Dermot, king of Leinster, expelled by his fellow kings, repairs to Henry, and offers to become his vassal, if replaced. The king declines to engage in the matter, but allows him to apply to his nobles.

A.D. 1169. Peace is concluded between Louis and Henry, Jan. 6.

The archbishop excommunicates Gilbert Foliot, bishop of London, the king's chief adviser.

IRELAND.

A.D. 1169. Dermot of Leinster procures aid from Richard de Clare". Fitzgerald and Fitzstephen, two of Clare's associates, are sent forward with a body of Norman horse and Welsh foot; they land near Wexford, June 24, and establish themselves there.

The state of Ireland, mainly in consequence of the strange system of elective monarchy, called tanistry, which prevailed there, had long been such as to favour

He was the great-grandson of Richard of Brion, a Norman, who fought at Hastings, and appears in Domesday Book possessed of manors in Kent, Suffolk, and seven other counties. His father Gilbert made conquest of great part of West Wales, and received the title of earl of Pembroke, but this Richard is better known as Strongbow, or Richard of Strigul (Chepstow), from his place of residence. He was a man of broken fortune and in disgrace with the king, but his military skill and courteous manners gave him great influence, which he was induced to exert by the liberal promises of the fugitive. Strongbow married Eva, the daughter of Dermot, and succeeded to his kingdom; he was obliged to surrender it to Henry II., but had it re-granted, except Dublin, Waterford, and the other Ostman seaports, which the king retained in his own hands; he died in Dublin in 1172. His daughter Isabel married William Marshall, who became earl of Pembroke, and was guardian of the realm in the minority of Henry III.

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They were the sons of Nesta, one of the mistresses of Henry I., and so half-brothers of Robert, earl of Gloucester.

any invasion from England, even, as was now the case, with comparatively small numbers. There were five native kings, commonly at war among themselves; and although one of them was nominally lord paramount, and styled Ardriach (equivalent to the Saxon Bretwalda, a war-king), his authority cannot have been much regarded, as it appears that the head of each sept, or tribe, was everywhere considered as an independent ruler. Neither hereditary succession nor primogeniture was known, but, in accordance with gavelkind, on the death of any chief, his possessions were equally shared among all his male issue, whether legitimate or not; and by the tanist rule, each king's successor was chosen by popular election, during the lifetime of the king himself, being sometimes his eldest son, but more often not, and so frequently making war to obtain possession, that more than half of the Irish kings whose fate is known are ascertained to have met with violent deaths from this cause. To add to the confusion, the Ostman kings and bishops were in constant communication with the kindred Norman rulers in England. A people thus divided into as many factions as families, of course could offer no more effectual opposition to the new invaders than to their precursors; but though thus readily established, the rule of the English kings in Ireland was in reality for a long period restricted to very narrow limits; little more indeed than the Ostman seaports which had been reserved for the crown by Henry II. The natives, seeing their invaders begin to quarrel over their spoil, which they speedily did, reconquered much of the country that had been overrun, and disclaimed

their recent formal submission; the king's officers were equally set at nought by the Norman settlers, who soon, in hatred to all newer comers and defiance of authority, became " more Irish than the Irish themselves;" they strove to dispossess the old inhabitants, but yet they intermarried with them, and adopted much of their manners and customs, and even language.

The kings of England took the title of Lords of Ireland, but their authority was little more than nominal; statutes and proclamations for nearly 400 years speak of three classes in the country, the king's subjects, the king's rebels, and the king's enemies. The first, by far the smaller number, were the inhabitants of the English Pale, a limited district on the east coast, who, dwelling in, or immediately adjoining, Dublin, Drogheda, or other fortified towns, were thus by military force brought to yield a semblance of obedience; the second ordinarily comprised, in the east and south, the Butlers and Fitzgeralds, in the north and west, the De Courcys, De Burghs, and other Anglo-Irish chiefs, who had occupied in almost independent sovereignty the open country; the last were the natives, the mere Irish," who fiercely contended for their rocky fastnesses and remote districts, in which struggle they received occasional assistance from both Scotland and Norway. Though emphatically styled the king's enemies, they really appear to have been less hostile to the royal government than the other classes, for they made frequent applications for the benefit of the laws and the king's protection, but failed to obtain either; they had then no hope but in arms, and thus they remained bar

barous and poor, though probably not much more so than their opponents. Thus the history of Ireland is for ages nothing but a dreary picture of convulsions and blood, painful to peruse, and but slightly connected with that of any other country.

A.D. 1169. Owen Gwynneth dies; his son David succeeds, after a civil ward.

The papal legates endeavour to bring about a reconciliation between the king and the archbishop, who accordingly meet in November, at St. Denys, but part without any agreement.

A.D. 1170. Henry, the king's son, is crowned by the king's command at Westminster, June 15, by the archbishop of York (Roger of Bishopsbridge) and other prelates. Becket complains to the pope, who forwards him a sentence of suspension against them, as invaders of the rights of the see of Canterbury.

The king's sons, Henry and Richard, quarrel with him, and he is obliged to suffer them to do homage for Aquitaine and Poitou to the king of France.

The king and the archbishop meet at Fretville, in Touraine, and are formally reconciled, July 22.

Richard de Clare goes to Ireland, and captures Dublin,

■ Several Welsh chieftains being exiles in consequence of this war, some of them sought the protection of the king, and did homage to him as their liege lord at Gloucester, July 25, 1173; one of the exiles, named Madoc, (probably a son of Owen,) is said by the bards to have preferred putting to sea with a few of his friends, and to have reached America; a statement which recent researches have shewn to be by no means improbable.

They had had meetings before, as early as November, 1167, but without any good result, neither party being willing to put faith in

the other.

but is soon after besieged there by the Irish in conjunction with the Ostmen.

The archbishop's possessions are restored to him, Nov. 12. He returns to Canterbury, Dec. 3, and finds that the property of the see has been grievously wasted by Ranulf and Robert de Broc, the sequestrators.

He publishes the sentence against the prelates, who repair to the king in Normandy, and beseech his protection. Henry gives utterance to angry expressions, which prove the immediate cause of the archbishop's death.

The archbishop proposes to visit the young king at Woodstock, but is prevented. His provisions are intercepted, and his life threatened. He preaches in the cathedral on Christmas-day, and afterwards excommunicates Ranulf and Robert de Broc.

Four Norman knights (Richard Brito, Reginald Fitzurse, Hugh de Moreville, and William Tracy) having secretly left the king's court, meet at the house of Ranulf de Broc, at Saltwood, Dec. 28; on the following day they proceed to Canterbury, when, feigning a commission from the king, they in vain endeavour to induce the archbishop to recall the sentence against the archbishop of York and the other prelates. At length they follow him into the north transept of the cathedral, and there murder him before the altar of St. Benedict, Dec. 29. His body is hastily buried in the crypt, Dec. 31.

There it remained until the year 1220, when it was with solemn pomp transferred to a splendid shrine which had been prepared immediately behind the high altar. Becket was canonized by Pope Alexander III., March 3, 1173, and although his shrine was destroyed, and his name erased from the Anglican calendar, by Henry VIII., no