Although Mac Turcaill's men successfully made landfall near the town, the sources indicate that his forces were utterly crushed by the Norman defenders, and that he was himself captured and beheaded.

[8] In Gerald's version of the events, Affreca's father supplied thirty ships to an unsuccessful later-attempt at ousting the Normans from Dublin.

[9] With the conquest of Norse-Gaelic Dublin, and the ongoing entrenchment of the English in Ireland, the Crovan dynasty found themselves surrounded by a potentially threatening, rising power in the Irish Sea zone.

He reached Down (modern day Downpatrick), drove off Ruaidrí Mac Duinn Sléibe, King of Ulaid (d. 1201),[13] and consolidated his conquest of the area with the erection of a castle.

Less speculative is the likelihood that de Courcy's success was used by the Crovan dynasty, who were allied by marriage with Cenél nEógain, as a means of settling old scores.

Sometime in 1205, de Courcy rose in rebellion, and gained military support from Affreca's brother, Ragnvald Godredsson (Old Norse: Rǫgnvaldr Guðrøðarson), King of the Isles.

Together the two laid siege to what the chronicle describes as "the castle of Rath", before being beaten back with the arrival of Walter de Lacy (d. 1241), Hugh's elder brother.

[22] Affreca founded in 1193 Grey Abbey, in the peninsula of Ards, where John had previously given lands to his family priory, St Andrew of Stogursey.