Page:History of Manchester (1771), Volume 1, by John Whitaker.djvu/478

Chap. XII. OF MANCHESTER, 443 lation of Nagnatae in the long extent of the abovementioned counties. And if the other tribes of the Britons had not feen tome particular inftances of the old encroaching fpirit of the Belgae in Ireland, flow as the Britons ever were to unite- in x one common caufe, they would not have combined fb readily and fo heartily as we fhall foon fee them combine agaiuft the TBelgae. In this new ftate of the ifland, the Belgae pofleffed the whole counties of Cork Kerry and Limerick in Munfter, the counties of Clare Galway Mayo Sligo Rofcommon, and the greateft part of Letrim, in Connaught, and a part of Fermanagh county in Ulfter ; and the Britons occupied the reft of Ulfter, all Lei li- fter, and a part of Munfter: the barriers betwixt them being the river of Blackwater, the mountains of Tipperary, the courfe of the Shannon, and the length of Logh Erne* The two nations were now pretty equally oppofed, the Britons poflefling moft land, and the Belgae being the moft populous. And a general war immediately enfued. The fame chief who had conduced the new colony acrofs the Shannon was ftill the a&ive fbvereign of them 4 *. The war muft have commenced therefore within a few years after that expedition j and as Trathal the fon of Trenmor was then upon the throne of the Creones 4J , it muft have begun about the year 1 60 or 1 70, And it lafted with many in- temiiflions and various fucce& for more than an hundred years. The Belgae were much better fitted for a general war than the Britons. They were fubjeft to one governor, a defcendant from the original condu&or of the Belgae into Ireland, the here- ditary monarch of the Nagnatae, and the hereditary Pendragon of the tribes 4 V " The chiefs of the fbuth gathered round the " echoing (hield of Crothar, the king of Alnecma, and thefirft " of the race of Bolga 45 ." And Alnecma or Nagnata is there- fore in the Geography of the cotemporary Ptolemy diftinguiihed above all the cities of Ireland by the peculiar and appropriate chara&er of woXtg Birumpos or illuftrious city. , The Britops (the Hardinii, the Venicnii, and the Robogdii, pretty certainly) were defeated by the Belgae, and the country "was overrun 46 . In di- Lll % ftrefs