whence the Light had come. The nave, or main body of the church, was entered by the great western door, and the arms of the cross, or transepts, extended to the north and south. From one of the transepts, a side door generally led to the domestic buildings: the dormitory, where they slept; the refectory, where they ate; and the chapter-house, where the friars or brothers assembled, under the presidency of the abbot. There were also smaller buildings, storerooms, granaries, and workrooms. The church was the centre of all things, and under the stones of its floor the friars were at last laid to rest, while those who survived them carved their tombs and epitaphs.

Centres of

These abbeys were the homes of culture and art, as well as of devotion and learning, throughout the whole period of turmoil we have described, and for learning. the next two or three centuries. They are, indeed, among the great art monuments of Ireland, and there is a world of beauty in their graceful arches, slender pillars with rare and fanciful carving, and beautiful windows with many lights. Into these strong yet delicate fabrics of stone, their builders worked that art inspiration which an earlier age had embodied in the finely-wrought chalices and intricately interlaced illuminations of the sacred manuscripts.

SUMMARY

The Normans inherited the Roman power of conquest through discipline. As they gained a more extensive footing in Ireland they secured their position by building castles and keeps of stone against which the power of the Irish was unavailing. Fighting between the two races was incessant, and, in 1210, King John headed an expedition to restore order and peace. He divided that part of the country

under English influence into twelve counties, and introduced Norman law, which was directly opposed to the Irish law of inheritance, and this difference later became the cause of much bloodshed.

For a hundred years, from 1216 to 1315, Ireland was kept in a continuous state of turmoil by quarrels between the Irish chiefs and the Norman barons, and by fighting among the Irish themselves. Meath, Connaught, Ulster, and Munster were successively devastated, and the country suffered years of famine and pestilence. In 1315, Edward Bruce was invited by the northern Irish to be their king. He landed at Larne with a Scotch army and was joined by Donall O'Neill and the native Irish. The combined forces won several battles against the Normans, and Bruce was crowned king. He was killed in the battle of Faughart, in 1318. Bruce's invasion left the Norman government for the time being in a very weak condition.

Ireland owes to the Normans the introduction of the religious orders of Franciscans, Dominicans, and Cistercians, all of whom built many beautiful abbeys, the ruins of which are still standing in many places.

108. Old and new invaders. By the beginning of the fourteenth century, the government of England had ceased to be exclusively Norman, and was gradually becoming more truly English in institutions, law, and language. English literature was blending the older tongue. of the Angles and Saxons with the French imported by the Normans from France, and a mixed speech, half Germanic, half Latin in origin, was being formed, of great flexibility, color, and strength. The conquered English were absorbing and assimilating their conquerors.

This change naturally affected Ireland. The first comers from Britain had been Norman knights like De Lacy and De Courcy, with French names, and speaking French. They often married Irish wives, a daughter of Roderick O'Conor thus becoming the mother of one branch of the Fitzgeralds. The children of these marriages of course learned Irish as a mother-tongue, and it is safe to say that many of these Celto-Normans never knew a word of English, passing directly from NormanFrench to Irish. The common religion drew them closer

to their adopted country, and we find Irish princes and Norman nobles vying with each other in founding the early Cistercian and Franciscan abbeys. Many of these first settlers became so completely acclimated, and felt themselves so much at home, that they took Irish names, as well as the Irish tongue, and of them it was said that they were "more Irish than the Irish themselves."

109. Feuds between the Norman and English settlers. As Britain became more English, a new race of invaders began to come to Ireland, no longer Norman, but distinctively English, in thought and speech. As they were much more in harmony with conditions then prevailing in England, they were constantly favored by the Dublin government at the expense of the older Norman families. A keen rivalry grew up between the two elements, and the English newcomers spoke "Degencontemptuously of the older Normans as the erate "degenerate English." A result of this hostility was the quarrel between the Gernons and Savages, from among the newer English on the one side, and the De Bermingham family on the other. Sir John de Bermingham, who had defeated Edward Bruce at the battle of Faughart, together with his brothers and nephews, and a number of his followers, a hundred and sixty in all, were treacherously murdered by his rivals at Bragganstown near Ardee in Louth, in the year 1329.

English."

Another similar affair happened one Sunday morning in 1333. Young De Burgo, called the Dun Earl of Ulster, was on his way to church at Carrickfergus on the north shore of Belfast Lough. He was attacked and murdered by Richard de Mande- De Burgo. ville, his uncle by marriage. As De Burgo was

Murder of

1333.

a great favorite with the Norman families, they avenged his death by killing all persons suspected of having a part

in the murder, so that nearly three hundred of De Mandeville's followers were slain. De Burgo had vast estates in Ulster and Connaught, and at his death this territory fell to his daughter, then an infant. Two kinsmen of the Dun Earl, seeing that under Irish law, with its principle of election, the vast estates would probably fall to them, and not to the helpless girl, determined to seize the property. They announced that they had broken off their allegiance to England and English law, and in all things adopted the life and customs of the Irish. founded two powerful lines of the Burke family.

They

110. "The Pale" and the "Black Rents." The English settlement in the immediate neighborhood of Dublin, which later came to be known as the "Pale" (meaning "an inclosure," the same word as "paling," a fence, from an embankment which was built around it in the fifteenth century), was the only region which was really subject to England, and was now the one stronghold of English government in Ireland. Wars, famine, and pestilence had so weakened the inhabitants of this small district that they were no longer able to defend themselves. The powerful Irish chieftains made the English of the Pale pay tribute for protection from attacks by bodies of Irish raiders; and this tribute, which was called "Black Rent," was sometimes paid even by the Dublin government.

111. Weakness of the English government. By 1330, the English government at Dublin was so weak that the lord lieutenant called in the help of Maurice Fitzgerald, one of the powerful Norman lords, to ward off the attacks of the Irish chiefs, and gave him the title of first Earl of Desmond. Although Fitzgerald won a few. battles for the English, his presence did more harm than good, for he quartered his immense army of ten thousand men on the poor settlers of the Pale. Furthermore, he