make thee a lord in Connaught of more ground than thy master hath in Ireland.' Hussy treated the offer with scorn, whereupon his attendant, 'a stout lubber, began to reprove him for not relenting to so rich a proffer.' Hussy's answer was, to cut down the knave; next, 'he raught to O'Kelly's squire a great rap under the pit of the ear, which overthrew him; thirdly, he bestirred himself so nimbly, that ere any help could be hoped for, he had also slain O'Kelly, and perceiving breath in the squire, he drawed him up again, and forced him upon a truncheon to bear his lord's head into the high town.'
These notable exploits were rewarded by knighthood and the lordship of Galtrim.
Robert Bruce brought a considerable army to the assistance of his brother, and wasted the country up to the walls of Dublin; but Roger Mortimer coming to the relief of the city, he was forced to retreat. It was a horrible devastation that he made, and yet this was only what was then supposed to be the necessity of war, for it was while burning many a homestead, and reducing multitudes to perish with famine, that Bruce halted his whole army to protect one sick and suffering washerwoman.
'This was a full great courtesy,
That swilk a king and so mighty
Gert his men dwell on this manner
But for a poor lavender.'
Bruce was one of the many men tender to the friend, ruthless to the foe; merciful to sufferings he beheld, merciless to those out of his sight. He returned to Scotland, and Mortimer to England, both leaving horrible hunger and distress behind them, and Mortimer in debt L1,000 to the city of Dublin, 'whereof he payde not one smulkin, and many a bitter curse he carried with him beyond sea.'
Edward Bruce continued to reign in Ulster until the 5th of October, 1318, when the last and nineteenth battle was fought between him and the English, contrary to the advice of his wisest captains. His numbers were very inferior, and almost the whole were slain. Edward Bruce and Sir John Malpas, an English knight, were found lying one upon the other, slain by each other's hands in the deadly conflict. Robert, who was on the way to bring reinforcements to his brother, turned back on hearing the tidings, and employed his forces against his old foe, John of Lorn, in the Western Isles, and it was on this occasion that, to avoid doubling the Mull of Cantire, he dragged his ships upon a wooden slide across the neck of land between the two locks of Tarbut-a feat often performed by the fishermen, and easy with the small galleys of his fleet, but which had a great effect on the minds of the Islemen, for there was an old saying-
'That he should gar shippes sua
Betwixt those seas with sailis gae
Should win the Islis sua till hand,
That nane with strength should him withstand.'
Accordingly they submitted, and Lorn, being taken, was shut up for life in Lochleven Castle.
It was about the time of Edward Bruce's wild reign in Ulster that Dublin University was founded by Archbishop Bigmore; and in contrast to this advance in learning, a few years later, a horrible and barbarous warfare raged, because Lord de la Poer was supposed to have insulted Maurice of Desmond by calling him a rhymer. Moreover, at Kilkenny, a lady, called Dame Alice Kettle, was cited before the Bishop of Ossory for witchcraft. It was alleged that she had a familiar spirit, to whom she was wont to sacrifice nine red cocks, and nine peacocks' eyes; that she had a staff 'on which she ambled through thick and thin;' and that between compline and twilight she was wont to sweep the streets, singing,
'To the house of William, my son,
Hie all the wealth of Kilkenny town.'
She was acquitted on the charge of witchcraft, but her enemies next attacked her on the ground of heresy, and succeeded in accomplishing her death.
The Pope at Avignon assisted the English cause by keeping Bruce and his kingdom under an interdict; but the Scots continued to make inroads on England, and year after year the most frightful devastation was committed. In 1319, the Archbishop of York, hoping for another Battle of the Standard, collected all his clergy and their tenants, and led them against Douglas and Randolph at Mitton; but their efforts were unavailing, and such multitudes were slain, that the field was covered with the white surplices they wore over their armor, and the combat was called the Chapter of Mitton.
For many long years were the northern provinces the constant prey of the Scots, as the discords of the English laid their country open to invasion. Bruce himself was indeed losing his strength, the leprosy contracted during his life of wandering and distress was gaining ground on his constitution, and unnerving his strong limbs; but Douglas and Randolph gallantly supplied his place at the head of his armies, and his affairs were everywhere prospering. He had indeed lost his eldest daughter Marjorie, but she had left a promising son, Robert Stuart; and to himself a son had likewise been born, named David, after the royal Saint of Scotland, and so handsome and thriving a child, that it was augured that he would be a warrior of high prowess.
Rome was induced, in 1323, to acknowledge Robert as King, on his promise to go on a crusade to recover the Holy Land-a promise he was little likely to be in a condition to fulfil; and Edward II began to enter into negotiations, and make proposals, that disputes should be set aside by the betrothal of the little David and his youngest daughter, Joan. But these arrangements were broken off by the rebellion of Isabel, and the deposition of Edward of Caernarvon; and Bruce sent Douglas and Randolph to make a fresh attack upon Durham and Northumberland. The wild army were all on horseback; the knights and squires on tolerable steeds, the poorer sort on rough Galloways. They needed no forage for their animals save the grass beneath their feet, no food for themselves except the cattle which they seized, and whose flesh they boiled in their hides. Failing these, each man had a bag of oatmeal, and a plate of metal on which he could bake his griddle-cakes. This was their only baggage; true to the Lindsay motto, the stars were their only tents: and thus they flashed from one county to another, doing infinite mischief, and the dread of every one.
While young Edward III was being crowned, they had well-nigh seized the Castle of Norham. The tidings filled the boy with fire and indignation. He was none of the meek, indifferent stock that the Planta Genista sometimes bore, but all the resolution and brilliancy of the line had descended on him in full measure, and all the sweetness and courtesy, together with all the pride and ambition of his race, shone in his blue eye, and animated his noble and gracious figure. He was well-read in chivalrous tales, and it was time that he should perform deeds of arms worthy of his ladye-love, the flaxen-haired Philippa of Hainault.
Strange was the contrast of the pure, ardent spirit, with the scenes of shame and disgrace of which he was as yet unconscious. He knew not that he was a usurper-that one parent was perishing in a horrible captivity, the other holding himself and his kingdom in shameful trammels, and giving them over into the power of her traitorous lover.
But Edward was sixteen, and Isabel and Mortimer could only hope to continue their dominion by keeping him at a distance; and he was therefore placed at the head of a considerable army, with Sir John of Hainault as his adviser, and sent forth to deliver his country from the Scots.
Good Sir John of Hainault, accustomed to prick his heavy Flemish war-horse over the Belgian undulating plains, that Nature would seem to have designed for fair battle-fields, was no match for the light horsemen of the Scots, trained to wild, desultory warfare. He and his young King thought the respectable way of fighting was for one side to wait civilly for the other, interchange polite defiances on either side, take no advantage of ground, but ride fairly at each other with pennons flying and trumpets sounding, like a tournament; and they did not at all approve of enemies of whom they saw no trace but a little distant smoke in the horizon, and black embers of villages wherever they marched. There was no coming up with them. The barons set forth in the morning, fierce, and wound up for a battle, pennons displayed, and armor burnished; but by and by the steeds floundered in the peat-bogs, the steep mountain-sides were hard to climb for men and horses cased in proof armor, and when shouts or cries broke out at a distance, and with sore labor the knights struggled to the spot in hopes of an engagement, it proved to have been merely the hallooing of some other part of the army at the wild deer that bounded away from the martial array. When, at night, they reached the banks of the Tyne, and had made their way across the ford, they found themselves in evil case, for all their baggage and provisions were far behind, stuck in the bogs, or stumbling up the mountain-sides, and they had nothing to eat but a single loaf, which each man had carried strapped behind him, and which had a taste of all the various peat-bogs into which he had sunk. The horses had nothing to eat, and there was nothing to fasten them to, so that their masters were forced to spend the whole night holding them by the bridles. They hoped for better things at dawn, but with it came rain, which swelled the river so much that none of
