Richard II’s Invasions—Heroic Art MacMurrough
THE first half of the fourteenth century passed away quietly enough in
Ireland, except for occasional conflicts between the Anglo-Normans and
the Celtic tribes, or an odd encounter of the latter with one another.
Edward III had so many quarrels with Scotland and France that he could
do nothing in Ireland, even were he so inclined, and the sad experience
of the Duke of Clarence in that country warned succeeding viceroys to
let well enough alone. The Irish nation, Celtic, Norman, and Saxon, was
gradually fusing and would soon have developed a composite strength
nearly equal to that of England herself. In the wars with France, many
Anglo-Irish septs fought under the orders of Edward, and, probably, some
of the Celtic septs also joined his standard, rather as allies, through
the bad policy of their chiefs, than as mercenaries.
By the time that Edward completed, or nearly so, the conquest of France,
the English power in Ireland had so shrunken as to be almost nominal.
Dublin, Drogheda, Kilkenny, and Waterford were the chief garrisons of
the English. The Lacys, Burkes, Fitzgeralds, and other Norman-Irish
houses and clans were scarcely to be distinguished from the Milesian
families and septs. Such fighting as they indulged in between themselves
was comparatively trivial. The island, blessed with partial peace, began
to grow more populous and prosperous. Edward, the Black Prince, having
crowned himself with glory in France, died before he could inherit the
crown of England. Edward III, not so old as worn out by ceaseless
warfare, died in 1377, and after him came to the English throne Richard,
son of the Black Prince, a handsome boy of sixteen, who, at first, gave
promise of great deeds, but who subsequently proved himself a weakling
and voluptuary. In Ireland, Ulster, Connaught, and Munster remained
tranquil for the most part, but, in Leinster, the royal house of
MacMurrough—lineal descendants of the traitor of Strongbow’s time—showed
a determination to drive the remnant of the English garrison into the
sea. They were as loyal to Ireland as their accursed ancestor had been
faithless. King Art I, after a long series of successes and failures,
died, and was succeeded on the Leinster throne by King Art II—one of the
bravest, wisest, and truest characters in Irish history. He continued
the war his father had begun. Richard II, like all of his race, was vain
and greedy of military glory. As the war with France had closed for a
period, he thought Ireland a good field in which to distinguish himself
as a general. He had heard of “MacMore,” as he called MacMurrough, and
longed to measure swords with him. Accordingly, in the summer of 1394,
he landed at Waterford with a large army. The historian McGee estimates
it at 35,000 horse and foot, but we are inclined to think it was much
less. That it was formidable, for those times, all historians who have
dealt with the subject are agreed upon. He was accompanied, also, by a
large retinue of nobility, among them Roger Mortimer, the young Earl of
March, who, because of the childlessness of Richard, was heir to the
British throne, through descent from the Duke of Clarence, in the female
line. Richard did not wait long in Waterford, but proceeded on his march
to Dublin, unfurling the banner of Edward the Confessor, for whom the
Irish were supposed to have a deep veneration. MacMurrough, however,
showed scant courtesy to the Confessor’s ensign, not because it was the
banner of a saint, but because, for the time, it represented the
rapacity of England. Richard was met boldly at every point. His bowmen
got tangled up in the woods. His horsemen floundered in the bogs.
MacMurrough’s army hovered in his front, on his flanks, and in rear. Not
a single success did the English monarch gain. He summoned MacMurrough
to a conference when he reached Dublin—having lost a third of his army
while en route—and the Leinster king, having accepted the invitation,
was ruthlessly thrown into prison. After a time, a treaty of some kind
was patched up between King Richard and himself, and the Irish prince
was allowed to go free. Richard then returned to England, leaving Roger
Mortimer in command. Soon afterward, MacMurrough, objecting to the
English encroachments in his territory, again rose in arms. He
encountered Mortimer and the English army on the banks of the King’s
River at Kenlis or Kells in Westmeath, and utterly routed them.
England’s heir-apparent was among the slain. This circumstance had much
to do with bringing about the bloody Wars of the Roses in the succeeding
century.
About this time Art MacMurrough and his chief bard, who, as was then the
Irish custom, accompanied his patron everywhere, were invited to a
banquet by one of the Norman lords, who treacherously pretended
friendship. The invitation was accepted. While seated at a window of the
banquet-hall, the bard perceived a mustering of troops around the
castle, and at once seized his harp and struck the chords to an ancient
Irish air. The Gaelic words which accompanied the measure fell upon the
ears of Art MacMurrough and warned him of his danger. His sword and
buckler hung near by. On some trivial pretext, he arose and seized them,
the bard having, meanwhile, armed himself. The two made a sudden
onslaught and, surprising their foes, cut their way to the courtyard,
where, fortunately, their horses still stood. They sprang upon them,
and, before the astonished men-at-arms could rally, made good their
escape. Art MacMurrough never again trusted the English, and remained
their consistent foe to his latest hour.
But King Richard, maddened by the death of Mortimer, which he felt was
dangerous to himself, raised another great army, and, in 1398, again
invaded Ireland. He was accompanied by a younger son of his uncle, John
of Gaunt, “time-honored Lancaster,” and also by Prince Henry, eldest son
of Henry of Hereford and afterward Henry V, the hero of Agincourt. The
boy was only in his twelfth year, but well grown and brave as a lion. In
the first encounter with the formidable MacMurrough, in the glens of
Carlow, he so distinguished himself that Richard II knighted him on the
field. This march from Waterford to Dublin proved, in the end, even more
disastrous than the former one. MacMurrough kept up his harassing
tactics, as usual. The rain poured down in torrents. The Irish drove all
the cattle away from the English line of march, and destroyed the
growing crops. Nearly all the baggage-animals of the invading force died
for want of forage, and the army was in a state of famine and revolt,
when it finally reached the seacoast near the present town of Arklow,
where some English ships, laden with provisions, saved it from actual
starvation. The remnant made its way to Dublin, where other disastrous
news awaited King Richard. Henry of Hereford, eldest son of John of
Gaunt, whom he had unjustly exiled, and whose lands he had seized, now,
on the death of his father, having become Duke of Lancaster, came back
from the continent, having heard of Richard’s misfortunes in Ireland,
and laid claim to the crown. Richard, after ordering young Prince Henry
and his uncle to be imprisoned in the castle of Trim—still one of the
finest Norman keeps in Ireland—set sail for England. Henry, who had by
this time raised a large army, made him prisoner and sent him to
Pontefract Castle, in Yorkshire, where, soon afterward, he was starved
to death, or otherwise foully made away with. Prince Henry and his uncle
were immediately released when the Duke of Lancaster ascended a usurped
throne as Henry IV of England. And thus was laid the bloody foundation
of the dreadful after wars between the rival royal houses of York and
Lancaster, which ended in the extermination of the legitimate
Plantagenets. An illegitimate branch, directly descended from John of
Gaunt, still survives in the ducal house of Beaufort.
Art MacMurrough remained a conqueror to the end, and kept up the war
with the Normans. In 1404, he defeated at Athcroe (Ford of Slaughter),
near Dublin, Lord Thomas of Lancaster, brother of the king, putting most
of the English to the sword, and desperately wounding the prince
himself. Only a few years ago, Irish laborers, excavating for a railroad
at Athcroe, came upon nearly a thousand bent swords, some of them badly
decomposed by rust, buried in the river bed. They were the swords taken
from the dead English, in 1404, and bent across the knees of the
victorious Irish, according to their custom in those days.
MacMurrough’s career of glory continued until 1417, when, having
captured all the important towns of Leinster, except Dublin and
Drogheda, he died at his capital of New Ross—then the second city in
Ireland—as some say by poison, in the sixtieth year of his age and
forty-fourth of his reign. Taken for all in all, he was not alone the
bravest, but the ablest, of Irish princes and warriors since the days of
King Brian, and it was a sad day for Ireland when the word went through
Leinster and rang around the island that King Art was dead. Many a dark
generation passed away before such another chief, or any one worthy to
be mentioned as a rival of his fame, arose in that unfortunate land.
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