[Sidenote: Edward refuses to treat. Consequent disasters.] Edward thought for a moment of renewing the war, and again summoned a fresh army; but the condition of England rendered further action impossible. The discontented Earls attributed the disaster to the refusal of the King to accept the Ordinances, and to the influence of his new favourites Beaumont and Despenser. Money, too, was wanting; and the King’s renewed efforts to obtain it from the clergy by means of the new Archbishop Walter were met with firm opposition. But though war was useless, he would not listen to Bruce’s overtures for peace, obstinately refusing to regard that Prince in any other light than that of a rebel. The North of England was thus left open to the fierce inroads of the Scotch. [Sidenote: Wars in Wales and Ireland.] [Sidenote: Edward Bruce’s invasion of Ireland.] [Sidenote: He is crowned King. 1316.] [Sidenote: Is killed at Dundalk.] The loss of the English prestige was more disastrous than the immediate loss of the battle. The Welsh and Irish thought their opportunity had arrived for obtaining their independence. The Welsh insurrection was indeed subdued after a year of fighting; but it required three years before Ireland was again secured to the English Crown. In that country Edward I. had done but little. It was in its usual state of disorder. The feuds among the Norman adventurers, to whom the conquest had been left, were scarcely less constant or bitter than the wars among the native tribes who surrounded them. Against these tribes, however, they exercised the greatest cruelties. To be an Irishman was to be excluded from all justice, to be classed at once as a robber and murderer. The news of the Battle of Bannockburn induced the Irish to beg the assistance of Bruce, and to offer him their crown. He declined it for himself, but his brother Edward, as ambitious as the Scotch King, accepted the offer. In May 1315 he landed, supported by the great tribe of the O’Niells, and probably also by the Norman Lacys, and was victorious over the combined forces of the Butlers and De Burghs. In vain did Edward send John of Hotham, a clergyman, to attempt some combination among the English and the Irish tribes. The English dislike to the royal lieutenant Butler prevented union, and in May 1316, O’Niell of Tyrone gave up his claim to the Irish throne to Edward Bruce, who was crowned King. But a series of separate attacks upon the natives was more successful. At Athenry the O’Connors were almost exterminated. The arrival of King Robert in Ulster, and a march in winter to Limerick and Dublin, produced no permanent effect, and at length, in 1317, Roger Mortimer, landing with a considerable army, succeeded in establishing some order. The Lacys were executed for treason; the tribes began quarrelling among themselves; and finally, in 1318, Edward Bruce fell in a battle, in which he was defeated by John of Birmingham, in the neighbourhood of Dundalk. The English government