in England; he therefore set off at once to plead his own
cause with his royal master. A third attack had been made on Dublin, in
the meantime, by the Lord of Breffni, but it was repulsed by Miles. With
this exception, the Irish made no attempt against the common enemy, and
domestic wars were as frequent as usual.

Henry had returned to England, and was now in Newenham, in
Gloucestershire, making active preparations for his visit to Ireland.
The odium into which he had fallen, after his complicity in the murder
of St. Thomas of Canterbury, had rendered his position perilous in the
extreme; and probably his Irish expedition would never have been
undertaken, had he not required some such object to turn his thoughts
and the thoughts of his subjects from the consequences of his
crime.[284] He received Strongbow coldly, and at first refused him an
interview. After a proper delay, he graciously accepted the Earl's offer
of "all the lands he had won in Ireland"--a very questionable gift,
considering that there was not an inch of ground there which he could
securely call his own. Henry, however, was pleased to restore his
English estates; but, with consummate hypocrisy and villany, he seized
the castles of the Welsh lords, whom he hated for their vigorous and
patriotic opposition, and punished them for allowing the expedition,
which he had just sanctioned, to sail from their coasts unmolested.

[Illustration: THE LOGAN STONE, KILLARNEY.]

[Illustration: ANCIENT IRISH BROOCH.[285]]

FOOTNOTES:

[273] _Merchants_.--Wright says that "theft and unfair dealing" were
fearfully prevalent among the Anglo-Normans, and mentions, as an
example, how some Irish merchants were robbed who came to Ely to sell
their wares.--_Domestic Manners_, p. 78. It would appear that there was
considerable slave-trade carried on with the British merchants. The
Saxons, who treated their dependents with savage cruelty (see Wright, p.
56), sold even their children as slaves to the Irish. In 1102 this
inhuman traffic was forbidden by the Council of London. Giraldus
Cambrensis mentions that, at a synod held at Armagh, A.D. 1170, the
Irish clergy, who had often forbidden this trade, pronounced the
invasion of Ireland by Englishmen to be a just judgment on the Irish for
their share in the sin, and commanded that all who had English slaves
should at once set them free. Mr. Haverty remarks, that it was a curious
and characteristic coincidence, that an Irish de