 The Cloyne estate was large and contained some of the best land in the area.After the king's death (c. 580) Colman somehow became involved in factional strife between Coirpre's descendants in which some of them persecuted him while others, the ancestors of the later dominant line, protected him.His surviving verses date from the period 565 and 604, and are among the earliest examples of Irish writing in the Latin alphabet.