te vicious customs, to respect the rights of the native Churches,
and to enforce the payment of Peter's pence" as a recognition of the
overlordship of the Roman See. Hadrian by his bull approved the
enterprise, as one prompted by "the ardour of faith and love of
religion," and declared his will that the people of Ireland should
receive Henry with all honour, and revere him as their lord.

The Papal bull was produced in a great council of the English baronage,
but the opposition was strong enough to force on Henry a temporary
abandonment of his designs, and twelve years passed before the scheme was
brought to life again by the flight of Dermod, King of Leinster, to
Henry's court. Dermod had been driven from his dominions in one of the
endless civil wars which devastated the island; he now did homage for his
kingdom to Henry, and returned to Ireland with promises of aid from the
English knighthood. He was followed in 1168 by Robert FitzStephen, a son
of the Constable of Cardigan, with a little band of a hundred and forty
knights, sixty men-at-arms, and three or four hundred Welsh archers.
Small as was the number of the adventurers, their horses and arms proved
irresistible by the Irish kernes; a sally of the men of Wexford was
avenged by the storm of their town; the Ossory clans were defeated with a
terrible slaughter, and Dermod, seizing a head from the heap of trophies
which his men piled at his feet, tore off in savage triumph its nose and
lips with his teeth. The arrival of fresh forces heralded the coming of
Richard of Clare, Earl of Pembroke and Striguil, a ruined baron later
known by the nickname of Strongbow, and who in defiance of Henry's
prohibition landed near Waterford with a force of fifteen hundred men as
Dermod's mercenary. The city was at once stormed, and the united forces
of the earl and king marched to the siege of Dublin. In spite of a relief
attempted by the King of Connaught, who was recognized as overking of the
island by the rest of the tribes, Dublin was taken by surprise; and the
marriage of Richard with Eva, Dermod's daughter, left the Earl on the
death of his father-in-law, which followed quickly on these successes,
master of his kingdom of Leinster. The new lord had soon however to hurry
back to England and appease the jealousy of Henry by the surrender of
Dublin to the Crown, by doing homage for Leinster as an English lordship,
and by accompanying the king in 1171 on a voyage to the new dominio