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He landed at Crook, reached Dublin, and prepared at once to subdue the Lacys. With his own army, and the co-operation of Cathal O'Conor, he drove out Walter de Lacy, Lord of Meath, who fled to his brother, Hugh de Lacy, since de Courcy's disgrace, Earl of Ulster.
Hulsen is on winged march hitherward with about 9,000. 'How would the King come on wings, like an eagle from the Blue, if he were but aware! thought everybody, and said. Hulsen did arrive on the 8th; so that there are now 14,000 of us. And here are all their Lacys, Czernichefs fairly assembled; five to two of us, 35,000 of them against our 14,000.
The feuds of the de Lacys with the Marshals, of the Geraldines with the de Burghs, broke out periodically during the thirteenth century, and were naturally seized upon, by the Irish as opportunities for attacking either or both.
John's son Henry had at his back the chief military resources of the country; the two strongest of the earls, William Marshal, Earl of Pembroke, and Randolph of Blundeville, Earl of Chester; the fierce lords of the Welsh March, the Mortimers, the Cantilupes, the Cliffords, the Braoses, and the Lacys; and the barons of the West Midlands, headed by Henry of Neufbourg, Earl of Warwick, and William of Ferrars, Earl of Derby.
The hereditary owners of this noble building and of a wide territory in the contiguous counties I have named, were English the De Lacys long naturalized in Ireland.
"Is it that thou wilt not, or canst not, tell me to which of the De Lacys thou art to be bondswoman? to the overweening Constable, who, sheathed in impenetrable armour, and mounted on a swift and strong horse as invulnerable as himself, takes pride that he rides down and stabs at his ease, and with perfect safety, the naked Welshmen? or is it to his nephew, the beardless Damian? or must thy possessions go to mend a breach in the fortunes of that other cousin, Randal Lacy, the decayed reveller, who, they say, can no longer ruffle it among the debauched crusaders for want of means?"
Mayler Fitz-Henry, the last of Strongbow's companions, who rose to such eminence, being Justiciary in the first six years of the century, was aided by O'Conor to besiege William de Burgo in Limerick, and to cripple the power of the de Lacys in Meath.
But very many districts had long before this come under the dominion of Norman adventurers, like the De Courcys, the De Lacys, and the rest, of whose coming we have told.
It was probably at this stage of his progress that he received the adhesion of the junior branches of the Lacys the chief Norman family that openly joined his standard. This termination of his first campaign on Irish soil might be considered highly favourable to Bruce.
When he went to the tower-top, where was the gallows, finding himself in extremity, and no hope of mercy, he swore that though he could work them no evil before his death, yet that he would devote himself thereafter to blast the greatness of the De Lacys, and never leave them till his work was done.
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