To the honor of the Anglo-Normans and Celtic-Irish be it remembered, the base statute became almost immediately inoperative, and the Norman lords and Irish ladies, and the Irish princes and the Norman ladies, intermarried more numerously than before—an example generally followed by their dependants. The gallant house of Fitzgerald, or Geraldine, as usual, set the example of disregard. “These Geraldines! These Geraldines! Not long her air they breathed— Not long they fed on venison in Irish water seethed— Not often had their children been by Irish mothers nursed, When from their full and genial hearts an Irish feeling burst! The English monarch strove in vain, by law and force and bribe, To win from Irish thoughts and ways this ‘more than Irish’ tribe; For still they clung to fosterage—to Brehon, cloak, and bard— No king dare say to Geraldine: ‘Your Irish wife discard!’” The immediate effect of the Statute of Kilkenny was to temporarily unite most of the Irish clans against the common enemy. They fell fiercely upon the Pale and again shut up the Normans in their fortresses. Prince Lionel returned to England grieved and humiliated. His viceroyalty had been a signal failure. Throughout the viceroyalty of Clarence and his successor, William de Windsor, the desultory war between the Old Irish and the Anglo-Normans made many districts, in all the provinces, red with slaughter. The power of the De Burgos declined in Connaught after the death of the warlike Red Earl, who was the scourge of the O’Conors, and the latter family brought his descendants, who had assumed the name of MacWilliam, under their sway. The fierce tribes of Wicklow, Wexford, and Carlow harried the Pale, and were frequently joined by the O’Mores of Leix, and the Fitzpatricks of Ossory. In Ulster, Niel O’Neill, Prince of Tyrone, attacked and defeated the English armies and garrisons with so much success that he cleared Ulster of all foreigners, and won the title of Niel the Great. The Earl of Desmond met with a severe defeat at the hands of O’Brien, Prince of Thomond, who assailed him near the abbey of Adare in Limerick, and routed his army with terrible carnage. Desmond himself was mortally wounded and died upon the field. The Earl of Kildare, Desmond’s kinsman, attempted to avenge his rout, but met with scant success, because the Irish had, by this time, grown used to the Norman method of warfare, and, in many cases, improved upon the tactics of their oppressors.