Estoire de la Guerre Sainte, vv. 101, 102.

The fifth son, the eighth and last child, of Henry II. of England and Eleanor of Aquitaine was born at Oxford, in the “King’s manor”—that is, the palace of Beaumont—on Christmas Eve 1167.[2] Of their six other surviving children, the three younger were daughters; the last of these, Joanna, was then two years old. The eldest living son, Henry, was nearly thirteen; Richard was ten, and Geoffrey nine. The boy Henry had, when an infant, been acknowledged by the barons of England as heir to the crown,[3] and in 1160 had done homage to Louis of France for the duchy of Normandy.[4] In 1162 preparations had been made for his crowning in England, and he had again received the homage of the barons,[5] to which that of the Welsh princes and the Scot king was added in 1163.[6] Eleanor’s duchy of Aquitaine had been destined for her second surviving son, Richard, as early as 1159,[7] when he was not yet two years old. In the summer of 1166 the king had secured Britanny for Geoffrey by betrothing him to its heiress.[8] The whole Angevin dominions, with one exception, were thus, in design at least, partitioned among John’s brothers before John himself was born. The exception was, indeed, an important one; in the contemporary accounts of Henry’s plans during this period for the distribution of his territories, there is no mention of Anjou and its dependency Touraine. The reason, however, is obvious. Anjou was the cradle of his race, the very heart and centre of his dominion, the one portion of it which he had inherited from his forefathers in unbroken male descent, by a right which had been always undisputed and indisputable. The destiny of Anjou was therefore as yet unspecified, not because Henry was reserving it for a possible younger son, but because its devolution to his eldest son, as head of the Angevin house after him, was in his mind a matter of course. It was in fact Henry himself who gave to his new-born child the name which has clung to him ever since—“Johans Sanz Terre,” John Lackland.[9]

Two years later the scheme of partition was fully developed, and now Anjou was explicitly included in it. At Epiphany 1169 Louis of France granted to the younger Henry the investiture of Anjou and Maine, on the understanding that the boy was to hold these fiefs, as well as Normandy, in his own person, directly of the French crown. Richard was invested, on the same terms, with the county of Poitou and the duchy of Aquitaine. Britanny was granted to young Henry, to be holden by his brother Geoffrey of him as mesne lord, under the king of France as overlord.[10] The one fragment of the continental dominions of the Angevin house which the king of England formally reserved to himself was Touraine; his homage for it was due to a prince of inferior rank, the count of Blois, and his paternal pride chose rather to perform that homage himself than to suffer it to be performed by any of his sons.[11]

All these arrangements were as yet merely prospective. Henry had no intention of abdicating, nor of depriving Eleanor of her rights as duchess of Aquitaine and countess of Poitou, nor even of dispossessing the reigning duke of Britanny. His purpose was simply to insure that, were he himself unexpectedly to become disabled or die, there should be no fair pretext for fighting over his inheritance or defrauding any of his sons of their shares, but that they should be bound to each other, and their overlord Louis bound to each and all of them, by such legal ties as none of the parties could lightly venture to set at defiance. In June 1170 the scheme was completed by the coronation of the younger Henry at Westminster. Two months later the elder king fell sick at La Motte-de-Ger, near Domfront. Believing his end to be at hand, he confirmed the partition of January 1169, and solemnly bequeathed the one son who had no share in it—John—to the guardianship of his eldest brother, “the young king,” “that he might advance him and maintain him.”[12] One contemporary historian adds: “And he (the king) gave to his youngest son John the county of Mortain.”[13] The meaning of this probably is that Henry expressed a wish, or made a suggestion, that his successor should provide for John by investing him with Mortain.[14] From the days of the Conqueror downwards, this Norman county had always been held by some junior member of the Norman ducal house. Henry I. had granted it to his favourite nephew, Stephen; it had passed to Stephen’s son William, and afterwards to his daughter Mary; in 1168, Mary’s husband, Count Matthew of Boulogne, had ceded it to Henry II., on condition that a heavy sum charged upon its revenues should be paid annually to his two daughters.[15] Its actual value, therefore, was now very small; and Henry on his recovery seems to have abandoned, for the time at least, his project of bestowing it on John. A year later his diplomacy had wrought out a scheme for providing John with a far more splendid, as well as more valuable, endowment than Mortain, by betrothing him to the presumptive heiress of Maurienne.

A proposal for this marriage was made by Count Humbert of Maurienne and accepted by Henry in 1171.[16] Humbert was then a widower for the third time, and had only two daughters. The marriage contract, which was signed at the close of 1172,[17] provided that if he should yet have a son, that son should inherit scarcely anything but the little county of Maurienne itself, which was only a small and comparatively unimportant part of Humbert’s dominions, stretching as they did along both sides of the Alps and including all the passes between Gaul, Germany and Italy. Except Maurienne, and a very trifling portion of land reserved as a dowry for his younger daughter, all Humbert’s territories—Rossillon-en-Bugey, the county of Belley, the valley of Novalesia, ChambÉry and its dependencies, Aix, Aspremont, Rochetta, Mont-Major, and La Chambre on the western side of the Alps; and on their eastern side, Turin, Cavaur, Colegno, with the homage and service of the count of Canavesia, and that which the viscount of Aosta owed for ChÂtillon, and also Humbert’s claims on the county of Grenoble—were devised absolutely and unconditionally to John and his bride, and were, if Henry so willed, to be secured to them immediately by the homage of all Humbert’s subjects in those regions to the little bridegroom; while if Humbert should die without a son, Maurienne itself was to be added to John’s inheritance. The price stipulated for all this was five thousand marks, of which one thousand were paid over at once by Henry to Humbert.[18] It was not till the infant bride had been actually delivered over to her intended father-in-law, who was to bring her up in company with her betrothed till both were old enough to be married, that Humbert asked what was to be John’s share in the heritage of the Angevin house. Henry, seemingly on the spur of the moment, proposed to give the boy three castles with the lands appertaining to them—Chinon, Loudun, and Mirebeau.[19] Chinon was in Touraine; but Loudun and Mirebeau were in Anjou. The project was defeated by young Henry’s refusal to allow any part of his county to be settled upon his little brother, and it thus gave the immediate occasion, though it was certainly not the real cause, for his revolt.[20]

When that revolt was subdued {1174 Oct.}, the political relations between King Henry and his elder sons were settled upon a new footing. The terms of this new settlement, while confirming the arrangements made at Montmirail for the devolution of Henry’s territories after his death, left no room for any doubt of his intention to keep them all, for the present at least, in his own hands. He covenanted to give to his eldest son, so long as he remained dutiful, two castles in Normandy and a yearly revenue of fifteen thousand pounds Angevin; to Richard, two castles in Poitou, and half the revenues of that county; to Geoffrey, half the dowry of Constance till they should be married, and the whole of it after that event. Richard and Geoffrey had to do homage to their father “for what he granted and gave them,” but young Henry was excused from doing the like in consideration of his regal dignity. For John there was now made a carefully detailed provision; he was to receive an income of a thousand pounds from the royal demesnes in England, any escheats which the king might choose to give him, the castle and county of Nottingham, the castle and lordship of Marlborough; two castles and a revenue of one thousand pounds Angevin in Normandy, and from the Angevin lands the same amount in money, with one castle in Anjou, one in Touraine, and one in Maine; and this settlement young Henry was made to promise that he would keep “firmly and inviolate.”[21]

The scheme looks almost as if planned purposely to give John a foothold in every part of his eldest brother’s future dominions—a strip, so to say, in every one of young Henry’s fields. There was indeed no thought as yet of putting the boy into possession, of investing him with the county of Nottingham, or making him do homage either to his brother or to his father. The clause about escheats, however, soon furnished an opportunity for adding to John’s portion. In 1175 the great estates of Earl Reginald of Cornwall reverted to the Crown at his death, and Henry set them aside for John.[22] Henry’s plans for his little “Lackland” were in fact completely changed. The project of setting him up as “marquis in Italy” was abandoned; Alice of Maurienne was dead,[23] her father had married again, and neither he nor Henry seems ever to have thought of insisting upon the fulfilment of the clause in her marriage-contract which provided that in case of her premature death her sister should take her place as John’s bride. The settlement of October 1174 seems to indicate that Henry now saw his best hope of providing for John in his insular dominions, rather than anywhere on the continent. In 1176 there was added to John’s prospect of the earldoms of Nottingham and Cornwall that of a third English earldom and a yet wider lordship in the west. Earl William of Gloucester, the son and successor of Earl Robert and Mabel of Glamorgan, had been implicated in the recent rebellion. His three surviving children were all daughters, two of them already married. He bought his peace with the king by making John heir to all his lands, Henry in return promising that John should marry William’s youngest daughter, or, if the needful dispensation could not be obtained,[24] he would bestow her on another husband “with the utmost honour”; while a yearly sum of one hundred pounds was to be paid by the Crown to each of her sisters, as compensation for the loss of their shares of the family heritage. If William should yet have another son, that son and John were to divide the lands of the earldom of Gloucester between them.[25]

Where John himself had been from his birth until near the completion of his fifth year, there is nothing to show. He seems to have been with his father at the time of the marriage-treaty with Maurienne, and throughout the subsequent revolt; “John alone, who was a little boy, remained with his father,” says Gervase of Canterbury, when speaking of the defection of Henry’s elder sons in 1173.[26] He was apparently in England when the arrangement with Earl William of Gloucester was made, September 28, 1176; and he was certainly with the king at Nottingham at Christmas in that year,[27] and also at Oxford in May 1177, when Henry bestowed on him the titular sovereignty of the English dominions in Ireland, and made the Norman-Welsh barons to whom he had granted fiefs in that country do homage for those fiefs to John as well as to himself.[28] A slight indication of the boy’s increasing importance may be found in two entries on this year’s Pipe Roll; the expenditure accounted for by the fermor of Peterborough abbey includes a corrody for “the king’s son John,” and fifty-two pounds spent in buying two palfreys “for the use of the same John.”[29] In August the king returned to Normandy; John followed him, travelling under the care of his half-brother Geoffrey, the bishop-elect of Lincoln;[30] at Mid-Lent, March 19, 1178, he was present with his father and eldest brother at the consecration of the abbey church of Bec;[31] and at Christmas 1178 Henry and John were together at Winchester.[32] During the next four years no mention occurs of John, save that at some time between Michaelmas 1178 and Michaelmas 1179 twenty shillings were spent on horses for him “in England and Normandy” by one William Franceis, who seems to have been a groom appointed by the king to attend him.[33]

John’s earliest known appearance as witness to a charter of his father’s seems to date from the early part of the year 1182; his style is simply “John, the king’s son.”[34] This charter was given at Arundel. When Henry went over sea, in March, he left John in England under the guardianship of the justiciar, Ranulf Glanville.[35] Fifteen months later, the king’s arrangements for the disposal of the Angevin succession were all upset by the death of his eldest son, June 11, 1183. Almost heart-broken as the father was, one consolation immediately suggested itself; now at last he might secure to his favourite child some provision at once loftier and more independent than any number of Norman counties or English earldoms, and more substantial than his titular sovereignty in Ireland. In September Henry “sent to England for his youngest son, John, and his master Ranulf de Glanville”; when they had joined him in Normandy he sent for Richard, and bade him cede the duchy of Aquitaine to John and receive the boy’s homage for it.[36] This command shows clearly what Henry’s present intentions were. Richard was to take the place proper to the eldest son, as heir to the whole Angevin dominions; when he should enter upon his inheritance, his brothers were to hold the two great underfiefs, Britanny and Aquitaine, under him, just as he and Geoffrey had been destined to hold them under the younger Henry; and this arrangement for the future was to be made binding by the immediate homage of his brothers to him, although for the present all three sons were to remain in subjection to their father. The scheme was reasonable and just; but in Richard’s eyes it had a fatal defect. For the last eight years he had been actual ruler of Aquitaine, as Geoffrey had been actual ruler of Britanny. From 1175 Henry had given his second and third sons a free hand and left them to govern their respective duchies for themselves. Geoffrey’s hold upon Britanny had been secured in 1181 by his marriage with Constance; Richard had secured his own hold upon Aquitaine by eight years of hard fighting with its rebellious barons, and was now, in truth, duke by the right of the sword. But young Henry, the crowned king, had throughout these years been in England little more than a cipher, held in check by the authority of his father when present, and by that of the justiciars in his father’s absence; while in Normandy and the Angevin lands he had had no practical authority at all. Richard had no mind to give up substance for shadow. To be de facto duke of Aquitaine was far better than to be merely titular duke of Normandy and count of Anjou; for the title of king, he knew, Henry would never again grant to any one during his own lifetime. Richard’s answer therefore was that, so long as he lived, he and he alone would rule Aquitaine.[37] In June 1184 the king went back to England,[38] leaving John in Normandy. John was now in his seventeenth year, and Henry is said to have given him permission to “lead an army into Richard’s territories and win them for himself by force.”[39] Whether he also furnished him with an “army” for that purpose, or how John was expected to find one for himself, is not stated; possibly the permission was nothing more than a hastily uttered word which the speaker never meant to be taken seriously. In any case, however, Henry’s departure over sea left John to his own devices, and to the influence of his next brother, Geoffrey of Britanny.

Two or three years later, Gerald of Wales sketched the portraits of Geoffrey and John both at once, in a manner highly suggestive of the close relations which the two brothers formed at this time, and of the points of likeness which drew them together. From that picture we can see what was the character of the influence under which John now fell, and what response it was likely to find in the character of John himself. Geoffrey was now a man of twenty-six years, a knight of approved valour, reputed scarcely inferior in this respect to either of his elder brothers, while he surpassed them both in eloquence of speech and subtlety of brain. “He was not easy to deceive, and would indeed have been one of the wisest of men, had he not been so ready to deceive others. He was a compound of two different natures, Ulysses and Achilles in one. In his inmost soul there was more of bitterness than of sweetness; but outwardly he was always ready with an abundance of words smoother than oil; with his bland and persuasive eloquence he could unbind the closest ties of confederation; with his tongue he had power to mar the peace of two kingdoms. He was a hypocrite, never to be trusted, and with a marvellous talent for feigning or counterfeiting all things.”[40]

There was nine years’ difference in age between Geoffrey and John; but already a clear-sighted onlooker could see that the two brothers were cast in the same mould, morally as well as physically. Both were short in stature—shorter than their father, and far below the height of young Henry or of Richard; they were well built, but on a small scale. The likeness between them went deeper than that of outward form. As Gerald expresses it, “while one was corn in the blade, the other was corn in the ear”; but the blade developed fast. Before John was twenty, Gerald, though evidently striving hard to make the best of him, was driven to confess that, “caught in the toils and snared by the temptations of unstable and dissolute youth, he was as wax to receive impressions of evil, but hardened against those who would have warned him of its danger; compliant to the fancy of the moment; making no resistance to the impulses of nature; more given to luxurious ease than to warlike exercises, to enjoyment than to endurance, to vanity than to virtue.”[41] As soon as the king was out of Normandy, Geoffrey and John joined hands; they collected “a great host,” with which they marched, burning and plundering, into Poitou. Richard retaliated by harrying Britanny, till Henry, on learning what was going on, summoned all three brothers to England. They obeyed the summons,[42] and in December a “final concord” between them was drawn up and sealed at Westminster.[43] Whatever were its terms, they evidently did not include any cession of territory by either of the elder brothers to the youngest. Geoffrey was at once sent back to Normandy “to take care of it with its other guardians”;[44] and immediately after Christmas Richard obtained leave to return to Poitou.[45] The king’s project of transferring Aquitaine to John had been merely a passing fancy. Of the scheme for establishing him in Ireland Henry had never lost sight; and this scheme he now determined to carry into effect.

Before he could do so, however, a yet loftier destiny was proposed to him for his favourite son. At the end of January 1185 Heraclius, the patriarch of Jerusalem, came to England to implore Henry’s aid for the perishing realm of Palestine. King Baldwin IV. was dying; after him there was but one male heir left of the blood of King Fulk of Anjou and Queen Melisenda, and that one was a little child. From the story as told by Gerald it seems plain that Heraclius aimed at something more than merely persuading Henry to take the command of a crusade; his project was nothing less than a transfer of the succession from the younger to the elder Angevin line—from the infant son of Fulk’s grand-daughter to a son of Fulk’s grandson, Henry. When the king of England, after taking counsel with his “faithful men,” declared that he could not in person undertake the deliverance of the Holy Land from its enemies, Heraclius still persisted in his other request; he implored Henry to send at least one of his sons—if even it were only John—“that from this scion of the Angevin house the seed royal might be raised up and spring into new life.” The king, however, would not listen. John, it is said, was inclined to embrace the patriarch’s suggestion, and threw himself at his father’s feet to beg his consent, but in vain.[46] At Mid-Lent Henry knighted him at Windsor, and publicly gave out that he was to proceed at once to Ireland, where he was destined to be king.[47]

The dominions of the English Crown in Ireland were defined by the treaty made between the Irish Ard-Righ, Roderic of Connaught, and Henry II. in October 1175 as consisting of the ancient Irish kingdoms of Meath and Leinster, the cities of Dublin and Waterford, and a tract of land extending from Waterford as far as, and including, Dungarvan.[48] Meath had been granted by Henry in 1171 to Hugh de Lacy to hold in chief of the Crown by the service of fifty knights;[49] Leinster had been granted a few weeks before to Richard de Clare, earl of Striguil.[50] The cities of Dublin and Wexford and the territory appertaining to each of them, which had been held by the Ostmen, were not included in these grants, but were reserved by Henry to himself, and placed under the charge of custodians appointed by him. His authority over the whole area occupied by his subjects in Ireland was represented by a governor whose headquarters were at Dublin, and who at the time of the treaty was Earl Richard, the lord of Leinster.[51]

On the side of the invaders and their king, the treaty was made only to be broken. Henry on his visit to Ireland in 1171–72 had established constables of his own in two other towns, Limerick and Cork.[52] Cork, though not named in the treaty, and therefore implicitly included in that portion of the island over which he renounced all claims to ownership, seems nevertheless to have been continuously occupied by his officers; it was certainly in their hands in November 1177.[53] Limerick had been recovered by the Irish, probably when all Henry’s garrisons were recalled from Ireland to swell his forces in Normandy in 1173. It was, however, stormed and captured early in October 1175—only a few days before the treaty with Roderic was signed—by Earl Richard’s brother-in-law and constable, Raymond the Fat, and his cousin Meiler Fitz-Henry.[54] They evacuated it, indeed, six months later, when Raymond was recalled by Henry to England on the death of Earl Richard in May 1176;[55] but Raymond’s infraction of the treaty was not the reason for his recall;[56] and the withdrawal of his troops from Limerick was due not to any order from the king, but to his own sense of the difficulty of holding a place so remote from the other Norman-Welsh settlements in Ireland. Henry, when he heard of the affair, merely remarked: “Great was the daring shown in seizing the place, but the only wisdom was in leaving it.”[57] In 1171–72 he had made, it is said, a grant of Ulster to John de Courcy “if he could conquer it by force.”[58] At the opening of 1177 De Courcy set forth to try whether he could make this grant effectual, and by February 2 he had taken the city of Down.[59] Shortly afterwards, Miles Cogan, who was constable of Dublin under the new governor-general, William Fitz-Audeline, made a raid into Connaught as far as Tuam.[60] A few weeks later, Henry himself openly flung his treaty with Roderic to the winds. According to one account, he bade Earl Hugh of Chester “go into Ireland and subdue it for him and his son John, to whom he had granted it; for he had obtained leave from Pope Alexander to crown and make king in Ireland whichever of his sons he might choose; and he bade the said earl conquer the kings and princes of Ireland who would not submit to him.” The commission was probably given not to Hugh of Chester, but to Hugh de Lacy, who was certainly appointed governor in Ireland shortly afterwards.[61] However this may have been, in May 1177 Henry, in a great council at Oxford, arrogated to himself the right of disposing at his pleasure not only of the territories in Ireland which were already conquered, but also of the whole of Munster. Leinster was at this time in his own hands; for Earl Richard’s heir was a girl, and therefore a ward of the king. He confirmed Hugh de Lacy’s tenure of Meath, and gave him the custody of Dublin, which carried with it the office of governor-general; he appointed William Fitz-Audeline—whom Hugh was thus to supersede as governor—custodian of Wexford, and Robert le Poer custodian of Waterford; and he defined the territory dependent upon the latter city as extending not merely as far as Dungarvan (the limit specified in the treaty of 1175), but as far as “the river which is beyond Lismore,” that is, the Blackwater. Moreover, he granted to Robert Fitz-Stephen and Miles de Cogan in fee, for the service of sixty knights, “the kingdom of Cork,” South Munster, or Desmond;[62] and to Herbert and William Fitz-Herbert and their nephew Jocelyn de la Pommeraye, on the same terms, “the kingdom of Limerick,” North Munster, or Thomond. From each of these grants the capital city, with the Ostmen’s cantred attached to it, was excluded, being expressly reserved by Henry for “himself and his heirs.” The recipients of all these grants did liege homage and swore fealty to John as well as to Henry.[63]

The grant of Thomond to the two Fitz-Herberts and their nephew was shortly afterwards annulled at their own request, on the ground that this realm “was not yet won or subdued to the king’s authority”; evidently they did not feel equal to the task of winning it. Henry then offered its investiture to Philip de Braose, who accepted it; and this time the city of Limerick, with its cantred, was either included in the enfeoffment, or, more probably, Philip was appointed to hold it, when won, as custodian for the king.[64] The “kingdom of Cork” was also as yet unconquered; but here the grantees had the advantage of being supported by an English constable, Richard of London, in Cork itself. They seem to have compelled or persuaded the king of Desmond, Dermot MacCarthy, to some agreement, in virtue of which they are said to have obtained peaceable possession of “the seven cantreds nearest to the city,” and divided these between themselves, Fitz-Stephen taking the three eastern, Cogan the four western; and they seem also to have been appointed by Henry joint custodians of the city of Cork, in succession to Richard of London.[65] As for the other twenty-four cantreds which made up the rest of their promised territory, they agreed to divide the tribute equally between them, “when it should come.”[66]

Philip de Braose had helped Cogan and Fitz-Stephen to effect their settlement in Desmond; they now went to help him to gain possession of Limerick. As the three adventurers and their little band of Welsh followers reached the bank of the Shannon, the citizens noticed their approach and fired the town before their eyes. De Braose lost heart, and “chose rather to return safe to his home than to try the risks of fortune in a land so hostile and so remote”;[67] and it does not appear that he ever obtained any footing in the country. Cogan and Fitz-Stephen held their seven cantreds in Desmond and the city of Cork for five years; then, in 1182, Cogan was slain by an Irish chieftain,[68] and the natives rose at once throughout the district. They besieged Fitz-Stephen in Cork; his nephew, Raymond the Fat, went to his rescue by sea, and managed to throw himself and some troops into the city; while King Henry, as soon as the news reached him, despatched Miles Cogan’s brother Richard, with some soldiers, from England to take Miles’s place.[69] In 1183, or very soon after, Fitz-Stephen died;[70] Henry then appointed Raymond sole constable of Cork, and Raymond contrived to restore at least some degree of “English”—more properly to be called Norman-Welsh—ascendency throughout the cantreds occupied in 1177, of which the western ones were apparently now held by Richard de Cogan as heir to Miles, while Raymond was recognized by Henry as tenant-in-chief of the eastern ones in succession to Fitz-Stephen, who had no heirs.[71] The temporary loss of ground in the south in 1182 was more than counterbalanced by the successes of John de Courcy in the same year at the opposite extremity of the island, where he seems to have effected a permanent settlement in Dalriada, though probably only along the coast.[72]

The internal condition of the so-called “English” dominion in Ireland, meanwhile, was not altogether satisfactory to the king. It was of course necessary that he should have a viceroy there to represent him and to hold the feudataries in check; but for that very reason the viceroy was always, simply as viceroy, an object of jealousy to the other barons; and the viceroy who had been appointed in 1177, Hugh de Lacy, presently incurred the distrust of the king himself. Hugh’s rivals accused him of currying favour with the Irish in the hope of making himself an independent sovereign; and on his marriage with a daughter of the king of Connaught, a marriage contracted “according to the manner of that country” and without King Henry’s leave, Henry in May 1181 removed him from his office and summoned him to England, sending the constable of Chester and Richard de Pec to Ireland as joint governors in his stead. Hugh’s disgrace, however, lasted only six months; he returned to Dublin as governor at the end of the year.[73] Meanwhile Henry was providing himself with a new instrument for working out his purposes in Ireland. The saintly and patriotic archbishop of Dublin, S. Laurence O’Toole, had died in November 1180;[74] Henry kept the see vacant ten months, and then, in September 1181, gave it to an English clerk and confidant of his own, John Cumin. The new archbishop was consecrated by the Pope on March 21, 1182;[75] but more than two years elapsed before he set foot in his diocese. At last, in August 1184, he was sent over by Henry to prepare the way for the coming of John.[76] It was doubtless for the same purpose that Hugh de Lacy was again superseded as governor; at the beginning of September he was replaced by Philip of Worcester, whose first work was to recover for the Crown certain lands which Hugh had alienated, and whose next undertaking was a plundering raid upon the clergy and churches of Armagh, achieved with great success in March 1185.[77]

On April 24 John sailed from Milford[78] with a fleet of sixty ships,[79] which carried some three hundred knights, a large body of archers, and a train of other followers. Next day they all landed at Waterford.[80] There the neighbouring Irish chieftains came to salute the son of the English king. The knights of John’s suite, young and reckless like himself, jeered at the dress and manners of these Irishmen, and even pulled some of them by their beards, which they wore long and flowing according to their national custom. The insulted chieftains reported to their brethren in more remote districts the indignity with which they had been treated; and in consequence, the kings and princes of Munster and Connaught not only refused to attend John’s court, but agreed among themselves to oppose him by force.[81] Archbishop Cumin, who had been sent over on purpose that he might set an example of clerical submission and lend John the support of his countenance as spiritual head of the province over which John was to be the secular ruler, of course welcomed the lad as his sovereign and gave him his homage and fealty, and so did the lay barons who owed their possessions in Ireland to King Henry; but among the survivors and representatives of the original Norman-Welsh conquerors the king’s son—like the king himself fourteen years before—evidently received but a half-hearted welcome;[82] and John did nothing to gain their confidence or their respect. He ordered castles to be built at Lismore and at two places on the Suir, Ardfinnan and Tibraghny;[83] beyond this he seems to have taken no measures to oppose the threatened coalition of the Irish princes and people; and while they were openly joining hands against him, he was spending in riotous living the money which had been destined for the pay of the soldiers who had come with him from England. When these soldiers demanded their wages, he met them with a refusal.[84] Some of them, whom he had left to garrison the new castles at Ardfinnan and Tibraghny, provided for themselves by making plundering raids into Munster, till they were defeated with great slaughter by the king of Thomond, Donell O’Brien;[85] most of the others refused to serve John any longer, and went over to the Irish.[86] Such was the characteristic beginning of John’s public life. Equally characteristic was the facility with which he escaped from the consequences of his criminal folly. In September, finding himself on the verge of ruin, he hurried back to his father’s court and laid the blame of his ill-success upon Hugh de Lacy, whom he accused of plotting with the Irish against him.[87] The task of repairing the mischief wrought by his five months’ stay in Ireland was entrusted by Henry to John de Courcy as governor-general.[88]