forfeited to the Crown, and had granted twenty-five cantreds to Richard De Burgo, retaining five in his own hands.[1]
These five, comprising most of the modern Roscommon, with parts of Sligo and Galway, after a complicated series of grants and regrants to some of the O'Conors and to various colonists, finally were left in the effective occupation of three great Irish clans, the MacDermotts, the O'Conors and the 'Kelly s, who held them in defiance of any efforts of the Crown to subdue them.[2]
The remaining twenty-five passed, with the rest of the great De Burgo inheritance, to the Mortimers, and so ultimately, on the accession of Edward IV,, to the Crown.
But with the extinction of the De Burgo earldom the Irish recovered possession of many districts, including the whole of the present County Sligo. Two illegitimate offshoots of the De Burgo house divided between them the lordship of the lands making up the present Galway and Mayo, and held their territories without any regard to the Mortimers. They gradually adopted Irish ways; so did the innumerable junior branches of the De Burgo family, and the descendants of the lesser lords, D'Exeters, Prendergasts, Nangles, &c. who had settled in Connaught in the thirteenth century. In particular succession to their lands began to be by tanistry in the case of the
- ↑ Knox: History of Mayo, p. 55. The dealings of the Kings of England with Connaught previous to this year are most confusing; a full account of them can be found in Knox.
- ↑ The best account of these transactions is in Knox, History of Mayo. Leitrim and Cavan were not included in the De Burgo grant as they were held to form part of De Lacy's grant of Meath.
