The family were bitter Irreconcilables; since the days of an older Calvagh, the “Great Rebel,” who a hundred years before (1307), had been invited with thirty of the Offaly chiefs to dine at Castle-Carberry on Trinity Sunday with “the treacherous baron,” Sir Pierce Bermingham, the “Hunter of the Irish”; and were deceitfully murdered, the Great Rebel and all, as they rose from table. This new Calvagh fought the invaders for over sixty years, from youth to old age, with scarcely a pause--a man of humour as well as courage. Once when the English troops with their Irish followers had ridden to the very borders of Killeigh (1406)--the religious and business centre of Offaly--Calvagh with half a dozen horsemen came upon a body of plundering kerns, one carrying off on his back a great cauldron which Calvagh had lent his friend MacMaoilcorra for brewing beer. “There is your caldron with the kerns,” cried MacMaoilcorra helplessly, “take it and discharge me of my loan.” “I accept of it where it is,” mocked Calvagh, and flung “the shot of a stone” which hit the cauldron straight, at the great noise and report whereof the plunderers cast away their spoil and fled in consternation. In the great rout of the English that day the Irish won back from them the chiefest relic of Connacht, the cap or mitre of S. Patrick stolen from Elphin. In Calvagh’s days the Irish revival had pushed back the rule of Dublin Castle to a strip of coast land some twenty miles by thirty. There flew a tale of panic (1385) that the Irish “were confederate with Spain,” and that “at this next season, as is likely, there will be made a conquest of the greater part of the land.” Revenue was falling, English colonists were flying across the water, and prayers for help were sent over to the English king. The king’s favourite De Vere, appointed Marquis of Dublin and Duke of Ireland (1386), got no farther than Wales, and English pretentions over the island under a confused series of shifting rulers became the mock of Europe. Stung by the taunt that he who desired to be made head of the Holy Roman Empire could not even subdue Ireland, Richard II. made his fantastic journey across the Irish Channel (1394), carrying a wardrobe of untold cost in which one jewelled coat alone was worth thirty thousand marks, and with a following of four thousand squires and thirty thousand archers, a greater army, some said, than Edward III. commanded at Crecy. Thus Calvagh had the rare opportunity of seeing the arrival in Ireland of the only king of England who landed there in the five hundred years between the coming of Henry II. and John (1171 and 1210), and that of James II. (1689)--all four driven over by personal necessities, not by any concern whatever for the Irish people or their well-being. The English troops were flung back from the O’Connor land and from Ely of the O’Carrolls, with many men slain and many horses captured, and fresh supplies were sent for from England. But Richard, unlike any other