Page 141 - Demo

Chapter Five 141
The text of the letters went:
“Henry, King of England, Duke of Normandy and Acquitaine, and Earl of Anjou, to
all his liegemen, English, Norman, Welsh, and Scotch, and to all other nations under his dominion, sends greeting. As soon as the present letters shall come to your hands, know that Dermid, Prince of Leinster, has been received into the bosom of our grace and be- nevolence. Wherefore, whosoever within the ample extent of our territories shall be willing to lend aid towards the restoration of this prince, as our faithful and liege subject, let such person know that we do hereby grant to him, for said purpose, our licence and favour.”
There is an extant piece of old Irish wisdom which tells of the bird who fell from the sky into the cowpat and was rescued by a cat. The moral of the piece is that everyone who gets you out of the excrement is not necessarily your friend. So, armed with this royal authority, Dermot returned to Britain and in Bristol and around the borders of Wales he succeeded in getting several land-needy Norman barons to support his cause. The most conspicuous of these warriors of ruined fortunes were the errants Richard de Clare, former Earl of Pembroke, otherwise known as “Strongbow,” the most powerful of them all, his two half- brothers, Robert Fitzstephen and Maurice Fitzgerald, and his uncle Hervé de Montmau- rice. The promise of getting Diramuid’s daughter, Aoife, in marriage and of succeeding Diramuid in the throne of Leinster, an ofer Diarmuid had no authority to issue, were the conditions on which Strongbow’s help was acquired. Pledges of land, including the towns of Wexford and Waterford and the lands about them, induced the other Norman barons to support Diarmuid.
At the time, Strongbow, who was in disfavour with Henry, was unable to come to Ireland himself, but nonetheless, he undertook to send his two half-brothers and his uncle, with armed forces to give Diarmuid immediate help- he agreed to arrive later, as soon as he had again secured Henry’s favour. So it came to pass that in 1168, having accomplished his treacherous business successfully, Dermot, accompanied by a few Norman oicers, returned quietly to Ireland to plot and bide his time until the main force arrived.
On 1 May, 1169, the irst group of Normans under the command of Robert Fitzstephen and Maurice Prendergast, afterwards feted in poetry as “the faithful Norman,” landed at Banú-present day Bannow, in south Wexford-various sources claim that the force may have been as large as 2,000 men including a small body of mailed knights, a larger body of arch- ers, and a troop of hired Flemish mercenaries.