except for their armor, could hardly be distinguished from the Celts. Henry III paid but small attention to Irish affairs. He ascended the English throne a minor, and his mature years were spent mainly in repeated civil wars with his barons, who finally compelled him to extend and confirm the Magna Charta of his father. His son, Edward I, nicknamed “Long Shanks,” the ablest king of the Plantagenet race, was almost constantly occupied, during his stirring reign, in wars of conquest against Wales and Scotland, and he succeeded in annexing the first-named country to the English crown. His son and successor, Edward II, was the first English Prince of Wales. This Edward inherited the Scotch war which his father had left unfinished, after great effusion of blood. In 1314, his great English army, said to have numbered 100,000 knights, archers, and men-at-arms, was disastrously routed at Bannockburn (“Oaten-cake rivulet”), near Sterling, by King Robert Bruce, of Scotland, who had under his command not more than 30,000 men, horse and foot. This great victory did not entirely end the Anglo-Scotch wars, which were always bitter and bloody down to the close of the sixteenth century, but it preserved the independence of Scotland for nearly four hundred years. That country ceased to be a separate nation in 1707. Many Irish clans of Ulster aided Bruce at Bannockburn, and some Connaught septs, under one of the O’Conors, fought on the English side, and were nearly exterminated, which “served them right.” As the Irish princes could not settle on one of their own number for High King, they, at the suggestion of the wise and generous Donald O’Neill, King of Ulster, agreed to elect Edward Bruce, brother of the Scotch monarch, king of all Ireland. Their proffer of the Irish throne was accepted by the Bruces, and Edward was duly crowned in 1315. This provoked a destructive three years’ war. Brave King Robert came to Ireland to aid his brother, and, in the field, they swept all before them, particularly in Munster. But the Norman-Irish fought them bitterly, notably the Geraldines, the Berminghams, and De Burgos. Felim O’Conor, the young and gallant king of Connaught, was forced into a repugnant alliance with De Burgo, who was powerful in the west. His heart, however, was with the Bruce, and he soon found an opportunity to break away from his repugnant Norman ally. Summoning all his fighting force, he marched upon the fortified town of Athunree, or Athenry, “the Ford of the Kings,” in Galway, and came up with the Anglo-Norman army, arrayed outside the walls, on the morning of August 10, 1316. De Burgo and De Bermingham, two able veteran soldiers, headed the Anglo-Normans. The conflict was fierce and the slaughter appalling, particularly on the Irish side, because the heroic clansmen did not have, like their foes, the advantage of chain armor and long bow archery. Night closed upon a terrible scene. The Irish refused to fly