Fitzgeralds and Burghs, they were mild as compared with the rancorous
hereditary factions which divided the native septs from each other.
These divisions alone made it possible for the king's officers to keep
up some semblance of royal rule. If they were seldom obeyed, the
divisions in the enemies' camps prevented any chance of their being
overthrown. Thus the Irish went on living a rude, turbulent life of
perpetual purposeless war and bloodshed. Ireland was a wilder, larger,
more remote Welsh march, and the resemblance was heightened by the fact
that many of the Anglo-Norman principalities were in the hands of great
English or marcher families, and that the Irish foot-soldier played
only a less important part than the Welsh archer and pikeman among the
light-armed soldiers of the English crown.

The easiest way to keep up a show of English government was to form an
alliance between the crown and some of the baronial houses. Richard de
Burgh, Earl of Ulster, the most powerful of the feudal lords of
Ireland, was the only one who at that period bore the title of earl. He
had long been interested in general English affairs, and his kinswomen
had intermarried into great British houses. One of his daughters
married Robert Bruce when he was Earl of Carrick, and another was more
recently wedded to Earl Gilbert of Gloucester. Despite the Bruce
connexion, the Earl of Ulster was still trusted by the English party,
and the king gave him the command of an Irish army which he had
intended to send against Scotland in 1314. Richard was too busy
fighting the Ulster clans of O'Donnell and O'Neil, and too jealous of
the Fitzgeralds, his feudal rivals, to throw his heart into the
hopeless task of gathering together the two nations and many clans of
Ireland into a single host. The death of Earl Gilbert at Bannockburn
broke his nearest tie with England, and the release of Elizabeth Bruce
in exchange for Hereford gave his daughter the actual enjoyment of the