n initial misconception, which
continued, as will be seen, to be a deeper and deeper source of
confusion as the years went on.

In the meanwhile Henry was established in Dublin, where he kept
Christmas in high state, occupying a palace built in the native fashion
of painted wicker-work, set up just outside the walls. Here he
entertained the chiefs, who were naturally astonished at the splendour
of his entertainments. "They learnt," Giraldus observes with
satisfaction, "to eat cranes"--does this mean herons?--"a species of
food which they had previously loathed;" and, in general, were suitably
impressed with the greatness and glory of the conqueror. The bishops
were most of them already warmly in his favour, and at a synod shortly
afterwards held at Cashel, at which all the Irish clergy were
represented, the Church of Ireland was solemnly declared to be finally
united to that of England, and it was laid down that, "as by Divine
Providence Ireland has received her lord and king from England, so she
should also submit to a reformation from the same source."

The weather that winter was so rough that hardly a ship could cross the
channel, and Henry in his new kingdom found himself practically cut off
from his old one. About the middle of Lent, the wind veering at last to
the east, ships arrived from England and Aquitaine, bearers of very ill
news to the king. Two legates were on their way, sent by the Pope, to
inquire into the murder of Becket, and armed in case of an
unsatisfactory reply with all the terrors of an interdict. Henry hastily
made over the government of Ireland to Hugo de Lacy, whom he placed in
Dublin as his representative, and sailed from Wexford upon Easter
Monday. He never again revisited his new dominions, where many of the
lessons inculcated by him--including possibly the delights of eating
cranes--were destined before long to be forgotten.

XII.

EFFECTS OF THE ANGLO-NORMAN INVASION.

Henry had been only six months in Ireland, but he had accomplished
much--more certainly than any other English ruler ever accomplished
afterwards within the same time. He had divided the ceded districts into
counties; had appointed sheriffs for them; had set up three Law
Courts--Bench, Pleas, and Exchequer; had arranged for the going on
circuit by judges; and had established his own character for orthodoxy,
and acquitted himself of his obligations to the papacy by freeing all
church property from the exactions of