In vain did the Irish clergy meet in synod at Armagh and strive to avert the wrath which seemed to have been revealed against their country by a solemn decree for the liberation of the English slaves with whom, even yet, the houses of the Irish chieftains were filled.[492] One sentence from an Irish record of the next year may serve to illustrate the condition of the country: “Seven predatory excursions were made by the Ui-Maine into Ormond from Palm Sunday till Low Sunday.”[493] It made but little difference when at Whitsuntide Dermot, “by whom a trembling sod was made of all Ireland,” died at Ferns “of an insufferable and unknown disease—without a will, without penance, without the Body of Christ, without unction, as his evil deeds deserved.”[494] At that very moment a wiking fleet gathered from all the lands where the old sea-rovers’ life still lingered—Norway, the Hebrides, Orkney, Man—appeared in Dublin bay under the command of Hasculf, the exiled leader of the Ostmen, and of a northern chief whose desperate valour won him the title of “John the Furious”—in the English speech of that day, John the Wode.[495] Something of the spirit of the old northern sagas breathes again in the story of this, the last wiking-fight ever fought upon the soil of the British isles. Bard and historian alike tell of the mighty strokes dealt by the battle-axes of John and his comrades,[496] and how they had almost hewed their way into Dublin once more, when a well-timed sally of the besieged caught them at unawares in the rear;[497]—how an Irish chief named Gillamocholmog, whom Miles Cogan had posted on a neighbouring hill, chivalrously bidding him watch the course of the battle and join the winning side, rushed down with his followers at the critical moment and helped to complete the rout of the Ostmen;[498]—how John the Wode fell by the hand of Miles Cogan;[499]—how Hasculf was taken prisoner by Miles’s brother Richard and brought back to be reserved for ransom, and how his hot wiking-blood spoke in words of defiance which goaded his captors to strike off his head.[500] Fifteen hundred northmen fell upon the field; five hundred more were drowned in trying to regain their ships.[501] From the shores of Ireland, as from those of England, the last northern fleet was driven away by Norman swords.

The garrison of Dublin fought in truth even more desperately than their assailants; for they were fighting for their all. A remonstrance addressed by some of the Irish princes to the king of England against the aggressions of his subjects[502] can hardly have been needed to open Henry’s eyes to the danger gathering for him and his realm beyond the western sea. This little band of adventurers, almost all bound together by the closest ties of kindred,[503] were conquering Leinster neither for its native sovereign nor for their own, but were setting up a new feudal state independent of all royal control, under the leadership of a disgraced English baron. Such a state, if suffered to grow unhindered, would soon be far more dangerous to England than to Ireland, for it would be certain to play in every struggle of the feudal principle against the royal authority in England the part which the Ostmen had played of old in the struggles of the Danelaw. At the beginning of the year 1171 therefore Henry issued an edict prohibiting all further intermeddling of his subjects in Ireland, and bidding those who were already there either return before Easter or consider themselves banished for life.[504] Not a man went back; Richard of Striguil sent Raymond over to Normandy with a written protest to the king, pleading that his conquests had been undertaken with the royal sanction and that he was ready to place them at the king’s disposal;[505] but the “Geraldines,” as the kindred of Maurice Fitz-Gerald called themselves, seem to have at once accepted their sentence of exile and resolved to hold by their swords alone the lands which those swords had won.[506]

The hostility of the Ostmen had apparently ended with Hasculf’s defeat; thenceforth they seem to have made common cause with the new-comers in whom they were perhaps already beginning to recognize the stirrings of kindred blood. But, on the other hand, the position of Earl Richard and his comrades had been seriously weakened by Dermot’s death. The king of Leinster’s devise of his kingdom to his son-in-law was, like the grants which he had made to the Geraldines and like his own homage to King Henry, void in Irish law. In Irish eyes his death removed the last shadow of excuse for the presence of the strangers on Irish soil; their allies rapidly fell away;[507] and by midsummer the whole country rose against them as one man. Roderic O’Conor mustered the forces of the north; Archbishop Laurence of Dublin, whose family occupied an influential position in Leinster, called up the tribes of the south; while a squadron of thirty ships was hired from Jarl Godred of Man.[508] The aim of the expedition was to blockade Dublin, whither Earl Richard had now returned, and where almost all the leaders of the invasion, except Robert Fitz-Stephen and Hervey of Mountmorris, were now gathered together. The whole Irish land-force amounted to sixty thousand men; half of these were under the immediate command of Roderic, encamped at Castle-Knock;[509] Mac-Dunlevy, the chieftain of Uladh, planted his banner on the old battle-field of Clontarf;[510] Donell O’Brien, the king of North Munster, posted himself at Kilmainham; and Murtogh Mac-Murrough, a brother of Dermot, whom Roderic had set up as king of Leinster in 1167, took up his position at Dalkey.[511] To these were added, for the northern division, the men of Breffny and of East Meath under Tighernan O’Ruark, those of Oiriel or southern Ulster under Murtogh O’Carroll,[512] and those of West Meath under Murtogh O’Melaghlin; while the archbishop’s call had brought up the whole strength of Leinster except the men of Wexford and Kinsellagh;[513] and even these, as the sequel proved, were preparing to fight the same battle on other ground.

For nearly two months[514] the English knights were thus blockaded in Dublin. Their sole hope of relief was in Robert Fitz-Stephen, who had been left in command at Wexford. They were all but starving when Donell Kavanagh, a half-brother of Eva Mac-Murrough and a devoted adherent of her husband, slipped into the city with tidings that Wexford had risen; Robert Fitz-Stephen was blockaded in the little fort of Carrick by the townsfolk and the men of Kinsellagh, to the number of three thousand; unless he could be succoured within three days, all would be over with him and his men.[515] Earl Richard at once called a council of war. It comprised nearly all the leaders of the English and Welsh forces in Ireland:—Richard of Striguil himself; Maurice Fitz-Gerald with three of his gallant nephews, Meiler Fitz-Henry, Miles Fitz-David and Raymond the Fat; Miles Cogan, the captor of Dublin and its chief defender in the recent siege; Maurice de Prendergast,[516] who two years before had thrown up the adventure and gone home in disgust at the faithlessness of his allies,[517] but had returned, it seems, in Earl Richard’s train, and was yet to leave, alone of all the invading band, an honoured memory among the Irish people;[518] and some fourteen others.[519] They decided upon sending Maurice de Prendergast and Archbishop Laurence to Roderic with an offer of surrender on condition that Richard of Striguil should hold the kingdom of Leinster under Roderic as overlord. Roderic rejected the proposal with scorn; the knights might hold what the earlier pirates had held—Dublin, Waterford and Wexford; not another rood of Irish land should be granted to the earl and his company; and if they refused these terms, Dublin should be stormed on the morrow.[520] That afternoon the little garrison—scarce six hundred in all[521]—sallied forth and surprized Roderic’s camp while he and his men were bathing; Roderic himself escaped with great difficulty; fifteen hundred Irishmen were slain, many of them perishing in the water; while at sunset the victors returned, after a long pursuit, with scarcely a man missing, and laden with provisions enough to supply all Dublin for a year.[522] The rest of the besieging army dispersed at once, and the very next morning Earl Richard was free to set out for the relief of Robert Fitz-Stephen.[523]

He was however already too late. Three thousand men of Wexford and Kinsellagh, finding that they could make no impression by fair means upon Robert Fitz-Stephen shut up in the fort of Carrick with five knights and a handful of archers, at length had recourse to fraud. Two bishops and some monks were made to stand under the walls of the fort and swear upon relics brought for the purpose that Dublin was taken, the earl and his comrades slain, and Roderic on the march to Wexford at the head of his victorious host. On a promise of liberty to escape to Wales[524] Robert in his despair surrendered, only to see his little band of humbler followers slaughtered to a man, and himself and his five knights cast into chains. The men of Wexford then fired their town and took refuge with their captives on the neighbouring island of Beg-Erin,[525] whence they sent word to Richard of Striguil that if he dared to approach them he should immediately receive the heads of his six friends.[526] Notwithstanding this disaster at Wexford, and the failure of a plot to entrap the chief of Ossory—a well-deserved failure, due to the loyalty of Maurice de Prendergast[527]—the invaders were rapidly gaining ground. The king of North Munster, who was married to Eva’s sister, again forsook Roderic and made alliance with his English brother-in-law;[528] an attempt made by Tighernan O’Ruark to renew the siege of Dublin ended in failure;[529] and at last Murtogh of Kinsellagh was reduced to make a surrender of his principality into Richard’s hands and accept a re-grant of it from him as overlord, while Donell Kavanagh was invested on like terms with the remaining portion of Leinster.[530]