De Lacy's castle at Trim is not the only evidence that the Normans, when they came, were quick to fasten upon this fertile valley. At Randalstown, near Navan, Colonel Everard's tobacco plantations are an object of interest to thousands to-day; but perhaps not many of them realize that this enterprising country gentleman is living to-day where his forefathers have lived since the first of them got a grant there in the twelfth century, among the other knights and squires who rode with De Lacy. Norman they were and Irish they soon became, yet here in the pale they kept far more distinct than the Geraldines of Desmond or the De Burgos of Connaught; and so they kept on the lucky side, the side whose supremacy was finally established when William of Orange fought his way across the fords at Oldbridge. [Illustration: ON THE RIVER SLANEY AT BALLINTEMPLE] Oldbridge is only about a mile upstream from Drogheda, and an obelisk marks the site of the famous Battle of the Boyne. The battle was decided before it was fairly begun, because a large force had been thrown across the bridge at Slane, and thus turned the Irish position, which lay along the south bank from opposite the Mattock River to where the hill rises steep below Oldbridge. Schomberg fell in the ford above the island, probably some two hundred yards below the present bridge--fell rallying his Huguenots like a hero. No record of brutality sullies that feat of arms; but at Drogheda, one of the most picturesquely situated towns in Ireland, and made more picturesque by the high viaduct which here spans the river, there are terrible memories connected with those old defences of which one part remains perfect--St. Laurence's Gate with its two-storied tower. Here it was that Cromwell perpetrated the first of those massacres which disgrace his name. Such of the captured as were not slain were sent for slaves to the West Indies, where to-day in certain islands a debased Irish can be heard from negroes, and Irish names are general among the negro population.