He was slain by a knight named John Maupas, who paid for his valour with his life.  Bermingham obtained the Earldom of Louth and the manor of Ardee as a reward for Bruce’s head; and the unfortunate Irish were left to their usual state of chronic resistance to English oppression.  The head of the Scottish chieftain was “salted in a chest,” and placed unexpectedly, with other heads, at a banquet, before Edward II.  The English King neither swooned nor expressed surprise; but the Scotch ambassadors, who were present, rushed horror-stricken from the apartment.  The King, however, was “right blyth,” and glad to be delivered so easily of a “felon foe.”  John de Lacy and Sir Robert de Coulragh, who had assisted the said “felon,” paid dearly for their treason; and as they were Anglo-Normans, and subjects of the English crown, the term was justly applied to them, however cruel the sentence.  They were starved to death in prison, “on three morsels of the worst bread, and three draughts of foul water on alternate days, until life became extinct.”

Since this chapter was written, Mr. O’Flanagan has kindly presented me with his valuable History of Dundalk, from which I am permitted to make the following extracts, which throw much additional light upon the subject:—­[348]

“‘In the ninth year of King Edward’s reign,’ writes Hollinshed, ’Edward Bruce, brother to Robert Bruce, King of Scots, entered the north part of Ireland, with 6,000 men.  There were with him divers captains of high renown among the Scottish nation, of whom were these:—­The Earls of Murray and Monteith, the Lord John Stewart, the Lord John Campbell, the Lord Thomas Randolf, Fergus of Ardrossan, John Wood, and John Bisset.  They landed near to Cragfergus, in Ulster, and joining with the Irish (a large force of whom was led out by Fellim, son of Hugh O’Conor).  Thus assisted, he conquered the Earldom of Ulster, and gave the English there divers great overthrows, took the town of Dundalk, spoiled and burned it, with a great part of Orgiel.  They burned churches and abbeys, with the people whom they found in the same, sparing neither man, woman, nor child.  Then was the Lord Butler chosen Lord Justice, who made the Earl of Ulster and the Geraldines friends, and reconciled himself with Sir John Mandeville, thus seeking to preserve the residue of the realm which Edward Bruce meant wholly to conquer, having caused himself to be crowned King of Ireland.’

“Dundalk was heretofore the stronghold of the English power, and the head-quarters of the army for the defence of the Pale.  At the north, as Barbour preserves in his metrical history of Robert Bruce: 

    “’At Kilsaggart Sir Edward lay,
    And wellsom he has heard say
    That at Dundalk was assembly
    Made of the lords of that country.’

“It was not, however, within this town that the ceremony of Bruce’s coronation took place, but, according to the best avouched tradition, on the hill of Knock-na-Melin, at half a mile’s distance.