foreigners who burned and pillaged the city. Brian Boru's sons were usually called Kings of north Munster though their reigns were rather disturbed until 1164 when Donnchad mac Briain became King of Munster. His reign was successful, founding monasteries and nunneries, constructing several monuments, including a church on the Rock of Cashel, and in his grant bestowing his Limerick Gothic palace to the church he styled himself King of Limerick. However the Danes were still a powerful force who were able to obtain four sequential Danish bishops concentrated by the Archbishop of Canterbury not subservient to the See of Cashel. Anglo-Norman era The arrival of the Normans to the area in 1173 changed everything. Domnall Mór Ua Briain, the last styled King of Limerick, burned the city to the ground in 1174 in a bid to keep it from the hands of the new invaders. After he died in 1194, the Normans finally captured the area in 1195, under the leadership of Prince John. In 1197, King Richard I of England granted the city its first charter, and its first Mayor, Adam Sarvant, ten years before London. A castle, built on the orders of King John and bearing his name, was completed around 1200. Under the general peace imposed by Norman rule, Limerick prospered as a port and trading centre. By this time the city was divided into an area which became known as "English Town" on King's Island surrounded by high walls, while another settlement, named "Irish Town", where the Irish and Danes lived, had grown on the south bank of the river. In 1216 King John further granted the areas North (as far as a tributary of the Shannon) and South of the River to City to be known as the "Northern" and "Southern" Liberties. Around 1395 construction started on walls around Irishtown that were not completed until the end of the 15th century. The city opened a mint in 1467. A 1574 document prepared for the Spanish ambassador attests to its wealth: Limerick is stronger and more beautiful than all the other cities of Ireland, well walled with stout walls of hewn marble...there is no entrance except by stone bridges, one of the two of which has 14 arches, and the other eight ... for the most part the houses are of square stone of black marble and built in the form of towers and fortresses. Luke