earlier hour in the morning than suited the tastes of his courtiers, and
took exercise either on horseback or on foot, keeping in constant motion
all day.

When the Christmas festivities had passed, Henry turned his attention to
business, if, indeed, the same festivities had not also been a part of
his diplomatic plans, for he was not deficient in kingcraft. In a synod
at Cashel he attempted to settle ecclesiastical affairs. In a _Curia
Regis_, held at Lismore, he imagined he had arranged temporal affairs.
These are subjects which demand our best consideration. It is an
historical fact, that the Popes claimed and exercised great temporal
power in the middle ages; it is admitted also that they used this power
in the main for the general good;[290] and that, as monks and friars
were the preservers of literature, so popes and bishops were the
protectors of the rights of nations, as far as was possible in such
turbulent times. It does not belong to our present subject to theorize
on the origin or the grounds[291] of this power; it is sufficient to say
that it had been exercised repeatedly both before and after Adrian
granted the famous Bull, by which he conferred the kingdom of Ireland on
Henry II. The Merovingian dynasty was changed on the decision of Pope
Zachary. Pope Adrian threatened Frederick I., that if he did not
renounce all pretensions to ecclesiastical property in Lombardy, he
should forfeit the crown, "received from himself and through his
unction." When Pope Innocent III. pronounced sentence of deposition
against Lackland in 1211, and conferred the kingdom of England on Philip
Augustus, the latter instantly prepared to assert his claim, though he
had no manner of title, except the Papal grant.[292] In fact, at the
very moment when Henry was claiming the Irish crown in right of Adrian's
Bull, given some years previously, he was in no small trepidation at the
possible prospect of losing his English dominions, as an excommunication
and an interdict were even then hanging over his head. Political and
polemical writers have taken strangely perverted views of the whole
transaction. One writer,[293] with apparently the most genuine
impartiality, accuses the Pope, the King, and the Irish prelates of the
most scandalous hypocrisy. A cursory examination of the question might
have served to prove the groundlessness of this assertion. The Irish
clergy, he asserts--and his assertion is all the proof he
gives--betrayed the