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M'Murrogh had cost him his crown, eventually his life; had changed the dynasty in England, and seated the house of Lancaster upon the throne.

For eighteen years subsequently the invincible Art reigned over his inviolate territory; his career to the last being a record of brilliant victories over every expedition sent against it. As we wade through the crowded annals of those years, his name is ever found in connection with some gallant achievement. Wherever else the fight is found going against Ireland, whatever hand falters or falls in the unbroken struggle, in the mountains of Wicklow there is one stout arm, one bold heart, one glorious intellect, ever nobly daring and bravely conquering in the cause of native land. Art, "whose activity defied the chilling effects of age, poured his cohorts through Sculloge Gap on the garrisons of Wexford, taking in rapid succession in one campaign (1406) the castles of Camolins, Ferns, and Enniscorthy. A few years subsequently his last great battle, probably the most serious engagement of his life, was fought by him against the whole force of the Pale under the walls of Dublin. The Duke of Lancaster, son of the king and lord lieutenant of Ireland, issued orders for the concentration of a powerful army for an expedition southwards against M'Murrogh's allies. But M Murrogh and the mountaineers of Wicklow now felt themselves strong enough to take the initiative. They crossed the plain which lies to the north of Dublin, and encamped at Kilmainham, where Roderic, when he besieged the city, and Brian before the battle of Clontarf, had pitched their tents of old. The English and Anglo-Irish forces, under the eye of their prince, marched out to dislodge them, in four divisions. The first was led by the duke in person; the second by the veteran knight, Jenicho d'Artois; the third by Sir Edward Perrers, an English knight; and the fourth by Sir Thomas Butler, prior of the order of St. John, afterwards created by Henry the Fifth, for his distinguished service, earl of Kilmain. With M Murrogh were O'Byrne, O'Nolan, and other chiefs, besides his sons, nephews, and relatives. The numbers on each side could hardly fall short of ten thousand men, and the action may be fairly considered one of the most

decisive of those times. into Dublin; the slopes of Inchicore and the valley of the Liffey were strewn with the dying and the dead; the river at that point obtained from the Leinster Irish the name of Atheroe, or the ford of slaughter; the widowed city was filled with lamentation and dismay."

The duke was carried back wounded

This was the last endeavor of the English power against Art. "While he lived no further attacks were made upon his kindred or country." He was not, alas! destined to enjoy long the peace he had thus conquered from his powerful foes by a forty-four years' war! On the 12th of January, 1417, he died at Ross in the sixtieth year of age, many of the chroniclers attributing his death to poison administered in a drink. Whether the enemies whom he had so often vanquished in the battle-field resorted to such foul means of accomplishing his removal, is, however, only a matter of suspicion, resting mainly on the fact, that his chief brehon, O'Doran, who with him had partaken of a drink given them by a woman on the wayside as they passed, also died on the same day, and was attacked with like symptoms. Leeches' skill was vain to save the heroic chief. His grief-stricken people followed him to the grave, well knowing and keenly feeling that in him they had lost their invincible tower of defence. He had been called to the chieftaincy of Leinster at the early age of sixteen years; and on the very threshold of his career had to draw the sword to defend the integrity of his principality. From that hour to the last of his battles, more than forty years subsequently, he proved himself one of the most consummate military tacticians of his time. Again and again he met and defeated the proudest armies of England, led by the ablest generals of the age. "He was," say the four Masters, a man distinguished for his hospitality, knowledge, and feats of arms; a man full of prosperity and royalty; a founder of churches and monasteries by his bounties and contributions." In fine, our history enumerates no braver soldier, no nobler character, than Art M'Murrogh "Kavanagh," prince of Leinster.

XXIX. HOW THE CIVIL WARS IN ENGLAND LEFT THE ANGLOIRISH COLONY TO RUIN. HOW THE IRISH DID NOT GRASP THE OPPORTUNITY OF EASY LIBERATION.

ITHIN the hundred years next succeeding the events we have just traced-the period embraced between 1420 and 1520-England was convulsed by the great civil war of the White and Red Roses, the houses of York and Lancaster. Irish history during the same period being chiefly a record of the contest for mastery between the two principal families of the Pale-the Butlers and the Geraldines. During this protracted civil struggle, which bathed England in blood, the colony in Ireland had, of course, to be left very much to its own resources; and, as a natural consequence, its dimensions gradually contracted, or rather it ceased to have any defined boundary at all, and the merest exertion on the part of the Irish must have sufficed to sweep it away completely. Here was, in fine, the opportunity of opportunities for the native population, had they but been in a position to avail of it, or had they been capable of profiting by any opportunity, to accomplish with scarcely an effort the complete deliverance of their country. England was powerless for aggression, torn, distracted, wasted, paralyzed, by a protracted civil war. The lords of the Pale were equally disunited and comparatively helpless. One-hundredth part of the exertion put forth so bravely, yet so vainly, by the native princes in the time of Donald O'Neil and Robert Bruce would have more than sufficed them now to sweep from the land every vestige of foreign rule. The chain hung so loosely that they had but to arise and shake it from their limbs. They literally needed but to will it, and they were free!

Yet not an effort, not a movement, not a motion, during all this time-while this supreme opportunity was passing

away forever-was made by the native Irish to grasp the prize thus almost thrust into their hand-the prize of national freedom! They had boldly and bravely striven for it before when no such opportunity invited them; they were subsequently to strive for it yet again with valor and daring as great, when every advantage would be arrayed against them. But now, at the moment when they had but to reach out their hand and grasp the object of all their endeavors, they seemed dead to all conceptions of duty or policy. The individual chiefs, north, south, east, and west, lived on in the usual way. They fought each other or the neighboring Anglo-Norman lord just as usual, or else they enjoyed as a pleasant diversification a spell of tranquillity, peace, and friendship. In the relations between Pale and the Irish ground there was, for the time, no regular government "policy" of any kind on either hand. Each Anglo-Norman lord, and each Irish chieftain, did very much as he himself pleased; made peace or war with his neighbors, or took any side he listed in the current conflicts of the period. Some of the Irish princes do certainly appear to have turned this time of respite to a good account, if not for national interests, for other not less sacred interests. Many of them employed their lives during this century in rehabilitating religion and learning in all their pristine power and grandeur. Science and literature once more began to flourish; and the shrines of Rome and Compostello were thronged with pilgrim chiefs and princes, paying their vows of faith, from the Western Isle. Within this period lived Margaret of Offaly, the beautiful and accomplished queen of O'Carroll, king of Ely. She and her husband were munificent patrons of literature, art, and science. On queen Margaret's special invitation the literati of Ireland and Scotland, to the number of nearly three thousand, held a "session" for the furtherance of literary and scientific interests, at her palace, near Killeagh, in Offaly, the entire assemblage being the guests of the king and queen during their stay. "The nave of the great church of Da Sinchell was converted, for the occasion, into a banqueting hall, where Margaret herself inaugurated the proceedings by

placing two massive chalice of gold, as offerings, on the high altar, and committing two orphan children to the charge of nurses to be fostered at her charge. Robed in cloth of gold, this illustrious lady, who was as distinguished for her beauty as for her generosity, sat in queenly state in one of the galleries of the church, surrounded by the clergy, the brehons, and her private friends, shedding a lustre on the scene which was passing below, while her husband, who had often encountered Engiand's greatest generals in battle, remained mounted on a charge outside the church to bid the guests welcome, and see that order was preserved. The invitations were issued, and the guests arranged, according to a list prepared by O'Connor's chief brehon; and the second entertainment, which took place as Rathangan, was a supplemental one, to embrace such men of learning as had not been brought together at the former feast.”

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XXX.-HOW A NEW ELEMENT OF ANTAGONISM CAME INTO THE STRUGGLE. HOW THE ENGLISH KING AND NATION ADOPTED A NEW RELIGION, AND HOW THE IRISH HELD FAST BY THE OLD.

HE time was now at hand when, to the existing elements of strive and hatred between the Irish and the English nations, there was to be added one more fierce than all the rest; cne bitterly intensifying the issues of battle already knit with such deadly vehemence between the Celt and Saxon. Christendom was being rent in twain by a terrible convulsion. A new religion had flung aloft the standard of revolt and revolution against the successors of St. Peter; and the Christian world was being divided into two hostile camps-of the old faith and the new. This was not the mere agitation of new theories of subverting tendencies, pushed and preached with vehemence to the overturning of the old; but the crash of a politico-religious revolution, bursting like the eruption of a

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