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Updated: June 11, 2025
Although the religious struggle was thus for a time postponed, the other vital Irish point the possession of the land now began to be pressed with new vigour. Fercal, Leix, and Offaly, belonging to the fierce tribes of the O'Moores, O'Dempseys, O'Connors, and O'Carrols, lay upon the Kildare frontier of the Pale, and had long been a standing menace to their more peaceful neighbours.
From his men he gained fifty recruits and no small booty, both of money and horses; and from the O'Connors he took bitter blood-fine for his slain men in spare horses and provisions.
Bruce was crowned King of Ireland, the O'Neil, it was said, having abdicated his rights in his favour. But the summer saw the utter defeat of the O'Connors by the justiciar at the bloody battle of Athenry, where King Phelim and the noblest of his sept perished. A little later the King of Scots came to the help of his brother.
"'How can I deny it? says I. 'Education runs in my family; and I have acquired courage by a hard struggle with life. "'The O'Connors, says he, 'are a warlike race. There is me father's sword; and here is the map. A life of inaction is not for me. The O'Connors were born to rule. 'Tis a ruler of men I must be.
A general rising of the Irish welcomed this deliverer; but the danger drove the barons of the Pale to a momentary union, and in 1316 their valour was proved on the bloody field of Athenree by the slaughter of eleven thousand of their foes and the almost complete annihilation of the sept of the O'Connors. But with victory returned the old anarchy and degradation.
It is known also that there were many families in Ireland of substance and good social standing who, at their own expense, took venture in the enterprise of Lord Baltimore and afterwards in that of William Penn, and who applied for and received grants of land, which, as the deeds on record show, were afterwards divided into farms bought and settled by O'Briens, McCarthys, O'Connors, and many others of the ancient Gaelic race, the descendants of those heroic men whose passion for liberty, while causing their ruin, inspired and impelled their sons to follow westward "the star of empire."
By an Act passed in their reign the lands occupied by the O'Moores, O'Connors and O'Dempseys were confiscated and formed into the King's and Queen's counties, Leix and Offaly being renamed "Philipstown" and "Maryborough"; and a "Plantation" of English settlers was established. And here it is well to pause for a moment and consider these confiscations, about which so much has been written.
She loved to have any or all of the Carrolls with her, welcomed Billy's business associates warmly, and three times a year had Georgie and her family come to a one o'clock Sunday dinner, and planned for the comfort of the O'Connors, little and big, with the greatest pleasure and care. But this was almost the extent of her entertaining in these days.
There was always, either in Dublin or London, a sufficient supply of materials out of which crown's chiefs might be manufactured; the government made it part of its policy to hold in its hands and train to its purposes certain members of each of the ruling families of the O'Neills, O'Reillys, O'Donnells, O'Connors, and others.
The documents were never laid before us, and we have only the positive assertion of the Squireen O'Donahue, who asserted not only that they were kings in Ireland before the O'Connors, whose pretensions to ancestry he treated with contempt, but further, that they were renowned for their strength, and were famous for using the longest bows in battle that were ever known or heard of.
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