territory, covering nearly a
third of the island, barely one acre of which, however, remained in
his hands.

The king had not been gone long before Art McMurrough rose again. The
young deputy was in Wicklow, endeavouring to carry out a projected
colony. Hearing of this outbreak, he hastened into Meath. An encounter
took place near Kells. Art McMurrough, at the head of his own men, aided
by some wild levies of O'Tooles and O'Nolans, completely defeated the
royal army, and after the battle the heir of the English Crown was found
amongst the slain.

This Art McMurrough, or Art Kavangh, as he is sometimes called, was a
man of very much more formidable stamp than most of the nameless
freebooters, native or Norman, who filled the country. His fashion of
making his onset seems to have been tremendous. Under him the wild
horsemen and "naked knaves," armed only with skeans and darts, sent
terror into the breast of their armour-clad antagonists. One of the few
early illustrations of Irish history extant represents him as charging
at breakneck pace down a hill. We are told that "he rode a horse without
a saddle or housing, which was so fine and good that it cost him four
hundred cows. In coming down the hill it galloped so hard that in my
opinion," says a contemporary writer, "I never in all my life saw hare,
deer, sheep, or other animal, I declare to you for a certainty, run with
such speed. In his right hand he bore a great dart, which he cast with
much skill[6]." No wonder that such a rider, upon such a horse, should
have struck terror into the very souls of the colonists, and induced
them to comply with any demands, however rapacious and humiliating,
rather than have to meet him face to face in the field.

[6] "Metrical History of the Deposition of Richard II."

The news of McMurrough's victory and of the death of his heir brought
Richard back again to Ireland. He returned in hot wrath resolved this
time to crush the delinquents. At home everything seemed safe. John of
Gaunt was recently dead; Henry of Lancaster still in exile; the Percys
had been driven over the border into Scotland. All his enemies seemed to
be crushed or extinguished. With an army nearly as large as before, and
with vast supplies of stores and arms, he landed at Waterford in 1399.

This time Art McMurrough quietly awaited his coming in a wood not far
from the landing-place. He had only 3,000 men about him, so prudently
declined to be drawn from that s