, De Marisco,
and the Lord Justice. Cathal Crovderg and O'Brien aided the latter in
besieging Limerick, while some of the English fortified themselves in
their castles and plundered indiscrimately.

In 1205 the Earldom of Ulster was granted to Hugh de Lacy. The grant is
inscribed on the charter roll of the seventh year of King John, and is
the earliest record now extant of the creation of an Anglo-Norman
dignity in Ireland. England was placed under an interdict in 1207, in
consequence of the violence and wickedness of its sovereign. He procured
the election of John de Grey to the see of Canterbury, a royal
favourite, and, if only for this reason, unworthy of the office. Another
party who had a share in the election chose Reginald, the Sub-Prior of
the monks of Canterbury. But when the choice was submitted to Pope
Innocent III., he rejected both candidates, and fixed on an English
Cardinal, Stephen Langton, who was at once elected, and received
consecration from the Pope himself. John was highly indignant, as might
be expected. He swore his favourite oath, "by God's teeth," that he
would cut off the noses and pluck out the eyes of any priest who
attempted to carry the Pope's decrees against him into England. But some
of the bishops, true to their God and the Church, promulgated the
interdict, and then fled to France to escape the royal vengeance. It was
well for them they did so; for Geoffrey, Archdeacon of Norwich, was
seized, and enveloped, by the royal order, in a sacerdotal vestment of
massive lead, and thus thrown into prison, where he was starved to death
beneath the crushing weight. We sometimes hear of the cruelties of the
Inquisition, of the barbarity of the Irish, of the tyranny of
priestcraft; but such cruelties, barbarities, and tyrannies, however
highly painted, pale before the savage vengeance which English kings
have exercised, on the slightest provocation, towards their unfortunate
subjects. But we have not yet heard all the refinements of cruelty which
this same monarch exercised. Soon after, John was excommunicated
personally. When he found that Philip of France was prepared to seize
his kingdom, and that his crimes had so alienated him from his own
people that he could hope for little help from them, he cringed with the
craven fear so usually found in cruel men, and made the most abject
submission. In the interval between the proclamation of the interdict
and the fulmination of the sentence of excommun