In all this internecine conflict the only motive that can clearly be traced is the passionate desire for vengeance. To glut that desire Dermot was ready, not only to call in the alien against his fellow-countrymen, but even to promise ‘Strongbow’ the succession to Leinster and his followers landed possessions, which he could only do at the cost of enraging his own kinsmen and subjects. Giraldus, indeed, is at pains to justify the position of the English in Ireland, and to claim that it was virtually brought about by consent rather than by conquest. Here again we may best picture to ourselves the situation by comparing the treaties or concessions wrung from barbarous potentates by the adventurous Englishmen of to-day. Dermot had notoriously promised what was not his to give, without the least consideration for the rights or interest of his people. But just as, at the conquest of England itself, Norman casuistry had enabled William to claim the succession by gift of his kinsman, and to forfeit as traitors all those who opposed that claim, and just as his followers, by Norman law, though standing in the shoes of English thegns, assumed the position of feudal lords, so, in Ireland, the new settlers looked at things from a feudal standpoint, and so originated that conflict of irreconcilable polities which has practically continued without intermission ever since. In the end indeed, especially outside of Meath and Leinster, they adapted themselves, as is well known, to the native system of government, and became, in the eyes of the English, more or less Irish chieftains. But at first the necessities of the case accentuated their alien status. For on the one hand the weakness of the royal power, and on the other the danger of their position, conspired to give their settlement an intensely feudal character. Our poem, as we have said, shows us the lords of Meath and Leinster, respectively, enfeoffing their followers to hold of them by knight service, and these became, it should be noticed, the “barons” of Meath or of Leinster, a term which in England was only found in the border palatinates of Chester and of Durham. These barons were encouraged to construct castles at once as the best defence against those sudden raids in which the Irish were wont to indulge. In accordance with the policy of the Romans in their day, and with our own at the present time, when extending the borders of the Empire, the shrewd Gerald strongly urged that the country should be opened up by constructing roads through its wilds, and then held by fortified posts, or, as he expressed it, by castles. Writing within twenty years of earl Richard’s landing, he had already to lament that the Irish had learnt from their foes the use of the bow, and had so greatly improved their tactics that the easy victories of the early invaders were no longer possible: by castles alone could their successors hope to hold the land.