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Dermod conceived it expedient to resume their allegiance, and to crowd round his standard, with all the ardour of the most zealous loyalty. The combined forces marched to Wexford, and the Irish and Ostmen, who then governed the town, marched out to meet the enemy. The Irish army were compelled to return to the town, and the enemy, encouraged by this temporary success, pursued them to the gates of the city. The Irish turned upon their pursuers, and drove back the enemy with considerable loss. At length the clergy of the garrison interposed their mediation between the besieged and besiegers, and Wexford was given up to Dermod, and Earl Pembroke, who was immediately invested with the lordship of the city and domain. Harvy of Mountmauris was also head of two considerable districts, on the coast between Wexford and Waterford. Here was settled the first colony of British inhabitants, differing in manners, cus toms, and language, from the natives, and even to this day preserving that difference in a very remarkable degree, notwithstanding the lapse of many ages. Dermod immediately proceeded at the head of his combined forces, amounting to 3000 men, to lay waste the territory of the prince of Ossory, (a part of Leinster,) which he desolated with fire and sword; and though the Irish army made a most heroic resistance to the invader, the superiority of English discipline and English arms, counterbalanced the advantages which the Irish enjoyed from their superior knowledge of the country. Had the latter patiently remained in the woods and morasses,

where the English cavalry could not act, they would have wearied the courage, and baffled the discipline of the invaders, and perhaps would have preserved the independence of their country. A reliance on the intrepidity of their soldiers, betrayed them from their native situations into the open plains, where they were exposed to the superior generalship of the English invader.

English historians have laboured, with malicious industry, to paint the comparative superiority of their countrymen, over the wild and barbarous natives of Ireland; and hesitate not to brand with the infamous epithets of cruel, and savage, and uncultivated, these unoffending people, whose properties the English were desolating, whose peace they were disturbing, and on the rights and liberties of whose country they were about to trample.

The vengeance of an unprincipled and exiled Irish monarch found refuge in the ambition and avarice of English adventurers; and the miserable and afflicting scenes, which the reader of Irish history is doomed to wade through, were acted under the specious and insulting pretext of order, religion, and morality-but to proceed. Dermod succeeded in bringing to subjection the revolted subjects of his government, and prepared to defend himself against the denunciations of the Irish monarch, who now began to be alarmed, at an invasion which he had hitherto viewed with contempt, and without apprehension.

The Irish reader contemplates, with a mixture of gratification and melancholy, the picture of mag

nificence and grandeur which the preparations of the monarch of Ireland present to his view, for the invasion of the territories of Dermod, and the expulsion of the English army, who presumed to violate the independence of Ireland. He convened the estates of the nation at Tarah, in Meath. He ordained new laws, raised and regulated new seminaries, distributed splendid donations to the various professors of learning, and assembled and reviewed the army in presence of the vassal Irish sovereigns, who waited on their monarch. Dermod, deserted by his subjects on the approach of the Irish monarch, fled to his fastnesses in Wexford, where he strongly entrenched himself.

Before Roderic unsheathed his sword, he remonstrated with the English leaders on the injustice and cruelty of their invasion; on the shameful and odious connection they had formed with an adulterer, and traitor to his country; and that the war they were about to wage with the Irish, was as impolitic as it was unprincipled; for surely, said the monarch of Ireland, Englishmen cannot suppose that Ireland will surrender her rights to a foreign power, without a dreadful and sanguinary strug gle.

Fitzstephen, the English general, refused to desert his Irish ally, and determined to abide the event of the contest. Roderic still hesitated, before he would proceed to force; and at the moment he could have crushed this infant effort of the English, to subjugate his country, he was solicited by the clergy to enter into a treaty with Dermod; the prin

cipal condition of which was, that he should immediately dismiss the British, with whom again he was never to court an alliance. Soon after this treaty, we find the English general, Fitzstephen, building a fort at Carrig, remarkable for the natural strength of its situation. Dermod, supported by his English allies, proceeded to Dublin, and laid waste the territories surrounding that city with fire and sword. The citizens laid down their arms, and supă plicated mercy from the cruel and malignant enemy. It is the duty of the historian to record, that the inhabitants of this devoted city found refuge in the mercy of the English general, who interpos ed to allay the fury of Dermod's vengeance. Dermod was not inattentive to every opportunity which afforded him a pretext to violate the treaty, into which force alone obliged him to enter with the Irish monarch. He defended the son-in-law of Donald O'Brien, prince of Thomond, against the efforts of Roderic to reduce him to obedience, and again solicited the aid of his English allies, to assert the rights of his family, against the ambition and pretensions of the Irish monarch. The English generals cheerfully obeyed the invitation; and Roderic, alarmed by the rumours of the formid. able strength of the allied armies, declined, for the present, to curb the licentiousness of the prince of Thomond, or to dispute the rights of Dermod to the sovereignty of Leinster.

The son of Dermod was then in the power of Roderic, as an hostage for the allegiance of his father. He threatened Dermod with the destruction

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of his child, if he did not instantly return to his obedience, dimiss his English allies, and ceased to harass and disturb his unoffending neighbours.

Dermod defied the power of Roderic, was care less of the fate of his son, and openly avowed his pretensions to the sovereignty of Ireland. The head of the young Dermod was instantly struck off by order of Roderic. The English continued to spread through the country the wide wasting calamities of a sanguinary war; their thirst of blood seemed to increase with the number of their victims, and their spirit of destruction with the bountiful productions of nature, which covered the country around them. At length the jealousy of the British sovereign awoke, and suspended the fate of this unhappy people; and the meanest passion of the human mind prompted Henry to take those measures which justice should have dictated.

Henry issued his edict, forbidding any future supplies of men or of arms to be sent to Ireland, and commanding all his subjects there instantly to return. Strongbow immediately dispatched Raymond to his sovereign, to endeavour to allay his jealousy, and to impress his sovereign with the conviction, that whatever they had conquered in Ireland, was conquered for Henry, and that he alone was the rightful possessor of all those territories which had submitted to the arms of Strongbow. Raymond was received with haughtiness and distrust by the English monarch, who refused to comply with his solicitations. At this period bishop Becket was murdered; a circumstance which to Henry was a