A period of anarchy ensued, during which several princes contended for royal honours.  This compliment was finally awarded to Mac Loughlin, King of Aileach, and a temporary peace ensued.  Its continuance was brief.  In 1095 there was a pestilence all over Europe, “and some say that the fourth part of the men of Ireland died of the malady.”  A long list is given of its victims, lay and ecclesiastical.  Several severe winters are recorded as having preceded this fatal event; probably they were its remote cause.  In the year 1096, the festival of St. John Baptist fell on Friday.  This event caused general consternation, in consequence of some old prophecy.  A resolution “of the clergy of Ireland, with the successor of St. Patrick[232] at their head,” enjoined a general abstinence from Wednesday to Sunday every month, with other penitential observances; and “the men of Ireland were saved for that time from the fire of vengeance."[233]

But the most important event of the period was the contention between the northern and southern Hy-Nials.  Murtough was planning, with great military ability, to obtain the supreme rule.  The Archbishop of Armagh and the clergy strove twice to avert hostilities, but their interference was almost ineffectual.  “A year’s peace” was all they could obtain.  In the year 1100, Murtough brought a Danish fleet against the northerns, but they were cut off by O’Loughlin, “by killing or drowning.”  He also assembled an army at Assaroe, near Ballyshannon, “with the choice part of the men of Ireland,” but the Cinel-Connaill defended their country bravely, and compelled him to retire “without booty, without hostages, without pledges.”  In 1101, when the twelvemonths’ truce obtained by the clergy had expired, Murtough collected a powerful army, and devastated the north, without opposition.  He demolished the palace of the Hy-Nials, called the Grianan of Aileach.[234] This was an act of revenge for a similar raid, committed a few years before, on the stronghold of the O’Briens, at Kincora, by O’Loughlin.  So determined was he on devastation, that he commanded a stone to be carried away from the building in each of the sacks which had contained provisions for the army.  He then took hostages of Ulidia, and returned to the south, having completed the circuit of Ireland in six weeks.  The expedition was called the “circuitous hosting.”  His rather original method of razing a palace, is commemorated in the following quatrain:—­

    “I never heard of the billeting of grit stones,
    Though I heard [sic] of the billeting of companies,
    Until the stones of Aileach was billeted
    On the horses of the king of the west."[235]

Murtough appears to have been a not unusual compound of piety and profanity.  We read in one place of his reckless exploits in burning churches and desecrating shrines, and in others of his liberal endowments of the same.