He is crowned King of Ireland

He was soon after crowned King of Ireland, and immediately after his assumption of the regal dignity, laid siege to Carrickfergus. On being informed of the situation of his brother's affairs, King Robert is trusted the government of the kingdom to his son-in-law the Steward, and Sir James Douglas. He then passed over to the assistance of the new king, with a considerable body of troops; and, after their junction, the united armies, having reduced Carrickfergus, pushed forward through the county Louth, to Slane, and invested Dublin; but being compelled to raise the siege, they advanced into Kilkenny, wasted the country as far as Limerick, and after experiencing the extremities of famine, and defeating the enemy wherever they made head against them, terminated a glorious but fruitless expedition, by a retreatinto the province of Ulster, in the spring of 1317. The king of Scotland now returned to his dominions, taking along with him the Earl of Moray, but having left the flower of his army to support his brother in the possession of Ulster.

A miserable fate awaited these brave men. After a long period of inaction, in which neither the Irish annals nor our early Scottish historians afford any certain light, we find King Edward Bruce encamped at Tagher, near Dundalk, at the head of a force of two thousand men, exclusive of the native Irish, who were numerous, but badly armed and disciplined. Against him, Lord John Bermingham, along with John Maupas, Sir Miles Verdon, Sir Hugh Tripton, and other Anglo-Irish barons, led an army which was strong in cavalry, and outnumbered the Scots by nearly ten to one. Edward, with his characteristic contempt of danger, and nothing daunted by the disparity of force, determined, against the advice of his oldest captains, to give the enemy battle. In the course of a three years' war, he had already engaged the Anglo-Irish forces eighteen times; and although his success had led to no important result, he had been uniformly victorious.