Norman Ireland

Categories: History of Ireland

After their successful conquest of England, the Normans turned their attention to Ireland.

The Coming of the Normans 1167-1185

By the 12th century, Ireland was divided politically into a shifting hierarchy of petty kingdoms and over-kingdoms. Power was concentrated into the hands of a few regional dynasties contending against each other for control of the whole island. The Northern O'Neills ruled much of what is now Ulster. Their kinsmen, the Southern O'Neills, were Kings of Meath. The kingship of Leinster was held by the dynamic Ui Cheinnselaigh dynasty. A new kingdom rose between Leinster and Munster, Osraige, ruled by the family of Mac Gilla Pádraig. Munster was nominally controlled by the Mac Cartaig, who were however in reality often subject to the Ó Brians of Thomond. North of Thomond, Connacht's supreme rulers were the Ó Conchobair.

After losing the protection of High King Muirchertach MacLochlainn - who died in 1166 - the King of Leinster Diarmait Mac Murchada (anglicised as Diarmuid MacMorrough) was forcibly exiled from his kingdom by a confederation of Irish forces under the new High King, Ruaidri mac Tairrdelbach Ua Conchobair. Fleeing first to Bristol and then to Aquitaine, Diarmait obtained permission from Henry II to use his subjects to regain his kingdom. By 1167 he had obtained the services of the brothers Robert fitz Stephen and Maurice fitz Gerald, their first cousin, Prince of Dehurbarth Rhys ap Gruyffd, and most importantly, Earl of Pembroke Richard de Clare, known as Strongbow.

The first Norman knight to land in Ireland was Richard fitz Godbert de Roche in 1167, but it was not until 1169 that the main forces of Normans, Welsh and Flemings landed in Wexford. Within a short time Leinster was regained, Waterford and Dublin were under Diarmait's control, and he had Strongbow as a son-in-law, and named him as heir to his kingdom. This latter development caused consternation to King Henry II of England, who feared the establishment of a rival Norman state in Ireland. Accordingly, he resolved to visit Leinster to establish his authority.

The Papal Bull and Henry's invasion

Pope Adrian IV (the first English pope, in one of his earliest acts) had already issued a Papal Bull in 1155, giving Henry authority to invade Ireland as a means of curbing ecclesiastical corruption and abuses.

Henry landed with a large fleet at Waterford in 1171, becoming the first King of England to set foot on Irish soil. Both Waterford and Dublin were proclaimed Royal Cities. Adrian's successor, Pope Alexander III ratified the grant of Irish lands to Henry in 1172. Henry awarded his Irish territories to his younger son John with the title Dominus Hiberniae ("Lord of Ireland"). When John unexpectedly succeeded his brother as King John, the "Kingdom of Ireland" fell directly under the English Crown.

Henry was happily acknowledged by most of the Irish Kings, who saw in him a chance to curb the expansion of both Leinster and the Hiberno-Normans. This led to the ratification of the Treaty of Winsor in 1175 between Henry and Ruaidhrí. However, with both Strongbow and Diarmuid dead (in 1171 and 1176), Henry back in England and Ruaidhrí unable to curb his nominal vassals, within two years it was not worth the vellum it was inscribed upon. John de Courcy invaded and gained much of east Ulster in 1177, Raymond le Gros had already captured Limerick and much of north Munster, while the other Norman families such as Prendergast, fitz Stephen, fitz Gerald, fitz Henry and le Poer were actively carving out virtual kingdoms for themselves.

The Lordship of Ireland 1185-1254

Initially the Normans controlled large swathes of Ireland, securing the entire east coast, from Waterford up to eastern Ulster and penetrating as far west as Galway and Mayo. The most powerful forces in the land were the great Anglo-Norman Earldoms such as the Geraldines, the Butlers and the Burkes, who controlled vast territories which were almost independent of the governments in Dublin or London. The Lord of Ireland was King John, who, on his visits in 1185 and 1210, had helped secure the Norman areas from both the military and the administrative points of view, while at the same time ensuring that the many Irish kings were brought into his fealty; many, such as Cathal Crobderg Ua Conchobair, owed their thrones to him and his armies.

Invasion contained

The Normans also were lucky to have leaders of the calibre of the Butler, Marshall, de Burgh, de Lacy and de Broase families, as well as having the dynamic heads of the first families. Another factor was that after the loss of Normandy in 1204, John had a lot more time to devote to Irish affairs, and did so effectively even from afar.

However, the Anglo-Normans suffered from a series of events that slowed, and eventually ceased, the spread of their settlement and power:

• numerous rebellious Gaelic lords who at best stretched resources, at worst regained territory from the Normans.
• a lack of direction from both Henry III and his successor, Edward I who were more concerned with events in England, Wales, Scotland and their continental domains.
• outright war between leading Hiberno-Norman lords such as the de Burghs, FitzGeralds, Butlers and de Berminghams.
• division of estates among heirs, the most damaging being that of the Marshalls of Leinster, which split a large single lordship into five.

Politics and events in Gaelic Ireland served to draw the settlers deeper into the orbit of the Irish, which on occasion had the effect of allying them with one or more native rulers against other Normans.

Gaelic Resurgence, Norman Decline 1254-1536

Main article Irish Military Revival 1249-1367

Anglo-Norman Ireland was deeply shaken by three events of the 14th century.

The first was the invasion of Ireland by Edward Bruce of Scotland who, in 1315, rallied many of the Irish lords against the English presence in Ireland. Although Bruce was eventually defeated in Ireland at the battle of Faughart, near Dundalk, his troops caused a great deal of destruction, especially in the densely settled area around Dublin. In this chaotic situation, local Irish lords won back large amounts of land that their families had lost since the conquest and held them after the war was over.

The second was the murder of William Donn de Burgh, 3rd Earl of Ulster, in June 1333. This resulted in his lands being split in three among his relations, with the ones in Connacht swiftly rebelling against the Crown and openly siding with the Irish. This meant that virtually all of Ireland west of the Shannon was lost to the Anglo-Normans. It would be well over two hundred years before the Burkes, as they were now called, were again allied with the Dublin administration.

The third calamity for the medieval English presence in Ireland was the Black Death, which arrived in Ireland in 1348. Because most of the English and Norman inhabitants of Ireland lived in towns and villages, the plague hit them far harder than it did the native Irish, who lived in more dispersed rural settlements. A celebrated account from a monastery in Kilkenny chronicles the plague as the beginning of the extinction of humanity and the end of the world. The plague was a catastrophe for the English inhabitations around the country and, after it had passed, Gaelic Irish language and customs came to dominate the country again. The English-controlled area shrunk back to the Pale, a fortified area around Dublin.

Additional causes of the Gaelic revival were political and personal grievances against the Anglo-Normans, but especially impatience with procrastination and the very real horrors that successive famines had brought. Pushed away from the fertile areas, the Irish were forced to eke out a subsistence living on marginal lands, which left them with no safety net during bad harvest years (such as 1271 and 1277) or in a year of famine (virtually the entire period of 1311-1319).

Outside the Pale, the Hiberno-Norman lords adopted the Irish language and customs, becoming known as the Old English, and in the words of a contemporary English commentator, became "more Irish than the Irish themselves." Over the following centuries they sided with the indigenous Irish in political and military conflicts with England and generally stayed Catholic after the Reformation. The authorities in the Pale grew so worried about the "Gaelicisation" of Ireland that they passed special legislation in a parliament in Kilkenny (known as the Statutes of Kilkenny) banning those of English descent from speaking the Irish language, wearing Irish clothes or inter-marrying with the Irish. Since the government in Dublin had little real authority, however, the Statutes did not have much effect.

Throughout the 15th century, these trends proceeded apace. Central English authority in Ireland all but disappeared in this period. The monarchy of England was itself in turmoil - being fought over in the Wars of the Roses. As a result, English interest in Ireland diminished further. The (English) Kings of Ireland effectively delegated their power over the Lordship of Ireland to the powerful Fitzgerald Earl of Kildare, who dominated the country by means of military force and alliances with lords and clans around Ireland.

Around the country, local Gaelic and Gaelicised lords expanded their powers at the expense of the English government in Dublin. See Main article Anglo and Gaelic Ireland 1367-1536 for details of the Irish kingdoms in this period.