f whom no less than four hundred were knights.
In addition his ships contained vast stores of provisions, a variety of
war devices never before seen in Ireland, artizans for building bridges
and making roads--a whole war train, in short. Such a display of force
was felt to be irresistible. The chieftains one after the other came in
and made their submission. Dermot McCarthy, lord of Desmond and Cork,
was the first to do homage, followed by Donald O'Brien, Prince of
Thomond; while another Donald, chieftain of Ossory, rapidly followed
suit. The men of Wexford appeared, leading their prisoner with them by a
chain, and presenting him as an offering to his master, who, first
rating him soundly for his unauthorized proceedings, ordered him to be
chained to another prisoner and shut up in Reginald's tower. Later,
soothed by his own triumph, or touched, as Giraldus tells us, with
compassion for a brave man, he, at the intercession of some of his
courtiers, forgave and restored him to his possessions, reserving,
however, the town of Wexford for himself.

From Wexford Henry marched to Dublin, having first visited Tipperary and
Waterford. The Danes at once submitted and swore allegiance; so also did
O'Carrol of Argial, O'Rorke of Brefny, and all the minor chieftains of
Leinster; Roderick O'Connor still stood at bay behind the Shannon, and
the north also remained aloof and hostile, but air the other chieftains,
great and small, professed themselves willing to become tributaries of
the king of England.

The idea of an Ard-Reagh, or Over-lord, was no new one, as we have seen,
to any of them. Theoretically they had always acknowledged one,
although, practically, he had rarely exercised any authority save over
his own immediate subjects. Their feeling about Henry was doubtless the
same. They were as willing to swear fealty to him as to Roderick
O'Connor, more so in fact, seeing that he was stronger than Roderick,
but that was all. To Henry and to his successors this recognition
carried with it all the complicated dependence of feudalism, which in
England meant that his land and everything else which a man possessed
was his only so long as he did service for it to the king. To these new
Irish subjects, who had never heard of feudalism, it entailed nothing of
the sort. They regarded it as a mere vague promise of adhesion, binding
them at most to a general muster or "hosting" under his arms in case of
war or some common peril. This was a