For Ardglass was the port of the neighbouring monastery whose site we may still trace at Dunsford. A Protestant church was planted over it in Reformation times; but an old cross slab may still be seen, and from the graveyard there has been rescued an ancient stone font, and carried to the new church of the older faith; and here too an ancient Celtic cross from an old cemetery, of the type of those found at Clonmacnois, has been set over the church door. Lecale was a rich land to plunder when the Danes descended on it. Not a creek that they did not visit. Their raids were followed by later raids of their Norman kinsmen, when in 1177 de Courcy came marching to the conquest of Ulster, dreaming himself the knight foretold by Merlin, and willing “to accommodate himself in dress, in gesture, in his shield, and even his white horse, to the prophecies; so that he looked more like a Merry-Andrew than a warrior.” The seizing of Lecale and Downpatrick was his first adventure; before a year was over (1178) he had attached Mahee to an English monastery, peopled it with monks from the other side of the sea, and along with Roger, the new lord of Dunsford, endowed it with large tracts of land about Dunsford and in Lecale. In spite of new wealth the spirit and fortunes of Mahee died for ever under foreign rule. [Illustration: CROSS SLAB AT DUNSFORD.] By de Courcy and his followers the island of Lecale was ringed with castles from the great keep of Dundrum (“it is one of the strongest holds I ever saw,” said Lord Leonard Grey) to Downpatrick at the passage of the Quoile. The memory of one of his Norman knights is preserved in Dunsford church, a grave-slab with a fine cross and sword cut deeply on it, perhaps the tombstone of “Rogerus de Dunsford.” The strong rush of waters that poured through the narrow neck of Lough Cuan at every incoming or outgoing tide, once guarded on either side by earthen entrenchments that may still be seen, was now held by a Norman keep at Strangford; but the towers of the coast line from Ardglass to Down--Kilclief, Walsh’s castle, Audley castle, Quoile castle, and the rest--each set at the head of a little bay, were evidently planted there for trade; and all probably on the sites of older Irish communities. Thus at Kilclief, while Norman cross slabs tell of de Courcy’s plantation, there is in the churchyard a long forgotten tombstone marked with a Celtic cross of the type of Clonmacnois. How many were thrown out to build fences, or to be broken on the roads! The activity of trade along the coast even as late as the eighteenth century may be seen by the remains at Quoile harbour near Down, the custom-house, the great stores, the houses of merchants and officials of the harbour.