's Pence were paid to Rome;
Roman canon law, Roman ritual, the Roman rules of marriage, had no
authority; the Roman form of baptism was replaced by a tradition which
made the father dip his new-born child three times in water, or, if he
were a rich man, in milk; there was no payment of tithes; clerks were
taxed like laymen when a homicide occurred; Irish nobles still demanded
hospitality from religious houses, and claimed, according to ancient
custom, provisions from towns on Church domains. Hadrian himself had long
been interested in Irish affairs. The religious houses which the Irish
maintained in Germany kept up communication with Pope and Emperor; an
Irish abbot at Nuremberg was chaplain to the Emperor Frederick; one of
Hadrian's masters at Paris had been a monk from the Irish settlement in
Ratisbon, and as Pope he still remembered the Irish monk with warm
affection. When he was raised to the Papacy in the very year of Henry's
coronation, one of his first cares was to complete the organization of
Christendom in the West by bringing the Irish Church under Catholic
discipline.

Henry, on his part, was only too eager to accept his new responsibility,
and less than a year after his coronation he called a council to discuss
the conquest of Ireland. The scheme was abandoned on account of its
difficulties, but the question was later raised again in another form.
Diarmait Mac Murchadha (in modern form Jeremiah Murphy), King of
Leinster, had carried off in 1152 the wife of the chief of Breifne
(Cavan and Leitrim). A confederation was formed against him under
Ruaidhri (or Rory), King of Connaught, and he was driven from the island
in 1166. "Following a flying fortune and hoping much from the turning of
the wheel," he fled to Henry in Aquitaine, did homage to the English
king for his lands, and received in return letters granting permission
to such of Henry's servants as were willing to aid him in their recovery.
Diarmait easily found allies in the nobles of the Welsh border, in whose
veins ran the blood of two warlike races. It was by just such an
enterprise as this that their Norman fathers and grandfathers had won
their Welsh domains. From childhood they had been brought up in the tumult
of perpetual forays, and trained in a warfare where agility and dash and
endurance of hunger and hardship were the first qualifications of a
soldier. Richard de Clare, Earl of Striguil, in later days nicknamed
Strongbow--a descendant of one