Chester was confirmed, and from all parts of England new settlers
came in numbers during the next few years to share in the privileges and
wealth which its commerce promised. A stately cathedral of decorated
Norman work rose on the site of an earlier church founded by the Ostmen.
It seemed as though the mere military rule of the feudal lords was to be
superseded under the king's influence by a wiser and more statesmanlike
occupation of the country. A great council was held at Cashel, where a
settlement was made of Church and State, and where Henry for the first
time published the Papal Bull issued by Hadrian fifteen years before. He
had won a position of advantage from whence to open a new bargain with
the Pope. In the moment of his deepest disgrace and peril he defiantly
showed himself before the world in all the glory of the first foreign
Conqueror and Lord of Ireland.

Henry's work, however, was scarcely begun when in March there came a
lull in the long winter storms, and a vessel made its way across the
waters of the Irish Sea. It brought grave tidings. Legates from the Pope
had reached Normandy, with powers only after full submission to absolve
the king; unless Henry quickly met them, all his lands would be laid
under interdict. Other heavy tidings came. Evil counsellors were
exciting the young king to rebellion. It was absurd, they said, to be
king, and to exercise no authority in the kingdom, and the boy was
willing enough to believe that since his coronation "the reign of his
father had expired." All Henry's plans in Ireland were at once thrown
aside. At the first break in the adverse winds he hastily set sail, and
for two hundred years no English king again set foot in Ireland. The
short winter's work was to end in utter confusion. The king's policy had
been to set up the royal justice and power, and to break the strength of
the barons by dividing and curtailing their interests. He had left them
without a leader. The growing power of Strongbow had been broken; Dublin
had been taken from him; the castles had all been committed to knights
appointed by the king. Quarrels and rivalries soon broke out. Raymond
the Fat became the recognized head of Nesta's descendants. In his
enormous frame, his yellow curly hair, his high-coloured cheery face,
his large gray eyes, we seethe type of the old Norse conquerors who had
once harried England; we recognize it too in his carelessness as to food
or clothing, his indifference