d son, Lionel of Antwerp, when still in his childhood, Edward found
the greatest heiress of her time, Elizabeth, the only daughter of
William de Burgh, the sixth lord of Connaught and third Earl of Ulster,
the representative of one of the chief Anglo-Norman houses in Ireland.
Even before his marriage, Lionel was made Earl of Ulster, a title sunk
after 1362 in the novel dignity of the duchy of Clarence. This title was
chosen because Elizabeth de Burgh was a grand-daughter of Elizabeth of
Clare, the sister of the last Clare Earl of Gloucester, and a share of
the Gloucester inheritance passed through her to the young duke. His
marriage gave Lionel a special relation to Ireland, where, however, his
two lordships of Ulster and Connaught were largely in the hands of the
native septs, and where the royal authority had never won back the
ground lost during the vigorous onslaught of Edward Bruce on the English
power. In 1342 the estates of Ireland forwarded to Edward a long
statement of the shortcomings of the English administration of the
island.[1] No effective steps were taken to remedy those evils until, in
1361, Edward III. sent Lionel as governor to Ireland, declaring "that
our Irish dominions have been reduced to such utter devastation and ruin
that they may be totally lost, if our subjects there are not immediately
succoured". Lionel's most famous achievement was the statute of
Kilkenny. This law prohibited the intermixture of the Anglo-Normans in
Ireland with the native Irish, which was rapidly undermining the basis
of English rule and confounding Celts and Normans in a nation, ever
divided indeed against itself, but united against the English. Lionel
wearied of a task beyond his strength. His wife's early death lessened
the ties which bound him to her land, and he went back to England
declaring that he would never return to Ireland if he could help it. His
succession as governor by a Fitzgerald showed that the plan of ruling
Ireland through England was abandoned by Edward III. in favour of the
cheaper but fatal policy of concealing the weakness of the English power
by combining it with the strength of the strongest of the Anglo-Norman
houses. Under this faulty system, the statute of Kilkenny became
inoperative almost from its enactment.

[1] Cal. of Close, Rolls, 1341-43, pp. 508-16.

The widowed Duke of Clarence made a second great marriage. The
Visconti, tyrants of Milan, were willing to pay heavily for the
priv