led an army to Athliag, now Ballyleague, being part of Lanesborough in Connaught, and began to erect a castle, which the Irish, however, soon destroyed (ib. iii. 201). During this year he also captured the crannog of O'Reilly. Walter was at this time in charge of the lands of his brother Hugh, which had been entrusted to him in 1215 (Cal. Rot. Pat. i. 150; Cal. Rot. Claus. i. 501). In 1223 he was in England on the royal service, but next spring was sent over to Ireland on account of the war which his brother had raised (ib. i. 575 b, 590 b). In consideration of the excesses committed by his men of Meath in support of Hugh de Lacy, Walter had to make an agreement with the king, under which he put his castles of Trim and Ludlow into the royal hands for a period of two years from Easter 1224, and agreed to go over to Ireland and exert all his influence in opposition to his brother (Shirley, i. 507). Walter was in Ireland by 30 March (Cal. Rot. Claus. i. 590 b). How far he kept his promise to act against his brother is not clear; one statement in the ‘Annals of Loch Cé’ (i. 271) implies that he actually supported him. At any rate it was not thought prudent that he should remain in Ireland after the suppression of the rebellion, and his Irish estates were for a time taken into the royal hands. On 15 May 1225 he paid a fine of three thousand marks for seisin of these lands, but Trim, Drogheda, and other castles were not yet restored. Walter, moreover, was kept in England, and did not recover full seisin till 4 July 1226 (Cal. Rot. Claus. ii. 39 b, 64, 104, 126). Previously he had been put in charge of his brother's lands in Ulster for three years, but he only held them till the following April (ib. ii. 182 b; Sweetman, i. 1371–4). By August Walter was once more in Ireland, when Geoffrey de Marisco reported that no danger was to be apprehended from him on account of the agreement which his son Gilbert had made with William Marshal. De Marisco at the same time reported that the king of Connaught had been summoned to Dublin under conduct of Walter de Lacy (Shirley, i. 292). Walter was summoned for the French war in 1228 with four knights (ib. i. 358). In June 1230 he was one of those appointed to hold the assize of arms in Herefordshire (ib. i. 374). On 26 Aug. he had leave to go to Ireland (Sweetman, i. 1850), and there assisted Geoffrey de Marisco in his invasion of Connaught, commanding one of the three divisions of the army (Matt. Paris, iii. 197). On 15 Dec. 1233 he was again sent to Ireland on the royal service (Sweetman, i. 2079), and next year appears, like his brother Hugh, in opposition to Richard Marshal. In 1235 he took part in the raid into Roscommon (Loch Cé, i. 321). In his later years Walter became blind and infirm (Sweetman, i. 2429, December 1237). He died early in 1241, apparently before 24 Feb. (Excerpta e Rot. Finium, i. 337; Matt. Paris, iv. 174, ‘circa Paschalem’). The ‘Annals of Clonmacnoise’ describe him as the ‘bountifullest foreigner in steeds, attire, and gold that ever came to Erin’ (Four Masters, iii. 302 n.; Gilbert, p. 101). Matthew Paris calls him ‘the most eminent of all the nobles of Ireland’ (iv. 43).
Walter de Lacy figures in the earlier part of the ‘Romance of Fulk Fitzwarine’ as the opponent of Joce de Dinan and the captor of Ludlow Castle. So far as Walter is concerned this is pure legend, and Joce's true adversaries were Walter's father and grandfather, Hugh and Gilbert de Lacy. The substitution of Walter's name in the romance may, however, serve to show the fame which he acquired as a great marcher lord. It is interesting to find Walter de Lacy twice mentioned in connection with Fulk Fitzwarine; on the first occasion in 1207, with reference to the quarrel between the king and William de Braose, when they were opponents (Cal. Rot. Claus. i. 92), and secondly, nearly twenty years later, when Walter de Lacy asked Hubert de Burgh to forward a marriage between his niece, the daughter of Madoc ab Griffith of South Wales, and Fulk's son (Shirley, i. 306).
Walter de Lacy married, before November 1200, Margaret, daughter of William de Braose [q. v.], who was still living in 1255. By her he had two daughters, Egidia, who married Richard de Burgh (d. 1243) [q. v.], and Katherine, who was alive in 1267; also a son, Gilbert, who married Isabella, daughter of Ralph Bigod, and died in 1234, leaving a son, Walter, and two daughters, Matilda and Margaret. Walter de Lacy the younger was alive in 1238 (Sweetman, i. 2451); he married a daughter of Theobald Butler (Reg. St. Thomas, Dublin, p. 420), but died without issue in his grandfather's lifetime; possibly it is his death which the ‘Annals of Clonmacnoise’ record in 1240 (Four Masters, iii. 301 note x). Margaret and Matilda thus became their grandfather's heirs. Margaret married John de Verdon, son of Theobald Butler. Matilda married (1) in 1240 Peter de Geneva, a foreigner of low extraction, and (2), in 1249, Geoffrey de Genville, or Joinville, a brother of the famous Sieur de Joinville (Matt. Paris, v. 91). Geoffrey de Genville held Ludlow and part of Meath, and was for a time justiciar of Ireland under
