Note 537 — Chapter III · THE CONQUEST OF IRELAND. 795–1172.

Gerald (Expugn. Hibern., l. i. c. 30, Dimock, vol. v. p. 275) reckons five hundred knights, with “arcariis [var. satellitibus equestribus] quoque et sagittariis multis.” The Anglo-Norm. Poem (Michel), p. 123, makes the knights four hundred, and a few lines later sums up the whole force as “quatre mil Engleis.” Mr. W. Lynch (View of Legal Inst. in Ireland under Hen. II., p. 2) argues from the payments for arms, provisions, shipping, etc. recorded in the Pipe-Rolls for 1171, that the army must have numerically “far exceeded the force described in our printed historians.” He gives a few details of these payments, extracted from the Pipe-Roll in question (17 Hen. II., a. 1171); some more, from this and the next year’s roll, maybe seen in Eyton, Itin. Hen. II., pp. 161, 163. The host was no doubt composed almost wholly of English tenants-in-chivalry; but whatever may have been its numbers, there was a large proportion of these tenants who had nothing to do with it except by paying its expenses next year with a great scutage. See in Madox, Hist. Exch., vol. i. pp. 629–632, the extracts from Pipe Roll 18 Hen. II. “de scutagio militum qui nec abierunt in Hyberniam nec denarios” (in some cases “nec milites nec denarios”) “illuc miserunt.”