And then after many attacks and dreadful and incredible famine the French were compelled to submit they keys of the city and themselves to the mercy of the King of England. Freynestown, like the whole of county Kilkenny, would from then on be included in the historical events of the period known as the Lordship of Ireland: before gradually slipping into a quiet rural existence. Early history The ancient kingdom of Ossory was formed around the 2nd century when the Osraighe, an Érainn Iverni tribe, led by their King Aengus Osrithe, established a semi-independent state within the territory of the Laigin (Leinster). Part of that territory now includes Freynestown and was in the early medieval period the Tuatha of the Ui Duach - the descendants of Duach who held these lands from the mid-6th century. The old barony of "Fassadinin and Idough" would loosely correspond to their lands: alternatively the cantreds of Ogenty and Oskelan. This ancient cantred of Oskelan was that of the "Ui-Scellain - the descendants of Scellan, sixth in descent from Aengus Osrithe, the founder of the kingdom of Ossory: according to Edmund Curtis's 1933 edition of the Ormond Deeds." Also in the "Feilire of Aengus the Culdee" - "Hui Scellain was in Sliabh Mairge, the mountain district which, extending into Kilkenny from Carlow and Queen's County, embraced the Castlewarren, Johnswell, and Kilmogar hills, in the north of the Barony of Gowran." The septs of Ua Braonáin (O'Brennan), Ua Donnchadha (Dunphy, O'Donoghue), Ua Cearbhaill (O'Carrowill, O'Carroll, MacCarroll) and Mac Giolla Phadraig (Fitzpatrick), were for many centuries dominant in this part of Ossory. Freynestown townland is the location of the old monastery of St. Scuithin a 6th- and 7th-century Irish saint with strong connections to Wales. Tiscoffin Monastery is noted in the List of monastic houses in Ireland. The neighbouring town of Castlewarren celebrates this ancient saint's memory with the church of St.Scuithin. There exists another Freynestown, near Dunlavin in County Wicklow which stems from the same family of "de la freyne" References Townlands of County Kilkenny