foresaw the worst. "I know," he declared, "that this day I am delivered
over to death, but it is better to die honourably for the cause of
justice than to flee from the field and become a reproach to
knighthood."

The forsworn Irish knights slunk away to neighbouring places of
sanctuary or went over to the enemy. When the final struggle came, later
on the same April 1, Richard had few followers save the faithful fifteen
knights who had crossed over with him from Wales. The little band,
outnumbered by more than nine to one, struggled desperately to the end.
At last the marshal, unhorsed and severely wounded, fell into the hands
of his enemies. They bore him, more dead than alive, to his own castle
of Kilkenny, which had just been seized by the justiciar. After a few
days Richard's tough constitution began to get the better of his wounds.
Then his enemies, showing him the royal warranty for their acts, induced
him to admit them into his castles. An ignorant or treacherous surgeon,
called in by the justiciar, cauterised his wounds so severely that his
sufferings became intense. He died of fever on the 16th, and was buried,
as he himself had willed, in the Franciscan church at Kilkenny. No one
rejoiced at the death of the hero save the traitors who had lured him to
his doom and the Poitevins who had suborned them. Their victim, the weak
king, mourned for his friend as David had lamented Saul and Jonathan.[1]
The treachery of his enemies brought them little profit. While Richard
Marshal lay on his deathbed, a new Archbishop of Canterbury drove the
Poitevins from office.

[1] _Dunstable Ann._, p. 137.

In the heyday of the Poitevins' power the Church sounded a feeble but
clear note of alarm. The pope expostulated with Henry for his treatment