his efforts.  Then the brothers led their forces from one end of Ireland to the other.  Dublin prepared for a siege by burning its suburbs and devastating the country around.  But though the two Bruces penetrated as far as Limerick, they did not capture a single castle or a walled town.  They lost so many men during their winter campaign, that they were forced in the spring to retire to Ulster.  The hopeless disunion of both parties in Ireland seemed likely to prolong the struggle indefinitely.  The men of Dublin and the Earl of Ulster were at feud with each other, and the citizens captured the earl and shut him up in Dublin castle.  However little the earl could be trusted, this was a step likely to throw all Ulster into the arms of the Bruces.  But a stronger justice of Ireland then superseded Edmund Butler.  Roger Mortimer of Wigmore, the mightiest baron of the Welsh march, and a man of real ability, rare energy, extreme ruthlessness, and savage cruelty, crossed over from Haverfordwest early in 1317 at the head of a large force of marcher knights and men-at-arms, versed from their youth up in the traditions of Celtic warfare.  Mortimer set himself to work to break up the ill-assorted coalition that supported Bruce.  He released the Earl of Ulster from his Dublin prison; he procured the banishment of the heads of the house of Lacy; he won over some of the Irish septs to his side; he stimulated the civil war which had devastated Connaught since the fall of the O’Connors.  Edward Bruce was once more confined to Ulster, where he still struggled on bravely.  In the autumn of 1318 he led a foray southwards, and met his fate in a skirmish near Dundalk on October 14, when his force was scattered in confusion by John of Bermingham, one of the neighbouring lords.  The four quarters of the luckless King of Ireland were exposed in the four chief towns of the island as a trophy of victory, and Bermingham was rewarded by the new earldom of Louth.

Edward Bruce’s enterprise ended with his death, and Ireland rapidly settled down into its normal condition of impotent turbulence.  Though at first sight the invader utterly failed, yet he pricked the bubble of the English power in Ireland.  His gallant attempt at winning the throne is the critical event in a long period of Irish history.  From the days of Henry III to the days of Edward Bruce, the lordship of the English kings in Ireland was to some extent a reality.  From 1315 to the reign of Henry VIII, the English dominion was little more than a name as regards the greater part of Ireland.

No one attained success, in the years after Bannockburn,—­neither Banaster, nor Llewelyn Bren, nor the Bristol commons nor Edward Bruce and his Irish allies.  Before long, the incompetence of Lancaster became as manifest as the incompetence of Edward II.  Lancaster’s failure led to the dissolution of the baronial opposition into fiercely opposing factions.  Personal and territorial jealousies slowly undermined a unity which