The northern and southern Hy-Nials had long held rule in Ireland; but while the northern tribe were ever distinguished, not only for their valour, but for their chivalry in field or court, the southern race fell daily lower in the estimation of their countrymen.  Their disgrace was completed when two kings, who ruled Erinn jointly, were treacherously slain by Conall Guthvin.  For this crime the family were excluded from regal honours for several generations.

Home dissensions led to fatal appeals for foreign aid, and this frequently from the oppressing party.  Thus, Congal Caech, who killed the reigning sovereign in 623, fled to Britain, and after remaining there nine years, returned with foreign troops, by whose assistance he hoped to attain the honours unlawfully coveted.  The famous battle of Magh-Rath,[180] in which the auxiliaries were utterly routed and the false Congal slain, unfortunately did not deter his countrymen from again and again attempting the same suicidal course.

In 656 the country was once more visited by the fatal Crom Chonaill, and again holy prelates and sainted religious were foremost amongst its victims.  Many orphans were of necessity thrown on the mercy of those to whom charity was their only claim.  Nor was the call unheeded.  The venerable Bishop of Ardbraccan, St. Ultan, whom we may perhaps term the St. Vincent of Ireland, gathered these hapless little ones into a safe asylum, and there, with a thoughtfulness which in such an age could scarcely have been expected, sought to supply by artificial means for the natural nourishment of which they had been deprived.

Venerable Bede mentions this pestilence, and gives honorable testimony to the charity of the Irish, not only to their own people, but even to strangers.  He says:  “This pestilence did no less harm, in the island of Ireland.  Many of the nobility and of the lower ranks of the English nation were there at that time, who, in the days of Bishop Finan and Colman, forsaking their native land, retired thither, either for the sake of divine studies, or for a more continent life.  The Scots willingly received them all, and took care to supply them with food, as also to furnish them with books to read and their teaching gratis."[181]

In 673 Finnachta Fleadhach, or the Hospitable, began his reign.  He yielded to the entreaties of St. Moling, and remitted the Boromean Tribute, after he had forced it from the Leinster men in a bloody battle.  In 687 he abdicated, and showed his respect for religion still further by embracing the monastic state himself.  In 684 the Irish coasts were devastated, and even the churches pillaged, by the soldiers of Egfrid, the Saxon King of Northumbria.  Venerable Bede attributes his subsequent defeat and death, when fighting against the Picts, to the judgment of God, justly merited by these unprovoked outrages on a nation which had always been most friendly to the English (nationi Anglorum semper amicissimam).