When from their full and genial hearts an Irish feeling burst!
The English monarch strove in vain, by law and force and bribe,
To win from Irish thoughts and ways this ‘more than Irish’ tribe;
For still they clung to fosterage—to Brehon, cloak, and bard—
No king dare say to Geraldine: ‘Your Irish wife discard!’”
The immediate effect of the Statute of Kilkenny was to temporarily unite most of the Irish clans against the common enemy. They fell fiercely upon the Pale and again shut up the Normans in their fortresses. Prince Lionel returned to England grieved and humiliated. His viceroyalty had been a signal failure.
Throughout the viceroyalty of Clarence and his successor, William de Windsor, the desultory war between the Old Irish and the Anglo-Normans made many districts, in all the provinces, red with slaughter. The power of the De Burgos declined in Connaught after the death of the warlike Red Earl, who was the scourge of the O’Conors, and the latter family brought his descendants, who had assumed the name of MacWilliam, under their sway. The fierce tribes of Wicklow, Wexford, and Carlow harried the Pale, and were frequently joined by the O’Mores of Leix, and the Fitzpatricks of Ossory. In Ulster, Niel O’Neill, Prince of Tyrone, attacked and defeated the English armies and garrisons with so much success that he cleared Ulster of all foreigners, and won the title of Niel the Great. The Earl of Desmond met with a severe defeat at the hands of O’Brien, Prince of Thomond, who assailed him near the abbey of Adare in Limerick, and routed his army with terrible carnage. Desmond himself was mortally wounded and died upon the field. The Earl of Kildare, Desmond’s kinsman, attempted to avenge his rout, but met with scant success, because the Irish had, by this time, grown used to the Norman method of warfare, and, in many cases, improved upon the tactics of their oppressors.
Edward III, just before his death in 1376, attempted to get the settlements of the Pale to send representatives to London to consult about the affairs of Ireland, but they demurred, saying that it was not their custom to deliberate outside of their own country. However, they sent delegates to explain matters to the king, who did not further insist on convening a Pale Parliament in the English capital. It is strange that so able a monarch as Edward was, even in his declining years, never thought of visiting Ireland. Of course, most of his reign was taken up with the wars in France, in which he proved so signally victorious, and he had but little time for other occupations. In truth, Edward III, although nominally English, was, in reality, a Frenchman in thought and speech, and his dearest dream was to rule over the country of his Plantagenet ancestors, with England as a kind of tributary province. Of course, the English people would never have acquiesced in this arrangement, for, however willing to impose their yoke on other peoples, they are unalterably opposed to having any foreign yoke imposed upon themselves.