and never again dared to show themselves at
Court, the Pope excommunicated them, and
they lived miserably for some time, shunned
by all their countrymen. At last, they went
humbly to Jerusalem, as a penance, and there
died, and were buried.

It happened fortunately for the pacifying
of the Pope, that an opportunity arose very
soon, after the murder of À BECKET, for the
King to declare his power in Ireland—which
was an acceptable undertaking to the Pope,
as the Irish, who had been converted to Christianity
by one Patricius (otherwise Saint
Patrick) before any Pope found out that
nobody could go to Heaven without his
leave, considered that the Pope had nothing
at all to do with them, or they with the Pope,
and accordingly refused to pay him Peter's
Pence, or that tax of a penny a house which
I have elsewhere mentioned. The King's
opportunity arose in this way:

The Irish were, at that time, as barbarous a
people as you can well imagine. They were
continually quarrelling and fighting, cutting
one another's throats, slicing one another's
noses, burning one another's houses, carrying
away one another's wives, and committing all
sorts of violence. The country was divided
into five kingdoms—DESMOND, THOMOND,
CONNAUGHT, ULSTER, and LEINSTER-- each
governed by a separate King, of whom one
claimed to be the chief of the rest. Now, one
of these Kings, named DERMOND MAC MORROUGH
(a wild kind of name, spelt in more
than one wild kind of way) had carried off
the wife of a friend of his, and concealed her
on an island in a bog. The friend, resenting
this (though it was quite the custom of the
country), complained to the chief King, and,
with the chief King's help, drove Dermond
Mac Murrough out of his dominions. Dermond
came over to England for revenge, and
offered to hold his realm as a vassal of King
Henry's, if King Henry would help him to
regain it. The King consented to these terms,
but only assisted him, then, with what were
called Letters Patent, authorising any English
subjects who were so disposed, to enter into
his service, and aid his cause.

There was, at Bristol, a certain EARL
RICHARD DE CLARE, called STRONGBOW: of no
very good character, needy and desperate, and
ready for anything that offered him a chance
of improving his fortunes. There were, in
South Wales, two other broken knights of the
good-for-nothing sort, called ROBERT
FITZ STEPHEN and MAURICE FITZ GERALD.
These three, each with a small band of
followers, took up Dermond's cause; and it
was agreed that if it proved successful, Strongbow
should marry his daughter EVA, and be
declared his heir.

The trained English followers of these
knights were so superior in all the discipline
of battle to the wild Irish, that they beat
them against immense superiority of numbers.
In one fight, early in the war, they cut off
three hundred heads, and laid them before
Mac Murrough, who turned them every one
up with his hands, rejoicing, and coming to
one which was the head of a man whom he
had very much disliked, grasped it by the hair
and ears, and tore off the nose and lips with
his teeth. You may judge from this, what
kind of gentleman an Irish King in those
times was. The captives, all through this war,
horribly treated; the victorious party
making nothing of breaking their limbs.
casting them into the sea from the tops of
high rocks. It was in the midst of the  miseries
and cruelties attendant on the taking of
Waterford, where the dead lay piled in the
streets, and the filthy gutters ran with blood,
that Strongbow married Eva,—an odious
marriage-company those mounds of corpses
must have made, and one quite worthy of the
young lady's father.

He died, after Waterford and Dublin had
been taken, and various successes achieved;
and Strongbow became King of Leinster.
Now came King Henry's opportunity. To
restrain the growing power of Strongbow,
he himself repaired to Dublin, as Strongbow's
Royal Master, and deprived him
of his kingdom, but confirmed him in the
enjoyment of great possessions. The King
then, holding great state in Dublin, received
the homage of nearly all the Irish Kings and
Chiefs, and so came home again with a great
addition to his reputation as Lord of Ireland,
and with a new claim on the favor of the
Pope. And now, their reconciliation was
completed—more easily and mildly by the
Pope, than the King might have expected, I
think.

At this period of his reign, when his
troubles seemed so few and his prospects so
bright, those domestic miseries began which
gradually made the King the most unhappy of
men, reduced his great spirit, wore away his
health, and broke his heart.

He had four sons. HENRY, now aged
eighteen: his secret crowning of whom had
given such offence to Thomas à Becket;
RICHARD, aged sixteen; GEOFFREY, fifteen;
and JOHN, his favorite, a young boy whom
the courtiers named LACKLAND, but to whom
he meant to give the Lordship of Ireland.
All these misguided boys, in their turn, were
unnatural sons to him, and unnatural brothers
to each other. Prince Henry, stimulated by
the French King, and by his bad mother
Queen Eleanor, began the undutiful history.

First, he demanded that his young wife,
MARGARET, the French King's daughter,
should be crowned as well as he. His father,
the King, consented, and it was done. It was
no sooner done, than he demanded to have
a part of his father's dominions, during his
father's life. This being refused, he made off
from his father in the night, with his bad
heart full of bitterness, and took refuge at the
French King's Court. Within a day or two,
his brothers Richard and Geoffrey followed.