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Updated: June 18, 2025
He is found towards its close, as if impatient of the succession, employing the arms of the common enemy to ravage the ancient mensal land of the kings of Erin, and otherwise harassing the last days of his successful rival. But it was plain enough then, and it is tolerably so still, that this was not to be an age of restoration.
His only rival in Meath in such meritorious works of destruction was Conor, son of Donnell, and O'Melaghlin of East-Meath, or Bregia, whose death is recorded at the year 1277, "as one of the three men in Ireland" whom the midland English most feared. From the ancient mensal the transition is easy to the north.
The Bishops of Meath, the ancient mensal of the monarchy, seem to have occupied a middle station between the benches of the north and south. Notwithstanding the solemn compact of 1094, Murtogh did not long cease to claim the title, nor to seek the hostages of all Ireland.
In the eighth year after Clontarf the summer of 1022 the Dublin Danes once again ventured on a foray into East-Meath, and the aged monarch marched to meet them. At Athboy he encountered the enemy, and drove them, routed and broken, out of the ancient mensal land of the Irish kings. Thirty days after that victory he was called on to confront the conqueror of all men, even Death.
It was the mensal demesne, or "board of the king's table:" it was exempt from all taxes, except those of the Ard-Righ, and its relations to the other Provinces may be vaguely compared to those of the District of Columbia to the several States of the North American Union. How the common people lived within these external divisions of power it is not so easy to describe.
These, with their respective principal supporters, elected the ard-ri "supreme king", of Ireland, who for ages held his court and national assemblies at Tara and enjoyed the kingdom of Meath for his mensal land. This was also the rule in the learned professions and "noble" arts, which were similarly endowed with free land.
Among the prohibitions of the monarch the first is, that the sun must never rise on him in his bed at Tara; among his prerogatives he was entitled to banquet on the first of August, on the fish of the Boyne, fruit from the Isle of Man, cresses from the Brosna river, venison from Naas, and to drink the water of the well of Talla: in other words, he was entitled to eat on that day, of the produce, whether of earth or water, of the remotest bounds, as well as of the very heart of his mensal domain.
He is found towards its close, as if impatient of the succession, employing the arms of the common enemy to ravage the ancient mensal land of the kings of Erin, and otherwise harassing the last days of his successful rival. But it was plain enough then, and it is tolerably so still, that this was not to be an age of restoration.
It was the mensal demesne, or "board of the king's table:" it was exempt from all taxes, except those of the Ard-Righ, and its relations to the other Provinces may be vaguely compared to those of the District of Columbia to the several States of the North American Union. How the common people lived within these external divisions of power it is not so easy to describe.
The tactics of both nations were the same. No sooner had they established themselves on the ruins of their predecessors in Dublin, than the Danish forces entered East-Meath, under the guidance of Kenneth, a local lord, and overran the ancient mensal, from the sea to the Shannon.
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