Battle of Faughart The Battle of Faughart was fought on 14 October 1318 between a Hiberno - Norman force led by John de Bermingham and Edmund Butler , and a Scots - Irish army commanded by Edward Bruce , brother of Robert Bruce , king of Scotland . It was a battle of the First War of Scottish Independence and more precisely the Irish Bruce Wars . The defeat and death of Bruce at the battle ended the attempt to revive the High Kingship of Ireland . It also ended , for the time being , King Robert ' s attempt to open up a second front against the English in the War of Scottish Independence . A united Gaelic realm . Although King Robert ' s victory over Edward II at the Battle of Bannockburn had effectively secured the independence of Scotland , it did not bring the war with England any closer to an end . Even repeated Scots raids into the northern counties of England had little effect on a king seemingly blind to political and military realities . Something more decisive was needed to end the stalemate . It came in 1315 with an invitation from Ireland , too tempting to resist . Since the time of Henry II , the kings of England had also claimed to be the lords of Ireland . English settlers had taken root in Ireland , chiefly along the eastern seaboard , north and south of Dublin . But the native Gaelic chieftains still enjoyed a large measure of autonomy , especially in the north and west , and English control was often of a fluctuating nature . With the opening of the war with Scotland Edward II had made heavy demands on the Irish , both for men and materials , pushing the country close to the point of financial ruin . King Robert , who long maintained political and personal contacts with the men of Ulster , decided that Irish discontent could be usefully employed against his enemy . He sent envoys to the native Irish kings and clergy with letters invoking the common ancestry of the two nations , and offering to help them recover their liberty . A response was received from Domnal O ' Neil , king of Tyrone , asking for aid against the English and offering in return the crown of the ancient High Kings of Ireland , to his brother , Edward Bruce . The Bruce brothers are believed to have been related by blood to the O ' Neill clan through their maternal line . It might be thought that this was a perilously narrow base for a new military adventure : for as always in Gaelic politics , the enemies of the O ' Neils would be bound to be friends of the English ; but it was good enough for the aims Robert had in mind . Edward landed with an expeditionary force at Larne near Carrickfergus Castle , ready to conjure up the spirit of ' Gaelic Internationalism ' . High King . Bruce was joined by a number of local chieftains and gained some early successes against the Anglo - Irish aristocracy . He won his first engagement at the Moyry Pass in South Armagh , Jonesborough and sacked Dundalk on 29 June . Bruce was able to exploit disputes between his two leading opponents - Richard de Burgh , Earl of Ulster and Edmund Butler , Justiciar of Ireland - and defeat them piecemeal . De Burgh , King Robert ' s own father - in - law , was routed at the Battle of Connor in County Antrim on 10 September , and Butler at the Battle of Skerries in Kildare on 1 February 1316 . Edward was then secure enough to proceed to Dundalk , where he was crowned as High King on the hill of Maledon on 2 May 1316 . By the spring of 1316 , it looked as if the Irish venture was set to be a strategic success . It came , however , at the worst possible time . In Ireland , as elsewhere across much of Europe , the weather was so bad that the whole period was subsequently likened to a mini ice - age . Historians refer to the " Great Famine of 1315 – 1317 " . Crops failed and people began to starve . Dependent of local sources of supply Bruce ' s campaigns began to resemble nothing more than large - scale plundering raids , carried on at the expense of an already desperate peasantry . In these circumstances it is hardly surprising that the supposed kinship of the Celts failed to materialise to any significant degree , and for most Irish the Scots were little better , if not worse , than the English settlers with whom they were familiar . A Connaught tract of this time refers to " Scottish foreigners less noble than our own foreigners . " . In the end , rather than acting as a true High King , Bruce ' s power was confined to parts of the north , and held there by serious problems of provisioning and supply . The opportunity to attempt an extension had to wait until 1318 , when the weather , and the harvest , improved . Faughart . Unfortunately , the sources provide little in the way of detail and background for the Battle of Faughart . According to John Barbour , the Scottish chronicler , Edward Bruce was the architect of his own defeat , deciding to engage a larger enemy force ( 20 , 000 strong in his account ) without waiting for reinforcements from Scotland , a view which finds some support in the " Annals of Clonmacnoise " , where it is recorded that " anxious to obtain the victory for himself , he did not wait for his [ Sir John Stewart ' s ] brother . " He took up position on the rising ground at Faughart , not far from Dundalk , on 14 October . When his Irish allies objected to facing a stronger enemy force in battle Bruce responded by placing them in the rear , close to the top of the hill , leaving some 2000 Scots troops to face the enemy onslaught . In contrast to Barbour , the " Lanercost Chronicle " , the chief English source , says that Bruce approached Dundalk " with a great army of Scots which had already arrived in Ireland . " It would seem that the three English commanders — John de Bermingham , Edmund Butler and Roland Joyce , Archbishop of Armagh — were themselves attacked , though in a somewhat impetuous and haphazard fashion . " Lanercost " gives by far the clearest description of the action that followed : The Scots were in three columns at such a distance from each other that the first was done with before the second came up , and then the second before the third , with which Edward was marching could render any aid . Thus the third column was routed just as the two preceding ones had been . Edward fell at the same time and was beheaded after death ; his body being divided into four quarters , which were sent to the four chief quarters of Ireland We have no precise figures for the number slain , though they also included Alexander MacDonald , described in the annals as ' King of Argyll ' , and Alexander MacRuari , ' King of the Isles . ' This would suggest that most , if not all , of the Scottish force was drawn from the Gaels of the Western Isles and from Bruce ' s own earldom of Carrick in Ayrshire . Defeat was followed by the almost complete collapse of the Scottish position in Ulster : Carrickfergus castle was recaptured on 2 December . John de Bermingham received most of the credit for the victory , and was created earl of Louth by a grateful king . It was not to be the end of Scottish involvement in Ireland ; but there were to be no more High Kings . While in some ways a failure , the Scottish adventure in Scotland did serve the purpose of Scotland ' s King Robert the Bruce , as never again were the English able to use a base in Ireland to mount an attack on the western seaboard of Scotland .