Shortly afterwards, a parley was held with Reymond by the king of Limerick and Roderic O’Conor, in which the Irish princes once more swore allegiance to King Henry and his heirs, and delivered up hostages as a guarantee of their fidelity.
The death of Earl Strongbow, however, which followed soon after these events, once more restored Limerick to its native prince, never again to be wrested from him but by death. In consequence of the necessary departure of Reymond from Ireland, it was deemed expedient, as well by himself as by his friends, to relinquish the possession of a city so surrounded by enemies, and which it required so large a force to defend, and particularly as no person could be found willing to take the command of its garrison after his departure. Making a virtue of necessity, therefore, Reymond unwillingly conferred the command on Donnell himself, as a liege servant of the king, who, in accepting of it, renewed his former promises of fidelity and service by fresh oaths of allegiance. But oaths were very lightly observed by all parties in those troubled times; and Reymond and his followers had scarcely passed the farther end of the bridge, than the citizens, at the instigation of Donnell, who declared that Limerick should no longer be a nest for foreigners, broke it down, and set fire to the city in four different quarters.
Yet it was not resigned to Donnell without another effort. In 1179, a grant of the kingdom of Limerick, then wholly in the possession of the Irish, having been made to Herbert Fitz-Herbert, who resigned it to Philip de Braosa, or Bruce, the English, with their Irish allies, led by Miles Cogan and Robert Fitzstephen, invested the city, with a view to establish Bruce in his principality; but they were no sooner perceived from the ramparts of the town than the garrison gave a striking proof of their inveterate hostility by setting it on fire; and though Cogan and Fitzstephen still offered to lead on the attack, Bruce and his followers refused to risk their lives in a contest whose first beginnings gave so bad an omen of success.
After a series of conflicts with the English in different parts of Munster, in which he was usually the victor, Donnell O’Brien died a natural death in 1194, and with him the line of Irish kings of Limerick may be said to have terminated. In the following year we find the town in the possession of the English, and though it was again taken from them in 1198, it was recovered shortly afterwards by the renowned William de Burgo, who formed a settlement, which from that period defied all the power of the Irish.