Raymond now led an army to Limerick, to revenge himself on Donnell O’Brien, for his defeat at Thurles.  He succeeded in his enterprise.  Several engagements followed, in which the Anglo-Normans were always victorious.  Roderic now sent ambassadors to Henry II.  The persons chosen were Catholicus, Archbishop of Tuam; Concors, Abbot of St. Brendan’s, in Clonfert; and St. Laurence O’Toole, styled quaintly, in the old Saxon manner, “Master Laurence.”  The King and Council received them at Windsor.  The result of their conference was, that Roderic consented to pay homage to Henry, by giving him a hide from every tenth head of cattle; Henry, on his part, bound himself to secure the sovereignty of Ireland to Roderic, excepting only Dublin, Meath, Leinster, Waterford, and Dungarvan.  In fact, the English King managed to have the best share, made a favour of resigning what he never possessed, and of not keeping what he could never have held.  This council took place on the octave of the feast of St. Michael, A.D. 1175.  By this treaty Henry was simply acknowledged as a superior feudal sovereign; and had Ireland been governed with ordinary justice, the arrangement might have been advantageous to both countries.

Roderic was still a king, both nominally and ipso facto.  He had power to judge and depose the petty kings, and they were to pay their tribute to him for the English monarch.  Any of the Irish who fled from the territories of the English barons, were to return; but the King of Connaught might compel his own subjects to remain in his land.  Thus the English simply possessed a colony in Ireland; and this colony, in a few years, became still more limited, while throughout the rest of the country the Irish language, laws, and usages, prevailed as they had hitherto done.

Henry now appointed Augustin, an Irishman, to the vacant see of Waterford, and sent him, under the care of St. Laurence, to receive consecration from the Archbishop of Cashel, his metropolitan.  For a century previous to this time, the Bishops of Waterford had been consecrated by the Norman Archbishops of Canterbury, with whom they claimed kindred.

St. Gelasius died in 1173, and was succeeded in the see of Armagh by Connor MacConcoille.  This prelate proceeded to Rome very soon after his consecration, and was supposed to have died there.  When the Most Rev. Dr. Dixon, the late Archbishop of Armagh, was visiting Rome, in 1854, he ascertained that Connor had died at the Monastery of St. Peter of Lemene, near Chambery, in 1176, where he fell ill on his homeward journey.  His memory is still honoured there by an annual festival on the 4th of June; another of the many instances that, when the Irish Church was supposed to be in a state of general disorder, it had still many holy men to stem and subdue the torrent of evil.  We shall find, at a later period, that several Irish bishops assisted at the Council of Lateran.