more troublesome than ever.  Froissart’s account runs thus:  He was waiting in the royal chamber at Eltham one Sunday, to present his treatise “On Loves” to Henry II.; and he takes care to tell us that the King had every reason to be pleased with the present, for it was “handsomely written and illuminated,” bound in crimson velvet, decorated with ten silver-gilt studs, and roses of the same.  While he was awaiting his audience, he gossiped with Henry Crystede, whom he describes as a very agreeable, prudent, and well-educated gentleman, who spoke French well, and had for his arms a chevron gules on a field argent, with three besants gules, two above the chevron, and one below.

Crystede gave him a sketch of his adventures in Ireland, which we can but condense from the quaint and amusing original.  He had been in the service of the Earl of Ormonde, who kept him out of affection for his good horsemanship.  On one occasion he was attending the Earl, mounted on one of his best horses, at a “border foray” on the unfortunate Irish, with whom he kept up constant warfare.  In the pursuit his horse took fright, and ran away into the midst of the enemy, one of whom, by a wonderful feat of agility, sprang up behind him, and bore him off to his own house.  He calls the gentleman who effected the capture “Brian Costeree,” and says he was a very handsome man, and that he lived in a strong house in a well barricaded city.

Crystede remained here for seven years, and married one of the daughters of his host, by whom he had two children.  At the end of this period his father-in-law was taken prisoner in an engagement with the Duke of Clarence, and Crystede’s horse, which he rode, was recognized.  Evidently the knight must have been a person of some distinction, for he states that the Duke of Clarence and the English officers were so well pleased to hear of the “honorable entertainment” he had received from “Brian Costeree,” that they at once proposed to set him at liberty, on condition that he should send Crystede to the army with his wife and children.  At first “he refused the offer, from his love to me, his daughter, and our children.”  Eventually the exchange was made.  Crystede settled at Bristol.  His two daughters were then married.  One was settled in Ireland.  He concluded the family history by stating that the Irish language was as familiar to him as English, for he always spoke it to his wife, and tried to introduce it, “as much as possible,” among his children.

On the retirement of the Duke of Clarence, in 1367, the Viceroyalty was accepted by Gerald, fourth Earl of Desmond, styled “the poet.”  He was one of the most learned men of the day, and thereby, as usual, obtained the reputation of practising magic.  Yet this refined and educated nobleman wished to have his son fostered in an Irish family, and, despite the Statute of Kilkenny, obtained a special permission to that effect—­another evidence that social life among the natives could not have been quite what the malice of Cambrensis, and others who wrote from hearsay reports, and not from personal knowledge, have represented it.