The brief authority of the archbishop was succeeded by three years under James, fourth {49} Earl of Ormonde; and then Edmund de Mortimer, fifth Earl of March and Ulster, began a viceroyalty which lasted for less than two years, although he was appointed for nine. Edmund de Mortimer was the legal heir to Richard II., but he was an unambitious man, and there was no guile in him. He appointed Edward Dantsey, Bishop of Meath, his deputy, but William Talbot, Archbishop of Dublin, declined to recognize the authority of his ecclesiastical inferior, and consequently the viceroy had to come to Dublin. This was in 1424, and the following year the plague carried him off. Sir John Talbot was then induced to accept the viceroyalty, but his services were wanted nearer home, and he agreed to the reappointment of the Earl of Ormonde, who acted for two years, and helped to maintain a sort of peace by conciliating the native Irish. The viceroyalties of Sir John de Gray (1427-28), Sir John Sutton (1428-29), Sir Thomas le Strange (1429-31), and Sir Leon de Welles and his brother, William, who became his deputy (1438-46), were undistinguished. The deposed Earl of Ormonde succeeded in clearing himself of a charge of high treason, but the result of the bitterness and dissensions the charge provoked and fostered were felt for a long time. [Sidenote: The Earl of Shrewsbury] The reappointment of Sir John Talbot, now Earl of Shrewsbury, brought that strong and merciless old man--he was seventy-three--back to Ireland. He was created Earl of Waterford and Wexford, and Constable of Ireland, but even the valour and wiles of one of the bravest of {50} warriors could not prevail against the owners of the land which had been granted to Talbot. Several times he quaintly informed the king that he was unable to collect a penny of his rents, an admission which the monarch politely disregarded. But Talbot left his mark on Ireland. Long service in the Continental wars had taught him many forms of cruelty and lust, and at seventy-three he showed that he had not forgotten what he had learnt. Not always victorious, he was always cruel and vicious. He found time to ape the statesman by presiding over a Parliament that decreed various ordinances, including the prohibition of moustaches--which were then almost exclusively worn by the native Irish, and coming into fashion amongst the Anglo-Irish. A writer of the period described Talbot as another Herod, and the country, including the colonists, who had found in him an oppressor instead of a protector, sighed with relief when the charms of a continental war called him from Ireland, and he left the Archbishop of Dublin to represent him. Talbot was little better than a hireling, and when he was killed at the age of eighty in a battle in France, he was not fighting for his country or for himself, but for a salary, and, no doubt, inspired by the lust of conflict. [Sidenote: A mother of kings]