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162 Stephen Dunford: The Journey of The IrIsh
same term has also been applied to the tributes paid by the exchequer to some Irish chiefs for a right of way through their territories. In this case Art’s annuity was paid in return for which he kept the coast round Dublin free from pirates, raiders and robbers. Smarting from these indignities, Art rallied the clans in his own Leinster and retaliated, it is said, by ‘com- mitting divers slaughters, devastations, and burnings in the counties of Kildare, Carlow, Kilkenny, and Wexford’ and refused to make peace until his “Black Rent” and his wife’s lands were restored.
Alarmed by the bloody successes of MacMurrough, Richard 11, who in 1377 had suc- ceeded his grandfather Edward 111 on the English throne, and a monarch whose posthu- mous reputation has to a large degree been shaped and interpreted by William Shakespeare, determined to visit Ireland with such a force as would completely subdue the rebels. Richard landed at Waterford on October 1394, with an army of 34,000 men and marched north- wards towards Dublin with the intention of defeating the Leinster rebels en route. All along his course through Leinster, the laborious progress of Richard’s mighty but unwieldly army was constantly harried, harassed and worsted by Art’s light-footed troops who made sudden and deadly attacks and then disappeared into the woods. Both MacMurrough’s worrying tactics, the slowness of their advancement, and the lack of provisions, greatly nonplussed the royal army, which eventually entered Dublin, dispirited, depleted, exhausted, and half- starved.
At length, Art and several other Irish chieftains came to Dublin and made submissions to Richard, with as one commentator suggested ‘as much sincerity as did their predeces- sors to Henry 11.’ All the principal Irish, with the single exception of O’Donnell, prince of Donegal, agreed to a treaty and to recognize Richard as their overlord as long as he did not interfere with them. The wily Art MacMurrough was acknowledged by Richard as King of Leinster. The English King, having accepted the submissions, all be they insincere, of the Irish principals, “received them” as one contemporary scribe wrote “in osculo pacis”-this is the traditional Christian greeting, the kiss of peace, “feasted them, and having given the honour of knighthood to divers of them, did break up and dissolve his army, and returned into England with much honour and small profit.” This expedition lasted nine months.
Before departing, Richard appointed Roger Mortimer, 4th Earl of March and nominal 6th Earl of Ulster, and heir-presumptive to the English throne, as Governor of Ireland. The sham submissions and suspect promises of the Irish chiefs and the blatant breaches of the
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