saw the magnificent troop of Raymond’s cousins and nephews, who had thrown aside all armour save shields, and, mounted on splendid horses, dashed across the plain to display their feats of agility and horsemanship, he muttered to his followers, “This pride I will shortly abate, and these shields I will scatter.”  He was true to his word.  The fortunes of the knights of both parties indeed rapidly declined; “those who had been first had to learn to be last;” their lands were taken from them on every excuse, and they were followed by the enmity and persecution of the king.  For the next ten years the history of the English in Ireland is a miserable record of ineffective and separate wars undertaken by leaders each acting on his own account, and of watchful jealousy on the part of Henry.  A new governor was sent in 1177 to replace Fitz-Aldhelm.  Hugh de Lacy was no Norman.  His black hair, his deep-set black eyes, his snub nose, the scar across his face, his thin ill-shapen figure, marked him out from the big fair Fitz-Geralds, as much as did his “Gallican sobriety” and his training in affairs, for in war he had no great renown.  Perhaps it was some quick French quality in him that won the love of the Irish.  But Henry was suspicious and uneasy.  He was recalled in 1181 on the news that without the king’s leave he had married the daughter of the King of Connaught, and rumour added that he had even made ready a diadem for himself.  But his services were so valuable that that same winter he was sent back, only to be again recalled in 1184 and again sent back.  At last in 1186, “as though fortune had been zealous for the king of England,” he was treacherously slain by an Irishman, to Henry’s “exceeding joy.”

Meanwhile the king had in 1185 made a further attempt at a permanent settlement of the distracted island.  John was formally appointed king over Ireland, and accompanied by Glanville, landed in Waterford on the 25th of April.  His coming with a new batch of Norman followers completed the misfortunes of the first settlers.  The Norman-Welsh knights of the border had by painful experience learned among their native woods and mountains how to wage such war as was needed in Ireland-a kind of war where armour was worse than useless, where strength was of less account than agility, where days and nights of cold and starvation were followed by impetuous assaults of an enemy who never stood long enough for a decisive battle, a war where no mercy was given and no captives taken.  On the other hand, their half Celtic blood had made it easy for them to mingle with the Irish population, to marry and settle down among them.  But the followers of John were Norman and French knights, accustomed to fight in full armour upon the plains of France; and to add to a rich pay the richer profits of plunder and of ransom.  The seaport towns and the castles fell into the hands of new masters, untrained to the work required of them.  “Wordy chatterers, swearers of enormous oaths, despisers of others,”