Connaught—­despite a treaty drawn up between Henry I. and Cathal O’Connor, its native king—­was granted by John to William FitzAldelm de Burgh and his son Richard, on much the same terms as Ulster had been already granted to De Courcy, on the understanding, that is to say, that if he could he might win it by the sword.  De Courcy failed, but the De Burghs were wilier and more successful.  Carefully fostering a strife which shortly after broke out between the two rival princes of the house of O’Connor, and watching from the fortress they had built for themselves at Athlone, upon the Shannon, they seized an opportunity when both combatants were exhausted to pounce upon the country, and wrest the greater part of it away from their grasp.  They also drove away the clan of O’Flaherty—­owners from time immemorial of the region known as Moy Seola, to the east of the bay of Galway—­and forced them back across Lough Corrib, where they took refuge amongst the mountains of far Connaught, descending continually in later times in fierce hordes, and wreaking their vengeance upon the town of Galway, which had been founded by the De Burghs at the mouth of the river which carries the waters of Lough Corrib to the sea.  To this day the whole of this region of Moy Seola and the eastern shores of Lough Corrib may be seen to be thickly peppered over with ruined De Burgh castles, monuments of some four or five centuries of uninterrupted fighting.

At one time the De Burghs were by far the largest landowners in Ireland.  Not only did they possess an immense tract of Connaught, but by the marriage of Richard de Burgh’s son to Maud, daughter of Hugh de Lacy, Earl of Ulster, they became the nominal owners of nearly all Ulster to boot.  It never was more, however, than a nominal ownership, the clutch of the O’Neills and O’Donnells being found practically impossible to unloose, so that all the De Burghs could be said to hold were the southern borders of what are now the counties of Down, Monaghan, and Antrim.  When, too, William, the third Earl of Ulster, was murdered in 1333, his possessions passed to his daughter and heiress, a child of two years old.  A baby girl’s inheritance was not likely, as may be imagined, to be regarded at that date as particularly sacred.  Ulster was at once retaken by the O’Neills and O’Connels.  Two of the Burkes, or De Burghs, Ulick and Edmund, seized Connaught and divided it between them, becoming in due time the ancestors, the one of the Mayos, the other of the Clanricardes.

Another of the great houses was that of the Ormonds, descended from Theobald Walter, a nephew of Thomas a Becket, who was created hereditary cup-bearer or butler to Henry II.  Theobald Walter received grants of land in Tipperary and Kilkenny, as well as at Arklow, and in 1391 Kilkenny Castle was sold to his descendant the Earl of Ormond by the heirs of Strongbow.  The Ormonds’ most marked characteristic is that from the beginning to the end of their career they