related by blood to the Ó Néill clan through their maternal line. In May 1315 Edward Bruce 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 several local chieftains and gained some early successes against the Anglo-Irish aristocracy. He won his first engagement near Jonesborough in the Moyry Pass and sacked nearby Dundalk on 29 June. Bruce was able to exploit disputes between his two leading opponents—Richard de Burgh, Earl of Ulster, and Edmund Butler, Earl of Carrick in the Peerage of Ireland and 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 High King on the hill of Maledon on 2 May 1316. By the spring of 1316, it looked as if the Irish venture was 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 later likened to a mini ice-age. Historians refer to the "Great Famine of 1315–1317". Crops failed and people began to starve. Depending on local sources of supply, Bruce's campaigns began to resemble nothing more than large-scale plundering raids, carried out 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, and for most Irish the Scots were little better, if not worse, than the English settlers with whom they were familiar. A Connacht 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 could wield power in only parts of the north, and he was held there by 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