Meanwhile MacCarthy of Desmond had attacked and defeated the English garrison at Waterford, but without any advantageous results.  Roderic’s weakness now led him to perpetrate an act of cruelty, although it could scarcely be called unjust according to the ideas of the times.  It will be remembered that he had received hostages from Dermod for the treaty of Ferns.  That treaty had been openly violated, and the King sent ambassadors to him to demand its fulfilment, by the withdrawal of the English troops, threatening, in case of refusal, to put the hostages to death.  Dermod laughed at the threat.  Under any circumstances, he was not a man who would hesitate to sacrifice his own flesh and blood to his ambition.  Roderic was as good as his word; and the three royal hostages were put to death at Athlone.

An important synod was held at the close of this year (A.D. 1170), at Armagh.  We have already mentioned one of its principal enactments, which deplored and condemned the practice of buying English slaves from the Bristol merchants.  Other subjects shall be more fully entertained when we come to the Synod of Cashel, which was held two years later.

In 1171 Dermod MacMurrough, the author of so many miseries, and the object of so much just reprobation, died at Ferns, on the 4th of May.  His miserable end was naturally considered a judgment for his evil life.  His obituary is thus recorded:  “Diarmaid Mac Murchadha, King of Leinster, by whom a trembling soil was made of all Ireland, after having brought over the Saxons, after having done extensive injuries to the Irish, after plundering and burning many churches, as Ceanannus, Cluain-Iraired, &c., died before the end of a year [after this plundering], of an insufferable and unknown disease; for he became putrid while living, through the miracle of God, Colum-cille, and Finnen, and the other saints of Ireland, whose churches he had profaned and burned some time before; and he died at Fearnamor, without [making] a will, without penance, without the body of Christ, without unction, as his evil deeds deserved."[282]

But the death of the traitor could not undo the traitor’s work.  Men’s evil deeds live after them, however they may repent them on their deathbeds.  Strongbow had himself at once proclaimed King of Leinster—­his marriage with Eva was the ground of his claim; but though such a mode of succession might hold good in Normandy, it was perfectly illegal in Ireland.  The question, however, was not one of right but of might, and it was settled as all such questions invariably are.  But Strongbow had a master at the other side of the Channel, who had his own views of these complications.  His tenure, however, was somewhat precarious.  His barons, always turbulent, had now a new ground for aggression, in the weakness to which he had exposed himself by his virtual sanction of the murder of St. Thomas of Canterbury, and he was fain to content himself with a strong injunction commanding