, he had recourse to
Rome, which assumed a right to dispose of kingdoms and empires; and,
not foreseeing the dangerous disputes which he was one day to maintain
with that see, he helped, for present, or rather for an imaginary,
convenience, to give sanction to claims which were now become
dangerous to all sovereigns. Adrian III., who then filled the papal
chair, was by birth an Englishman; and being, on that account, the
more disposed to oblige Henry, he was easily persuaded to act as
master of the world, and to make, without any hazard or expense, the
acquisition of a great island to his spiritual jurisdiction. The Irish
had, by precedent missions from the Britons, been imperfectly
converted to Christianity; and, what the pope regarded as the surest
mark of their imperfect conversion, they followed the doctrines of
their first teachers, and had never acknowledged any subjection to the
see of Rome. Adrian, therefore, in the year 1156, issued a bull in
favour of Henry; in which, after premising that this prince had ever
shown an anxious care to enlarge the church of God on earth, and to
increase the number of his saints and elect in heaven; he represents
his design of subduing Ireland as derived from the same pious motives:
he considers his care of previously applying for the apostolic
sanction as a sure earnest of success and victory; and having
established it as a point incontestable, that all Christian kingdoms
belong to the patrimony of St. Peter, he acknowledges it to be his own
duty to sow among them the seeds of the gospel, which might in the
last day fructify to their eternal salvation: he exhorts the king to
invade Ireland, in order to extirpate the vice and wickedness of the
natives, and oblige them to pay yearly, from every house, a penny to
the see of Rome: he gives him entire right and authority over the
island, commands all the inhabitants to obey him as their sovereign,
and invests with full power all such godly instruments as he should
think proper to employ in an enterprise thus calculated for the glory
of God and the salvation of the souls of men [b]. Henry, though armed
with this authority, did not immediately put his design in execution;
but being detained by more interesting business on the continent,
waited for a favourable opportunity of invading Ireland.
[FN [a] Hoveden, p. 527. [b] M. Paris, p. 67. Girald. Cambr. Spellm.
Concil. vol. ii. p. 51. Rymer, vol. i. p. 15.]

Dermot Macmorrogh, Ki