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treaty by the English changed nothing in Ireland and desultory ighting went on as before. An attempt to entrap MacMurrough at a feast, from which he escaped, according to one chronicler “by the strength of his arm and by bravery” set the scene in motion once again for rebellion, and in 1397, an army commanded by MacMurrough met the forces of Mor- timer at Kellistown, county Carlow, during which the English were defeated and Mortimer slain.
On hearing the result of the battle of Kellistown and the death of his appointed heir, Richard determined to come to Ireland a second time-but on this occasion he was bent on chastening the Gaedhil once and for all. In June, 1399, with an army as large as before, Rich- ard again landed at Waterford and set out through Leinster for Dublin. Art MacMurrough repeated his strategic tactics, crippling, harassing and delaying Richard’s cumbersome army, until inally, at Arklow, in county Wicklow, the English King endeavoured to make terms with Art. These endeavours, however, came to nothing and the hostilities resumed with vigour. In the aftermath of the talks, the English army recommenced its march to Dublin where preparations were at once begun for a concerted assault against MacMurrough; but these preparations were abruptly brought to a close on the arrival of the news that Henry of Lancaster had raised a formidable insurrection in England. This second Irish expedition consequently proved as fruitless as the irst and in September 1399, Richard returned to England where deposition and an obscure death by starvation awaited him.
Known in history as the man who twice thwarted the aims of the English King Richard 11, and remembered as one whose resistance to the foreigners was the most sustained, the most vigorous, and the most successful of all the Irish chiefs, Art Oge MacMurrough ruled Leinster undefeated for more than forty years, during which time, it is told, ‘the Gaill of Dublin dared not venture beyond their city walls for fear of him.’ His career ended early in the year 1418, when both he and his chief Brehon, O’Doran, were poisoned at New Ross, county Wexford, at whose instigation it is not known. Our annalists say that ‘he nobly de- fended his own province against the English and Irish from his sixteenth to his sixtieth year; that he was a man full of hospitality and chivalry, an enricher of churches and monasteries by his aims and oferings.’
By then, everywhere throughout the land English power and inluence was becoming less, and whereas in 1250 the colonists controlled two-thirds of the country, in 1418 they controlled scarcely one third.