Bull sanctioning and approving of the conquest of Ireland as prompted
by "the ardour of faith and love of religion," in which Bull he is
desired to enter the island and therein execute "whatever shall pertain
to the honour of God, and the welfare of the land."

Fourteen years elapsed before the enterprise thus warmly commended was
carried into effect. The story of Dermot McMurrough, king of Leinster,
and his part in the invasion, has often been told, and does not, I
think, need dwelling upon at any great length. He was a brutal,
violent-tempered savage, detested in his own country, and especially by
his unfortunate subjects in Leinster. How he foully wronged the honour
of O'Rorke, a chieftain of Connaught; how, for this and other offences,
he was upon the accession of Roderick O'Connor driven away from Ireland;
how he fled to England to do homage to Henry, and seek his protection;
how, finding him gone to Aquitaine, he followed him there, and in return
for his vows of allegiance received letters authorizing the king's
subjects to enlist if they choose for the Irish service; how armed with
these he went to Wales, and there succeeded in recruiting a band of
mixed Norman and Norman-Welsh adventurers--all this is recorded at large
in the histories.

Of the recruits thus enlisted, the most important was Robert de Clair,
Earl of Pembroke and Chepstow, nicknamed by his contemporaries,
Strongbow, whom Dermot met at Bristol, and won over by a double
bribe--the hand, namely, of his daughter Eva, and the succession to the
sovereignty of Leinster--a succession which, upon the Irish mode of
election, he had, it may be observed, no shadow of right to dispose of.

Giraldus, who seems to have been himself in Wales at the time, speaks
sentimentally of the unfortunate exile, and describes him inhaling the
scent of his beloved country from the Welsh coast, and feasting his eyes
tenderly upon his own land: "Although the distance," he more prosaically
adds, "being very great, it was difficult to distinguish mountains from
clouds." As a matter of fact, Dermot McMurrough, we may be sure, was not
the person to do anything of the sort. He was simply hungry--as a wild
beast or a savage is hungry--for revenge, and would have plunged into
any number of perjuries, or have bound himself to give away any amount
of property he had no right to dispose of in order to get it. He could
safely trust, too, he knew, to the ignorance of his new allies as to