s laboring in the southeastern part of Munster, a petty
prince of Cardiganshire, named Coroticus, though apparently professing
Christianity, set out from Wales, and descending on the Irish coast with
a band of armed followers, murdered several of the people, and carried
off a large number with the intention of disposing of them as slaves.
This outrage, perpetrated in one of the districts where St. Patrick was
baptizing, roused his keenest indignation, and he wrote a letter, which
he sent by one of his companions, calling upon Coroticus to restore the
captives, many of whom had been baptized. But his request being treated
with contempt and scorn, he composed another circular epistle, in which
he inveighed in the strongest terms against the cruelty of the marauding
tribe and its chief. He contrasted his conduct with that of the
Christians of the Continent, who were in the habit of sending large sums
of money to ransom captives, and concluded by threatening him and his
followers with excommunication, unless he desisted in future from his
piratical habits. What was the result of the epistle is not known, but
it is to be feared that the attempt to recover the captives was not
successful. Slavery and the trade in slaves was almost more difficult to
root out than paganism, and the inhuman traffic was in full activity as
late as the tenth century between England and Ireland, and the port of
Bristol was one of its principal centres.

Meanwhile, after a somewhat lengthened sojourn in the district of Lowth
and parts of Ulster, St. Patrick reached the district of Macha,
containing the royal city of Emania, the residence of the kings of
Ulster, the remains of which, under the name of the Navan, still exist
about two miles west of Armagh. Here he was cordially received by Daire,
a wealthy chief, who made over to him a pleasant piece of ground on an
eminence, _Druim-sailch_, or "Hill of the Willows." The spot pleased St.
Patrick, and here he determined to erect a church. The foundations were
accordingly laid, and around it rose by degrees the city of Armagh, the
ecclesiastical metropolis of Ireland; and here its founder spent the
remainder of his life, only leaving it now and then to visit his
favorite retreat at Saul, round which clustered so many associations of
his earliest labors, and of his first convert Dichu.

Here, too, having called to his aid the bishops Secundinus, Isserninus,
and Auxilius, who next to himself were best qua