The Lieutenant sent by Henry IV. to rule Ireland (1401) was his son Thomas of Lancaster twelve years old; and the first in a series of changing deputies Sir Stephen Scrope, an old soldier trained in French and Flemish wars, and as ready to serve Henry as Richard. He it was who slew O’Carroll, Richard’s friend; and against him Murchadh and Calvagh O’Connor warred victoriously in Meath (1406, 1408). The prior of Kilmainham being deputy (who had also been on that ride of death when the sun stood still), the O’Connors captured the sheriff of Meath (1411) and took a great price for his ransom. The three months’ rule of Sir John Stanley (1413) first governor of Henry V. was ended by his death after the curse of the chief bard Niall O’Higgin whom he had plundered at Usnach--“the second poetical miracle” of this famous bard. In vain his successor Archbishop Cranley, whose eighty years alone held him back from battle, gathered his clergy at Castledermot to pray for English victory: O’Connor and MacGeoghagan routed the English, and held to ransom prisoners for two thousand six hundred marks besides other fines (1414). Sir John Talbot Lord Furnival followed (1414), hovering between Ireland, England, and France--to the English “an ancient fox and politique captain,” to the French “a very scourge and daily terror,” to the Irish “a son of curses for his venom and a devil for his evil.” He called out the troops to active war, slew many rebels, and gave protection to neither saint nor sanctuary; it was his policy to “oblige one Irish enemy to serve upon the other,” by forcing defeated chiefs to swear that they would fight under him against their countrymen. Still the O’Connors raided Meath for arms, horses, and prisoners (1417). Calvagh was once treacherously captured by a Meath lord, from whom Talbot in hope of a ransom purchased him; but the prisoner escaped that same night. To Talbot succeeded (1420) James the White Earl of Ormond, back from the French wars. Precepts drawn up to guide his conduct declared that as “the Irish are false by kind, it were expedient and a charity to execute upon them wilful and malicious transgressors the king’s laws somewhat sharply.” He too had been at the death of O’Carroll, and once again, it was said, the sun miraculously stood still for three hours, and no pit or bog annoyed horse or man on his part, while he slaughtered the Irish on “the red moor of Athy.” Twice every week the clergy of Dublin went in solemn procession praying for his good success against those disordered persons which now in every quarter of Ireland had degenerated to their old trade of life, and repined at the English. The colonists petitioned Henry V. that he would induce the Pope to proclaim a holy crusade against the Irish, “in perpetual destruction of those enemies.” It was in the bitterness of this exasperated conflict that Murchadh O’Connor Faly won a last victory (1421), before he laid down arms and entered his monastery of