set foot in Ireland.  The short winter’s work was to end in utter confusion.  The king’s policy had been to set up the royal justice and power, and to break the strength of the barons by dividing and curtailing their interests.  He had left them without a leader.  The growing power of Strongbow had been broken; Dublin had been taken from him; the castles had all been committed to knights appointed by the king.  Quarrels and rivalries soon broke out.  Raymond the Fat became the recognized head of Nesta’s descendants.  In his enormous frame, his yellow curly hair, his high-coloured cheery face, his large gray eyes, we seethe type of the old Norse conquerors who had once harried England; we recognize it too in his carelessness as to food or clothing, his indifference to hardship, his prodigious energy, the sleepless nights spent in wandering through his camp where his resounding shouts awoke the sleeping sentinels, the enduring wrath which never forgot an enemy.  Richard’s uncle, Hervey of Mount Moriss, led a rival faction in the interests of Strongbow.  The English garrison in Ireland was weakened by the loss of troops which Henry was compelled to carry away with him.  The forces that remained, divided, thinned, discouraged, were left to confront an Irish party united in a revived hope.  No sooner did rebellion break over England in the next year than the Irish with one accord rose in revolt.  The treasury was exhausted, and there was no payment for the troops.  A doubtful campaign went on in which the English, attacked now by the Ostmen of the towns, now by the Irish, fought with very varying success, but with prodigies of valour.  They were reckless of danger, heedless of the common safeguards of military precaution.  When Henry heard of Raymond’s daring capture of Limerick in 1176, and then of his retreat, he made one of his pithy “Great was the courage in attacking it, and yet greater in the subduing of it, but the only wisdom that was shown was in its desertion.”

The rivalry of Raymond and Strongbow was at its height when, in 1176, Earl Richard died; and to this day his burial-place in the Norman Cathedral in Dublin, and that of his wife Aeifi, are marked by the only sculptured tombs that exist of these first Norman conquerors of Ireland.  Others besides the king heard with joy the news that the great warrior was dead.  Richard’s sister, who had been married to Raymond, had cast in her lot with her lord.  She sent a cautious despatch to her husband, who was unable himself to read, and had to depend on the good offices of a clerk.  “Know, my dearest lord,” wrote the prudent wife, “that that great tooth which pained me so long has now fallen out, wherefore see that you delay not your return.”  The watchful Henry, however, at once recalled Raymond to England, and sent a new governor, Fitz-Aldhelm, to hold the restless barons in check, till his son John, to whom he now proposed to give the realm of Ireland, should be of age to undertake its government.  When Fitz-Aldhelm