homage for his kingdom to Henry, and returned to Ireland with promises of aid from the English knighthood.  He was followed in 1168 by Robert FitzStephen, a son of the Constable of Cardigan, with a little band of a hundred and forty knights, sixty men-at-arms, and three or four hundred Welsh archers.  Small as was the number of the adventurers, their horses and arms proved irresistible by the Irish kernes; a sally of the men of Wexford was avenged by the storm of their town; the Ossory clans were defeated with a terrible slaughter, and Dermod, seizing a head from the heap of trophies which his men piled at his feet, tore off in savage triumph its nose and lips with his teeth.  The arrival of fresh forces heralded the coming of Richard of Clare, Earl of Pembroke and Striguil, a ruined baron later known by the nickname of Strongbow, and who in defiance of Henry’s prohibition landed near Waterford with a force of fifteen hundred men as Dermod’s mercenary.  The city was at once stormed, and the united forces of the earl and king marched to the siege of Dublin.  In spite of a relief attempted by the King of Connaught, who was recognized as overking of the island by the rest of the tribes, Dublin was taken by surprise; and the marriage of Richard with Eva, Dermod’s daughter, left the Earl on the death of his father-in-law, which followed quickly on these successes, master of his kingdom of Leinster.  The new lord had soon however to hurry back to England and appease the jealousy of Henry by the surrender of Dublin to the Crown, by doing homage for Leinster as an English lordship, and by accompanying the king in 1171 on a voyage to the new dominion which the adventurers had won.

[Sidenote:  Revolt of the younger Henry]

Had fate suffered Henry to carry out his purpose, the conquest of Ireland would now have been accomplished.  The King of Connaught indeed and the chiefs of Ulster refused him homage, but the rest of the Irish tribes owned his suzerainty; the bishops in synod at Cashel recognized him as their lord; and he was preparing to penetrate to the north and west, and to secure his conquest by a systematic erection of castles throughout the country, when the need of making terms with Rome, whose interdict threatened to avenge the murder of Archbishop Thomas, recalled him in the spring of 1172 to Normandy.  Henry averted the threatened sentence by a show of submission.  The judicial provisions in the Constitutions of Clarendon were in form annulled, and liberty of election was restored in the case of bishopricks and abbacies.  In reality however the victory rested with the king.  Throughout his reign ecclesiastical appointments remained practically in his hands, and the King’s Court asserted its power over the spiritual jurisdiction of the bishops.  But the strife with Thomas had roused into active life every element of danger which surrounded Henry, the envious dread of his neighbours, the disaffection of his own house, the disgust of the barons at the