made them necessary, in a military sense, to the Plantagenet kings, who employed them chiefly as archers. Under Norman training, their skill with the deadly long bow made them perhaps the most formidable infantry of the Middle Ages. The Normans in England, very wisely, accommodated themselves to the new conditions and made up their minds to live upon and enjoy the lands they had won by the sword. They rapidly became more English than Norman, and after the accession of the House of Anjou to the throne, in the person of Henry II, began to call themselves “Englishmen.” Sir Walter Scott, in his noble historical romance of “Ivanhoe,” draws a splendidly vivid picture of that period. In Ireland, as we have seen, the series of distracting civil wars, all growing out of questions of succession to the national and provincial thrones, still progressed, and, owing to the unceasing discord, prosperity waned, and some historians claim that Church discipline was relaxed, although not to any such extent as is asserted by the Norman chroniclers. But the reigning Pontiff, hearing of the trouble, summoned some of the leading hierarchs of the Irish Church to Rome, where they explained matters satisfactorily. About the time that Henry II, in virtue of his descent from the Conqueror, through his mother, daughter of Henry I, assumed the English crown, the Papal chair was occupied by Adrian the Fourth, whose worldly name was Nicholas Breakspeare, an Englishman by birth, and the only man of that nationality who ever wore the tiara. He, too, had been informed by Norman agents of the disorders in Ireland, where, among other things, it was claimed that the people in general had neglected to pay to the Papacy the slight tribute known as “Peter’s Pence.” This circumstance, no doubt, irritated the Pontiff, and when Henry, who had his ambitious heart set on acquiring the sovereignty of Ireland, laid open his design, Pope Adrian, according to credible authority, gave him a document called a “bull,” in which, it would appear, he undertook to “bestow” Ireland on the English king, with the understanding that he should do his utmost to reform the evils in Church and State said to exist in that country, and also compel the regular payment of the Papal tribute. All of which Henry agreed to do. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ CHAPTER X The Norman-Welsh Invasion of Ireland—Their Landing in Wexford