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]

The earl’s triumphs, however, met with an abrupt check from over sea. His uncle Hervey of Mountmorris, who had gone to plead his cause with the king after the failure of Raymond’s mission, returned to Waterford[531] with tidings that Henry himself was on his way to Ireland and required the self-styled earl of Leinster to go and speak with him without delay. Richard hurried over to Wales,[532] met Henry on the border,[533] and was forgiven on condition that he should surrender Dublin and the other coast towns absolutely into the king’s hands and do him homage and fealty for the rest of Leinster;[534] he then accompanied Henry into Pembrokeshire;[535] where the royal fleet was assembling in Milford Haven. It consisted of four hundred ships,[536] carrying a force of about four thousand men, of whom some five hundred were knights and the rest archers, mounted and unmounted.[537] The king embarked on the evening of Saturday, October 16, and landed next day at Croch, eight miles from Waterford.[538] On the morrow, S. Luke’s day, he entered the town of Waterford;[539] there he was met by his seneschal William Fitz-Aldhelm, his constable Humfrey de Bohun, Hugh de Lacy, Robert Fitz-Bernard, and some other officers of his household whom he had sent over to prepare for his coming.[540] The Irish of the district and the Ostmen of the town, in the person of their chieftain Ragnald, made submission to him as their sovereign;[541] while Richard of Striguil formally surrendered the place into the king’s hands and did homage to him for the earldom of Leinster.[542] The men of Wexford now, according to an agreement which they had made with Henry while he was waiting for a wind at Pembroke,[543] brought their captive Robert Fitz-Stephen to his sovereign’s feet, to be by him dealt with as a rebel and a traitor. Henry loaded him with reproaches and imprisoned him afresh, but his anger was more assumed than real, and the captive was soon released.[544] The submission of the English adventurers was followed by that of the Irish princes. Dermot MacCarthy, king of Cork or South Munster, was the first of them who came to Henry’s feet at Waterford, swore him fealty, gave hostages and promised tribute.[545] On November 1[546] Henry advanced to Lismore, and thence, two days later, to Cashel, where at the passage of the Suir he was met by the king of Limerick or of Northern Munster, Donell O’Brien, with offers of tribute and obedience. The lesser chieftains of southern Ireland followed the example of the two kings; in three weeks from his arrival all Munster was at his feet, and its coast-towns, Wexford, Waterford, Limerick and Cork, were all in the custody of his own officers.[547] At Martinmas he reached Dublin;[548] before Christmas he received hostages from all the princes of Leinster and Meath, from Tighernan O’Ruark of Breffny, from O’Carroll of Oiriel, and from the king of Uladh or eastern Ulster;[549] his new vassals built him a dwelling of wattle or wicker-work, after the manner of their country, outside the walls of Dublin, and there in their midst he held his Christmas court.[550]

Early in November two royal chaplains had been despatched to summon the Irish bishops to a council and claim their submission.[551] We hear not a word of Pope Adrian’s bull; but we can hardly doubt that its existence and its contents were in some way or other certified to the Irish prelates before, in response to the royal mandate, they met in council at Cashel in the first weeks of 1172.[552] The archbishop of Armagh absented himself on the plea of extreme age and infirmity;[553] all his episcopal brethren, however, made full submission to Henry, pledged themselves to conform in all things to the pattern of the English Church,[554] gave written promises to support the English king and his heirs as lawful sovereigns of Ireland,[555] and joined with him in sending to Rome a report of his proceedings and their own.[556]

In all Ireland the king of Connaught was now the only ruler, spiritual or temporal, who had not submitted to Henry.[557] Trusting to the inaccessible nature of his country,[558] Roderic had at first refused all dealings with the invader, declaring that he himself was the sole rightful monarch of Ireland.[559] It seems however that he afterwards came to a meeting with William Fitz-Aldhelm and Hugh de Lacy by the banks of the Shannon, on the frontier of Connaught and Meath, and there promised tribute and fealty like his fellow-kings.[560] The promise was however worthless until confirmed by his personal homage; and this Henry soon perceived was only to be extorted at the sword’s point. The impossibility of fighting to any advantage in the wet Irish winter compelled him to postpone the attempt until the spring;[561] and when spring came he found that his intended campaign must be abandoned altogether. From the day when he left Milford he had received not one word of tidings from any part of his dominions.[562] This total isolation, welcome at first as a relief from the load of cares which indeed he had purposely left behind him,[563] became at the end of nineteen weeks a source of almost unbearable anxiety. On March 1 he removed from Dublin to Wexford;[564] there for nearly a month he remained eagerly watching for a ship from England; none came until after Mid-Lent,[565] and then it was laden with such ill news that he could only take such hasty measures as were possible at the moment for maintaining his hold upon Ireland, and prepare to hurry out of it as soon as the wind would carry him.[566] Richard of Striguil was suffered to remain at Kildare[567] as earl of Leinster; the general direction of government and administration throughout the king’s Irish domains was intrusted to Hugh de Lacy,[568] who had already received a grant of Meath in fee,[569] and who was also left in command of the citadel of Dublin,[570] with a garrison of twenty knights, among whom were Maurice Fitz-Gerald[571] and Robert Fitz-Stephen.[572] The grants of territory made by Dermot to the half-brothers were of course annulled; Waterford and Wexford were both garrisoned and placed in charge of an officer appointed by the king;[573] and in each of these towns a fortress was either erected or repaired by his orders.[574]