''he found, by experience, that it was safer to rely on the battle-axes of his bold Galloglas (Gallowglass) than on appeals to the sovereign against Anglo-Norman outrage in Ireland. In his time the Joyces, a family of British extraction, settled in the northern part of the territory, by the permission and under the protection of the O'Flaherties.

''Before the close of the thirteenth century, the O'Flaherties became masters of the entire territory of Iar-Connacht, extending from the western banks of Lough Orbsen, to the shores of the Atlantic. Separated from the rest of the kingdom, in that peninsulated, and then almost inaccessible district, they interfered but little in the external transactions of the province, and are, therefore, but seldom noted in our Annals for the two succeeding centuries.''