The successful careers of Niall M6r O’Neill Art  Mac  Murrough,  and  Murrough   O’Connor  mark  at  once  the completion of the absorption of the Normans and the end of Irish re-conquest.   Henceforward, little change in territory took place.  

 The recent conquests were held, but no new ones of importance were made. Indeed, there was but little left to win.   The Pale continued to shrink into even smaller dimensions, but the process was gradual, and was due more to internal weakness than to external attack.    

An effort would have extinguished it, but no such effort was made, and it was allowed to exist on sufferance.

During this period, then, English influence was at its lowest ebb.The country was independent, and the nation was unified in culture ; but the one had no centre, and the other no head— there was no national focus.

The conditions were remarkably like those after Clontarf or like those of the Italian States down to recent times. Certain definite groupings there were. O’Neill and O’Donnell, O’Brien and Mac Carthy were still the accepted leaders of many subordinate clans.

 Indeed, the continued recognition of the chief family, and of the ruling clan, is striking—in families and clans there were dissensions, but there was very little disloyalty. Those leaders, however, were surrounded by other clans, Gaelic and Norman, over whom they had no traditional claims.