Even more than a century afterwards we can still trace many Ostmen in the chief cities of Ireland, where, it seems, they continued to preserve those Scandinavian characteristics which distinguished them from the Irish and English. In the year 1201 a verdict was pronounced by twelve Irishmen, twelve Englishmen, and twelve Ostmen in Limerick, concerning the lands, churches, and other property belonging to the church of Limerick; which shows that the Ostmen were sufficiently numerous there to be placed on an equal footing with the English and Irish. There is in the Tower of London a document of the year 1283, issued by the English king Edward I., ordering that the Ostmen in Waterford (“Custumanni,” Oustumanni, Austumanni?) should, pursuant to King Henry the Second’s ordinance, have, and be judged by, the same laws as the English settled in Ireland, which clearly indicates that the Ostmen at that time still formed a distinct and separate people. We might almost believe that the Ostmen in Waterford had even refused to observe the English laws, or that at least there was a doubt how far these laws could be applied to them; since King Edward found it necessary to enforce Henry the Second’s ordinance, and to enjoin his chief justice and magistrates in Ireland that the three men named in the document should, “like other Ostmen in Waterford,” be judged, and as far as possible (“quantum in vobis est”), punished, according to the laws in force for Englishmen in Ireland. (See the Latin document in the Appendix.) The striking historical account that in the year 1263 the Irish applied to the Norwegian king Hakon Hakonsön, then lying with his fleet on the south-west coast of Scotland, for assistance against the English, will now no longer be inexplicable or improbable; for it is placed beyond all doubt that amongst the Irish who thus in vain implored King Hakon for help, there must have been a number of the Ostmen still living in Ireland, who naturally continued to maintain a connection with their countrymen in the Norwegian kingdoms on the south-west coast of Scotland, until these kingdoms also were destroyed in the middle ages.