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The first step taken to counteract their tendency to Hibernicize themselves, was to bestow additional honours on the great families. The baronry of Offally was enlarged into the earldom of Kildare; the lordship of Carrick into the earldom of Ormond; the title of Desmond was conferred on Maurice Fitz-Thomas Fitzgerald, and that of Louth on the Baron de Bermingham.
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.
After the battle, Sir Richard Bermingham sent out his page, John Hussy, with a single attendant, to "turn up and peruse" the bodies, to see whether his mortal foe O'Kelly were among them. O'Kelly presently started out of a bush where he had been hidden, and thus addressed the youth: "Hussy, thou seest I am at all points armed, and have my esquire, a manly man, beside me.
It inspired the Anglo-Irish with new courage. De Bermingham was created commander-in-chief. The citizens of Dublin burned their suburbs to strengthen their means of defence. Suspecting the zeal of the Red Earl, so nearly connected with the Bruces by marriage, their Mayor proceeded to Saint Mary's abbey, where he lodged, arrested and confined him to the castle.
At the head of the vanguard, without waiting for the whole of his company to come up, he charged the enemy with impetuosity. The action became general, and the skill of de Bermingham as a leader was again demonstrated. An incident common to the warfare of that age was, however, the immediate cause of the victory.
Judged by the other armaments of that period, from the fact that the Normans of Meath, under Sir Miles de Verdon and Sir Richard Tuit, were in his ranks, and that he then held the rank of Commander-in-Chief of all the English forces in Ireland, it is incredible that de Bermingham should have crossed the Boyne with less than eight or ten thousand men.
He was actually crowned King, and laid siege to Carrickfergus, while the wild chieftains of Connaught broke into the English settlements, and did great mischief, till they were defeated at Athenry by the Earl of Ulster's brother and Sir Richard Bermingham.
He pressed his forehead against the saddle, and from the depth of a bleeding heart came up an agonised exclamation. A gentle hand was laid on his shoulder as he spoke, and, turning round, he beheld Mr. Bermingham. "What brings you here?" said the clergyman. "Accident," answered Edward. "But why should I say accident? it is by a higher authority and a better it is the will of Heaven.
Under date of 1480, we find Chief Justice Bermingham having an Irish harper to teach his family, as also "to harp and to dance." A century later "Blind Cruise, the harper" Richard Cruise composed a lamentation song on the fall of the Baron of Slane, the air of which is still popular. Bathe wrote a second musical treatise in 1587, and he was the first to call measures by the name of bars.
Through his heroic mother, a daughter of the Lord of the Isles, he would naturally find allies in that warlike race. His precocious prowess and talents began to be noised abroad, and stimulated Perrott to the employment of an elaborate artifice, which, however, proved quite successful. A ship, commanded by one Bermingham, was sent round to Donegal, under pretence of being direct from Spain.
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