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Title: Eleanor Hull (1860-1935) Author: A History of Ireland and Her People (1931) * A Project Gutenberg of Australia eBook * eBook No.: 0800111h.html Language: English Date first posted: February 2008 Date most recently updated: February 2008 Production notes: Footnotes are shown at end of paragraph in which the reference to the note appears. Project Gutenberg of Australia eBooks are created from printed editions which are in the public domain in Australia, unless a copyright notice is included. We do NOT keep any eBooks in compliance with a particular paper edition. Copyright laws are changing all over the world. Be sure to check the copyright laws for your country before downloading or redistributing this file. This eBook is made available at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg of Australia License which may be viewed online at http://gutenberg.net.au/licence.html
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VOLUME 1—To the Close of the Tudor Period
Preface
I. Pre-Christian Ireland
II. Early Christian Ireland
III. The Northmen
IV. Clontarf and After
V. The Normans in Ireland
VI. The O'Conors of Connacht and the O'Briens of Thomond
VII. The Invasion of Edward Bruce and the Gaelic Revival
VIII. The Statute of Kilkenny
IX. The Geraldines: The House of Desmond and the House of Kildare
X. The New Policy of Henry VIII
XI. The Change in Religion
XII. Sir Henry Sidney
XIII. Shane O'Neill and the Scots in Ulster
XIV. The First Plantations
XV. The Desmond Rebellion
XVI. Hugh O'Neill, Earl of Tyrone
XVII. Essex in Ireland and the Ulster Campaign
XVIII. The Munster Planters
XIX. Fineen (Florence) MacCarthy Reagh
XX. The Battle of Kinsale
XXI. The Flight of the Earls and the End of Mediaeval Ireland
APPENDICES
I. Pope Adrian's Bull "Laudabiliter" and Note upon It
II. Letter from Cathal Crovdearg O'Conor, King of Connacht, to Henry III,
circa 1224
III. Extract from a Letter written by Richard II to his Uncle, the Duke of York,
on his Arrival in Dublin, February 1, 1395
IV. Intelligence Message for Henry IV on the State of Ireland in 1399
V. List of Books belonging to the Library of Gerald, Ninth Earl of Kildare, 1526
VI. Letter of Conn O'Neill during his Imprisonment in Dublin Castle, 1552
VII. Letter of Shane O'Neill to the Earl of Sussex, Viceroy of Ireland, 1561
VIII. Historical Work done by Sir George Carew relating to Ireland
VOLUME 2—From the Stuart Period to Modern Times
I. James I and Ireland
II. The Plantation of Ulster
III. Wentworth in Ireland
IV. The Rebellion of 1641-42
V. The Confederate Wars in Ireland
VI. The Ormonde Peace
VII. Cromwell in Ireland
VIII. The Restoration
IX. James II in Ireland
X. James II's Irish Campaign
XI. After Limerick
XII. Commercial Disabilities
XIII. The Struggle for Legislative Independence
XIV. Grattan's Parliament
XV. Revolution and Rebellion
XVI. The Union
XVII. O'Connell and Emancipation
XVIII. The Famine
XIX. Young Ireland and the Fenians
XX. Remedial Legislation
XXI. Parnell and the Land League
XXII. John Redmond and Home Rule
XXIII. Sinn Fein and the Rising of Easter Week, 1916
XXIV. War and Conciliation
XXV. The Treaty
Epilogue. 1922-1930
APPENDICES
I. Phelim O'Neill's Commission from King Charles I
II. Oration of P. H. Pearse over the grave of O'Donovan Rossa
III. Proclamation of the Irish Republic, April 24, 1916
IV. Commission given by Eamon de Valera to the Envoys to the British Government,
October 7, 1921
V. The Three Oaths
VI. Articles of Agreement on the Boundary Question
VII. Speech of Arthur Griffith in Dail Eireann on December 19, 1921,>
in moving the approval of The Treaty
VIII. Poem 'Renunciation' by P. H. Pearse
IX. 'Moral Force' by Terence MacSwiney
Old Matthew Paris writes: "The case of historical writers is hard; for if they tell the truth they provoke men, and if they write what is false, they offend God." Of all histories this dictum is perhaps most true of Irish history, which has been studied rather in terms of present-day political issues than in terms of actual retrospect. The most urgent of these political issues having been, up to a recent moment, the relations of England toward Ireland, this part of the history has to a certain extent, though often with much prejudice, been dealt with by all writers on Ireland; but the conditions of the country under native rule have been much more inadequately studied. It is taken almost for granted by patriotic writers that native Ireland was enjoying a Golden Age from which she was rudely awakened by the irruption of the English, who, in destroying it, put in its place a ruthless despotism, increasing in severity from age to age There is no more exacting problem than that of the rule of a dependency by an outside power; and in studying this problem, as Lecky truly says, "Irish history possesses an interest of the highest order...In very few histories can we trace so clearly the effects of political and social circumstances in forming national character, the calamity of missed opportunities and of fluctuating and procrastinating policy; the folly of trying to govern by the same methods and institutions nations that are wholly different in their character and their civilization." [1] The problem was much more complicated than modern writers allow; the conditions in Ireland itself account for much; and it is perhaps because the theory of a Golden Age breaks down upon closer study that the internal history of the country, as exhibited in its own annals, has been scrupulously avoided by Irish writers anxious to lay all the blame of misgovernment upon forces over which Ireland had no control. In the new situation, now that Ireland has once more regained freedom of action unhampered by outside interference, a reconsideration of the whole subject seems urgent. The professed desire of many of the younger school of Irishmen is for a return to the conditions, the methods, and the laws of the past as a rule of guidance for to-day. A clear understanding as to where this ambition leads calls for a reading of history which takes into account both sides of the problem, and endeavours fairly to estimate the actual conditions of native life in Ireland as well as the many and varied attempts of England to deal with it. The early intentions of the ruling power to act justly toward Ireland broke down in a despair that led to the most ruthless methods of resettlement. The fault was partly English, partly Irish, but still more largely that of the officials, who intervened between the English Crown and the Irish people. How Ireland would have developed had the Normans never set foot in Ireland is a question as impossible to answer as a similar question concerning England. The coming of the Normans was as inevitable in the one case as in the other; nothing at that time could withstand the sweep of their victorious onrush over Western Europe; and the result of their conquests was in both cases permanent and mixed of good and evil.
[1] Historical and Political Essays.
I have endeavoured in the following history to interpose as little as was possible between the reader and the contemporary authorities to which all writers of history must go, if they would study the matter at first hand. The result has been in numberless cases a surprise to myself; so different is the report of the man on the spot from the commonly received opinion of the present day. Irish history is a series of contradictions; its unexpectedness creates its absorbing interest; it refuses to march along the simple lines marked out for it by the modern political writer; it is illogical, independent, averse to rule. In these circumstances it has seemed best, so far as space permitted, to let the original writers speak for themselves.
By this means some portion of that fresh flavour which we taste in old personal documents, letters, and memoirs of the time may be retained, and the fault which Montaigne charges against "the middle sort of historians" that "they will chew our meat for us" is partly avoided. The writers of the day were undoubtedly often prejudiced, partial, or even false; but their memorials are all we have to depend upon; and especially in the Tudor period, when Irish history is well documented on all sides, they never held their tongues. We might like them better if they had not talked so much; but at least we have their unbiased opinion, and it is not difficult for any intelligent reader to make the necessary deductions for their individual points of view. To know the history of any period we must know the men who made that history; the personal element can never be omitted with safety in preference for wide general deductions. History never repeats itself, for the men who made it yesterday are different from the men who are making it to-day. But it is upon the men that the trend and conclusions of history depend.
I have to acknowledge with gratitude the kindness of the following noblemen and gentlemen who have allowed the use of photographs of portraits from their private collections for this work: His Grace the Duke of Devonshire, for a portrait of the first Earl of Cork, called the 'Great' Earl of Cork, now at Hardwick Hall, formerly at Lismore, attributed to Paul van Somers; the Right Hon. Lord Sackville, for the portrait of Katherine FitzGerald, the "Old Countess of Desmond," at Knole; the Right Hon. Lord de l'Isle and Dudley, for the portrait of Sir Henry Sidney, at Penshurst Place; Lady Nesta FitzGerald, for the portrait of Garrett Oge, ninth Earl of Kildare, at Carton, Maynooth; the Hon. Francis Agar-Robartes, for the portrait of Sir Walter Raleigh, at Wimpole; Mr Francis Joseph Bigger, for the portrait of Shane O'Neill, at Castle Shane, Ardglass; and the Rev. F. H. Hodgson, for the portrait of Sir George Carew, first Earl of Totnes, at Clopton House, Stratford-on-Avon. I have been unable to discover the owners of the two interesting portraits of Hugh O'Neill, second Earl of Tyrone, which were exhibited in the Loan Collection of Portraits, London, in 1866. Though known as a portrait of Hugh O'Neill, the younger of the two portraits has a faint inscription across the top of the picture, which seems to read, "Haec est Christophori simulaia canalis imago quem jaculum transfixa coxendice peremit."
To Mr Newport B. White I am indebted for kindly translating King Cathal "Crovdearg" O'Conor's letter in the Appendices, and to my brother, Mr C. M. Hull, for help in proof-reading and indexing.
ELEANOR HULL
When Agricola in the fifth year of his British campaign (A.D. 82) "manned with troops that part of the British coast which faces Hibernia, with a forward policy in view," [1] the fate of Ireland, for good or ill, hung in the balance. Wherever the Roman arms made themselves felt, wherever by conquest or colonization Imperial law, religion, ideas, extended themselves, there followed as an inevitable consequence the profound modification, if not the extinction, of the native habits of life, and mythology. Ireland for many hundreds of years fell under no such yoke as that imposed by the Roman rule in Britain and Gaul. In spite of the Roman general's belief that "with one legion and a fair contingent of irregulars Hibernia could be overpowered and held," he never set foot upon her shores; for seven centuries after Agricola's day no important attempt was made by any outside power to subdue and colonize Ireland. Set apart by the surrounding ocean from the overwhelming catastrophes that overtook Europe after the fall of Rome, Ireland was left undisturbed to work out her own destiny. In Gaul and Britain, with the dying out of the native tongue and the adoption of a debased form of Latin, the native records, oral or written, were to a great extent lost; our knowledge of the customs, traditions, and beliefs of these countries, except for a few inscriptions and monuments, is derived solely from the observations of the conquerors.
[1] Tacitus, Agricola, xxiv.
In Ireland, on the other hand, thanks to its exemption from Roman dominion and the preservation of the native tongue, a mass of traditions, which were later preserved in writing, remain. Most of them have come down to us in the form of stories connected with special districts and relating to personages some of whom appear to have had an actual existence in history, and they are so full of detail as to habits, dress, and ways of life that we can form from them a clear idea of social conditions in Ireland at a time before history proper can be said to begin. They supply the most complete record of a civilization during the pre-Christian period preserved by any European nation north of the Alps. They claim to represent the life of the first century of the Christian era and onward; and the results arrived at by archaeology serve to confirm the truth of this tradition. Some of the ornaments described in the tales, for instance, are known to have ceased to be worn elsewhere within the first century of our era; and, though this does not preclude the possibility that in a country so remote from the general current of European influences as Ireland was they may have continued to be worn until a later period, it does tend to prove that the extant descriptions date from a period when these ornaments were still familiar to the story-tellers. Such are the beautiful brooches of the La Tène period and especially the leaf-shaped fibulae found in Ireland, descriptions of which occur as part of the dress of heroes in the Cuchulain tales; in Britain and Gaul, where they were also worn, they fell into disuse before the close of the first century. Though not nearly so common as the penannular brooch, with the circle pierced by a long pin, of which the Tara brooch is the best-known example, six specimens of the fibula have been found, three having been discovered at Emain Macha or Navan Rath, the centre of the Cuchulain tales in which these descriptions occur. It is evident that the bards who recited these stories, and possibly those who first committed them to writing, must have seen such brooches actually in use, otherwise they could not have been so accurately described.
The earliest tales of Ireland are partly concerned with mythological personages who seem to have been regarded as deities, known as the Tuatha De Danann, and partly with the doings of a group of heroic men and women, of whom the hero Cuchulain is the central figure. The chief centre of the group was Emain Macha in Ulster. In this district the outlines of forts, burial-places, and chariot-paths may still be seen, and the neighbourhood still retains old names and traditions corresponding to the legends as we have them written down in manuscripts of the tenth and eleventh centuries. The same may be said of the neighbourhood of Rath Cruachan, now Croghan, in Connacht, which is the centre of a similar group of Connacht traditions. In general the tales relate to an ancient struggle for pre-eminence between Ulster and Connacht, which was then ruled by a queen named Meave (Medhbh) as formidable as the British warrior-queen Boadicea (Boudicca). She is said to have gathered to the contest the "Four Great Fifths"or provinces into which Ireland was then divided and to have invaded Ulster, primarily to regain possession of a famous bull, but actually to assert the authority of Connacht and the South over that of the North. The incidents and fights into which the war resolved itself, in which her chosen warriors fought in single combat the champion of Ulster, Cuchulain, form a long and varied story. The Táin bó Cualnge is the chief epic of early Ireland.
There has been much dispute as to how the early division into five provinces was made. According to an old tradition, the first partition was carried out in the time of the Firbolg, one of the pre-Gaelic peoples of Ireland, and was later confirmed by the Milesians (or Clann Mileadh), the last invaders of ancient Ireland. According to this division Ireland consisted of Leinster, Connacht, Ulster, and two divisions of Munster. At the date of the Cuchulain or Ulster cycle of tales the monarch of Ireland, Eochaidh Feidhlioch (pronounced Yohee Feiloch), the father of Queen Meave of Connacht, redistributed the country in exactly the same way; which was, as Keating says, "the most permanent division ever made in Ireland." [2] This was also the tradition related to Gerald of Wales (Giraldus Cambrensis) when he came to Ireland with Henry II. Professor Eoin MacNeill gives prominence to the Leinster tradition, which divided Leinster, instead of Munster, into two sections, and included Tara in the northern half, but this division was probably only temporary. [3] The erection of Meath into a separate province was only accomplished, according to an old belief, in the reign of Toole the Legitimate (Tuathal Teachtmhar), who reigned for thirty years at the end of the first and beginning of the second century. The local sept were the Luighne of Tara, a branch of a family of the same name settled in the Sligo district. At the close of the Ulster cycle we find the reigning king, Cairbre Nia Fear, giving his name to the territory of Meath as "Cairbre's Fifth" or Province, and disposing of part of his inheritance by gift to Conor (Conchubhar), King of Ulster, in return for the hand of his daughter in marriage. But from the earliest times the kings of Tara would seem to have exercised some undefined superiority over the provincial princes, and the repartition of the provinces by Eochaidh while monarch of Ireland shows that this right was submitted to and recognized. But all these ancient traditions must be received with caution. It was to the interest of each province to claim for itself the glory of having given High-kings to Tara, and the local writers did their best to give expression to these provincial aspirations. From an historical point of view little reliance can be placed on them.
[2] Keating, History of Ireland, ed. P. S. Dinneen (Irish Texts Society), 1, 107, 109, 185. There is a comparatively late cycle of tales dealing with Eochaidh, which may reflect the ideas of later days about the High-kingship.
[3] Phases of Irish History. Professor MacNeill does not give references; but has argument seems to be founded on the late composite Leinster text, Cath Ruis na Ríg, ed. E. Hogan, pp. 23 seq., which has been copied by Keating.
As time went on frequent changes took place. The early Ulster stories place the centre of the Northern power in the eastern portion of the province, with Emain Macha as its chief seat of authority. The chief incidents in the stories occur in parts of the present counties of Louth, then called Murthemne or Cuchulain's country, which was included in Ulster, and in Armagh, Down, and Antrim. Western Ulster takes no part. But during the Norse period the centre of power has swung west, and we find the princes of Ulster reigning from Aileach, five miles north-west of Derry in Co. Donegal, where a great fort is still to be seen.
In Tudor times the large part of Ulster west of the Bann was in the hands of the two powerful families of the O'Neills and O'Donnells, with their underlords or "Urraghs." The O'Neills occupied Tir-Eoghan or Tyrone, which then comprised, besides the present county of this name, the whole of Derry north to Lough Swilly, while the principality of the O'Donnells occupied Tir-Connell or Donegal.
The other provinces underwent similar changes. Munster, in Norse times, was divided between the Eoghanachts with Cashel as their capital, and the Dalcais or Dalcassians under the great family of the O'Briens, who made their chief seat at Kincora, near Killaloe on the Shannon, the succession to the kingship of Munster alternating between the two families. But later the province was partitioned into North Munster or Thomond, ruled by the O'Briens, which sometimes included Tipperary, Clare, and part of Limerick, sometimes only Clare; and South Munster or Desmond, which extended over Kerry, Cork, Waterford, and the south of Limerick. Co. Clare seems by geographical position to belong naturally to Connacht, and it passed back to that province about 1579 during the viceroyalty of Sir Henry Sidney, though the Earls of Thomond resisted the change.
The chief business of each province was transacted at public assemblies, to which people from all parts of the province congregated and to which merchants, native and foreign, brought their wares for sale. At these meetings laws were promulgated, the genealogies and provincial records rectified, and decisions come to by the brehons. Games and horse-racing formed part of the recreations of the assembly, and they may have had a religious significance. At the time of the marking out of the territory of Meath several of the sites where these gatherings (aonach) were accustomed to be held were brought within the limits of the central province, and forts were built beside them for protection. The meetings seem to have been connected with the quarterly festivals, for the assembly of Tlachtgha met with sacrificial rites at the beginning of winter (samhain), and that of Usneach at the beginning of summer (bealtaine). At the assembly of Taillte, held at the beginning of August (lughnassa), the marriages of the young people were arranged by their parents for the year, the men keeping themselves apart on one side and the girls on the other, while the arrangements were talked over and contracts made. Contracts for service seem also to have been part of the business of the fairs.
Originally these festivals had been the provincial assemblies of the separate provinces of Munster, Connacht, and Ulster, but they seem to have assumed a more general character with the readjustment of the provinces to form the new province of Meath. Ossory or Southern Leinster retained its own important fair of Carmen, which was divided into three parts, "a market of food, a market of live stock, and a great market of foreign goods." It is said to have been attended by Greeks, bartering gold and splendid clothing. One slope was given up to racing, another to cooking, and a third to women employed in making embroideries. The preliminary public business of law-giving and the execution of justice being disposed of, debts having been settled, arrests and distraints composed, and horse-racing tricks reprimanded, the company gave themselves over to gaiety and buying, while jugglers, bone-men, fiddlers, pipers, and masked actors carried on their trades in one part, and storytellers related the ever-fresh Fenian tales of destructions, cattle-preys, and courtships to crowds who never wearied of hearing them. [4]
[4] O'Curry, Manners and Customs, iii, App., 523-547.
These annual or triennial festivals served the purpose of keeping all parts of a province in touch. They were meeting-places for friends from a distance, and probably, like the still existing 'pardons' of Brittany, they had a religious purpose. Each was established on the site of the burial-place of some ancient female deity, and no doubt arose out of celebrations organized in her honour, with sacrifices and ceremonies which kept alive the cult. [5]
[5] Keating, History of Ireland, ii, 245-253.
The assembly or feis of Tara was the most important of all these meetings. It met once in three years in times of peace, and was attended by representatives of all the provinces. It was a sign of unusual disturbance if it were omitted. There the laws were promulgated or recited and rectified, annals and records added to, and genealogies brought up to date. It formed the central authority for the whole country, and was the main symbol of union between the provincial kingships. Men of rank attended it from all parts of Ireland, each captain of a band of warriors being followed by a shield-bearer. The monarch of Ireland or Aird-Rí presided, and banquets of great ceremony were held, each guest having his appointed place arranged beforehand according to rank and marked by the hanging of the owner's shield behind the seat he was to occupy. The women were provided for in a separate chamber, just as they had separate portions of the ground set apart for them at the fairs. The trumpet sounded three times as the guests entered and took their seats, each under his own shield. In the time of Cormac mac Art these assemblies were solemnized with great splendour; the dress of the king and his nobles being described as magnificent. That these old descriptions are substantially correct is rendered probable by the beauty of the ornaments actually recovered, such as finely decorated brooches, torques or waist-belts, rings and collars, all of which must have been worn by persons of rank. [6] Very fine examples of inlaid or chased bronze scabbards have also been found. Sickles and reaping-hooks for cutting rushes or reaping corn show that the custom was to cut the ears of the grain, which was then frequently stored in underground granaries for safety in times of turmoil. The cultivation of wheat was so general that it is referred to as a standard of value; barley was grown for malt; and ale was drunk, as well as mead, from early times.
[6] Armstrong, Catalogue of Gold Ornaments, National Museum, Dublin; W. Ridgeway, Date of the Cuchulain Saga; Macalister, Ireland in Pre-Celtic Times (1921); G. Coffey, The Bronze Age in Ireland; and cf. article on "The Distribution of Gold Lunulae in Ireland," in Proceedings of the Royal lrish Academy, vol. xxvii, Section C.
The High-kingship of Cormac mac Art in the third century may be accepted as historical; it represents the climax of the power of the kings of Tara in pre-Christian times. His reign is the centre of a number of stories pointing to the magnificence of his Court and the extent of his influence, but so many of the legends surrounding him are clearly folktales, that the whole tradition must be treated with reserve. It, however, incorporates one certainly historical fact, that of the dispersion of the clan of the Deisi, who migrated from Meath to the south of Ireland and to South Wales about this time. It is possible that at one time Connacht occupied a similar position of eminence to that which Tara obtained in Cormac's reign, for the pre-Christian kings of Ireland were buried at Clonmacnois, where the monastery of St. Ciaran was afterward built. From early times this seems to have been a sacred spot.
Tara itself was undoubtedly a religious centre before becoming the political headquarters of the High-king, and the rites with which the king was initiated point to a religious sanction for his election, and also to the belief that in his person he represented a divine idea. Though he was possessed of special privileges his life could hardly have been a happy one, for he was encompassed with taboos (geasa) which he dare not break without forfeit of his life or good fortune, and omens accompanied his every action. His existence must have been hampered at every point by ancient regulations. All Irish kings were subject to these restrictions, but they accumulated about the person of the king of Tara, as being the superior ruler, and a semi-divine personage. [7]
[7] Book of Rights, ed. O'Donovan, xlii-xlviii, 2-25; Folklore, March 1901; R. A. S. Macalister, "Tara" in P.R.I.A. vol. xxxiv, Section C, No. 10.
How the election of a king of Tara was carried out is not clear. The choice was probably in the hands of representatives from the different provinces, but it had to be ratified by certain ancient omens, such as the crying out of the Lia Fail, or "Stone of Destiny," when he stood upon it. Such omens were probably worked, as in other primitive societies, by the priests or Druids. The election of the provincial kings was also accompanied by curious and, to us, sometimes repugnant ceremonies, which continued in the native parts of the country up to a late date. Each king had his fixed retinue of officers of the household—his bards, law-givers, story-tellers, porters, stewards, and military body-guard, who attended to the regulation of the royal precincts, and to the arming or provisioning of the household. [8]
[8] Kilkenny Archaeological Journal, vol. ii.
If any uncertainty as to the succession existed the aid of soothsayers seems to have been resorted to. These men, after incantations, proclaimed the successor in a dream or ecstasy. In such a case as the election of King Conaire, the person indicated by them was quite unexpected by the electors. In the choice of Lugaidh of the Red Stripes a Convention of the Four Provinces of Ireland was held, attended by princes from all parts of Ireland, and this may have been the ordinary procedure. [9]
[9] Dá Derga, ed. Wh. Stokes, pp. 14, 17; Hull, Cuchulain Saga, pp. 231-32.
The inauguration ceremonies varied in different parts of the country. They took place on special hills or under ancient trees of great size, consecrated by time and tradition to this use. Though Keating and other Irish historians contest the truth of the old accounts, they are undoubtedly not imaginary, for they correspond closely to those of many peoples in a similar stage of progress. Some of the rites, such as that of handing to the newly elected chief a white rod as a symbol of the justice that ought to attend his rule, are of a solemn and suggestive character. A high standard of moral rectitude was set before the king, and such precepts as the following were laid down for him by his instructors. They are an appeal to the old wisdom of the fathers. "Speak not haughtily Mock not, insult not, deride not the old. Make no demands that cannot be met...Let not prescription close on illegal possession...Let the heir be established in his lawful patrimony; let strangers be driven out by force of arms. Do not sacrifice justice to the passions of men." [10]
[10] Instructions of King Cormac mac Art, R.I.A. Todd Lect., vol. xv.
In historical times elections were made in a more regular manner. The election was by popular vote and was taken at a mound (dumha), where the electors assembled and recorded their decision by shout or proclamation. The claimant had to be of the ruling family, and he was "the best of the noble heroes in knowledge, true learning and princely honour." If the election was disputed, both claimants appeared richly attired and armed, and when the decision was made the chief nobles placed their hands in his in token of fealty and placed the royal diadem (mind-righ) round his head, giving thanks to God for sending him. They then gave hostages for fidelity to the newly made king. Such an election is recorded of Callachan, King of Cashel, in the tenth century. [11]
[11] Caithreim Callachan Caisil, ed. A. Bugge, p 61.
Disputes and consequent wars for the succession were of constant occurrence. Primogeniture was not recognized, and sons born out of wedlock were equally eligible with the legitimate sons. The claimant was seldom the son of the late chief, but usually a cousin or nephew, chosen within certain family limits [12] for his position or capability. Though this system was good in theory, as being directed to the selection of the strongest candidate, the uncertainty with which elections were attended led to perpetual family feuds, murders, and mutilations, in order to get rid of possible rivals, a mutilated man being incapable of holding the princely office. This gave rise to the system of 'tanistry' in later times, by which the incoming chief was chosen during the lifetime of the reigning king, and thus secured the recognition of the sept, with the hope of a peaceful succession. But even this did not always secure the end in view; and the question of the succession of the Irish princes was one of those crucial points on which the English and Irish differed seriously throughout the Tudor period.
[12] Eoin MacNeill, Celtic Ireland, pp. 114-143
For centuries, from the date of the battle of Ocha (483) in the reign of Laery, we find the High-kingship of Tara held by the line of the Northern and Southern Hy-Neill in regular and alternate succession; but after the death of Malaughlan II (1022) it was seized by the O'Lochlans, a branch of the same house, and held by them in contest with the O'Conors of Connacht, one of whom, Roderick O'Conor, was in power at the date of the Anglo-Norman invasion. Once before, in the reign of Dathi (d. 428), Connacht had been the superior power, but only for a short interval. Munster had never placed a king in the royal seat until Brian wrenched the sceptre from Malaughlan II and reigned till his death at Clontarf; his son was sometimes reckoned as his successor. But through centuries, Ulster held, almost undisputed, the supreme power.
The old tales and laws present us with a picture of a warlike people whose children were trained from their boyhood to the use of arms, the sons of chieftains being admitted to knighthood at the age of seven and girded with miniature weapons suited to their age. This custom was continued up to a late period, for when the four provincial kings, O'Neill of Ulster, O'Conor of Connacht, MacMorrogh of Leinster, and O'Brien of Thomond, were invited to Dublin to meet King Richard II and offered English knighthood, they replied that they had been knighted when they were seven years of age. The little spears put into the hands of the young aspirant to knighthood were not empty symbols; they were intended to test his expertness in the actual implements of warfare which he would be called upon to use in after life, war being considered as the natural activity of the vigorous man.
Instruction in horsemanship, hurley, swimming, and shooting was given at an early age even to sons of the smaller chiefs, while children of the lower ranks were taught the care and herding of lambs and calves, kids and young pigs, kiln-drying, combing wool and wood-cutting; girls learned the use of the quern for grinding corn, and also kneading, dyeing, and weaving. They afterward took a large part in the work and superintendence of the farm and agriculture. Girls of high rank were trained in sewing, cutting out, and embroideries. The fine needlework of the Irish women was famous. The 'Raven-banner' of Earl Sigurd the Stout of Orkney, carried by him at Clontarf, which spread out in the wind like a flying bird, had been wrought for him by his Irish mother, a daughter of King Carroll (Cearbhal) of Ossory; and one of the prettiest pictures from old Irish romance is that of Emer, daughter of Forgall, seated in the pleasure-ground before her father's fort at Lusk, teaching the daughters of the neighbouring farmers fine needlework and embroidery.
Children of high rank were brought up and taught by foster-parents, fosterage forming among the Irish and Scotch Gaels the most enduring and the closest tie, as it was the most perfect expression of the unity of the clan as one family. From the son of the chief downward, every child of the higher ranks was nurtured by a family of a lower class. This formed an indissoluble bond of affection and a sure foundation of mutual sympathy between members of the clan. The chieftain who had been brought up in a farmer's family and had passed the first seventeen years of his life among his children had a knowledge of the conditions of life among his own retainers and a sense of their needs such as could have been gained in no other way. On the other side, the love of the foster-parents for their foster-children exceeded the affection which they bestowed upon their own offspring, and the families who fostered the chiefs felt for them a passionate affection. It was a bond at once sane and romantic, and it was seldom broken through life. The foster-son was bound to aid or support his foster-parents in old age or poverty just as much as the fosterer was bound to train and instruct him in youth. The obligations and the affection were mutual. The laws of fosterage were rigorously laid down; the fosterling's food, his clothes, his instruction, his payments, being all regulated by law. The child went provided with suits of clothes according to his rank; satin and scarlet, with silver on the scabbards and brass rings on the hurling-sticks, and brooches of gold for the sons of kings; plain black and white or saffron woollens for the humblest grades. Each child had to bring at least two suits of clothes, one new and one worn, the children of the highest chiefs wearing two colours every day and new clothes of two colours every Sunday, embroidered with gold and silver; the richness and variety of the colours worn corresponding to the rank of the wearer. They probably wore tartans.
The food of the poor child was 'stirabout' with salt butter; the higher-born child ate the same, but it was made with new milk and wheaten meal, while the sons of kings had fresh butter and honey. Chess-playing, the chief recreation of the higher classes in Ireland from the earliest times, was taught to boys of these classes along with more solid occupations. Girls paid a larger fosterage fee than boys, as being less useful to their foster-parents, but less was expected from them by way of return. The girl was of full age at fourteen years, the boy at seventeen; but if he were a king's son he was presented with a horse at seven. It was the duty of his tutor to instruct him fully in preparation for his degree, and to chastise him without undue severity. [13]
[13] Ancient Laws of Ireland, 11, pp. 147-103, 349.
The old laws show that the position of women in early Ireland was legally high, and the position of the 'wife of equal rank' where the marriage was made with the full consent of both parties was a good one. It carried with it equal rights between the husband and wife. Each owned the property—lands and household stuff and cattle—brought in at marriage, and both retained their rights over their own share, all family decisions about the children being made by mutual consent. In cases of separation, which had to be open and public, the woman took away with her all that she had contributed to the marriage stock. In law their word was equal, the evidence of the woman being equally admissible and equally valid with that of the man. Wedding gifts were divided, one-third going to the woman and two-thirds to the man, but the man, not the woman, paid the dowry. The wife received a stipulated share of all profits on farming or industry carried on by her; and, as the care of the farm as well as of wool and cloth-weaving, dyeing, malting, and similar pursuits, seems to have been in her hands, this must have amounted to a considerable regular income in the case of large farming operations. If she had been "a great worker" during her married life she was entitled on separation to one-ninth of the increase. [14] All women might give presents to their poor neighbours out of their separate property, and the woman might entertain half the company allowed to her husband. In the absence of her husband she could make contracts or reclaim debts. If she failed to enforce a debt there was a curious provision by which the contending parties might make "a lawful combat with their distaffs and comb-bags" in the presence of their guardians. The elaborate provisions relating to separated couples show that separation was frequent. A variety of other connexions besides regular marriage between men and women are provided for, the woman who bore sons having always a superior claim to the sonless woman. "The woman of equal rank, and the first wife with sons and without sons, and the adulteress with sons, these four women may give their own 'honour-price' in excess (of the actual debt) in presence of their husbands or in their absence, in loan and in lending at interest, in bargains and contracts. The adulteress without sons shall not give, in the absence of the man, anything but a hook and a distaff and such implements; and she shall not give in his presence anything but what her partner may order." [15] The power to exact an 'honour-price' in case of injury received showed that the aggrieved person held a position of dignity recognized by the clan. The ordinary sufferer from an injury could only exact compensation for the actual injury done him; but the man or woman of position claimed, over and above this, an extra compensation equivalent to their rank, rising by stages until it reached the 'honour-price' of the chief. If the culprit failed to pay the due compensation, it fell to his relatives to pay it, or in the last resort to the chief. Fines were regulated and debts reclaimed by the laws of ' distress ' which form a very large part of the Irish 'customary law.' [16] They were paid, as a rule, in cattle, which were driven into the village pound and retained there until the debt was discharged. Only persons of the lowest class, who owned no property that could be used to repay a debt, were imprisoned. Such a man was fettered or chained about the neck and fed on the smallest possible amount of food until the chief compelled him to do his duty. [17]
[14] Ibid , p. 391.
[15] Anc. Laws, ii, 379, 387.
[16] Ibid., i, 85 seq.
[17] Ibid., i, 105-7.
The descriptions of the dress of high-born women, as well as of kings, and of their utensils are of the most elaborate kind. Eochaidh, King of Ireland, is said to have seen Etain "at the edge of a well with a bright comb of silver adorned with gold, washing in a silver basin wherein were four golden birds and little bright gems of purple carbuncle in the rims of the basin. Her mantle folded and purple, a beautiful cloak with silvery fringes and a brooch of fairest gold. Her kirtle long, hooded, of green silk with red embroidery of gold. Marvellous clasps of gold and silver in the kirtle on her breasts and shoulders. On her head two golden-yellow tresses, each plaited in four locks, with a bead at the point of each lock. The hue of her hair seemed like the flower of the iris in summer, or like red gold after the burnishing." [18]
[18] Togail Bruidne Da Derga, ed. Wh. Stokes, p. 6.
The wide cloak, reaching to the knees or the feet, was common to all classes and periods and served many purposes, but a short cape with hood and tight-fitting jerkin with kilt were also worn. The linen undergarment was loose and thickly pleated and usually dyed saffron-colour.
Weapons were the broad sword, used for a downward stroke, spears and javelins of many kinds, and large bronze, hide, or wooden shields. Warriors fought from chariots, some of which were scythed like those of the Britons. Chiefs and charioteers were experts in the management of the horses, as they became in later times in horsemanship, when riding took the place of the chariot. Irish feats of skill in springing on to running horses, riding without saddle, and executing feats of agility on horseback were recorded with wonder by many visitors to the country, and horsemanship is still a passion in Ireland. Chariots were the usual means of entering into battle up to the seventh century, and decorated bronze bits have been discovered in Co. Mayo, adorned with late Celtic designs. Battles were, in the main, a series of single combats, ending with a general engagement. The duels were frequently fought in streams on the borders of territories, and a stranger was challenged in passing from one province to another by the warrior appointed to watch the ford.
One chief cause of wars was the raid for cattle, in which, along with personal and household goods, the wealth of a tribe consisted. Position depended upon the number of herds and flocks possessed by a tribesman, and there was an elaborate system by which cattle were loaned out by the chief or by large owners to those who needed them, in return for services rendered. According to the amount obtained, the borrower took a higher or lower place in the community, and rendered heavier or lighter service. It would appear that these middlemen were the 'Brugaid' or 'Bruigfer' of whom we hear as occupying large farms, which also acted as inns or houses of hospitality for wayfarers at central points along the main roads.
From the earliest times of which we have any record the inhabitants of Ireland were a Gaelic-speaking race, though it is not to be inferred that this language was aboriginal. At least for 1500 years the Celtic tongues have been spoken only in the extreme west of Europe—in Ireland, and the west of Scotland, the Isle of Man, Wales, Cornwall, and Brittany. They once had a wider range, but were pushed west by the spread of Roman culture and of the Latin language and by the Teutonic tribes who invaded the western half of the Empire and brought about its fall. It was probably from the mountain zone of Central Europe that the Celtic tongues spread over to the west. These people lived in pile-dwellings and were not given to movement.
Of the earliest inhabitants of the Celtic lands we know little with certainty. The latest researches in ethnology suggest the conclusion that the earliest race of which remains have been found in Ireland was a short, dark, and long-headed people, correlated with the Mediterranean European stock, who maintained intercourse with their brethren over the sea. Their blood, however, was not quite pure, and remains of individuals of alien racial character have also been found. These people are assigned to the late Stone (Neolithic) and Early Bronze Ages; they were the builders of the dolmens, or cromlechs, whose structures remain over an area extending from Japan, India, and Syria, along the north coast of Africa, and round by Spain, France, Holland, and Denmark, besides Cornwall, Wales, and Ireland. This race has given to Wales, Scotland, and Ireland the majority of their small brunette inhabitants. The wide distribution of their monuments would suggest a seafaring people, coasting along the shores, for the larger number of the dolmens are near the coast. They must have had a solemn cult of the dead; no one who has visited the great tombs of New Grange or Dowth on the banks of the Boyne, or who has seen the impressive alignments and the massive menhirs, or standing stones, at Carnac in Brittany, can fail to feel the reality of their belief in some form of worship connected with the dead.
These people were traders and workers in metal—copper, tin, and gold; and long before the arrival of the conquering race of tall, fair-haired people, who became dominant over many parts of Ireland, they were working gold in Wicklow and exporting, among other articles, the beautiful gold lunulae, or crescent-shaped neck ornaments, which have been found in Denmark, the north of France, Belgium, and Germany, in Cornwall, Wales, and Scotland, and in great numbers in Ireland itself. History has no beginning, and more than a thousand years before Christ traders may have been exchanging their wares along the Mediterranean shores, by way of Sicily, Spain, and Ireland, and so north to the Baltic.
At a period which is supposed not to be older than between 350-400 B.C. a new race came to Ireland. These were a tall race of fair-haired people, who brought with them the use of iron, and their arrival in Ireland marks there the beginning of the Iron Age. A people of Nordic origin, they came from the north of Europe. They were much like the Northmen and Normans, who in later days were to dispute with them the supremacy in Ireland, forerunners perhaps of the vikings who were to pour into Ireland in the ninth and tenth centuries. Being equipped with better weapons, they conquered [19] and assured domination over the original inhabitants, who probably differed from them, not only in race, but in religion and language; and, though there is no reason to think that the older peoples were inferior in courage and skill to their conquerors, the new-comers oppressed them as slaves and enacted laws to prevent intermarriage between the conquered and the conquerors. The old inhabitants seem to have sunk into the 'unfree communities' (daer-chlanna) or serfs; they had no rights, being despised by the ruling race as inferiors and reduced to servile ways of making a livelihood. [20]
[19] R. A. S. Macalister, Ireland in Pre-Celtic Times (1921). Cf. G. Fletcher, Ireland, pp. 82-94; H. J. E. Peake, The Bronze Age and the Celtic World;, H. J. Fleure, The Races of England and Wales; G. Coffey, Bronze Age in Ireland.
[20] For the castes in Irish society see Ancient Laws of Ireland, vol. iv.
The earlier Mediterranean people seem to have had a matriarchal form of life and government, memories of which lingered on in the tradition that the provincial assemblies, such as those of Tara and Taillte were founded in commemoration of famous women, and were held in celebration of their burial-feasts. War and learning were alike presided over by women-goddesses; there was a group of three war-goddesses, Morigan (or Neman), Macha, and Badb; another group, collectively called Brigit, presided over poetry and art. The cult of fairies and of well, stream, and forest spirits, and perhaps also the worship of animals, seems to belong to the most primitive forms of belief, and was widespread; but attempts to analyse the different strata of ancient beliefs can at present only be conjectural.
The old Irish traditions of origin, which describe the arrival in the country of a succession of peoples called the race of Partholan, the sons of Nemhed, the Firbolg, and the Milesians or children of Mileadh, are not to be regarded as having an historical basis. The actual facts of ethnology do not support these myths. But they in a general way indicate the early belief in the existence of races older than the dominant fair-haired, tall people of historic times, who were known as Milesians. The old legends describe the earlier race, called the Firbolg, as a small dark people who were despised by the conquering Milesians; they were supposed to be possessed of every evil trait of character. To the newer and superior race the Firbolg were as truly "meere Irish" as the Gaelic speaker was in later days to the speaker of English, and he was despised accordingly.
A body of people, known as the Erainn, seem to have been dominant in Munster and to have emigrated from the north of Kerry into Co. Antrim, while portions of the same communities are found in Connacht and Meath. These people have been thought to have given their name to the country, but this derivation is very doubtful. [21] They may have been scattered fragments of a population more widely spread in ancient times. Ptolemy, writing about A.D. 150, speaks of Brigantes in South-eastern Ireland similar to the inhabitants in the north of Roman Britain of the same name, and of Manapii on the coast of Wexford, whose name associates them with the Belgic people on the Continent. More important were the Cruithne or Picts, whom we meet in historical times occupying the whole of Scotland north of the Forth to the Orkneys, as well as the islands of Skye and Lewis. In Ireland they peopled the parts of Eastern Ulster, now known as Cos. Down and Antrim. Tradition gives them a much wider area; they seem to have occupied large parts of the present counties of Armagh, Tyrone, Derry, and Fermanagh. It would seem likely that they were once the dominant race in Ireland as in Scotland, although no trace of their language remains in Ireland. In Scotland there are a number of place-names which retain the word, such as Clais-nan-Cruitneachad, "Hollow of the Picts," in Sutherland; Carnan Cruitneachad, "Cairns of the Picts," in Ross; and Cruitneachan or "Pict's places" in Inverness. [22] The constant Irish tradition is that they passed over from Ireland to Scotland.
[21] Dr Pokorny suggests Ever as the true base of the name, which the Romans changed into Hibernia from the Iverni of Ptolemy.
[22] A. B. Scott, The Pictish Nation, People and Church (1918).
In early Christian days several well-known teachers from the North of Ireland went over to teach Christianity to these Pictish peoples of Scotland. St Finnbarr, Abbot of Moville, in Co. Down, St Moluag of Bangor in the same county, SS Comgall and Cainnech or Kenneth, the companions of St Columcille, were all north of Ireland Picts, who made their home among the Picts of Scotland; dedications to them are found all over Pictland. Another headquarters of Pictish missions was St. Ninian's "White House" in Galloway, then also a Pictish district. The descent of the Picts and Scots on Northern Britain in the latter part of the fourth century was probably the result of a combination of the Northern Picts of Ireland with those of Caledonia. The link of race would make the two peoples natural allies. Roman, British, and Saxon records alike confirm the accounts of the Irish chronicles as to the onslaught made upon Britain by the Picts and Scots or Irish. Ammianus Marcellinus says: "At that time the trumpet, as it were, gave signals for war throughout the Roman world...The Picts, Scots, Saxons, and Atticotti harassed the Britons with incessant invasions." Later he tells us that Theodosius had been sent to Britain to drive back the Picts from the gates of London. [23] Gildas writes that Britain groaned in amazement under the cruelty of two foreign nations, the Scots from the north-west and the Picts from the north. "The Britons abandoned their cities and the protection of the wall, dispersing in flight, and the enemy pursued them with unrelenting cruelty, butchering our countrymen like sheep." Bede tells us that they came at two intervals, being checked for a time by the return of the Roman troops at the appeal of the Britons and by the building of the second wall between the Forth and Clyde, to endeavour to push the invaders back into the mountainous parts of Britain. In this they appear to have been unsuccessful.
[23] Ammianus, xx, xxvi-xxviii; Gibbon, iii, 44-46 (Bury, 5th ed.)
The Irish annals place these events in the reigns of Crimthan (Criffan) the Great, who "gained victories and obtained sway in Alba [Scotland], Britain and France," and in that of his successor, Niall of the Nine Hostages, who reigned from 379 to 405. "The power of the Cruithne [Picts] and of the Gaels advanced into the heart of Britain and drove the inhabitants to the Tyne. Their power increased over Britain, so that it became heavier than the Roman tribute, because the aim of the northern Cruithne and Gaels was the total expulsion out of their lands." [24]
[24] The Irish Version of Nennius, ed. J. H. Todd (Irish Archaeological Society, 1848), p. 73.
It was into an almost solid Pictish population that, near the close of the fifth century, Fergus the Great, son of Erc, with his brothers, Loarn (Lome) and Angus, passed over with a body of followers from Dalriada in Ulster (now Co. Antrim) into Argyllshire, and made a settlement there. The title of Lome is still retained in the family of the Dukes of Argyll as that of their eldest sons. Their new home, then called Alba, henceforth became known as Scotia Minor, to distinguish it from Scotia Major, the name by which Ireland was commonly known at least up to the fifth century at home, and much later on the Continent. Scotia, or Scotland, was finally adopted as the general name for Alba and gradually dropped as a title for Ireland. In 563 the great-grandson of Fergus granted the island of Iona (or Hi) to St Columcille, known in Scotland as St Columba, and the saint repaid this courtesy by arranging for the release of the young colony from some of its dues to the mother-country and by officiating at the coronation of Aedan, its king. Scottish Dalriada grew in power and influence, and in the reign of Kenneth MacAlpin (d. 858) the submission of the Picts and the marriage of the King to a Pictish princess united the country under one crown. But the religious bonds which held together the monasteries under the Columban Rule in both countries, and the love of both for their great founder, kept the two Dalriadas of Antrim and Argyll closely united, and it was only the Norse descents on the coasts of Cantyre at the end of the eighth century that finally severed the connexion of Argyllshire with the old country.
Coming farther south, the study of place-names shows that there was a large infiltration of Gaelic peoples throughout the north-western portions of England, while in Anglesea, the Isle of Man, and over considerable districts in Wales they formed an important element in the population. The intermixture of the Cymric and Gaelic races probably began very early, but the distinction between the two was recognized well into historic times in Britain, and we hear much of the Gwyddel or Gael in old Welsh literature. In the Isles of Man and Anglesea a Gaelic population of Irish origin and speaking Irish inhabited the islands up to the Norse period. They were only partly driven out by the Norse from Man, and of the names occurring in the early inscriptions in that island almost half are Gaelic. The island had been Christianized by the Irishman MacCuil, originally one of the most violent adversaries to St Patrick's mission. To show his penitence he placed himself, at the saint's suggestion, in an open boat, his feet being locked together with an iron fetter, the key of which he threw into the sea. He had neither rudder nor oar, and only one small and poor garment for covering. Departing quickly "from this Irish land," he was bidden by the saint to come to shore wherever the boat might drift, there to remain obeying the commandments of God. He came to the coasts of Man (Evonia) and found there two holy bishops, with whom he worked, succeeding them on their deaths in the episcopate. [25]
[25] Muirchu, Life of St Patrick, ch. xxiii.
In Central and South Wales and in the neighbouring counties of Somerset, Devon, and Cornwall traditions of large Irish settlements are found in both Welsh and Irish literature, and these are confirmed by the existence of ogham inscriptions in a form of Irish older than that of any existing manuscript and by the large number of Gaelic place-names. An old statement in Cormac's glossary of ancient words, written probably in the tenth century, says that the Irish made great depredations in these districts, and that in the middle of the third century they built forts in Cornish Britain; "for not less was the power of the Gael in the West over the sea than it was in Ireland itself." He speaks also of forts built by Crimthan the Great a century later. Allowing for national exaggeration, we may yet accept this old account as substantially true. About the time of Cormac MacArt, in particular, very close relations seem to have existed between the Britons and the Irish kings. Armies of British came over to assist in Irish wars, and there were frequent intermarriages between princes and princesses of the British and Irish royal houses. [26] A well-substantiated story relates that in his day (254-277) a sept named the Deisi were expelled from their patrimonial lands in Meath and driven south, part of them settling in Leinster and South-eastern Munster, and another body crossing over to South Wales and making their home there. [27] The Welsh Iolo manuscripts mention three invasions of Wales by the Irish, in one of which the leader, Aflech Goronawg, took possession of Garth Madryn, but, having married the daughter of the king of the country and won the goodwill of the inhabitants, he obtained the rule of the district for himself and his descendants, who remain still intermixed with the original Welsh. [28] They were the parents of Brychan, the head of the great family of saints of that name, one of the "three saintly tribes of Britain," the other two being Cunedda and Caw. They are largely represented in North-east Cornwall, having settled down among the Irish already established there, but their original home was in Brecknock, which, with Carmarthen and Pembroke, was to a considerable extent peopled by Irish, who probably had the upper hand until the withdrawal of the nation from foreign wars after the death of Dathi early in the fifth century.
[26] Silva Gadelica, ed. S. H. O'Grady, ii, 355; Keating, History, ii, 281, and see ibid., p. 239.
[27] For this story see Y. Cymmrodor, xiv, 101-135; Anecdota from Irish Manuscripts, (1907), i, 15 seq; Ériu, iii, 135 seq.
[28] Iolo Manuscripts, p. 78.
These settlers appear to have come chiefly from two centres, Leinster and Co. Kerry. The former band belonged almost exclusively to Wexford, Waterford, and Ossory, and a number of Ossorian names are found both in Cornwall and in West Brittany on lapidary inscriptions. Of Kerry names Map Laithen, said to have been erected in Cornwall in the time of Crimthan, was probably the work of the Hy-Laithen from that county. The Maccodechet stone at Tavistock shows that a portion of the Deceti sept from Kerry settled in this neighbourhood; their name is found also in Anglesea. Of two stones at Lewannic, one bears the Kerry name Ullagnus (Olcan or Olacon) and the other the Irish word ingen, a daughter. When we come to Christian times proofs of intercommunication multiply. Christian inscriptions in Irish begin about the middle of the fifth century. Of these Wales has a hundred and thirty-five, Devon and Cornwall thirty-three, and there are others in the Isle of Man. They show that Christian teaching must have been accepted among the Irish for some time in their own country, if it had found its way at this date among the immigrants into Britain. The discovery of these Irish Christian inscriptions strongly supports the ancient and persistent tradition that the south-eastern portions of Ireland had received Christian teaching at a very early date. It is with this district that the names of the pre-Patrician saints and churches are connected, and we find episodes in the Lives of these saints which show a constant intercourse with Britain. The chief of the pre-Patrician saints are St Ailbe in Emly, Co. Tipperary; St Ibar of Bec Éire, or 'Little Ireland,' in Wexford Harbour; the pilgrims from which place gave their name to Bec Éire, now Beckery, at the sacred haunt of Glastonbury, which was constantly visited by Irish from this district; St Abban of Moyarney, on the borders of Wexford; and St Declan of Ardmore, in Co. Waterford. Some Lives add St Kieran of Saigher (Seir), in King's County, who is identified with St Piran of Cornwall, but he seems clearly to be of later date. The exact dates of all these early saints are uncertain. Whether pre-Patrician or not— and the weight of testimony certainly is on the side of a date earlier than St Patrick—these little Churches must have arisen independently of his preaching. Passages in St Declan's Life show that they prided themselves on their separate origin and organization, and difficulties arose when Patrick presented himself in the Deisi country. The controversy between the two Churches may be only a reflection of a later dispute for priority between Cashel and Armagh, thrown back into the time of the principal founders of the Churches of Northern and Southern Ireland; but it is exactly the sort of controversy that was inevitable if these Southern Churches looked back to an independent origin and an earlier date than that of the Apostle of Ireland, whose later glory had obscured their own. [29]
[29] Life of St Declan, ed. P. Power (Irish Texts Society), xvi, 34-37; Vitae Sanc. Hib., ed. C. Plummer, i, 8, 55, 217-218, and ii, 40, 45.
We may note that there was a close connexion between these early saints. Declan, Ibar, and Ailbe were friends, and St Ibar was Abban's maternal uncle as well as his teacher. He is said to have crossed from his own monastery of Bec Éire, or Beckery, in Wexford to the west of Britain, where he landed among pagans and built a church at a place called by him by the same name; this is undoubtedly the site of Glastonbury, which, like the original oratory beside which the great church of Malmesbury was afterward built, was founded by Irish hermits. Both Britain and Ireland are said to have been largely heathen in his time, and in Wexford few would listen to his teaching. Yet pilgrims, anchorites, and monks passed in large numbers both to and from Ireland. Three thousand went with Ibar. In an Irish Litany which is one of the most ancient documents of the Irish Church there is an invocation to thrice fifty clerics who went with St Abban on pilgrimage, and also to thrice fifty other pilgrims who came with him to Ireland, of the men of the Romans and Letha (Armorica or Latium?). In spite of the confusions in date in these old Lives, it seems unnecessary to reject their witness to the existence of small communities of Christians in the South of Ireland before St Patrick which are otherwise in accord with all we know from other sources. Eventually reports of the existence of these churches were carried to the Bishop of Rome, and in the year 431 Palladius was sent by Pope Celestine to preach to the Scots "believing in Christ."
Outside the borders of Ireland itself there are undoubted proofs that the country was recognized as Christian before the time of St Patrick. Already about 350 we find an Irish bishop presiding over the see of Toul, named Mansuetus, or Mansuy, of whom a twelfth-century writer says: Fuit idem venerandus Pater, sicut relatu maiorum didicimus, nobili Scotorum genere oriundus. [30] In Gaul, about 430, we find an early Irish Christian with the undoubtedly Gaelic name of Michomeri, which Professor Meyer thinks to be a corruption of Michomairle. He lived at Auxerre and died in Champagne. Heric's versified Life of Germanus says of him: Discipulus qui sanctum virum de Hibernia fuerat prosecutus, cui Michomeri vocabulum fuit. We remember also that, before 432, St Patrick found at Auxerre and brought back with him to Ireland a bishop named Iserninus, born on the borders of Carlow and Wicklow. The native name of this bishop was Fith. The intercourse with Gaul was constant, both in commercial and Church matters, and the Life of St Ailbe tells us that he had been long a pupil in the school of Hilary, Bishop of Poitiers (350-356). Jerome, who was still a young man at the time of his death, likens Hilary's Latin eloquence to the rush of the river Rhone. He was, too, the first writer of church hymns, and his hymn Hymnum dicat is found among the ancient collections used in the Irish churches. It may have set the example of the use of hymns in the Irish church offices, for the Irish hymnologies are among the oldest in Western Europe. Those used in liturgical worship were all in Latin, but there are besides a number of religious poems composed for personal ends, many of them in honour of saints or as charms to ward off danger or disease, both in Latin and Irish. The beautiful eucharistic hymn Sancti venite is purely Irish in origin.
[30] Martene and Durand, Thesaurus Novus Anecdotorum (Paris, 1717), iii, 991; Kuno Meyer, Learning in Ireland in the Fifth Century (1913), p. 23, note 17.
It is through the writings of St Jerome that we know that one of the two exponents of the Pelagian heresy, either Pelagius himself or his companion Coelestius, was of Irish birth. He tells us that he was descended from the Scots (Irish) de vicinia Britannorum, and that he was "reared on Scotch porridge." He would appear to be speaking of the author of the teaching he was combating and not, as is usually thought, of Coelestius, its principal exponent. Both travelled widely. Though the teaching of Pelagius found its most numerous adherents in Britain, he did not address himself to the Britons; he is found in Rome, in Sicily, and in Palestine. Had he not retired from Rome before the descent of Alaric with his Goths in 409-410, he would with his own eyes have witnessed the sack of the Eternal City. It may, perhaps, be permitted us to suppose that it was the stir made by his doctrines which was the immediate cause of the mission of Palladius to Ireland, as it was the cause of the mission of Germanus to Britain. Two years after the first visit of Germanus from Gaul in 429 Pope Celestine consecrated Palladius and "sent him to the Scots believing in Christ as their first bishop," so that, to borrow the words of Prosper of Aquitaine, "while he laboured to keep the Roman island [Britain] Catholic he also made the barbarous [i.e., pagan] island [Ireland] Christian." [31]
[31] Prosper, Lib. Cont. Collatorem, ch. xxi, 2 (Migne, Pat. Lat., li, 271); Bede, Eccl. Hist., Bk. I, ch. xiii.
It was during the wars of Niall of the Nine Hostages (379-405), who was himself of mixed Irish and British blood, his father Eochadh Muighmheadhon having married Cairionn of the dark ringlets, daughter of the King of Britain, [32] that Patrick was brought as a slave-boy to the land in which, in after days, his lot was to be cast. The ambition of this prince plunged his country into the wars both of Britain and of the Empire. Irish onslaughts in company with the Picts had obliged the leaders of the Britons to implore the return of the Roman legions which had been drawn off to protect the Empire from the assaults of the barbarians at their own gates. When these troops were finally withdrawn Britain, harassed by the Picts and Scots on the north as well as by Saxon pirates on the south, and abandoned by the Romans, rallied at last to attempt its own deliverance. Under Maximus and under the later Constantine, who were elected leaders of the revolt in Britain, British armies passed over to Gaul to contest the title to the Empire of the West. Both were received with acclamations, and before both the Roman and German armies retired across the Alps; in 408 Constantine became master of Gaul and Spain. In these important events, which have been much obscured by modern historians, bodies of Scots or Atticotti took part; they formed two bands or brigades, called the Honorians, and fought on the frontiers of Gaul along with mixed mercenary bodies of Moors and others who took the same name. Many of these Atticotti, whom St Jerome says he had met in Gaul, seem to have been drawn from the Irish settlers in Argyllshire and from Ireland. This accords with the Irish accounts, which say that Niall passed over to Gaul with a mixed body of troops drawn from Scottish Dalriada as well as from Ireland. He is said to have plundered in the neighbourhood of the river Loire, and there he met his death, but not by the armies against whom he was fighting. For a king of Leinster, who had been banished by Niall to Alba, accompanied the Dalriadian contingent to Gaul, and one day while Niall was resting in the shade by the river he had his revenge by casting an arrow at the King from the shelter of an oak grove on the opposite side, and so slew him. King Niall was succeeded by Dathi, a Connacht prince, who continued the wars of his predecessor in Gaul and who is said to have been killed by a flash of lightning in the Alps. Dathi's body was brought back to Ireland and buried at Cruachan, the place of interment of the Connacht kings. With his death the external wars of Ireland came to an end, and the country, freed from the distraction of foreign expeditions, had time to organize its internal affairs and to build up its system of social and religious life. The power of Niall's family did not pass away with his death. With one brief interval, when Dathi's son, Olioll Molt, was king, the race of Niall sat for five centuries without a break upon the throne of Ireland. They were elected alternately from two branches of the family, and were known as the Northern and Southern Hy-Neill.
[32] Keating, History, ii, 373. Niall's son Eoghan married the daughter of a Saxon king; see Silva Gadelica, ed. S. H. O'Grady, ii, 516.
The wars of King Niall in Britain and the bringing over of large bodies of Irish and Scoto-Irish troops to aid the British wars on the Continent must have greatly strengthened the intercourse already existing between the two countries. It has been a favourite doctrine with one class of historians that Irish interchange with Britain was practically non-existent, and that during all the early centuries Irish commerce and mercantile intercourse passed over and round the island that lay closest to its shores, making its way to the Continent by routes that skirted north and south of it. Such a doctrine, unlikely in itself, is denied by all we know from archaeology, language, and history as to the early relations between the two countries. They were, as we have seen, not only in constant communication, but there was a large intermixture of Gaelic blood all along the western districts, those lying closest to Ireland. Intermarriages, which took place even in the kingly families, must have been frequent among the fighting and mercantile classes, and the period upon which we are now entering saw those ties drawn yet closer by a sympathy in the practice and aims of the religious life and by the frequent interchange of teachers and scholars between the two countries. Early Irish history shows no sign of a desire for isolation; its people kept up a natural intercourse with the whole West of Europe from Norway to Spain, but, as was only to be expected from the geographical position of the two countries, it was most constant with Britain and Scotland. A new and abiding link was now to be formed by the coming of St Patrick to Ireland, and it ought to have been of happy augury for the future good relations between the neighbouring islands that the Irish, instead of choosing as their patron saint one of "the host of the saints of Ireland," a native of their own race and country, gave that honour to a man of British race.
The strangest doctrines as to the birthplace of St Patrick have been put forward from time to time, but it is clear that the main authority on the question must be the writings of the saint himself. His own testimony is explicit. In his Confession he frequently mentions the land of his birth. In chapter xxiii he writes, "And again, after a few years, I was in Britain with my kindred, who received me as a son and in good faith besought me that at all events now, after the great tribulations I had undergone, I would not depart from them anywhither." Elsewhere he speaks of proceeding to Britain, "and glad and ready I was to do so, as to my fatherland and kindred, and not only that, but to go as far as Gaul..." (chapter xliii). The earliest life of St Patrick, that by Muirchu, is still more explicit. It opens thus: "Patrick, who was also called Sochet, was of the British race and born in Britain." These passages have been transferred to Brittany in Gaul by many writers from the time of Keating onward; but it is impossible that they could refer to that country, which up to the middle of the sixth century, at least, was known as Armorica, and only adopted the name of Brittany after the flight of the Britons before the Saxons, when large numbers of the persecuted Britons passed overseas and settled on the opposite coasts. [1] For more than a hundred years after Patrick's birth, the date of which must have been 389 or thereabouts, this exodus had not begun. But it was a British population which eventually took root there.
[1] At the Second Council of Tours, in 567, the inhabitants were spoken of as the Britons and Romans of Armorica; and see J. Loth, L'Émigration bretonne en Armorique (1883).
The exact place in which Patrick was born is, and will probably always remain, uncertain. Muirchu calls it Bannavem Thaburinde, or Taberniae, and says that it was "not distant from our sea" (i.e., the Irish Channel), which is a clear indication that it was somewhere on the sea-coast of Britain. Very early Irish writers identify it with Ail-cluide, i.e., "the Rock of Clyde," or Dumbarton. It is so identified in a very ancient note on the name 'Nemthur' in the hymn Genair Patraicc; and also in the Hymn of St Secundinus in praise of the saint, called the first hymn made in Ireland, where it is said, "Now Patrick, of the Britons of Ail-cluide was his origin." Notes found on early copies of his Life in Oxford [2] and in Trinity College, Dublin, [3] make the same statement. There was evidently no prejudice against his British origin in the minds of the early Irish ecclesiastical writers.
[2] Rawl. B. 512, at the foot of fol. 21a.
[3] MS. H. 3. 18, p. 520, 1 20; see Tripartite Life of St Patrick, ed. W. Stokes. PP. xv, xlvii.
The Roman legions at the time of Patrick's birth still retained their hold on Britain, from which they did not finally withdraw till about 418, when the lad had grown to manhood. The Roman organization, though it was gradually breaking up over parts of the country with the recall of the army and officers to the defence of Rome, still held sway over the northern province. The year of his birth had witnessed the defeat and death of Maximus, who had drawn out of Britain a great army, many of whom afterward settled in Armorica as the first contingent of that army of fugitives which was to make a little Britain of their Frankish home, and also the triumphal entry of Theodosius into Rome. During his youth the tidings of the revolt of the barbarians, the invasions of Italy by Alaric and Radagaisus, and the flight of the Emperor Honorius must have been received with eagerness and terror in Britain. The triumphs of Stilicho must have been the more welcome from the protection he had, in an earlier day, extended to their own shores but they were followed, while Patrick was yet but a youth, by the frightful news of the Gothic sieges and sack of the Eternal City under the terrible Alaric. In all these startling events the young Patrick would feel an almost personal interest; his family, whether natives of Strathclyde or Roman in descent, formed part of the Roman organization in Britain; he had been brought up proud of his "free birth" and "noble rank" as the son of a Roman decurion; and it was one of the highest sacrifices he was afterward to be called upon to make when he "sold his noble rank for the profit of others; and became a slave in Christ to a foreign nation [Ireland] for the unspeakable glory of the eternal life which is in Christ Jesus our Lord." [4] Patrick's call to work among this "foreign nation" did not come very early in his life. If, as seems probable, he was born in the year 389 he must have been over forty years of age when Palladius was sent as bishop to the Irish people in 431. [5]
[4] Letter to Coroticus, ch. x, p. 56. Newport White's translation (1920) is used in these quotations. There are also translations of the Saint's writings by Archbishop Healy and others.
[5] The date of St Patrick's birth was probably 389 (this is the date accepted by Prof. Bury in his St Patrick); that of his return to Ireland as bishop, 432; and of his death, 461.
The mission of Palladius had not been a success. Three little churches on the coast of Wicklow attest the reality of his visit, but he soon retired, and died, Nennius tells us, among the Picts. Muirchu, the earliest biographer of St Patrick, says that "the wild and rough people" to whom Palladius was sent "did not readily receive his teaching, nor did he himself desire to spend a long time in a land not his own." It is easy to understand that a foreigner unable to speak the tongue of the people to whom he was sent, and assuming among them episcopal functions, would not be warmly welcomed. Palladius showed, indeed, no anxiety to continue his work among an unwilling nation, whom he perhaps despised, because their ways of life and their primitive form of Christianity were wholly unlike anything to which he had been accustomed.
St Patrick first came to Ireland as a young lad with no official status and with little knowledge of religion. It was during the time of the distant raids and wars of Niall of the Nine Hostages that he and other British youths were carried away from their homes into slavery in Ireland. His own account of himself in his Confession, written in old age when his work was almost done, is our safest guide to a knowledge of his early life. It begins thus: "I, Patrick, the sinner, am the most illiterate and the least of all the faithful, and contemptible in the eyes of very many. My father was Calpurnius, a deacon, one of the sons of Potitus a presbyter, who belonged to the village of Bannavem Taberniae. Now he had a small farm near by, where I was taken captive. I was then about sixteen years of age. I knew not the true God; and I went into captivity to Ireland with many thousands of persons, according to our deserts, because we departed away from God, and kept not His commandments, and were not obedient to our priests who used to admonish us for our salvation. And the Lord poured upon us the fury of His anger and scattered us among the heathen, even to the ends of the earth, where now my littleness may be seen amongst men of another nation." [6]
[6] Confession, ch. i, p. 31.
Thus, humbly and simply, opens the testimony of the man whose work was to leave so deep an impression on the nation to whom he first came as a slave. The Confession, found in the Book of Armagh, is not an autobiography giving the events of his career in order; it is written hurriedly and late in life, under the stress of deep feeling, to defend himself against evil reports put out by his enemies. They hoped to destroy the effect of his work in Ireland by bringing up against him some error of conduct committed in his extreme youth, when he was not yet fifteen years old, and had not yet learned to believe in the living God. [7] He points to the wonderful success of his mission to Ireland as a testimony of its acceptance by God, against the malice of those 'elders' who endeavoured to undermine it. St Patrick's own writings are two in number, but only one is found in the venerable book which takes its name from Patrick's primatial see of Armagh, being long preserved in the abbey church of that city. The writings were copied by a scribe, Ferdomnach by name, [8] at the request of the then abbot, and from a note at the close of the Confession it would seem that he was copying from a manuscript believed to have been written by the saint's own hand. The note runs, "As far as this folio [53 of the manuscript] was written by Patrick's own hand." If we may judge by the difficulty the scribe appears to have had in deciphering it, and the gaps that are found in it, it must have been an old and worn copy.
[7] Ibid. ch. xxvii, p. 40.
[8] Probably between A.D. 807 and A.D. 846.
The chief facts that we learn about the saint's early life are that he was the son of a deacon of noble rank who was also a decurion, or civil officer under the Roman administration, and the owner of a farm on which the boy was brought up. He was of good birth and, as he proudly asserts, a free-born citizen under Roman law. That his father was a man of some wealth is shown by the mention of the manservants and maidservants of whom the marauders made havoc when they attacked his home. [9] The combination of offices held by Calpurnius, which seems strange to us, was not uncommon under the later system of Roman administration. The duties of an Imperial decurion were so onerous that those holding the office often fell heavily into debt. They were responsible for the collection of the taxes of their districts, as well as for the upkeep of the roads and other matters; and many of them entered the army or the church to escape from their obligations to the state. [10] If Patrick's father and grandfather were men of this type it is likely enough that religious teaching took but a small place in the household, and we can understand how the boy, brought up in a family outwardly Christian, could grow up without education and in ignorance of the true God.
[9] Letter to Coroticus, ch. x, p. 56.
[10] See S. Dill, Roman Society in the Last Century of the Western Empire (1899), pp. 250-253, and Bury, History of the Later Roman Empire (1923), ch. i, p. 59. The curiae, or corporations of the cities, were formed of the richest landowners, who bore the burdens of the municipality on their shoulders.
An early and almost universal tradition places the scene of Patrick's captivity with a pagan farmer of Co. Antrim. Here, as he tells us, "tending flocks was my daily occupation; and constantly I used to pray in the daytime. Love of God and the fear of Him increased more and more, and faith grew and the spirit was moved...Before daybreak, I used to be roused to prayer in snow, in frost, in rain, and I felt no hurt...because the spirit was then fervent within me." [11] Muirchu, his earliest biographer, tells us that the name of his master was Miliuc and that his house lay on the southern slopes of Slieve Mis, or Slemish (Co. Antrim). Later in his life, when he returned to Ireland from Gaul, Patrick's first act was to make his way north, carrying in his hand the price of his release from service. But the pagan, "hearing that his old slave was coming to see him to endeavour to make him adopt a religion which he disliked," and fearing that his former slave "would lord it over him," gathered all his property round him and set fire to the house in which he lived as chief. Patrick, coming full of a gracious purpose, was so stupefied at the sight of the blazing pyre that he was speechless for two or three hours. [12]
[11] Confession, ch. xvi, p. 36.
[12] Muirchu, Life of St Patrick, ch. xii, p. 81.
St Patrick's life was a varied one. After his escape from slavery he was taken on board a ship by heathen men carrying in their cargo a number of hounds, probably the already famous Irish wolfhounds which were considered meet gifts for princes in after days. He landed after a stormy passage, on a desert shore, probably in Gaul, which was then wasted by the invasions of the Goths. He seems again to have fallen into captivity; later, he apparently visited his kindred in Britain, who "received him as a son" and besought him, after the great tribulations he had undergone, not to depart again. [13] But Patrick was haunted by visions of "a man coming from Ireland with countless letters," who gave him one, entitled "The Voice of the Irish"; and as he read he thought he heard the voice of them who lived beside the wood of Foclut, which is nigh to the Western Sea, crying with one mouth, "We beseech thee, holy youth, to come once more and walk among us." [14] This vision decided Patrick's future life. He spent some years in Gaul, travelling much, and studying, according to the summary of Tirechan, at the monastic island of Lerins (Atalanensis) and, according to Muirchu, under St Germanus of Auxerre; probably he passed some time in both centres of learning. There is no direct mention of a visit to Rome by his earliest biographers, but it is not improbable that Patrick visited the central church of Christendom at some time during his stay on the Continent. Muirchu speaks of him as "the venerable traveller" when he re-crossed to Ireland, and he himself speaks of being "nearly worn out" when he returned. But the fervour of his soul carried him through nearly thirty years of work in Ireland, work which left an impress on nearly every part of the country. He says that he baptized many thousands and ordained clergy everywhere, "not demanding from any even the price of my shoe"; "sons and daughters of Scotic [Irish] chieftains becoming monks and virgins of Christ." [15]
[13] Confession, ch. xxiii, p. 38.
[14] Ibid. ch. xxiii, pp. 38-39.
[15] Confession, ch. 1, p. 48; ch. xli, p. 45.
His task was a hard one. He was plundered and bound in irons by a chief who "eagerly desired to kill him"; he faced Laery, King of Tara, surrounded by his host of Druids; he had to grieve over the raids of Coroticus, a British king, who carried off newly baptized Christians "still in the white array" of their baptism, to sell them into the hands of Scots and apostate Picts of Strathclyde, cruelly butchering and slaughtering others with the sword. He revised the native system of law and committed it to writing. He taught everywhere the Latin tongue, the language of the Church and of the Scriptures, as he used them. He had to face slander both from the elders of the Church in Britain, and even from "his dearest friend," whom he does not name, but who would seem from the context to have been St Germanus, his teacher at Auxerre, who also gave him consecration. [16] But he succeeded where Palladius had failed; partly, no doubt, because of his familiarity with the Irish tongue, acquired during his years of slavery, but still more because of the simple sincerity of his own life and teaching. In his old age he writes thus in the opening of his Epistle to Coroticus: "Patrick, the sinner, unlearned verily; I confess that I am a bishop, appointed by God in Ireland. Most surely I deem that from God I received what I am. And so I dwell in the midst of barbarians, a stranger and an exile for the love of God. He is witness if this be so." It was undoubtedly the intention and hope of St Patrick to establish in Ireland a Church system similar to that with which he had been familiar in Britain, in Rome, and in Gaul. Roman Britain had long been Christian, and three British sees had been represented at the Council of Arles in 314, and a larger number at the Councils of Sardica in 347 and of Rimini in 359. At an even earlier date Christianity had spread into parts of Britain where the Roman arms had never penetrated, for Tertullian, in 208, had already spoken of "districts in Britain, inaccessible to the Roman arms, but subdued to Christ." [17]
[16] Ibid., ch. xxxii, p. 41. St Germanus was born about 378 and died in 448. He visited Britain twice, in 429 and 447.
[17] Adv. Jud., vii.
Whence this original Christianity had penetrated to Britain it is impossible to say. But the Roman districts of Britain, at least, were early organized into sees, and Patrick, who was proud of his Roman faith and citizenship, [18] and who came to Ireland the second time as an ordained bishop, would naturally endeavour to establish in the country of his adoption the orderly system to which he had been accustomed at home and abroad. In accordance with this desire he founded the earliest bishopric in Ireland, that of Armagh--the first, and for the next 650 years the only fixed episcopal see in Ireland. It is interesting that he chose as the site a spot close to Emain Macha (Navan Fort), the old centre of the heroic tales of Ulster, then disused, so far as we know, but evidently still retaining something of its old prestige. There seems no other reason for the choice of so retired a spot for his bishopric. The few Christian communities in the south-east of Ireland grouped themselves round native teachers, but they were growing up on native lines, with special peculiarities. In particular, they had no episcopal organization, or fixed sees, and the efforts of the Apostle of Ireland to introduce the system prevailing generally in the churches of Western Christendom did not prove a success For centuries afterward bishops in Ireland did not occupy fixed sees, and the country was not laid out in dioceses. They exercised their episcopal functions within the monasteries in a position subordinate to the abbot, who was their head and superior officer. Some others were wandering bishops, who moved about within or outside the country on missionary journeys. Even Armagh did not long retain its metropolitan character. On the death of St Patrick in 461-462, he was succeeded in the bishopric by his pupil, St Benen, and from that time till the death of Ailill, the fifth of his successors, there was a regular sequence of bishops of Armagh after the usual Church manner of organization; but from 526 onward the title of bishop is, except in rare instances, dropped, and the holders of the see are styled abbots, the future bishops being apparently, as in other Irish monasteries, subject to the abbot. [19] Thus Armagh, unable to resist the pressure of native custom, fell into line with the other Christian settlements all over the country and became primarily a monastic centre. It was not until the twelfth century that the archbishopric of Armagh was restored, and the bishopric of Cashel substituted for the abbacy of Cashel in the south, by the direct action of the Pope. Between the time of St Patrick and this late date the native Irish Church had quietly pursued her way, covering the land with Christian settlements formed on a tribal basis and within the limits of the tribe, each under some noted saint or teacher who was the inspiring spirit of his group and the abbot of his monastery. The importance attached to the office of abbot in Ireland is quaintly expressed by the Irish custom of calling the Pope Abbot (Abb) of Rome instead of Bishop of Rome, while in a singular invocation known as the "Path Protector" St Columcille speaks of Christ as "Son of Mary, the Great Abbot." It was only slowly, in the course of centuries, that the native Church gave up certain national peculiarities, such as the form of the Irish tonsure, and the old date of keeping Easter. It retained its marked monastic character all through the period of its greatest activity, and it carried on that work of evangelization and education not only within, but far beyond the limits of Ireland, which has ever since been considered its greatest glory.
[18] "Church of the Scots," he exclaims, "nay, of the Romans! In order that ye be Christians as well as Romans ye must chant in your churches at every hour of prayer that glorious word, Kyrie eleison, Christe eleison" (Dicta Patricii, from the Book of Armagh). Even if these words are later St Patrick's day they seem to convey the spirit of his teaching.
[19] H. J. Lawlor, in P.R.I.A., vol. xxxv, Sect. C, No. 9 (1919).
St Brigit's monastery of Kildare formed a link between the Church of St Patrick and the monastic foundations that sprang up all over the country with an almost simultaneous growth from about 530 onward. It was a mixed convent, and Cogitosus, the father of Muirchu, who wrote her life, [20] tells us that in his time the church of Kildare was large and lofty, with many pictures and hangings and ornamental doorways. It had a partition which ran down the church lengthways, dividing the men who sat on the right from the women who sat on the left side of the nave. It was in her church that the Welsh historian of the Norman conquest saw in 1185 the illuminated book which was of such great beauty that he was ready to assert that it was the work of angelic and not of human skill. Kildare may have been one of the centres for this exquisite work; very early it possessed a school which produced chalices, bells, and shrines.
[20] Trias Thaumaturga (Louvain), p. 524. This must have been the earliest life of any Irish saint.
During the twenty-five years after Brigit's death many of the most famous of the Irish foundations were established and were in full working order. Nendrum, in Strangford Lough, now Inish Mahee, or Mahee Island, under Abbot Mochaoi; Clonard and Moville, Co. Down, under the two Finnians; Clonmacnois on the Shannon under Ciaran; Bangor under Comgall, Glasnevin under Mobhi, were among the earliest of which we know the history, but the two monasteries of Birr and Clonfert, under the two Brendans, that of Molaise of Devenish in Lough Erne, and that of Senan on Scattery Island in the Shannon, were probably founded about the same date. Many of these famous men studied together in the school of Finnian of Clonard and formed lasting friendships. The latter was known as "Finnian the Wise, teacher of the saints of Ireland." The most important group of monasteries was that founded by the great Columcille, the future founder of Iona, or Hi, in Scotland, who in rapid succession established the monasteries of Derry, Raphoe, Durrow, Glencolumcille, Lambey, Swords, and many others, the head of the group being Kells, in Co. Meath.
The extension of the monastic system was abnormal, and it cannot be understood unless we have formed a clear idea as to what an Irish monastic foundation of this period was like. It was no single building of large size capable of holding numbers of persons. It generally arose around the person of some teacher whose fame had gone abroad and around whose hut, often intended originally as a hermitage or retreat, the cells of his pupils began to be raised by their own hands, made, according to the conditions of the district, either of wattle or of stone. Gradually, as people gathered, and fresh huts and oratories were constructed, the place would assume the aspect of a regular settlement. Rules were laid down, and a regular order was introduced into the work and worship of the day, and some of these establishments attracted as many as three thousand persons. They were partly educational, partly agricultural, and wholly religious. They came gradually to include the larger part of the entire Christian population. Each establishment was self-contained, having its own fields for growing corn and vegetables, its own mills, kilns, storehouses, and barns. The students and monks did the entire work of the place, sowing, reaping, carrying burdens to the mill, grinding corn, and performing in general the duties of the settlement. Even the abbots and bishops are found ploughing the fields, grinding corn, and fulfilling other agricultural offices. The extreme simplicity of life in these early monasteries must be carefully borne in mind. Part of each day was set apart for the instruction of students and part for active duties, while the offices of the Church were regularly and minutely observed. It was a system suited to the needs of a primitive and unlettered people and well calculated to guide and elevate them. These communities set before the entire population a new ideal of ordered, industrial life, sanctified by religion and enlarged by study. The highest saints retained to the end this primitive simplicity. St Brigit, after she had founded Kildare, still milked the cows, herded sheep, baked bread, churned milk, and carried on the ordinary work of a household, besides her care of the sick and lepers. When Columcille went to Bishop Etchen for consecration, he found him ploughing in his fields; when, in later life, he visited Clonmacnois the monks gathered hastily from the little grange farms on which they were working in order to receive him with honour. He himself and St Ciaran of Clonmacnois reaped and ploughed, and even ground corn in the quern, which was the office of the women-slaves. Nor did they look upon such labours as derogatory; they rather felt them to be ennobling and elevating. St Nathalan, a Scottish Celtic monk, believed "that in the lowly work of cultivating the earth, he approached nearest to the divine contemplation; therefore, though of noble birth, he practised with his own hands the lowly art of cultivating the fields," and this must have been the attitude of many even greater than he.
Reading and writing, the copying and multiplication of copies of the Gospels and the Psalms, the study of Latin and the making of ecclesiastical bells, crosses, book-satchels, and covers for illuminated books, occupied all of the day not occupied in religious or agricultural matters. The industry of many of these great teachers in copying books, chiefly the Gospels and Psalms, was remarkable. St Patrick is said to have "sowed the four books of the Gospel in Erin"; and St Columba is stated to have written three hundred books with his own hand, this being his chief occupation whenever he went for a time into retreat in the island of Eigg. St Finnian of Clonard is said to have given a copy of the Gospels to every church he founded. Besides the books needed for the services of the Church, we read of boys going to school with leather satchels of books upon their backs, and in the libraries that gradually grew up in connexion with the monastic schools these hand-written volumes were preserved in such satchels hung round the walls on pegs. A few have survived the lapse of time and still exist.
In the beginning few, if any, of the copies were illuminated; they were designed solely to meet the needs of the oratories scattered over the country; but two at least of the most elaborate and precious specimens of Irish illuminated art, the Book of Durrow and the Book of Kells, now in the Library of Trinity College, Dublin, come down from the seventh and eighth centuries, proving that already the art of book-illumination had reached its highest beauty of execution. Kells was the central church of the large Columban group of monasteries, taking precedence even of Iona, so there was a reason for the preservation there of this exquisite specimen of the draughtsman's art. It once had a wonderful cover of great value from the precious stones with which it was inlaid, but at an early period this cover was stolen, and it no longer exists. The Book of Durrow had a special sanctity from the belief that it was the work of Columcille's own hand; it seems, at least, to have been copied from his original. Both books are copies of the Gospels. The metal covers, on which the gold-workers of the day lavished their most careful art, are of later date; they were used for enclosing bells, manuscripts, and relics.
An ancient Irish Catalogue of Saints mentions that one of the special features of the 'second order' of saints was the great variety in their masses and monastic rules, one of which was said to have been introduced into Ireland by the British or Welsh bishops David, Cadoc, and Gildas. There is no doubt that the rules varied in different monasteries, each founder framing his own rule for the guidance of the monks who joined his foundation. They differed considerably in length and strictness. Some contained only general admonitions to penitence, love of God, fasting, and prayer, with a spirit apart from the world and devoted to the contemplation of heavenly things. Many are in verse, no doubt in order to be more easily remembered or for chanting. One of them, ascribed to the King-abbot of Cashel, Cormac MacCuilennan, in the ninth century, describes the low-voiced congregation singing the melodious song of the believers; he calls on them to join in the chanting of the rule, "the song which the ancients have sung." [21] In some rules we can trace the gradual introduction of severer admonitions, added to the original simpler regulations, and imposing greater mortifications. Of one called "An old Irish metrical rule" we have two versions. One, which apparently gives the original standard of an early date, says "These are thy three rules--have thou nought else more dear --patience, humility, and the love of God in thy heart." The other enjoins more explicit humiliations: "Three hundred prostrations every day and three at every canonical hour; two hundred blows on the hands every Lent will be a help." [22] There still exist rules attributed to SS. Ciaran, Manach Liath, or "the grey monk," Carthach or Mochuta of Rathin, Columban, Maelruain of Tallaght, and other well-known founders of monasteries. They were probably in use in the foundations established by the saints whose names they bear. Some were of great severity; the rule of St Columban, which divided the working day between copying manuscripts, teaching in the schools, and labour in the field and forest, enjoined severe punishments for the least infraction of the orders, amounting to two hundred stripes for some offences or rigorous and prolonged fasting for others. The discipline in the monastery of St Fintan at Clonenagh was so stern that the neighbouring clerics, feeling that the life of these monks was a reproach to them, begged Fintan, for the love of God, to relax its extreme rigour. His monks were not allowed to have any animals or ever to eat meat; even milk and butter were not permitted and, if offered, must be refused. He finally consented to make some changes for the brethren, but continued the same way of life for himself.
[21] Ériu, ii, 63 seq.
[22] Ériu, 1, 191 seq.
The old Irish tract De Arreis shows to what a pitch punishments for ecclesiastical offences could be carried in the Irish Church. [23] There were, however, monasteries where such excessive austerities were discouraged. In the rule of St Ailbe it is said that if the erennach, [24] who had under his charge the secular affairs and provisioning of the establishment, were wise, his rule should not be too harsh; "as the food shall be, so will the order be." "Let it not be too strict, neither let it be lax; let it not be a rule without knowledge, so that each may be able to bear his yoke." [25] In Tallaght, where Maelruain the Abbot did not approve of listening to music, as distracting the mind from its religious duties, and would allow neither a morsel of meat to be eaten nor a drop of beer, "the liquor that causes forgetfulness of God," to be drunk during his lifetime, we are told that fasting was not commended, but that a regular measured pittance was preferred by the Abbot. To a man much given to severe austerities he even refused admission, saying, "Those who are here, while they do their proper share of work, are able to eat their rations. Thou wilt not fit among them. Thou wilt neither do active work nor be able to eat thy rations." [26]
[23] Revue Celtique, xv, 485 seq.
[24] The erennach (airchinneach) seems to have combined the offices of archdeacon and steward; he farmed the Church lands. See O'Laverty Down and Connor (1887), iv. 61-62.
[25] Eriu, iii, 97 seq.
[26] P.R.I.A., vol. xxix, Sect. C, No. 5 (1911).
Of the monastic schools of Northern Ireland the three most important were Armagh, Bangor, and Clonmacnois. We have the fullest account of Bangor, preserved by the pen of the great St Bernard, in his life of St Malachy, or Mael Maedoc Ua Morgair, who in the twelfth century rebuilt the monastery, destroyed by the raids of the Danes in the early ninth century, when "its learned men and bishops were slain by the sword," and the relics of Comgall, its founder, shaken out of their shrine. But the tradition of its ancient fame was fresh in the mind of Malachy as he set about to rebuild, and he had communicated to his close friend, St Bernard, his own enthusiasm for the original Bangor of the sixth century. "For, indeed," the latter writes, "there had been formerly a very celebrated monastery under the first father, Comgall, which produced many thousands of saints, bringing forth most abundant fruit to God, so that one of the sons of that holy community, Lugaid by name, is said to have been the founder, himself alone, of a hundred monasteries." Bangor was founded in 559, and according to the Latin life of Comgall, so great a number of monks resorted to him that there was not room for them, and he had to found cells and monasteries in different parts of Ireland and Scotland to contain them all. He is said to have presided over three thousand monks, but such figures have to be accepted with caution. Still, the numbers in some of the Irish and Welsh foundations were very large. St Columban the most distinguished of the Bangor saints "who poured forth like a flood into foreign lands," is said by St Bernard to have established at Luxeuil the system of continuous church worship practised at Bangor, where the choirs succeeded each other in turn, "so that not a moment of the day or night was empty of praise." The Antiphonary of Bangor, found at Bobbio, shows that St Columban founded his cycle of the divine offices on the order familiar to him in his old monastery. The continuous office may have been a feature of the many monasteries called Bangor, or Benagher, in Ireland and Wales.
No less distinguished was the school of Clonmacnois on the Shannon, founded by St Ciaran near the site already famous as the burial-place of ancient kings, but now to become still more famous as the principal seat of learning and literature in the West. To Colcu, its fer-leginn, or chief professor, Alcuin addressed a letter from the Court of Charlemagne, enclosing a contribution of fifty shekels "from the King's bounty" and from himself fifty shekels, with a request that they will pray for him and for King Charles. He also sent a gift of oil to divide among the bishops, oil being now "a scarce article in Britain." He addresses Colcu, who has left a curious poem called "The Besom of Devotion," as "the blessed master and pious founder," and his letter is full of interesting details on matters of public interest in France and Europe generally, showing that even an isolated school like Clonmacnois was concerned about the current events of the larger world. Much literary and historical work of value was accomplished in later times at Clonmacnois. There the Leabhar na h-Uidhre, or "Book of the Dun Cow," was compiled about 1100; it contains the most ancient surviving collection of the old romances, together with much other material. The oldest existing annals, written by Tighernach partly in Latin and partly in Irish, were also produced there in the eleventh century, and the Chronicum Scotorum was probably written there. There must have been an extensive library in the monastery, for Tighernach quotes freely from Latin authors as well as from Irish and British authorities. The remains of its churches, its round tower, and its splendid crosses attest its former importance; but of Bangor not a trace is left.
The Norse raids of the ninth century made a break in the continuity of the schools, large numbers of the professors and scholars passing over to the Continent so that they might carry on their work in safety; but when quiet returned the old haunts in Ireland again became homes of study. It was at this time that Clonmacnois and Armagh attained their highest position as places of learning, the number of fer-leginn or professors increased, and Armagh, in particular, held so high a position that it was ordained at the Synod of Clane in 1162 that no one should henceforth be permitted to give public lectures in Holy Scripture or in theology unless he had spent some time studying at Armagh. This would seem to imply that Armagh was then considered the chief school or university. When the city was burned down in 1020 the library fortunately escaped, though the books in the dwellings of the students, all of course in manuscript, were destroyed.
During these centuries the borders of Ireland had been freely opened to the world, and commerce and friendly intercourse were encouraged with all who desired it. In the most active period of her early Christianity pilgrims seem to have gathered from every land to her shores. A Litany of Saints, known popularly as the Litany of Aengus, [27] composed about the seventh century, mentions lists of these foreigners who came to enter the Irish monasteries, or to make their home in the country. Roman pilgrims to various foundations are mentioned, and Gauls appear to have come in considerable numbers. The presence of Romans in Ireland is also attested by the inscription Septem romani in the churchyard of St Brecan at Aranmore. [28] In the life of St Senan we hear of a ship's crew of fifty Italians "from the lands of Latium" coming on pilgrimage to Ireland. [29] A Frankish priest and an English archdeacon are said to have settled in Glendalough, and seven Egyptian monks in Desert Kilaigh. Greeks are said to have trafficked at the Irish provincial fairs, and some of them appear to have settled down permanently, for as late as Ussher's day there was a Greek church at Trim in Co. Meath, its site retaining the name of Greek Park up to recent times.
[27] Edited by Charles Plummer (Henry Bradshaw Society), vol. lxii (1925), pp. 54 seq.
[28] Petrie, Christian Inscriptions, ii, Pl. XIV.
[29] Lives of the Saints from the Book of Lismore, ed. W. Stokes (1890) p. 209, l. 2069.
Nor were her nearest neighbours excluded. One of the most important settlements, frequently mentioned, was that of the Saxons in Mayo, in a district which bore the name of "Mayo of the Saxons" until much later times. It was the adverse result of the Synod of Whitby in 664, where the Columban and the Continental teachers disputed the question of the correct date for keeping Easter, that determined the emigration of these Columban monks under Bishop Colman from Northumbria to Iona and thence to Ireland. Colman was accompanied by many of the nobility and of the lower ranks of the English nation, who thought as he did, and they passed over in the year of the great plague, called in Ireland the Buidhe Conaill, which was raging alike in Ireland and England, and settled in the solitary island which Bede calls Inis-bo-finde, or "the Isle of the White Cow," now Inisbofin, off the coast of Connemara. Here he founded a monastery for the Columban monks of both nations. [30] They were willingly received by the Irish, who supplied them with books and food, but they do not seem to have agreed well, for they eventually separated, the Irish monks remaining at Inisbofin, while the English monks settled in Mayo (Magheo, "the Yew Plain" ), where a large establishment grew up, which was constantly recruited from England. Some of them devoted themselves to conventual life, but others, choosing to apply themselves to study, wandered about from one teacher to another according to the Irish plan. The Litany of Saints speaks of 3300 students who settled in Mayo, under Bishops Gerald [31] and Egbert, the latter a young English noble "who long lived a stranger in Ireland for the sake of the eternal kingdom." He afterward became Abbot of Iona and did much to induce the monks to adopt the Roman date for the celebration of Easter, having been enjoined to do so in a vision, "because their ploughs do not go straight." He was stricken with the plague, but recovered, and passed a long and strenuous life in combating the peculiarities of the Columban Church customs and bringing them into conformity with the general Western use. [32] Bede mentions the names of many others who went over to Ireland, either to adopt the hermit's life or for study. One of these was Wictbert, who became the first missionary to Friesland.
[30] Bede, Eccl. Hist., Bk. III, ch. xxvi-xxvii, and Bk. IV, ch. iv; Calendar of Aengus, ed. W. Stokes (1880), August 8, and note on p. cxxx.
[31] P. 57; and see "Life of St Gerald," Vitae Sanc. Hib., ii, 106 seq.
[32] Bede, Eccl. Hist., Bk. III, ch. xxvii; Bk. IV, ch. iii; Bk. V, ch. ix, xxii.
In the notes to the Calendar of Aengus [33] we hear of several early settlements of English besides those of Inisbofin and Mayo in Connacht. One was in the barony of Cianachta, in the present Co. Londonderry; another at Tullalease of the Saxons (Tulach-leis na Saxan), in Co. Cork; still another at O'Connell Gawra (Ui Conaill Gabhra), in Co. Tipperary. This shows that up to the twelfth century, when many of these notes were added to the Calendar, distinct English settlements were recognized in different parts of the country. They must have been still existing when Henry II came over. In the tenth century, when the schools of Armagh were at the height of their influence, they were resorted to in such numbers by English students that one-third of the monastic city was set apart for them. It was known as Trian Saxan, or the "Saxon Third," or "Quarter," and retained this name up to a late period.
[33] Calendar of Aengus, note on December 8, pp. clxxx-clxxxi; and see also p. cxxxv, where the district of the Little Saxons is mentioned, near Scattery Island, in the Shannon.
There are numerous records both of friendly and warlike relations between the two peoples during the early centuries which accord well with the known facts. Keating remarks that Ireland was a place of refuge for Britons who fled from the oppression of the Romans and Saxons, and that they found land there for themselves and their families, teaching their children Irish and carrying back with them many Gaelic words to England. He speaks of townlands named after them Graig na mBreathnach ("the Hamlet of the Britons" ), Baile or Dun na mBreathnach ("the Village or Fort of the Britons"), etc. [34] Intermarriages between Welsh and Saxon princesses and Irish chiefs are mentioned in many of the old stories. Later on, Keating quotes Hanmer's record of the visit of a king of Wales named Cadualin, who was banished to Ireland by Edwin, son of Æthelfred, in 635, and of two British princes, Haralt and Conan, who fled to Ireland in 1050 and were protected by the Irish; also of another Welsh chief, Bleithin ap Conan, who was maintained there in 1087. "Thus from age to age did they cultivate alliance and intercourse with one another."
[34] Keating, History, ii, 69,70-72, quoting Hanmer's Chronicle for the latter statement.
An earlier Lord of Pembroke than Strongbow is said to have married a daughter of Murtogh O'Brien in 1101; and Griffin ap Conan, the prince who occupied the throne of Wales in the time of Henry I of England, could boast that both his mother and grandmother were Irishwomen, and that it was in Ireland that he was born and educated in polite manners. The Norman-Welsh who accompanied Henry II to Ireland came to a country with which they were familiar, and with which they had long had intimate dealings.
In the North of Ireland the connexion was particularly close. Though the Romans had never, in a military sense, set foot in Ireland, Agricola says that in his day her harbours were well known at Rome. A considerable number of silver coins dating from the time of Constantius II to that of Honorius, with others about the same date, have been found in the North of Ireland, especially about Coleraine, showing that a certain amount of trade was in progress with Roman Britain, or Gaul. [35] During the seventh and eighth centuries the British took part on several occasions in the wars of Dalriada, or Eastern Ulster, on one side or the other. A host out of Britain, Saxon-land, and France is said to have assisted Con-gal Claen in the great historical battle of Magh Rath, or Moira, against his fosterfather King Donnell, prince of the peoples of Conaill and Eoghan, in 637. [36] This battle is mentioned by Adamnan and called by him Bella Roth.
[35] See Sir W. Ridgeway's paper on Niall of the Nine Hostages (Journal of Roman Studies, 1924).
[36] Battle of Magh Rath, ed. J. O'Donovan (Irish Archaeological Society, 1842).
Besides the intercourse with Britain there was also an independent trade with Gaul and Spain. The oldest version of the "Wooing of Emer," one of the most famous of the Cuchulain stories, speaks of "wine of Gaul" being brought to Ireland by one who purported to come on an embassy from the King of the Gauls--an early example of a trade destined to continue for many centuries. In the life of St Ciaran of Clonmacnois we hear of "a cask full of wine from the land of the Franks" being bestowed upon him. This was one of those acts of friendly intercourse which show that a constant interchange was kept up between that now retired spot and the Frankish Court and nobility. In Jocelyn's Life of St Patrick we are told that wine, honey, iron, and salt were imported into Dublin from ancient times, while the exports were mead, beer, shoes, and gloves. Wine was at all times a large article of import. Spanish and French wines were the usual beverage drunk in all the larger houses from the fourteenth century onward, whisky (uisge beathadh) becoming common about the sixteenth century, though the bards ignored and perhaps despised it. We hear of a chief of the Hy-Many who received an annual tribute in wine from one of his underlings; it was shipped into a harbour in Connacht, and carried up to his house. The "sea-laws" of the Book of Aicill relate to trading regulations for vessels arriving either from Britain or from abroad on the Irish coasts; [37] and Jonas in his life of St Columban, who crossed from Ireland to Nantes, speaks of a ship "which plied for the sake of commerce" between the two countries. Among the articles of commerce were the splendid wolfhounds bred in Ireland, which were so highly esteemed throughout the Middle Ages that they were offered as royal gifts to friendly potentates up to the seventeenth century; St Patrick's vessel sailing to Gaul contained a pack of these noble dogs. [38]
[37] Ancient Laws and Institutes of Ireland, iii, 423.
[38] Confession, ch. xix, p. 37.
From an early period Leinster was closely connected with Gaul, and a considerable portion of its inhabitants derived their origin from that country. "There was," says Keating, quoting old traditions, "a special friendly understanding between the Leinstermen and the French." He makes the curious statement that in early times "every province in Ireland had formed a special alliance of friendship beyond the sea, the Clann Neill [of Western Ulster] with the Scots, the men of Munster with the English, the [Eastern] Ulstermen with the Spaniards, the men of Connacht with the Welsh, and the Leinstermen with the Franks." [39] He quotes this from a poem of the bard John, son of Torna O'Mulconaire, who lived early in the fourteenth century, when these traditions were still alive among the people. The story that King Lowry (Labhraidhe) the Exile sought an asylum in France and returned bringing with him many foreigners "who were not of the Gael" seems to have confirmation from other sources. There is a tradition that the province of Leinster (Laighin) was named from the broad green-blue iron heads of the spears (laighne) of the foreigners who accompanied him; and those newcomers, known as Galian, were looked upon with jealousy by the older inhabitants on account of their superior celerity and expertness in matters of camp-warfare, as the story of the Táin bó Cúalnge shows. [40] The name is sometimes applied to the whole of the Leinstermen. The only instance of a chariot-burial being alluded to in Irish story is in connexion with this Lowry, who may have become familiar with this mode of burial of chiefs in Gaul. [41] There are many Gaulish names in the Irish genealogies, and we hear in early times of a place in Westmeath called Bordgal, the Irish form of the French Burdigala, or Bordeaux. The Litany of Saints mentions seven bishops of the Irish Bordgal, and in the life of St Colman MacLuachan [42] it is stated that two places were bestowed upon the saint in what was afterward Queen's County, called Bordgal and Lemchail. There seems to have been still another place of the same name, commonly corrupted to Bordwell, in the parish of Aghaboe; old records give it under the earlier form. It would seem likely that these places in Ireland were named by settlers from the French Bordgal, or Bordeaux.
[39] Keating, History, ii, 167, 168.
[40] Windisch, Táin bó Cúalnge, p. 51; Hull, Cuchullin Saga, pp. 125-126.
[41] Dobbs, "Chariot-burial in Ireland," in Zeit. für Celtische Philologie (1912), viii, 278.
[42] Todd Lectures, R. I. A. (1911), p. 63, and note on p. 116.
Dr Kuno Meyer, [43] following up an interesting suggestion made by Professor Zimmer, ascribes the revived intellectual impulse visible in Ireland from the sixth century onward to the arrival from Gaul of a body of learned men flying in the fifth century before the irruption of the Goths and Huns, and he relies for this explanation on a passage in the writings of a Gaulish grammarian named Virgilius Maro, who lived in the fifth century, near the time of the exodus of which he speaks, and whose works were read in Ireland. Virgilius says that "the depopulation of the entire Empire commenced...and owing to their devastations all the learned men on this side of the sea fled away, and in transmarine parts, i.e., in Hiberia and wherever they betook themselves, they brought about a very great advance of learning to the inhabitants of those regions." Zimmer and Meyer would read "Hibernia" for "Hiberia," or Spain, which would not be called a "transmarine" district or be reached across sea. The comparative quietude of Ireland would make it a natural place of resort for the hunted scholars. However this may be, it is certain that Ireland never lost touch with the main currents of classical and theological literature in Europe and the East, and that traditions, legends, and apocryphal literature, as well as some knowledge of Greek and a full competence in Latin, survived there, much of which was stamped out elsewhere by the inroads of the barbarians. Ireland never suffered the decay of religion and learning consequent on the devastations which befell Gaul and threw back its civilization for nearly three hundred years.
[43] Learning in Ireland in the Fifth Century (1913).
We may take it that Ireland had, before the seventh century, absorbed into its population large numbers of foreigners Leinster was intermixed both with British and Gaulish settlers, the South must always have had a considerable Spanish element, and Ulster an admixture both of Norse, Picts, and Scots. There were English or Saxon centres in Ulster, Connacht, and Munster. Even before the historical period of the Norse incursions, which brought in a large new element, the Irish nation, far from being a pure race, must have been one of the most varied in Western Europe; but long before the eighth century these had become absorbed into the older populations, speaking their language, and living in large part like the people among whom they had settled. The stranger, from whatever country he hailed, if left to himself without outside interference made himself speedily at home and grew proud to call himself an Irishman. It was outside influences alone that interrupted this natural process.
In the seventh century we find, on the other hand, Irish students crowding the classes of Archbishop Theodore of Canterbury, who had come to England from Rome in 664, and whose instruction in Greek made his school a centre for those who desired the higher learning. The restless Irish scholars seem to have had some sharp passages at arms with their teacher. Aldhelm, who was also a student, describes how they baited the Archbishop, who, however, proved more than a match for his unruly pupils. "He treated them as a truculent boar treats the Molossian hounds. He tore them with the tusk of grammar and shot them with the deep and sharp syllogisms of chronography, till they cast away their weapons and hurriedly fled to the recesses of their dens."
At the same time that Irish students were studying Greek with Theodore at Canterbury, and Latin and the arts under the teachers of Malmesbury, English youths were resorting to Ireland, thus bringing about an interchange of thought and learning which was to the advantage of both countries. Among the numerous students whom Bede mentions as having gone for study to the Irish schools was Aiden, first bishop of Lindisfarne (635), who is said to have spoken English so imperfectly on his return that Oswald, King of Northumbria, who had also made himself proficient in the Irish tongue during a long banishment in that country, went about with him to translate his sermons. Later the young Northumbrian prince Aldfrid (sometimes erroneously confused with Alfred the Great), who had been excluded from the throne on account of illegitimate birth, and who was of a studious disposition, crossed over to devote himself to literature, "suffering a voluntary exile to gratify his love of knowledge." He was recalled to the throne on the death of his brother Egbert and proved a worthy and noble king. He is said to have been "most learned in the Scriptures," and he "nobly retrieved the ruined state of the kingdom while confining it within narrower limits." In Ireland he was known as Flann Fina, from his mother, Fina, who according to Irish accounts was of the Irish race of Niall. He loved the country of his exile, and a poem in its praise is ascribed to him. Among other students of high rank was the Frankish prince who afterward became King Dagobert II, who passed his youth in foreign lands as an exile from his country, and whose student days were spent at the school of Slane, in Westmeath. It is a testimony to the widespread reputation of the Irish schools in the seventh century that one of them should have been chosen for the education of this Frankish prince by the lords of his household. On his return home in 670 the young prince was attended by a train of Irish friends, one of whom, St Arbogast, he raised to the see of Strassburg. His successor founded there a monastery for ' Scots ' or Irish in 687. Another of his followers, Maelceadar, an Irish warrior, became a person of distinction at Dagobert's Court. His wife, St Waldetrude, the patroness of Mons, accompanied her husband when he went on a visit to his native land to invite Irish teachers to come over and settle in the Frankish kingdom.
Students repairing to Ireland for study were free to pass from school to school and to choose their own masters. There must have been some great attraction in the Irish student's life, for Aldhelm, in a letter addressed to three young men just returned from Ireland, exclaims, "Why does Ireland pride herself on a sort of priority, in that such numbers of students flock there from England, as if here upon this fruitful soil there were not an abundance of Argive and Roman masters to be found, fully capable of solving the deepest problems of religion and satisfying the most ambitious students?" [44]
[44] The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, under 891, speaks of three Irish pilgrims who arrived in England in a boat without any oars, and who were cared for by King Alfred the Great. Their names were Dubhslane, Macbeth, and Mealinmun.
Many of the foremost of the Welsh teachers and saints gained part of their education in Ireland. St Gildas, the historian, frequently visited the country and is said to have "revived faith and discipline" and to have given to it a special Mass. St Cadoc, or Cathmael, the Wise, founder of the important monastery of Llancarvan, had been baptized and instructed by an Irish hermit named Tathai, who had settled in Wales and who taught St Cadoc grammar, the Scriptures, and the liberal arts for twelve years. Determining to perfect himself in the advanced learning then only to be acquired in Ireland, St Cadoc passed over in a coracle built by himself to Lismore, where he was received by "the master of the city [monastery] and all the clergy," and he remained three years "perfecting himself in the learning of the West." All his life he continued to wear the rough and hairy mantle "such as the Irish wear out of doors," and one of his special treasures was a small bell of peculiar sweetness which he brought back from Lismore. [45] St Padarn, St Cybi, and others built churches in Leinster, and as late as 1058 St Sulien the Wise, founder of the college of Llanbadarn Fawy, "stirred by the example of the fathers," spent thirteen years studying in Ireland. Some valuable manuscripts of his family and school remain. On the other hand, many of the chief Irish founders of monasteries passed part of their early life in Wales. It is even said that when the "Priority and Headship" of the Welsh Church was in question, the population being undecided whether to elect St David or St Gildas, the young Finnian of Clonard, who was standing among the huge assembly, was called upon to give an impartial opinion. He gave his award for St David "in such good Welsh that it might have been his mother-tongue." [46] An example of what was constantly going on is the story of the "fleet of Irish ships" which one day sailed into the harbour of Hayle, in Cornwall, where they were attacked by the inhabitants and many killed. The few who escaped entrenched themselves on a hill, and they gradually extended their power over the Land's End district. A large part of Cornwall became Irish, the original inhabitants taking flight overseas to Brittany, along with emigrants from Devon and Wales. There are also a great number of dedications to Irish saints in Brittany. From the north of Scotland southward to Cornwall we find Irish dedications in great plenty; St Brigit is found all over the Hebrides, St Finnbarr of Cork in Argyllshire, St Cainnech of Aghaboe is the St Kenneth of St Andrews. St Bees Head is so called from St Bega, and Brandon Head, near Bristol, from St Brendan, the navigator saint. The wide influence of the Irish Church in early times is clearly shown. [47]
[45] W. J. Rees, Lives of the Cambro-British Saints, pp. 313-317, 326, 352.
[46] Stokes, Lives of the Saints from the Book of Lismore, pp. 222-223.
[47] Plummer, Vitae Sanctorum Hiberniae, Introduction, pp. cxxiv-cxxvi; Baring-Gould and Fisher, British Saints, Introduction.
In the heart of Somerset the romantic village of Glastonbury was in old days known as "Glastonbury of the Gaels." It was founded by an Irish monk and seems to have been the special resort of pilgrims from Beggery Island in Wexford Harbour. The Irish tradition is very strong in Glastonbury. On either side of the figure of St Dunstan on the great seal of the monastery are found those of St Patrick and St Brigit. It was an old belief that St Patrick died here, but this "Sen-Patrick," or old Patrick, was probably another saint of the same name. Nevertheless, this tradition was one of the most persistent causes of the flocking to Glastonbury of Irish students and pilgrims. The life of St Dunstan says that "men of the Irish nation inhabited the place in large numbers, men who were most skilful and had fully given up their mental energies to the prosecution of the liberal arts; who, that they might the more entirely devote themselves to philosophy, leaving their native land and laying aside all their old habits, had hastened to Glastonbury, attracted by love of their first preacher St Patrick, whose corporal shell is from antiquity said to have been deposited there." [48] It is possible that it was the presence of these Irish students that infused into the severe mind of St Dunstan that love of music and the liberal arts for which he and his monastery became celebrated, just as in the neighbouring monastery of Malmesbury, founded by an Irish hermit named Maelduf, Aldhelm found a congenial atmosphere for the cultivation of that love of music which led him in later days to sing, on open ways and bridges, songs and religious poems to the chance passer-by.
[48] Vita Sancti Dunstani, ed. William Stubbs (1874), pp. 10, 74, 256, etc.; cf. William of Malmesbury, De Antiquitate Glastoniensis.
Though the western coasts were naturally the first to be invaded many Irish wanderers found their way farther afield. The dreamer of one of the earliest visions of heaven and hell, St Fursey, or Fursius (b. 633), was a Galway youth "of noble Irish blood, but much more noble in mind than in birth." He made his way across England and settled in the kingdom of Sigebert of the East Angles, in order to escape from the crowds that followed him in his own country. There he built his monastic cells "pleasantly situated in the woods and with the sea not far off," wherein he might the more freely indulge his heavenly studies. It was there he saw his strange vision of the other world, the earliest of those apocalyptic writings which were to find their culmination in the thirteenth century in the Divina Commedia of Dante. [49] Fursey seems to have been accompanied by a band of Irish followers, for, when he decided to cross to France to found his two monasteries of Péronne and Lagry on the Marne, he left behind him at his older foundation two priests of Gaelic name, Gobban and Dicuil, and took with him another named Ultan to join his anchorite cell in France.
[49] Bede, Eccl. Hist., Bk. iii, ch. xix.
This is not the place to relate at length the lives and labours of the Irish evangelists abroad. The place of honour must be assigned to Columban, who passed forth with twelve companions from the great school of Bangor, Co. Down, landed in Gaul, and reached Burgundy about the year 574, at the age of thirty-one. He settled down among the forests of the Vosges, building his simple monastery under the walls of a ruined castle at Annegray, and living chiefly on the wild fruits and herbs of the woods. Here he composed the rule for his monks, and though it was severe the gentle character of its followers drew many to join his order. He boldly attacked the vices of the three kings who ruled in Gaul, and he won over one of them, Sigisbert, who offered him land on which to build. Twice he was called into Italy to combat the Arian heresy and his conversion of the Lombard king, Agilulph, who began his reign in 590, led to the offer of any piece of land he might choose if he would consent to stay in Italy. He longed for solitude and chose a spot high among the Apennines which was destined to become famous as the monastery of Bobbio, the fourth of the monasteries founded abroad by Columban, the other three, Annegray, Luxeuil, and Fontaines being in Gaul. The grant of King Agilulph, making over the land to Columban, still exists, as do also a knife, cup, and bell said to have belonged to the founder. But the most splendid memorial of Bobbio is the valuable collection of manuscripts, many of them now in Rome, Turin, and Milan, which formed its library. A catalogue drawn up in the tenth century and attributed to Abbot Gerbert (967-972), who afterward became Pope Silvester II, contains a list of 700 volumes, 220 of which had been presented by scholars who are named, while the rest had been acquired from various unstated sources. The explanations of passages in the classical books and on copies of portions of the Bible made by Irish students in their own tongue are among the oldest surviving specimens of the Irish written language. They are known as the Turin and Milan 'glosses.' Eighteen monasteries in Germany and Switzerland, over thirty in France, and many in Italy and the Netherlands (to give these countries their modern names) earned on into the Middle Ages the work and memory of their Irish founders. The canton of St Gall was named after one of the companions of St Columban, who was so much attracted by the quietude of the region that he refused to cross the Alps into Italy, a country then rent by religious disputations. His monastery became one of the chief houses of call in the Middle Ages for pilgrims passing into Italy to visit Rome. At Salzburg, in the Tyrol, the bishopric dates back to Fergal, or Virgil, once Abbot of Aghaboe in Queen's Co. Over the canton of Glarus still waves the figure of St Fridolin, its Irish patron saint. St Cathaldus, patron of Taranto in Southern Italy, and St Colman, patron of Lower Austria, were Irishmen. When travellers enter Florence by the western gate they pass under the portals of St Fredianus, or Finnian, the Irish preacher and Bishop of Lucca. As they climb the sweet slopes of Fiesole they may rest beside the spot where Donat or Donatus built his hut and chapel.
Outside the city of Paris may be visited the holy well of St Fiacre, an Irishman whose shrine was so much frequented in the Middle Ages that it gave a special name to the carriages that bore pilgrims thither, and in Paris a cab is still a fiacre. From the shores of Iceland and the Faroe Isles down to the vine-clothed hills of Italy we find the cells, the traditions, and the manuscripts of Irish monks and travellers.
Among the twenty-nine chief monasteries which in the eighth century obeyed the Columban rule were, besides those we have mentioned, the almost equally well-known foundations of Péronne, Reichnau, Ratisbon, Seckingham, and Würzburg. When, in 723, the Saxon Winifred, better known as Boniface, was sent to the Franks as Papal legate, not one of the German or Bavarian tribes to which he went could be considered pagan, and in this work of Christianization the Irish had borne a considerable part. The last of the Irish foundations to be recognized as such was St James's of Ratisbon, known as the Monasterium Scotorum. But when the word 'Scotia' ceased to be applied to Ireland, and Scotsmen from Scotland claimed the monastery as their own foundation, it was handed over to them by Pope Leo X, and the remaining Irish monks were forced to leave.
It was during the disturbance of the monastic life at home through the onslaughts of the Northmen that Europe was flooded for a second time with Irish missionaries and teachers. The schools in Ireland were broken up, and life and property were rendered insecure. As the Norsemen and Danes penetrated farther into the country the monasteries became the chief points of attack, and the quiet pursuit of learning became more and more difficult. Then the thoughts of Irish men of letters turned naturally to the already existing Irish foundations abroad. The story of the foreign work of the Irish teachers thus falls into two parts. There were first the early missions like those of Columban and St Gall; of Finnian of Moville, known abroad as St Frediano of Lucca (500-588); of Ursus of the Val d'Aosta (c. 550); and of Cathaldus of Waterford (c. 618), who became Bishop of Taranto about 680, and whose brother Donatus founded a church near Naples about the same date. These men were followed in the ninth century by the great influx of learned men who gathered principally round the schools of Charlemagne and of Charles the Bald; from which centre they spread gradually over all Southern and Central Europe. The earlier movement was inspired by the love of adventure, the desire for solitude, and the craving to undertake missionary work among foreign nations. The later effort was made in response to the well-known ambition of Charlemagne to make the schools at Paris a centre of advanced learning. He welcomed with enthusiasm teachers who could assist him in carrying out his aims.
An old story, which, even if it be rather a parable than an historical fact, well describes what actually happened, tells us that "when the illustrious Charles began to reign alone in the West, and literature was everywhere almost forgotten, it happened that two Scots of Ireland, Clemens and Albinus, came over with some British merchants to the shores of France. These Scots [Irishmen] were incomparably skilled in human learning and in the holy Scriptures. As they had not merchandise for sale, they used to cry out to the crowds flocking to the churches, 'If anyone is desirous of wisdom, let him come to us and receive it, for we have it to sell.'" [50] The report of these men came to the ears of Charles the Great, who, being a lover of wisdom, ordered them to be brought before him without any delay. He asked them whether the report was true that they did really possess wisdom. They replied that it was so and that they were ready to impart such as they had to any who would seek it worthily. They required nothing in return but food and raiment, a convenient dwelling, and ingenuous minds. This was about the year 772. Clemens remained in France, and became magister palatinus or Instructor to the Imperial Court, teaching all children of the nobility and of the lower ranks who desired to attend his classes. Albinus was sent as ambassador to Pope Adrian I (772-795) by King Charles, who had succeeded to the Frankish throne in 769; [51] later he was placed by him in charge of the monastery of St Augustine in Pavia, where he continued to lecture until his death to all who desired to receive his instruction. Charles had added the kingdom of Lombardy to his dominions when, in 774, he entered Pavia and took its king Desiderius prisoner.
[50] The story is related by a monk of St Gall of the ninth century, and is accepted by Muritori, Ussher, Lanigan, and Hadden.
[51] Charles was crowned Emperor in the year 800; he died in 814. Lothaire succeeded Louis le Débonnaire in 817 and died in 855.
Pavia became a great centre of Irish learning. In 825 the French King Lothaire, who had been educated under two Irish teachers in the schools of his grandfather Charlemagne, desired one Dungal to accept the post of Principal of Pavia University, while Clemens remained at Paris. The edict of Lothaire declares that "through the extreme carelessness and indolence of certain superiors, true learning had been shaken to the very foundations on all sides"; therefore it had pleased him to desire that students should assemble from Milan, Brescia, Lodi, Vercelli, Genoa, Como, and other neighbouring towns, to the instruction to be given at Pavia under the superintendence of Dungal, and that neither poverty nor distance should serve as an excuse to the people. Dungal was one of that "vast train of philosophers" who, Eric of Auxerre says, removed to France in the ninth century, along with "almost all Ireland" flying as refugees before the Norse and carrying with them their books and valuables. The Irish saints' names scattered so thickly about Belgium, France and Brittany, and the great number of Irish manuscripts in foreign libraries, attest the truth of this passage. Dungal had arrived at the Court of Charles the Great about 780. He was a poet, theologian, and astronomer, and he became the trusted friend of the Emperor, to whom he wrote a letter that is still extant. In a Latin poem addressed to Charles he calls himself the Irish exile (Hibernicus exul). It begins, "These verses the Irish exile sends to King Charles." His letter is on the subject of a double eclipse of the sun which occurred in 810; the phenomenon so much excited the curiosity of the Emperor that he asked Dungal, then a recluse in St Denis, to write for him an explanation of the event. At Pavia he speedily attracted students from the surrounding states, many of whose names are still remembered, and his school acquired wide celebrity. He greatly esteemed Virgil and was acquainted with the early Christian Latin poets, such as Prudentius and Fortunatus. His numerous Latin verses prove his taste and his love of poetry. In a poetic address to the Emperor he exclaims, "Dost thou demand of what avail are the verses of our song? Ah, my friend, dost thou not know the names of the Muses, or can it be that scornfully thou dost despise their gifts? While the starry worlds revolve in their loftiest orbits...so long will be heard throughout the ages the everlasting names of the Muses by whom the glorious deeds of kings are celebrated." [52] Another Dungal, whose tracts show some acquaintance with the works of Greek as well as of Latin authors, took part in the discussion that rent the Church during part of the eighth century about the honour that should be paid to images. He was called upon as the only man able to enter into controversy with the Spanish bishop, Claudius, on this subject of the Western iconoclasm. [53]
[52] Martène and Durand, Vet. Scrip. Coll. (1729), vol. vi, p. 811. Quoted by M. Stokes, Six Months in the Apennines, pp. 213-214.
[53] Yet another Dungal presented his valuable library to Bobbio at a later date. Traube, in his O Roma nobilis, distinguishes five Dungals, all of Irish birth, but this seems uncalled for; see also L. Gougaud, Les Chrétientés Celtiques, pp. 287-288.
Nearly all the chief Irish saints wrote hymns and poems, both religious and secular, sometimes in Latin and sometimes in the native tongue. We find chance compositions penned on the borders of old manuscripts at home and abroad, such as the "Student's Address to his Cat" or the "Lines to the Blackbird"--the one written on the margin of a codex of St Paul's Epistles in the monastery of Carinthia, the other as a marginal note on a copy of Priscian found in the monastery of St Gall. [54] Columcille wrote his tender and patriotic verses in both tongues; his contemporary and namesake, Columban, left several Latin poems written while he was abroad, notably the charming epistle addressed to his friend Fedolius in Adonic verse, in which he prays him "not to despise these little verses by which Sappho loved to charm her contemporaries." The Book of Hymns of the ancient Church of Ireland has a number of early hymns and eulogies of Irish saints both in Irish and Latin. The poetic fervour of the hermit monks, who lived in the closest intimacy with nature, brought forth a group of poems, both on religious subjects and on the natural beauties of the woods and streams and stormy ocean beside which they passed their peaceful days. These poems are unsurpassed in any literature for the delicacy of their sentiment and their vivid perception of the life of bird, and beast, and insect, the humble companions who lent interest to their solitude.
[54] Originals and translations in Stokes and Strachan, Thesaurus Palaeo-hibernicus, ii, 290, 293; and cf. Hull, Poem-book of the Gael, pp. 132, 139.
The most important of the gifts of knowledge which the Irish were able to restore to a rent and distracted Europe was the study of the Greek tongue. From a very early period the study of Greek seems to have formed part of the curriculum in Irish monastic schools. Columcille is said as a child to have "learned Greek grammar," though his earliest lessons were given him by a bard. The abbot Aileran of Clonard, writing about the year 600 a curious work on the mystical meaning of the names in our Lord's genealogy, quotes apparently from Philo as well as from Origen, Jerome, and Augustine. The old glossaries occasionally give Greek equivalents for Irish words, and Greek vocabularies and paradigms have been found in Irish manuscripts abroad. These occasional words in glossaries do not necessarily argue any extensive acquaintance with the language, but they show that its study was still alive in Irish monastic schools in the ninth century. It was from St Gall that the Greek copy of St Paul's Epistles with a Latin translation between the lines, known to scholars as Codex Boernerianus, was brought to Dresden. It dates from the ninth century and was therefore probably acquired or copied either in the time of the abbot Moengal (under whom the school of St Gall attained its greatest fame both as a seat of learning and as a school of music) or in that of Grimald, who was abbot from 854 to 872, and who bestowed upon the library a collection of valuable manuscripts. The few fragments in Irish script still remaining at St Gall are made up into miscellaneous collections, in which the precious St Gall palimpsest of Virgil is found side by side with several very ancient fragments of the Gospels. [55]
[55] H. J. White, Old Latin Biblical Texts, Nos. II, III.
Two Irish scholars of the ninth century are admitted to have been the first Greek authorities of their day. These were Sedulius Scotus ('the Irishman') and Johannes Scotus. Sedulius, who was Abbot of Kildare about 820, sought the Court of Charlemagne and was appointed by him to an important post at Liege, where he remained for many years. He arrived there one winter's day, through deeply drifted snow, exhausted by hunger and fatigue, but he received a welcome appropriate to his gifts and learning, and soon entered upon his professorial duties. He continued at Liege from 840 to 860 and died soon afterward at Milan. He tells us that "many learned grammarians" from his country were studying under his tuition at Liege. It is probable that his Treatise on Government was written for the instruction of Charlemagne's grandson, Charles the Bald, for whom also he composed numerous poems. When Charles visited the monastery Sedulius the Irishman presented a poem in his honour. He wrote commentaries in which he displays his reading by the variety of works from which he quotes. He corrects his Latin New Testament by a Greek original and he refers to the Hebrew readings. He composed a grammatical treatise on the basis of Priscian and Donatus, as well as the Treatise on Government of which we have spoken, which was discovered in the Vatican Library by Cardinal Mai. He was not only a man of exceptional erudition and versatility, but he was also a graceful Latin poet. His verses on "The Lily and the Rose" in which these flowers contend in rivalry for the palm of beauty are worthy of Thomas Moore. He is not to be confused with the fifth-century Italian poet of the same name who wrote the Carmen Paschale.
Undoubtedly the most remarkable thinker produced by the Irish schools and one of the foremost thinkers of the Middle Ages was John 'Scotus' or 'Scotigena,' or 'John the Irishman,' though he preferred to call himself John Ériugena, from Ériu, the old native name of his country. [56] John lived at a time when Western Europe was disturbed by the invasions of the Northmen, who were pouring down upon Northrumbria and Ireland, sacking the towns of Western France, Bordeaux, Rouen, Toulouse, and making their way inland to the gates of Paris. It was "with the din of war crashing around him" that, sometime about 847, John crossed over to France to obey the behest of Charles the Bald, who, amid the terrors of war, was building up under his own immediate care a school of philosophy at which learned men from every country were welcomed and given the opportunity of promulgating their ideas. The man, "little of stature but of merry wit," who came at his call from Ireland captivated the affection of the King, as his teaching was speedily to stir the attention of Europe.
[56] An alternative form is Ierugena; in later manuscripts the incorrect form Erigena appears. Ériu is the oldest form of the name of Ireland in the native tongue, with dative Érinn or Ére, from which the forms Erin and Ierne seem to be taken.
It was John's knowledge of the Greek language that induced the French King to invite him to his Court. Though his capital was then at Laon, he was attracted to Paris by its neighbourhood to the abbey of St Denis, which Charlemagne had chosen as the burial-place of his house, and which was then universally believed to have been founded by Dionysius the Areopagite, the earliest Athenian convert of St Paul. Works attributed to this man were supposed to have been discovered, but the knowledge of Greek, the language in which they were written, had so completely died out in the west that no one could be found to translate them. Charles probably remembered that an Irish teacher in the schools of his grandfather Charles the Great, and whom he had met at Liege, was not only a learned Latinist and a graceful Latin poet, but possessed as well some knowledge of Greek. The memory of Sedulius induced him to send for help to Ireland, and John, on his arrival, was able to carry out the wishes of his patron, and produce a translation which, owing to the then general ignorance of the language, threw Anastasius, Librarian of the Vatican Library, into the deepest astonishment. "It is wonderful," he exclaimed, "that this uncivilized man, dwelling on the confines of the world, should have been able to understand such things and to translate them into another tongue."
It was from his knowledge of Greek philosophy, especially of Plato, that John rose to the conception of things which he elaborated in his great work On the Division of Nature. "In the simplicity of his general plan," it has been said, "he surpasses all the philosophers of the Middle Ages." He accepts Plato's conception of a world of ideas as the pattern on which the sensible universe is made, thought to him being the only reality and goodness its essential significance. The inherent dignity of man's nature must assert itself in the end. "The soul may forget her natural goods, may fail in her striving towards the goal of the inborn virtues of her nature; the natural powers may move, by fault of judgment, towards something which is not their end," but not for ever, for the universal tendency of things is upward. "Our nature is not fixed in evil;...it is for ever moving, and seeks nought else but the highest good, from which as from a beginning its motion takes its source and to which it is hastening as to an end." Since all things proceed from God, so in God they find their final perfection. John was not a pantheist, for he believed in personal immortality. "This," he writes, "is the end of all things visible and invisible, when all visible things pass into the intellectual, and the intellectual into God, by a marvellous and unspeakable union; but not, as we have often said, by any confusion or destruction of essences or substances." His effort was to produce a philosophy of religion; he was led to conclusions on the essential goodness of human nature, and the negative and transient nature of evil, which were not acceptable in his own day, but many of which were revived, perhaps unconsciously, in the works of later thinkers. This belief in the dignity of human nature and its innate desire for good marks the conceptions of two mediaeval Celtic teachers, Pelagius and John Scotus, The one, with restless energy, was untiring in endeavouring to get his views accepted by a Church to which they were unwelcome; his doctrine is still the only heresy against which, in the Articles of the English Church, its adherents are warned by name. The other addressed himself to a more limited audience; and up to the death of his patron, Charles the Bald, John continued to enjoy the protection of this enlightened prince, whose scholar's instinct led him to encourage unfettered discussion, and whose respect for learning made him the personal friend of the scholars who gathered round him.
John came to a dreadful end at the hands of his own pupils and his own countrymen. On the death of Charles in France he was invited to repair to England by King Alfred the Great, and placed by him in charge of Malmesbury Abbey. Here he is said to have fallen a victim to the turbulence of his Irish pupils, who set upon him with the sharp ' stiles ' with which they wrote, inflicting wounds of which he died. [57]
[57] For an admirable essay on John Scotus see R. Lane Poole, Mediaeval Thought and Learning, ii, 46-68, from which the above quotations are taken. The question of the identity of John Scotus with the teacher of Malmesbury is fully discussed in Appendices I and II of the above-mentioned work.
It was not only in classical studies that Irishmen of the ninth century stood in the forefront of the knowledge of their time. They were also geographers and mathematicians. Fergal, or Virgil, of Salzburg has the double reputation of being a teacher of geometry and a missionary. At home he had been abbot of Aghaboe, and he must have been beloved in his native land, for he is one of the few among the host of Irish teachers who went abroad who is remembered in the annals and martyrologies of the homeland. His death is recorded in the Annals of Ulster under the date 784. On going to France he was recommended to Odilo, Grand Duke of Bavaria, by King Pepin (752-768), to fill the see of Salzburg. He had already achieved a reputation before leaving Ireland, for he was known there as the Geometrician; from his Greek studies he had learned the theory that the earth was a sphere and that there are antipodes. This theory was believed to run counter to the religious doctrines of the day, and Fergal was condemned again and again by the ecclesiastical authorities. But he still continued to maintain that the world was round, that the sun and moon passed beneath it, and that there must be inhabitants on the other side. No measures were actually taken against him, and he seems to have gone on quietly administering his diocese, while occasionally he startled the mediaeval world with new knowledge, wrought out in his study in the intervals of episcopal work.
An equally interesting writer was Dicuil, who lived about 820 or later, and who wrote in his old age a geographical work called De Mensura Orbis Terrae, which was discovered by M. Letronne about 1812 in the French National Library. Dicuil was a very intelligent man who was not content merely to compile an account of the world's geography from the records of the classical writers, though he was familiar with these and quotes from Solinus, Pliny, Isidore of Seville, Priscian, and many others. But he was also at great pains to find out any new material which could be contributed at first-hand by those who had travelled in little-known regions. The island of Iceland, for instance, was not discovered and peopled by Norsemen before 874, but Dicuil, who probably wrote half a century earlier, gives a long account of it. He corrects the common idea of his day that the island was surrounded with a sea of ice, remarking bluntly that those who made such reports "have evidently lied"; but he says that at a day's sail farther north the frozen ocean had been found, for certain clerics who visited the island went beyond it in the depth of winter. He describes, among other interesting details, the long days near the solstice, when the sun "hardly disappeared at all, but seemed only to hide itself behind a hill, so that, even during its short absence, the light of day does not fail." All this, he says, he had learned from some Irish anchorites who had visited the island over thirty years before and had remained there from the month of February till August. The account he gives of these hardy wanderers, who, despairing of finding nearer home the quiet they longed for, had pushed their way into the frozen seas, remarkably bears out the tradition handed down in the Icelandic Landnámabóc, which gives the history of the settlements on Iceland by the Norse. This old book says that when the Norse arrived in the island, flying before the harsh laws of Harold Fairhair, they found there already "Irish bells, books, and croziers." This passage is so interesting, as bearing on the wanderings of the Irish anchorites, that it will be well to quote it in full. It occurs in the prologue to this native record of the 'land-takes ' of Iceland and runs as follows: "Before Iceland was peopled from Norway there were in it men whom the Northmen called Papas [Fathers]; they were Christian men, and it is held that they must have come oversea from the west, for there were found after them Irish bells, books, and crooks [croziers], and more things besides, from which it could be understood that they were Westmen. These things were found east in Pap-isle, and it is stated in English books that in those times voyages were made between those countries." [58]
[58] Landnámabóc, Prologue.
It is an important testimony to the accuracy of this Icelandic record to find that Dicuil had conversed with those who knew some of these early explorers. He had also met a "man worthy of trust" who related to his master, the abbot Sweeney (Suibhne), how he had landed on the Faroe Isles after having navigated "two days and a summer night in a little vessel of two banks of oars." He found that they also had been inhabited nearly a hundred years before by eremites who had gone out of "our Scotia [Ireland]," but whom the inroads of the Northmen had driven away from Faroe, since which time the islands had been inhabited by an innumerable multitude of sheep, who were probably the descendants of those introduced and reared by the Irish hermits. To this day the sheep that are found on the Faroe Islands are of a breed unknown in Norway, but resembling those of the Western Isles of Scotland and the inhabitants have a peculiar method of rearing their sheep, unlike that of Norway. The name Faroe or Faerey Isles means "The Sheep Islands." [59]
[59] P. A. Munch, Chronica Regum Manniae et Insularum (1860), p. viii. Dicuil also wrote a remarkable treatise on astronomy which has been printed by M. Esposito in P.R.I.A., vol. xxvi, Sect. C, p. 378 seq. (1906-7).
As life at home became increasingly difficult for learned men new colleges of Irish began to spring up abroad, and Würzburg, Ratisbon, Fulda, Mayence (Mainz), Constance, and Nürnberg were all crowded with Irish students. They have left behind them many precious manuscripts, the fruit of their learning and patience. In the Imperial Library at Vienna is a copy of the Epistles of St Paul transcribed by a Donegal monk of Ratisbon in 1079. His name, Marianus "Scotus," shows the country of his birth, and his book was written "for his pilgrim brethren" who joined him from Ireland. Seven of his immediate successors were natives from the North of Ireland. Another Irish monk of the same name is associated with the Irish abbeys of Cologne and Fulda. He was educated at Moville in Co. Down, but, leaving his native land, he became an enclosed monk of the abbey of St Martin at Cologne. Though living as a solitary he wrote there a History of the World and various tracts of a controversial nature. His reputation spread, and when Siegfried, the Superior of Fulda Abbey, visited Cologne in 1058 he induced Marianus to return with him and take up his residence at Fulda. He became for the second time a professed 'incluse' in May 1059, taking up his abode in a cell in which another Irish incluse had lived and died sixteen years before. He died at Mayence, having followed his friend Abbot Siegfried thither, the remaining thirteen years of his life being passed in seclusion. All this we learn from his own diary, which has fortunately been preserved. A touching marginal note in a copy of his History gives a glimpse of the feelings which passed through the mind of an Irish scribe when, in foreign lands, he received tidings of events passing at home. It reads: "It is pleasant for us to-day, O Maelbrigte [i.e., Marianus], incluse in the inclusory of Mayence, on the Thursday before the feast of Peter, in the first year of my obedience to the Rule; namely, the year in which Dermot, King of Leinster, was slain. [60] And this is the first year of my pilgrimage from Scotia [Ireland]. And I have written this book for love of the Scots all, that is, the Irish, because I am myself an Irishman."
[60] King Dermot MacMaelnamo (Mael-na-mbó) of Leinster, who died in 1072.
At home the growing power of the Church had, even so early as the days of St Columcille, led to a struggle between the founders of monasteries and the central authority of Tara. The abbots began to exercise an authority independent of the secular arm and claimed, among other powers, the right to shelter criminals behind the 'law of sanctuary,' refusing to give them up to justice. Thus a merciful provision, intended to shelter an accused man from the vengeance of his pursuers until his case had been lawfully tried, was interpreted into a defiance of all legal punishment, the abbots in this way claiming an authority superior to that of the State even in matters not directly concerning the Church. The question was fought out by a test case in the reign of Dermot MacCarroll (Cearbhall), High King of Ireland about 538-565, a man of just aims and high ideals and determined to uphold the authority of the state. The story has taken the form of a parable in which the twelve chief saints of Ireland, as representing the Church, solemnly excommunicate Dermot by ringing of bells and "fasting upon" him. [61] Their action led to the downfall of Dermot and, with him, of the central supreme authority of Tara. After his time its position waned, and it was deserted as the seat of government. Thus the kingship was weakened just at the moment when a strong government would have been invaluable to the country. The last feis, or triennial festival, of Tara is recorded in the reign of Dermot. The Calendar of Aengus, composed late in the Norse period, speaks of "Tara's mighty town with her kingdom's splendour" as having perished, though the chief monastic foundations, in spite of Danish assaults, still survived, and "a multitude of champions of wisdom abode yet in great Armagh." But though Tara was deserted the name and title of Áird-rí continued up to the reign of Rory O'Conor, who submitted to Henry II, and during the Norse period a succession of powerful princes occupied the throne. Among signs of advance was the checking by St Columcille of the overgrown numbers of the bards, who were accustomed to go about the country in large bodies demanding entertainment and impoverishing the population. The exemption of women from warfare was obtained by St Adamnan, or Eunan (d. 704); and the adoption by the Irish Church of the customs and discipline of the Catholic Church in such matters as the date of keeping Easter and the form of the tonsure was largely secured by the persistent efforts of the same reformer. His powerful influence was exercised both at Iona (Hi), of which he was abbot, and in Ireland, where he held two important Synods, one at Armagh and another at Tara, where spots still known as the "Tent" and "Chair" of Adamnan are shown. He, like his great predecessor at Iona, St Columcille, was a Donegal man, and he wrote the most authoritative life of the founder, besides a book on the Holy Land highly praised by Bede. He was, as his writings show, a man of force and imagination.
[61] Silva Gadelica, ii, 70-74, 82. A speech of great dignity is put into Dermot's mouth. To "fast upon" a man from whom a debt was due was the legal form of enforcing a demand upon a man of higher rank under the Brehon law. It has recently been revived as the 'hunger-strike.' See Ancient Laws and Institutes of Ireland, i, 83, 113.
The state of the country during the close of the seventh and the eighth centuries declined with the decline of the restraining influence of the monastic schools, which had to a large extent replaced that of the secular arm. Disputed successions and enfeebled princes combined to produce a condition of disorder, and the gloom and misery of the period was accentuated by frequent and terrible visitations of pestilence which spared neither princes nor abbots, while the common people were swept away in vast numbers. Abbots of Clonard, Fore, Clonmacnois, and other monasteries, died of it. About 666-669 four abbots of Bangor, Co. Down, succumbed to it in succession. These plagues were followed by a great mortality among the cattle, which added the misery of famine to that of sickness. Extreme frosts are said to have occurred at the same time.
With the passing away of the founders of the greater monasteries the reverence in which these institutions were held seems to have declined. Early in the eighth century began that sacrilegious system of burning the monasteries which the Northmen copied but did not originate. In the period immediately preceding the first recorded Norse descents there is not a year in which the destruction of some old foundation is not noted. For instance, in 774 Armagh, Kildare, and Glendalough were burned. In 777 Clonmacnois was destroyed, in 778 again Kildare, in 783 Armagh and Mayo, in 787 Derry, in 788 Clonard and Clonfert, besides numerous smaller monasteries and churches. [62] The Danish fury shows us nothing worse than this. Quarrels and actual conflicts between the brethren were frequent. Both monks and students were armed and obliged to attend the warlike expeditions of their chiefs in the same way as other subjects; it is perhaps not surprising that, being trained and expected to fight, they should often have turned their arms against each other. They even appear in Church councils fully armed. [63] It was not until 803 that the clergy were legally exempted from hostings and wars. But a custom sanctioned by time did not easily die out; we shall find the clergy taking an active part in tribal warfare up to the beginning of the tenth century, though by that time a feeling seems to have been growing up that it was unseemly for monks and clergy to appear on the battlefield.
[62] Annals of Ulster, at above dates.
[63] Ibid., 806, 816. Notices of students "with shields and spears in their hands" at the monastery of St Aedh of Ferns will be found in the Life of St Aedan. Cf. W. J. Rees, Lives of the Cambro-British Saints, p. 566.
Never had Ireland been in a weaker condition morally and politically than at the moment when the foreign invader first arrived upon her shores; never was she less prepared to resist the fierce attacks of the Northmen whose conquering arms, spreading westward, fell at the close of the eighth century on the undefended coasts of Ireland.
But a great need called out the finer elements in the nation, and, in spite of the terror of the Norse incursions, the period was one of revival. A succession of purposeful rulers resisted with energy the onsets of the Northmen, and the gradual amalgamation of the two peoples brought to each some elements which were needed for the permanent benefit of both nations. The Danish period in Ireland, usually regarded as one of destruction and fury only, was, in fact, one of distinct advance both in material and intellectual conditions. It found Ireland an open country without large towns or solid fortifications, its chief centres the groups of simple huts gathered round the monastic foundations or along the river-mouths. The close of the Norse occupation left her with a number of walled towns, the beginnings of the larger towns of the present day, with fleets capable of penetrating to the Hebrides or Man, and with a commerce that made cities such as Dublin and Limerick centres of wealth and activity. Stone-built bridges, churches, and round towers showed an advanced style of building and the use of the true arch brought about a revolution in architecture; stone buildings also began to replace the old stockaded forts of the native princes. From the same period come many of the sweetest lyrics that Ireland has ever produced and a large body of prose literature. The most important religious poem of Ireland, the Psalter of the Verses (Saltair na Rann), relating Biblical events from the creation of the world to the final judgment, and containing a hundred and fifty poems in imitation of the Psalter, was composed toward the close of the tenth century.
It may be called the Paradise Lost and Paradise Regained of early Ireland. Few Irish poems are written on so extended a plan. To reach this state of renewed life the country had to go through a baptism of fire; but, comparing the Ireland of the eighth century with that of the eleventh, there is no question but that a great step forward had been taken, if not in the direction of internal peace at least in the direction of external prosperity.
The "fury of the Northmen" from which the mediaeval litanies of these islands and of Brittany prayed to be delivered began to fall upon Ireland toward the close of the eighth century. It was the backwash of a mighty movement which embraced all Southern and Western Europe and extended itself to the borders of Russia, then an almost unknown country. All the Scandinavian nations took part in it, but it was only the fleets of the Norsemen and Danes that visited the shores of Britain and Ireland, the main direction of Swedish expansion being toward the East. When the first recorded fleet of the foreigners appeared before Rechra in 795, and burned Inis Patraic [1] in 797 (798), the rumours of their descents on the shores of Northumbria had already reached Ireland. The Annals of Ulster speak of the "devastation of all the islands of Britain by Gentiles" or heathen men, under the year 793. This report doubtless refers to the ravaging of Lindisfarne, the news of which seems to have reached Ireland soon after the event. Though the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle speaks of these first-comers as Danes, it is almost certain that they came from Norway, not from Denmark. The place from which they started was Haerethaland, now Hordaland, on the west coast of Norway, directly opposite the northern shores of the British Isles. The Irish name for Norway, Ioruaith or Hirotha, may be a reminiscence of this word. But even before 793 there must have been settlements of Norse in Northumbria, for we hear of a synod held at Finn-Gall or " Fair Foreigners," a place evidently named after the Norse invaders, in the north of England in 788. The descents of the Norse on Ireland were by way of the Orkneys, Caithness, and the Hebrides; those of the Danes chiefly by the south coasts of England and Wales. The Norse were hardy seafarers, who pushed out north-west to the shores of Greenland, Iceland, and North Britain, and thence made their way down the western coasts of Scotland to Ireland; the Danes, who were not naturally a sea-loving nation, were inclined to hug the shores. They landed on the coasts of Britain and eventually established themselves as kings of England, a monarchy which, though shortlived, was remarkable for the vigour of the great Canute, whose vast realm at one time included Britain, Denmark, and Norway and came near to adding Sweden as well. Canute's dream of a Northern confederation of nations, to be ruled from Britain, though it was never realized, became very nearly an accomplished fact; but the weakness and follies of his successors dissipated all that his genius had achieved.
[1] It is uncertain whether this was the island of that name, near Skerries, Co. Dublin, or a place now called Holm-Peel in the Isle of Man. Probably it was the former.
Thus the two peoples, Norsemen and Danes, met upon the shores of Ireland, the one descending from the north, by way of Scotland and the Hebrides, the other from the south, by way of England and Wales. In Ireland they tried their mutual strength, for the aim of the Danes was to oust the earlier Norsemen from the fruit of their conquests and to establish settlers from Denmark in their stead. To a large extent they succeeded, for the Norse kingdom of Dublin, firmly established by Olaf the White in 853, came to an end, and the Danish kingdoms of Dublin, Waterford, and Limerick took its place. It is the Danes, not the Norse, who are remembered in Ireland. In the Irish Chronicles the distinction is usually well preserved, the Norse being called Finn-Gaill, or "Fair Foreigners," and the Danes Dubh-Gaill, or "Dark Foreigners." The plunderers of Rechra appear to have been a chance party of the Danes who had been ravaging in Glamorgan and South Britain, the first serious attempts at conquest being made by the Norse who fell upon the North of Ireland. The Gwentian Chronicle calls the plunderers of Rechra "black pagans from Denmark" and adds that when the Cymry, or Welsh, had driven them into the sea and killed very many of them they went to Ireland and devastated Rechreyn (Rechra). This was probably Lambay Island, off the coast of Co. Dublin, and not Rathlin on the Antrim coast, which would have been quite out of their way. The Annals of Clonmacnois also call them Danes (A.D. 792, recte 795).
The viking period began in these islands earlier than is usually supposed and lasted longer. Zimmer shows that the Norse were settled in the Orkneys two centuries before their first descents recorded in history, and even then were carrying on trade between Ireland and Scandinavia. They came both for booty and on trading expeditions, often combining both professions as occasion served. The earliest mention of Limerick is in the Icelandic Landnámabóc, where Hrafn, the Limerick-farer, is said to have spent a long time in Limerick in Ireland, which looks as if the town had already become a trading centre. Dublin, too, was very early a resort of the vikings, and the old song of Starkad, who was slain by Ragner Lodbrok, relates among his hero-deeds, "having taken the chief of the Irish race, I rifled the wealth of Dublin."
Lodbrok himself is said to have slain King Melbrik (Mael-brigde) of Dublin and to have found the city "full of barbarian wealth." In Egil's saga we hear of ships fitted out "for the Irish trade"; and many of these searovers settled down, married Irish wives, and made the trading towns they had established in Ireland their headquarters. One Bjorn, "a right doughty man," went sometimes on freebooting and sometimes on merchant voyages. His father refused his request for a fighting ship, but made him master of a trading vessel and bade him "go south to Dublin, for that voyage is now most highly spoken of." [2] The division of the descents of the Northmen on Ireland into two periods, a preliminary movement consisting of raids round the coast and up the waterways, in order to become familiar with the country, and a later period of settlement, is only a very partial description of what actually occurred. The building of towns and settlements in the country by no means put an end to plunderings for booty. The Norse lord, whether he lived in Norway or in the Hebrides (Sudreyer), [3] made his spring-viking and his autumn-viking as regularly as the seasons came round, with a space for sowing his seed and reaping his harvest between each distant raid. The terror of the Northmen was not confined to a brief period; it went on until late into the twelfth century, practically up to the time of the Norman invasion, for the coasts of Ireland lay conveniently within the range of coasting voyages. Half a century before we have any records of their doings in the Norse annals we hear of them pushing their way up the Irish rivers, robbing the monasteries of their ornaments, sacred books, and valuables, and burning the fragile structures to the ground. They made trading centres at every important river-mouth, to which the peasants of the interior brought down their goods for barter, and out of which were to grow the chief seaport towns of Ireland—Dublin, Waterford, Wexford, Cork, and Limerick. As early as the middle of the ninth century we hear of a mixed race called the Gall-Gael (Gaill-Gaedhil) of partly Scandinavian and partly Irish blood, who began to collect formidable armies. Intermarriage and settlement must thus have been frequent at a date when it is customary to think of the Norse as mere occasional raiders along the coasts. To the Irish it seemed that "great sea-cast floods of foreigners" poured in at every harbour and river-mouth and began to overrun the whole country by means of its waterways. Two fleets of sixty sail appeared simultaneously on the Boyne and Liffey, and, though their landing was disputed with vigour, the invaders succeeded in penetrating to Lough Erne and raiding Meath. For the first time, in 836, Ath-Cliath, henceforth to be known as Dyflin or Dublin, fell into their hands, and by a stroke of high policy they determined to make it their headquarters in Ireland. Standing on one of those splendid natural harbours which the Romans had envied, it lay within direct touch of the western coasts of Britain and was to form the main future passage for commerce and navigation between the two countries. Hitherto, as its name indicates, it had been the main ford across which ran the highway between the south-east and Tara, carried over the Liffey by a hurdle-bridge. Probably a village existed on the banks of the river where the bridge crossed it. But in the hands of the Norse it was to become not only a trading town and the capital of Olaf the White, but a chief link with the Scandinavian kingdoms of Northumbria and the Western Isles. There they planted their 'Thing-mote' for the administration of justice in the Scandinavian manner; there they built a fort on the site occupied by Dublin Castle in later days; and round "entrenched Ath-Cliath" they made their walls and gates. Norse names, such as Howth, Lambay, Leixlip, Skerries, cluster about the district north of the city which is still known as Fingall, or the place of the Fair Foreigners, as the Irish termed the Norse.
[2] The Saga of Egil Skalligrimson. It describes conditions in the middle of the tenth century.
[3] The Sudreyer, or Sudreys, were the Southern Hebrides. Later the word was corrupted into Sodor, which is now used in the title of the Bishops of Sodor and Man.
The choice of Dublin as the capital of the Norse kingdom brought about a corresponding change in the position of Armagh, which from the time of St Patrick onward had, both ecclesiastically and nationally, been looked upon as the metropolis of Ireland. Its great age and its connexion with the patron saint, its important schools and its abbatial dignity, had made it the real capital of the North. It was on this account that Turgeis, or Turgesius, styled in the Annals Lord of the Gall or Foreigners, who arrived in the North of Ireland in 842, with "a great royal fleet" attacked Armagh, plundering it three times in one month, the first of these dreadful experiences which had befallen it at the hands of the foreigners. Turgeis, who is said to have come "to assume the sovereignty of the Gall of Ireland," appears to have had two chief aims; first he desired to unite under his rule the Norse settlers, who had hitherto been without any definite central authority, and to consolidate their conquests in the face of the incoming Danes, who were already beginning to "exercise authority" over the Norse who preceded them; and, secondly, he wished to re-establish paganism in Ireland. To give himself the necessary position of authority he "usurped the abbacy" of Armagh, claiming thereby the spiritual as well as the temporal power over the North. He aimed at a pagan revival in the very place specially consecrated to Christian worship, and Forannan, Abbot of Armagh, had to fly into Munster. He next set up his wife, Ota (Old Norse, Audr), as a priestess and giver of oracles in the second great centre of Christian influence in Northern Ireland, Clonmacnois, and she pronounced her oracles from the high altar of St Ciaran's city. Turgeis has been identified with Thorgils, whom the historian Snorro Sturleson believed to be a son of Harald Fairhair, and who is said to have gone on a viking expedition into Ireland. The dates, however, are difficult to reconcile. If he was a devotee of the god Thor, as this name would indicate, his anxiety to establish the worship of Thor in Ireland would be explained. In Scandinavia the priesthood did not form a separate caste; the head of a family or village was also its priest and offered sacrifices to Thor.
The attempt of Turgeis to introduce the worship of Scandinavian deities into Ireland was not so hopeless as might at first appear. The intermarriages between Irish women and Norse husbands had brought about a widespread reversion toward paganism, the converts becoming even more fierce and sacrilegious than the foreigners themselves. Turgeis died a miserable death in 845, having been taken prisoner by the King of Ireland and drowned by him in Loch Owel in Westmeath, but his evil influence survived him. We hear that "many of the Irish forsook their Christian baptism and joined the Lochlanns or Norse, plundering Armagh and carrying away its riches. They even adopted the name of Norsemen, with the religion and customs of their former foes," and "though the original Norse were bad to the churches, these were far worse, in whatever part of Erin they chanced to be." The writer of this passage ascribes the awakening of this anti-Christian spirit to the fostering by the newcomers of Irish children, who thus imbibed from infancy ideas contrary to their own country and religion. Fosterage was equally common among both peoples, few Norse or Irish children being reared at home. Norse children were 'knee-seated' with some distinguished friend of the family, who, exactly as in Ireland, brought them up and set them out in life, frequently making the adopted child the heir. From this intercourse sprang the mixed race called Gall-Gael, who formed a considerable section of the nation and had their own fleets and armies. They formed bodies of mercenary troops, whom each party tried to bring over to its side, and were difficult to reckon with; they entered the forces of the Danes, Norse, or Irish indifferently, and are found fighting sometimes for and sometimes against their country.[4]
[4] MacFirbis, Three Fragments of Annals, ed. J. O'Donovan (1860), pp. 127, 129, 139. These Gall-Gael are not to be confused with the mixed Norse-Gaelic population of the same name in Galloway, though they sometimes fought in alliance with them; see Annals of the Four Masters, 1154.
After the death of Turgeis his conquests seem to have collapsed, and the next attempts were made by foreigners in the south. When King Malaughlan I came to the throne in 846 the seas between Ireland and the Scottish coasts swarmed with vessels, "so that there was not a point of Erin without a fleet." Forts sprang up on all the rivers along which the raiders could navigate their ships, and these gradually assumed the appearance of a network over the whole country. The King's first step was to clear out the nests of marauders or "sons of death" who were plundering from centres such as Loch Ramor in Cavan, after which he turned his arms against the foreigners of Meath and inflicted on them a severe defeat at Sciath Nechtan. Here fell the chieftain Tomar, who is called tanist (or heir) to the King of Lochlann and who seems to have been the ancestor of the Norse kings of Dublin. "The Sword of Carlus and the Ring of Tomar" were treasured as royal heirlooms in the city; in later times they were carried off by Malaughlan II by force in token of the supremacy that he had gained over the Norse of Dublin, who went by the name of the "Race of Tomar" or "Tomar's Chieftains." [5] The Ring of Tomar may have been one of the sacred iron rings on which it was customary with the Norse to swear judicial oaths. The Sword of Carlus seems to have been part of the royal insignia of the foreign kings of Dublin. Carlus was son of Olaf the White. He was killed in the battle of Killoderry in 866 (869). It may have been in consequence of the fall of Tomar, a scion of the royal house, that Olaf the White arrived in Dublin in the year 853 with a prodigious fleet. He seems to have been a Norse chief from the Hebrides, though his genealogy is given differently in the Northern and Irish accounts. The story of his wife, Aud the Deep-wealthy, who returned to Iceland by way of the Hebrides after the death of her husband, is told in Laxdaela Saga. Olaf came to Ireland to dispute the supremacy over the Irish with the Danes, who were making rapid advances both in the North and in Munster, and who, in the year succeeding the accession of King Malaughlan, had captured and plundered Dublin, the seat of Norse authority. These Dubh-Gaill or "Black Foreigners," as the Irish called them, probably rather on account of their deeds than their complexion, brought terror alike to the Norse and the Irish. They had the fierce habits and also the accommodating spirit, half pagan, half Christian, which characterized the Northmen of the viking period. When trading with Christian folk they were 'prime-signed,' or marked with a cross, so that they might enter into fellowship with Christian men, but at home they worshipped Thor as their ancestors had done. "I am prime-signed, but not baptized," said a man named Toki to King Haraldson, "because I have been in turn with heathen and Christians, though I believe in the White Christ." So the Danes who now arrived in the North of Ireland adopted Patrick as their protector and offered their spoils to his church at Armagh. Malaughlan was forced to come to terms with the Norse against the Danes, "but though Olaf promised many things and swore to observe them, he did not observe the smallest of them after leaving Malaughlan's house, but plundered all his land."
[5] Book of Rights, ed. J. O'Donovan (1847), p. xxxvi.
Malaughlan's efforts against the foreigners were impeded by the struggles of two restless foes who were disputing the monarchy with him, Aedh Finnliath, his successor, and Carroll (Cearbhal or Kjarval) of Ossory, a prince whose power so impressed the Northmen that we find him mentioned in the opening passage of the Icelandic Landnámabóc as King of Dublin at the same time that Harald Fairhair reigned in Norway and Alfred the Great in England. He was on friendly terms with the Norse and married his large family of daughters to famous vikings of the Hebrides or Iceland. His daughter Rafarta married Eyvind the Eastman, a great trader, who had a fleet fitted out specially for raiding the Irish coasts. Another, Aithne, married the father of Sigurd the Stout, who fell at Clontarf carrying the raven-banner which she had wrought. His descendants went home to Iceland and founded families there, calling their children partly by Norse and partly by Irish names. Carroll is said to have been "a person worthy to possess all Erin for the goodness of his countenance, hospitality, and valour," but he was an uncertain ally, and a thorn in the side both of the foreigners and of the Irish King. He crushed the Norse chief Orm, or Horm, in Munster, but he failed the Munstermen at the moment of battle, and involved them in a hopeless defeat. He wasted Leinster, and in 858-859 the King of Ireland had to summon a convention of princes and abbots to force Carroll to pay him his dues. He died in 887. But in 902, the year after the death of Alfred the Great, whose activities in England had broken the strength of the foreigners in that country, the invaders met with so severe a reverse in Ireland that they are said to have been expelled from the country and to "have escaped half dead, having been wounded and broken." Thus the first period of their power ended in rout and defeat.
A partial pause in hostilities or "forty years' rest" is reckoned in the annals between 876 and 916, years during which the Danes found it necessary to withdraw their troops in order to concentrate against the wars of expulsion that Alfred was waging against them in England. But fighting was going on all the time, and, in spite of it, the Norse kings of Dublin were again consolidating their power. Ivar, brother of Olaf the White (?), who in the Annals of Ulster is styled Rex Nord-mannorum totius Hiberniae et Britanniae,[6] was succeeded in turn by Ivar, his grandson, Sitric Gale and Olaf Godfreysson.
[6] He may have been Ivar Beinlaus, son of Ragnar Lodbrok.
Under Olaf Cuaran, or Olaf of the Sandal, whose name is famous in romance and history, the power of the Dublin Norse rose to its greatest height. Ragnall (d. 921) captured York in 919, and he and his successors ruled a kingdom which included all Northumbria south to the Humber, making their headquarters sometimes at York and sometimes in Dublin. But at the battle of Brunanburh, or Brumby, fought near the mouth of the Humber in 937, their power was broken in the defeat of the most formidable combination ever made by the Norsemen, including Scottish and Irish contingents, by Athelstan, King of England; and Olaf Cuaran, the Norse leader, only escaped back to Dublin "with a few," leaving five kings dead on the field.
In their nailed barks the Northmen departed
Bloody relic of darts, on roaring ocean
O'er the deep water Dublin to seek,
Back to Ireland, shamed in mind.[7]
[7] Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, 937.
In Ireland the power of the Norse attacks had been weakened even during the forty years' truce by a series of determined rulers, of whom the greatest were Niall Glundubh, or "Black-knee," and his son Murtogh of the Leather Cloaks in the North, and Cormac MacCuilennan and Callachan of Cashel in the South. These princes kept up a continuous fight, though with varying success, against the invaders.
The least warlike but in many ways the most remarkable of these princes was Cormac, who reigned for seven years (901-908) from his capital on the rocky cliff of Cashel which rises out of the plain of Tipperary. The existing group of buildings, consisting of the palace and cathedral, and the chapel of wonderfully rich decoration known as Cormac's Chapel now crowded on its summit, are all later than the tenth century, but they occupy the site of an earlier fort or palace.[8] The round tower was built, like most of the round towers of Ireland, about this date, as a protection against the Danish pirates. Cormac belonged to a race of abbot-kings, who in his day occupied the throne of Cashel. His predecessor and his successor were, like himself, at once abbots and princes, combining in their persons the religious and royal functions. His temperament was quiet and peaceful, and devoted to studious pursuits. He has left a glossary of obscure Irish words which were already, in his time, falling out of use, and he either initiated or continued a work called the Psalter of Cashel, containing "all the inhabitations, events, and septs that lived in this land, from the first peopling and discovery thereof," which seems to have been compiled after his accession to the throne. He is described as "a most excellent scribe, bishop, and anchorite," and "as a holy man, master of Gaelic and Latin; proficient in law, in wisdom, knowledge, and science; most pious, most pure." [9] But the times in which he lived and the influence of the warlike ecclesiastic Flaherty, Abbot of Scattery Island, who was Cormac's successor, involved him in wars against his better judgment. In the fateful battle of Ballymoon, in which Cormac fell (908) fighting against the men of Leinster, the clergy of Leinster are said to have abused Flaherty roundly for inducing the King to enter the battle to his own destruction. "Nobles of Munster," exclaimed one of the leaders, "fly from this abominable battle and leave the clergy, who could not be quiet without coming to battle, to fight it out between themselves." The law exempting ecclesiastics from warfare had evidently become a dead letter, if it had ever been enforced at all, and "the life of a cleric in battle was not more spared than that of a layman." Cormac was killed by the fall of his horse into a trench, just as he was urging a foster-son "who was an adept in wisdom and jurisprudence, in history and Latin" to escape. When Cormac's head was brought to Flann, King of Ireland, he was filled with horror. "It was a monstrous thing," he exclaimed, "to have taken off the head of the holy bishop," and he had it interred with reverence.[10]
[8] Cormac's Chapel was built in 1127 by King Cormac MacCarthy.
[9] MacFirbis, op. cit., p. 215. The Psalter of Cashel was continued by King Brian, who brought it up to date. The Book of Rights is believed to be a portion of this book.
[10] MacFirbis, op. cit., pp. 209, 213. O'Donovan tells us that the stone on which King Cormac's head was cut off is still shown on the site of the battle two and a half miles north of Carlow.
The last days of old Flann Sinna, who reigned as King of Tara for over thirty-six years, saw the outbreak of new and more determined attempts to establish a permanent footing in the South. From this time may be dated the seacoast towns, of which the most important were Waterford and Limerick, ruled by branches of the great house of Ivar; but even the less important trade centres, Cork, Youghal, and Wexford, seem at this period to have undergone a rapid expansion. Wexford is described by Giraldus in 1170 as having walls, towers, and battlements.[11] But Waterford (Port Lairge) continued to be the seat of the Southern line of Danish princes and the capital city of the Munster Danes. Already in the "Kraku-Mal" of the Ragnar Lodbrok cycle we hear of Waterford as one of the places visited by his viking troops.
[11] Giraldus Cambrensis, Conquest of Ireland, ch. iii.
Marstein, Erin's king, whelm'd by the irony sleet,
Allayed the hunger of the eagle and the wolf;
The slain at Wadras ford [Waterford] became the raven's booty;
We hewed with our swords!
South in Leinster, at break of day, we held our game of war.[12]
[12] Vigfusson and F. York Powell, Corpus Poeticum Boreale (1883), ii, 343. Marstein was the Melbric of Saxo.
Probably the first settlement was at Gaultire, or Gall-tire, "the Foreigner's Country," where there had been a settlement since 891. Waterford, like Dublin, had its walls and gates and its 'Green,' or Thing-mote, of judgment.[13] This nucleus was added to from time to time, especially after the "forty years' rest," when Ragnall, grandson of Ivar, and Ottar the Black, with "innumerable hordes," are said to have arrived. They raided all Munster, subdued it, and demanded from it heavy taxes. Though independent of Dublin, both Waterford and Limerick were in close contact with the Scandinavian kingdom of the Isles and with Man; their princes are found fighting in the Hebrides on the way to and from Ireland. The position of Waterford made it a centre from early times for trade with Britain, especially with Bristol. When the Normans landed there they found a merchant ship with a cargo of corn and wine lying in the harbour; and it became the port for the extensive slave trade carried on with Bristol. Limerick and Waterford seem to have been on friendly terms, and though each had its own line of princes, we do not hear of fighting between them. Limerick became an important harbour for Danish fleets; they anchored round what is now King Island (Inis Sibthonn) in the Shannon, and the arrival, about 919-920, of Tamar, son of Elge, with an immense fleet, enlarged this then small settlement in the river-mouth into a regular resort for Danish fleets. They speedily pushed their way northward; and their "mighty deeds" included raids on Loughs Derg and Ree,[14] from whence they made their way into Connacht and even across to Meath.
[13] Alexander Bugge, Caithreim Callachan Caisil, p. 70.
[14] Wars of the Gael with the Gall, ed. J. H. Todd, p. 39.
The heavy blows inflicted by the Irish on the Danes of Limerick must have greatly weakened the colony, and we hear of Morann, the viking chief of the island of Lewis in the Hebrides, coming to the help of the Danish city.[15] The Irish fought at a great disadvantage, for they wore no armour, but only tunics, with shields for protection; their weapons were swords, spears, clubs, and arrows; but the Northmen were encased in suits of armour, upon which the blades of the Irish took no effect, while the helmets of the Danes were impervious to the blows delivered with their clubs.[16] The battleaxe, later the favourite weapon of the Irish, was introduced by the Northmen; but both nations used it at the time of the Norman invasion.
[15] Caithreim Callachan Caisil, pp. 61, 65.
[16] Ibid., p. 64.
The years of the brief reign of Niall Glundubh (917-919) were the worst hitherto experienced by the Irish. Sixteen fleets are said to have arrived simultaneously to ravage Munster, one of them being commanded by the celebrated Inghen Ruadh, or "Red Maiden," the woman-warrior of whom terrible stories are told. The necessity of self-defence forced the Irish to imitate the Danes in building fleets of fighting vessels, and from this time we hear of considerable fleets of "brown-planked" barks in Munster used by the Irish. Regular levies of warships, "ten from each cantred," were raised and could be mustered on occasion. We hear of "Limerick of the ships and bulwarks" and the "king of Foyle of the ready ships." The fleet with which Murtogh of the Leather Cloaks penetrated to the Hebrides, "after gaining victory and triumph," was evidently a full fighting fleet. Most of the Irish words connected with ships and shipping, and many of those connected with commerce and markets, are of Norse origin. The native Gaelic words for boats, such as currach, a canvas or skin-covered bark, or ethar, a ferry-boat, indicate a very primitive sort of craft, which could not have met the "nailed barks" of the Norse on equal terms. The Irish also adopted Norse weights and measures, and the first coins minted in Ireland bear the names of Ivar and Sitric.
Building and fortifying went on all over the country; the massive tower known as Ragnall's or Reginald's Tower, in Waterford, still bears the name of its Danish ruler. Limerick is spoken of as "Limerick of the riveted stones," and even Armagh is called "Armagh of the great towers," while in Dublin arose the battlemented tower from which King Sitric looked out on the battle of Clontarf. Beneath it lay the bridge over the Liffey, called Droichet Dubhgall, or "the Dane's Bridge," later, when the Normans had driven the Danes into Ostmanstown on the north side of the river to be called Ostman's or Eastman's Bridge.
In addition to the ordinary articles of tribute, cattle, cauldrons, drinking horns and vessels, chariots and swords, we now hear of "imported gold and silver," "steeds brought across the green sea," and "foreign shields," as part of the tributes paid from prince to prince, or from the foreigners to the Irish princes. Bondsmen and bondswomen formed an important article of tribute, in one case "ten foreigners without a knowledge of Gaelic" being among the demands. Irish girls of high rank were carried away into slavery, as we know from the beautiful story of the daughter of King Myrkiartan, probably Murtogh of the Leather Cloaks, who was carried to Iceland as a slave, and whose son, Olaf the Peacock, or Olaf Pa, is the hero of Laxdaela Saga. Tributes were also paid from the Irish to the Danes, "a severe tribute" being demanded by the Dublin Norse from Leinster. On the other hand, the Danes had to attend the kings of Cashel in battle, in return for maintenance by them in their territory.[17] In 919 Niall Glundubh, or "Black-knee," King of Aileach, in Donegal fell in the fierce battle of Kilmashog, near Dublin, in a vain effort to recover the city from Sitric Gale, the Norse king. One of the few Irish entries in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle records, but incorrectly, under the year 921: "This year King Sitric slew Neil his brother." Though victorious, Sitric left Dublin the next year and never returned, Dublin falling into the hands of his brother or cousin Godfrey, and the great kingdom of the Norse became henceforth divided.
[17] Book of Rights, ed. J. O'Donovan (1847), pp. 51, 207.
Around the Irish princes who succeeded Niall Glundubh a number of stories or sagas have grown up, written in their praise by their poets and chroniclers. Murtogh of the Leather Cloaks, Callachan of Cashel, Brian Boromhe, or Boru, has each his story, written in the romantic manner of the bards. Substantially true, these stories are yet coloured by poetical imagination or provincial pride. This form of historical romance seems to have grown out of the union of the two nations who were at this period brought into such close contact. It also influenced several of the sagas of Iceland; some bear Irish names, as Cormac's Saga and Njal's (Niall's) Saga, others deal with Irish subjects, such as Thorstein's Saga or Brian's Saga, which take the battle of Clontarf as their central topic. The saga, as we may call it, of Murtogh, King of the Northern Hy-Neill, son of Niall Glundubh, who reigned from his fort of Aileach in Donegal, describes a tour made by him round the provinces of Ireland in the depth of winter in assertion of his authority after a series of defeats of the foreigners. He was accompanied by an imposing force of a thousand picked men, who were clad in sheepskin or cowhide cloaks, which served as wraps by day and tents by night, and from which he received his sobriquet of "Murtogh of the Leather Cloaks." He received tribute from the Norse of Dublin and "blood-money of red gold," besides a prince of their royal house as hostage. From Munster he carried off King Callachan of Cashel in fetters—an audacious stroke of policy, which made a noise in its day; and in Connacht a young son of Teigue of the Three Towers was entrusted to his care. On their arrival at Aileach the captive princes were received with honour and treated to a banquet, at which Murtogh himself and his queen waited on the hostages, after which they were delivered by him voluntarily to the King of Ireland as his superior lord. This chivalrous and successful prince fell in battle at Ardee in the same year (943) by the sword of Blacaire, Lord of the Foreigners, and the feeling of his countrymen is voiced by the chronicler: "Alas! since Murtogh does not live, the country of the Gael will ever be orphaned!" [18]
[18] The courtesies of Murtogh to his captives remind us of the later chivalries of the Black Prince. For the poem of Cormacan, Murtogh's bard (ed. J. O'Donovan), see Tracts relating to Ireland, (Irish Archaeological Society 1841), vol. 1.
A romantic tale has also grown up round Callachan of Cashel, the prince of Munster whom Murtogh took as a hostage. Like the King of Aileach he made a strong stand against the Northmen, but he was less fortunate in his efforts than his Northern rival, for he was twice a prisoner in their hands. They endeavoured also to entrap him by arranging a marriage between him and a sister of Sitric, lord of Dublin,[19] in order to entice him into their power. When he was on his way to Dublin to bring about the match Callachan was secretly warned by Sitric's queen that it was intended to take him prisoner. The warning came too late. As he turned to retrace his way he found himself surrounded by ambushed troops, who bore down upon him, killed his followers, and took him captive to Dublin and thence to Armagh. The men of Munster lost no time in collecting a great army to rescue their chief. They marched north to Armagh, only to find that the Northmen had got notice of their intentions and had quietly sent Callachan off with an escort to Dundalk, and thence to their ships in the harbour. Destroying as they went, the angry Munstermen pursued the party down to the brink of the sea. Their wrath was fierce when they saw their king bound with ropes and suspended from the mast of Sitric's ship. At this moment the Munster fleet under Failbe, King of Desmond, which had been making its way round by sea, entered the harbour. The Norse were caught between the land and sea forces, and a furious battle began. Failbe boarded Sitric's ship, a sword in each of his hands, and, while he kept the foe at bay with his right hand, with his left he cut down the ropes that bound Callachan and set him free. The two warriors cut their way back to Failbe's ship, but Failbe was overpowered and his head cut off on the side of his own boat. Callachan escaped safely and returned home in triumph to resume the sovereignty of Munster and to carry his revenge upon the Danes as far as the cities of Cork, Waterford, and Limerick. The Munster story speaks of Callachan's great size and ruddy face. The Northern chroniclers are not so favourable, and the annalists of Clonmacnois describe him as "that unruly king that partaked with the Danes," probably in memory of the fact that he and the foreigners had once plundered their monastery in company. But Callachan acted with magnanimity on more than one occasion, and he succeeded in keeping down the Danish advance in the south. He is said to have fought fifteen battles with the enemies of his country in the course of his career.
[19] This may have been the Sitric taken prisoner by Murtogh. He is otherwise unknown.
The wars and miseries of the city of Dublin during the perpetual attacks and sacks of the cramped mediaeval town led to their natural results. In 950-951 the unfortunate city was visited by a terrible pestilence, called in the Annals of Ulster "a great leprosy and bloody flux," which became known in Ireland as the Dolor Gentilium. It was followed by a plague among the cattle and bees, so that the country must have been in a miserable state of sickness and famine, in addition to the constant terrors of war. In the Annals of the Four Masters we hear that the famine was so intolerable that "the father would sell his son or his daughter for food." It is to the same period that the worst oppressions in Munster are also ascribed. The clergy had to go into hiding and many of the Irish were reduced to servitude. Heavy imposts were laid upon them: "an ounce of gold yearly from every man in Ireland or else the nose from his face." Foreign overseers were placed over every townland and every household was forced to take in a foreign soldier, who, if he were not satisfied with his treatment, could summon his host before the assembly. The milk of the babes of one year and of the sick had to be given to the soldier.[20]
[20] Keating, History, iii, 175-177; Wars of the Gael with the Gall, pp. 49-51.
But toward the close of the tenth century a check was given to the power of the Danes by the rapid rise of two rulers, one in the North and the other in the South, whose able and persistent efforts came near to bringing the foreign dominion to an end. Had not Brian of the Tributes been so fortunate in his eulogists, posterity would probably have regarded Malaughlan II (commonly miscalled Malachy) as one of the most commanding figures that ever occupied the seat of the High King of Ireland. His fame has, however, been overshadowed by that of his rival Brian, who deposed him, and whose poets and chroniclers put forth unusual efforts to glorify the first prince from Munster who succeeded in breaking through the long tradition of monarchs drawn from the Northern branches of the family of the Hy-Neill. Malaughlan II came to the throne in 980, and it was only after a reign of twenty-three years that Brian deposed him. During all that time he had pursued a steady and successful policy of opposition to the common enemy, similar to that which Brian was carrying on in the South. In the first year of his reign he inflicted on the foreigners of Dublin, at the battle of Tara, one of the heaviest defeats they had ever experienced. It is safe to say that Clontarf was rendered possible by this weakening defeat. As a result, Olaf Cuaran withdrew from Ireland and sought an asylum in Iona among those Columban monks whom the Norse had so often ravaged. With his retirement the whole of the North was freed from subjection to the foreigners of Dublin. Malaughlan forced the Danes to set free the Irish hostages and all slaves, and obliged them to give him hostages in token of subjection. Ragnall, Olaf Cuaran's son, fell in the battle, and Sitric, another son by Gormliath, succeeded to the rule of the Danes of Dublin. This was Sitric Silkenbeard (Silki-skeggor), the Danish king who was present at the battle of Clontarf. He had an uneasy reign. He was expelled from Dublin in 994, when his foe Ivar of Waterford unseated him, but he returned and drove out Ivar a couple of years afterward and reinstated his authority. Malaughlan allowed his enemies no rest. He immediately followed up his success at Tara by a three days' and three nights' siege of Dublin, which gave way before his "great army." He carried off booty and hostages and issued a proclamation bidding every Gael who was in servitude to the foreigner to return to his own territory in peace. So complete was the triumph of Malaughlan that the Annals of the Four Masters add that this was the end of the "Babylonian Captivity of Ireland; next, indeed, to the captivity of hell."
Two years later we find Malaughlan, who was doubtless aware of the growing power of Brian, descending on his sept, the Dalcais, and plundering Thomond. He cut down the ancient tree of Magh Adhair, under which, according to Irish custom, the chiefs of the O'Briens were inaugurated, following up this humiliation by marching on Waterford and inflicting a defeat on Ivar, with the men of Leinster along with him. He took prisoner Gilla-Phadraic, Ivar's son,[21] ravaged Leinster and passed on to inflict a similar fate on Connacht. In 989 he fell again upon the fort of Dublin. For twenty nights he besieged the fort, the Danes within having meanwhile nothing to drink "but the saltish water of the seas." He took the fort with great slaughter of the defenders and wrung from them his full demand, an ounce of gold out of every garden and croft in the city, to be paid for ever on Christmas Night. Shortly afterward Malaughlan asserted his supremacy over the Danes of Dublin by carrying off the royal insignia, the Ring of Tomar and the Sword of Carlus, which were taken by him forcibly with many other jewels. This possession of the Danish trophies and the imposition of the first annual tax upon them shows that the tide had turned in favour of the Irish kings. At this moment of their greatest power Malaughlan and Brian entered into friendly negotiations against their common enemy. "To the joy of all the Irish" they joined their armies and together obtained hostages from the Danes and plundered Dublin. A year later, in 1000, the two armies united in Co. Wicklow and inflicted on the foreigners a crushing defeat at Glenmama, a battle which was sternly contested on both sides. Brian and Malaughlan pursued the retreating Danes to Dublin, where they again burned the fort and expelled Sitric, Brian remaining encamped in the town from Christmas to Epiphany. The account of the wealth found in the city is surprising. Besides quantities of gold and silver, bronze and precious stones, goblets and buffalo horns, the poets of the day sing:
[21] It is curious to find a Danish prince calling himself the gilla, or servant, of Patrick.
We brought silk out of the fortress,
We brought bedding, we brought feathers,
We brought steeds goodly and fleet,
We brought blooming fair white women.
This was "the barbarian wealth of Dublin" of which the Northern saga speaks. Every yeoman in Munster gained enough to furnish his house with gold and silver and coloured cloths and property of all sorts. As a part of the "mutual peace" agreed upon between them the monarch of Ireland handed over to Brian all hostages held by him from the South of Ireland, whether foreign or Irish, thus acknowledging Brian's undivided authority over Munster, in return for a solemn renunciation on Brian's part of any claims on the High Kingship. In a few months' time this compact was broken by Brian's designs on the throne of Ireland, which were fully revealed in the following year.
At this turning-point in the story we must trace the rise to power of the King of Munster. The early career of Brian had been one long adventure. He and his elder brother Mahon were sons of Kennedy, a prince of the Dalcais who had withdrawn his claim in favour of Callachan of Cashel of the rival house of Eoghan, or Owen, an old arrangement between the two houses having provided for the alternate succession of the two Munster houses of the Eoghanacht and the Dalcais. The former had their seat in Cashel, the latter in Clare. The fort of Kincora, the 'Head of the Weir,' near the present town of Killaloe, on the Shannon, was the palace of the Dalcais. Kennedy of the Dalcais never reigned, but on the death of Callachan the succession passed by right to Mahon, who determined to continue Callachan's policy of a steady resistance to the Danes. After a period of waiting Brian stirred up his brother to more vigorous action, and he took the bold step of marching on Limerick to attack the Danish camp outside the city. The two armies met at Sulcoit, and after a fierce encounter the Danes were routed and the Munstermen pursued them into the city and sacked it, "the fort and good town being reduced to a cloud of smoke and red fire." A terrible orgy followed on the hills above the town, every man being put to the sword, and every "soft youthful matchless girl and every blooming silk-clad woman" of the Danes being degraded and enslaved "for the good of the souls of the foreigners who were killed," as the writer adds with a grim attempt at irony.[22] Mahon followed up the important defeat of Sulcoit (968) by seven routs of the Danes, and the people, encouraged by his successes, everywhere turned on the foreign soldiers billeted in their families and killed them. At the height of his success the career of Mahon was cut short by the jealousy of two rival clans under their chiefs Donovan and Molloy, who treacherously invited Mahon to their house and had him killed. Even the Bishop of Cork, under whose protection he had put himself, took part in the murder.
[22] Wars of the Gael with the Gall, pp. 77-83.
The horrid deed brought Brian to the throne as the undisputed head of the chiefs of Munster. He inflicted a just retribution on the murderers of his brother, slaying "that ripe culprit Donovan" along with his Danish ally Harald, or Aralt, and then set himself to continue Mahon's policy. He took hostages from Leinster and pushed his way up the Shannon into Meath and Connacht. In 998 he made his first compact with Malaughlan, who was closely watching the advance of his ambitious designs, now revealing themselves as directed against the monarchy. It was in the very year of the combined victory of Glenmama over the foreigners (1000) that we find the record, "The first turning of Brian against Malaughlan," to which the Northern Annals of Tighernach add "through guile and treachery." A brief entry in the same annals: "Brian of the Tributes reigns," announces the accomplishment of his ambitious purpose, but the Four Masters give the date of his accession as 1002. The Annals of Ulster do not mention his elevation to the kingship, but they later speak of him as King of Ireland, while his rival is named King of Tara.
Brian is said to have attained the age of seventy-six years when he replaced Malaughlan on the throne. The Annals of the Four Masters give the date of his birth at 925, and he is said to have been twenty-four years older than his rival. According to the Annals of Ulster, however, Brian is said to have been born in 941, which would make him sixty-one at the time of his accession, a much more probable age. The ambition of every prince who had risen to power by his own exertions was to secure the public recognition of his position by making an armed circuit of the provinces of Ireland, to obtain the open submission of the provincial chiefs by taking hostages from them. In the second year of Brian's reign he attempted such a circuit, but was refused entry into the North and was obliged to turn back. Not till after the delay of a year did the North consent unwillingly to give hostages to Brian rather than to go to battle with him. It was during Brian's circuit into Ulster that he visited the city of Armagh, where he spent a week discussing the question of the primacy as between the foundation of St Patrick and Brian's own abbatial church of Cashel. In the end Brian solemnly confirmed to Armagh the ecclesiastical supremacy over the whole of Ireland which the clergy of Armagh might well have feared would, on the accession of a prince of Munster to the throne of Ireland, pass from them to the Southern Church. There is still to be seen in the Book of Armagh an inscription written on this occasion by Brian's scribe under the eyes of the King himself, confirming these rights to the Church of Armagh. The entry ends as follows: "I, that is Calvus Perennis [i.e., Maelsuthain, Brian's secretary], have written under the eyes of Brian, Emperor of the Scots [Irish], and what I have written he determined for all the kings of Maceria [i.e., Cashel]." [23]
[23] O'Curry, Manuscript Materials, pp. 76-79, 529-531; the original of this inscription is given, ibid., pp. 653-654 (1861). The Book of Armagh is now in the Library of Trinity College, Dublin.
Ten years before this visit of Brian to Armagh a great misfortune had befallen the city in the destruction by lightning of the chief part of its religious buildings, "both houses and churches and its belfry and sacred wood," say the annals. Doubtless one of the most treasured objects in the city was the Book of Armagh, in which Brian inscribed his name and which contained some of the writings of St Patrick. When a few years later, in 1020, nearly all the city was again burned down, including its fort, the damhlaic or great church with its leaden roof, the bell-house with its bells, along with several oratories and houses, and the old preaching-chair and abbot's chariot, fortunately the library or house of the manuscripts was spared. Had it been burned with the rest the Book of Armagh would have been lost to us. Brian completed his patronage of Armagh by laying twenty-two ounces of gold upon the altar, after which he returned to Munster bringing the hostages of Eastern Munster with him. Next year he carried out his design of enforcing his imperial supremacy over Ireland by making the grand circuit of the provinces.
Having now accomplished his aims, Brian settled at home, and for nine years, up to the close of his life, he occupied himself with little interruption in securing the well-being of his own province of Munster. He made bridges and roads, built or strengthened a number of fortresses in different parts of the South, living himself chiefly at his favourite fort or palace of Kincora in Co. Clare. Close to it was a place called Boromhe (pronounced Boru) to which the tributes of cattle were brought to be given to Brian, and from which he came to be called, from the number of the tributes, Brian Boromhe, or "Brian of the Tributes." [24] He built churches and belfries, executed justice, and encouraged learning. He exercised a wide hospitality, and the peace of his reign is symbolized by the story of the solitary woman who could pass in safety from one part of the country to the other, carrying a gold ring on a horse-rod.[25] He sent professors over the sea "to teach wisdom and knowledge and to buy books beyond the sea and the great ocean, because the books and writings in every church and in every sanctuary had been burned and thrown into the water by plunderers; and Brian himself gave the price of learning and the price of books to each one who went on this service."
[24] His title had nothing to do with the special tribute out of Leinster known by the same name. For the fort of Boromha and Brian's name see Wars of the Gael with the Gall, p. 141; Ériu, vol. iv, Part I, pp. 68-73. The name Brian in this form is Breton, and only became common in Ireland after this date.
[25] The same legend is told of the reign of King Edwin of Northumbria, in Bede, Eccle. Hist., Bk. II, ch. xvi; and see Annals of the Four Masters, 1167.
But though things were outwardly prosperous there were signs of coming trouble. Leinster was restive under Brian's restraining hand and the necessity forced upon it of giving large tributes to him. The Norse were smarting under the defeats that they had received, and were showing unusual activity in forming alliances, fomenting dissatisfaction, and gaining adherents both within and without the country. Brian on his side was not unaware of what was going forward, and he was gathering the whole of the forces over whom he had control in one final effort to drive the Danes permanently out of Ireland.
Things came to a climax in 1014, when on Good Friday from sunrise to sunset was fought, under the walls of the Danish fort of Dublin, the famous battle of Clontarf, in which Brian and many of his auxiliaries fell, but which ended in a defeat of the Danes so decisive that though they were not driven from Ireland they never again regained their former supremacy over the Irish people. The battle of Clontarf is famous alike in Irish and Northern story. Of few battles have we so many independent accounts. Besides the long recital of the fight and the causes that led up to it in the Wars of the Gael with the Gall, we have a Norse account of the battle in Njal's Saga and fragments of a separate saga called the Saga of Thorstein, Sidu Hall's son, which is later than Njal's Saga and quotes from it. Both may, as Vigfusson thinks, be parts of a lost Brian's Saga. Were it not for these saga tales we should hardly have realized the importance of the battle from the Icelandic point of view.
The spark that started the conflagration was struck by a woman. It arose out of a family quarrel which quickly enlarged into a national struggle. Gormliath was the fiercest and most dreaded woman of her day. The saga says that "she was the fairest of women and the best gifted in everything that was not in her own power, but it was the talk of men that she did everything ill over which she had any power." Her natural gifts were great, that is to say, but she did nothing with them but what was bad. Already when she comes into the story as wife of Brian Boromhe she had been married to two husbands, first to Olaf of the Sandal (Cuaran), by whom she became mother of Sitric Silkenbeard, the reigning king of the Dublin Danes, and later to King Malaughlan, who had handed her over to Brian, perhaps as part of the spoils of war or in token of their alliance, as was customary in those times.
These unions may have been all irregular. At the date of her death, which did not occur till 1030, when she must have been a very old woman, the annals speak of Gormliath's "three leaps, which no woman shall ever take again, a leap at Dublin [to Olaf], a leap at Tara [to Malaughlan], a leap at Cashel of the goblets above all," this last being in reference to her marriage with Brian. We find her at Kincora when our story opens, but there was no love lost between her and Brian, and she was busily engaged in stirring up against him her brother Maelmora, King of Leinster, who had always rendered the tributes exacted by Brian from Leinster with great ill-will. At the battle of Clontarf she is found back in Dublin, with her son Sitric, egging him on to the defeat of Brian. "So grim," say the Northern sagas, "had she become against King Brian after parting with him that she would gladly have had him dead."
A false move in a game of chess was the immediate cause of the outburst. Maelmora, who had come to Kincora to bring his tribute of ship-masts to Brian, was teaching Conang, a young lad, to play chess with Morrogh, Brian's son. He advised a move which lost the game to Morrogh. Angry words arose. "It was thou that gavest advice to the foreigners at the battle of Glenmama by which they were defeated," Morrogh said angrily. "I will give them advice again, and they will not be defeated," retorted the King of Leinster. Without taking leave of anyone, Maelmora departed next morning in a furious passion, and hardly had he returned home when he began to stir up the chiefs of his own province, declaring that he had received insult in the house of Brian. They declared for war, and were joined by the princes of Ulster, who were only too glad of an opportunity to throw off the unwelcome yoke of Brian. Great hosts began to assemble. Gormliath in Dublin was gathering a formidable alliance of Danes from the Orkneys and the Isle of Man to the aid of her son Sitric, whom she brought into the quarrel to support her brother Maelmora, and all over the country the stormclouds gathered.
A vivid account is given in Njal's Saga of the arrival on Yule-night at the Orkneys of Sitric Silkenbeard's heralds to demand aid from Sigurd the Stout, Jarl (or Earl) of Orkney, in his rising against Brian. Sigurd's mother had been Audna, or Eithne, one of the daughters of Carroll (Cearbhal), King of Ossory, and he was familiar with affairs in Ireland, for he made constant viking expeditions there. Eithne, who was something of a soothsayer or 'wise woman,' had on a former occasion shown her mettle when her son had hesitated to go on an expedition against a jarl in Scotland, on the ground that his enemy's forces were seven to one "Had I known that thou wouldst wish to live for ever," she replied, "I should have reared thee up in my wool-bag. It is fate that rules life, and not the place where a man may go. It is better to die with honour than to live with shame." She had woven for him the raven banner, which floated in the form of a bird over the host, and which brought Sigurd to his death at Clontarf. It was said to bring victory to him before whom it was borne, but death to him who carried it. Sigurd at first refused to go out against Brian, but the promise of the kingdom of Ireland if they slew King Brian, with the hand of Gormliath, Sitric's mother, finally induced him to give his promise.
Gormliath, when she sent her son abroad to seek for help, had said to him, "Spare nothing to get them into thy quarrel; whatever price they ask, give it." All those to whom he went conspired to say the same thing; when he went on from Orkney to interview the chiefs of two fleets of thirty viking ships lying off the Isle of Man, they also asked as their reward the kingdom of Ireland and the hand of Gormliath. Sitric at once promised, only stipulating that they should keep the terms a secret from Sigurd the Stout. He went home with the news that the pirates of Man and the Earl of Orkney would be prepared to join their forces to those of the Danes of Dublin and the Leinstermen by Easter time of the new year. No doubt the Danes in Ireland hoped for the foundation of a kingdom similar to that which King Sweyn Forkbeard of England (1013-14) was endeavouring to found between Britain and Denmark. But it was not destined that a Danish Canute should ever rule a united kingdom from Ireland.
The battle of Clontarf was fought on Good Friday, 1014. Brian and his forces marched on Dublin, burning all the way, so that the Norsemen when they arrived in Dublin Bay saw all the land one sheet of flame. The battle was fought on the north side of the river Liffey, on the low lands beside Clontarf, and up to the wooded country on the higher ground now known as Phoenix Park. Here, with the wood of Tomar behind them, the Irish forces were drawn up, facing the bay by which the Danish auxiliaries were landing from their ships. On the south side of the river stood the Danish fort, from the height of which Sitric and Gormliath followed the course of the battle going on below them. Another spectator watched beside them. This was Sitric's wife, who was Brian's daughter, married to the chief of her country's foes. Her feelings must have been a strange compound indeed of fear and hope. All day long the contest lasted, from high tide in the morning, when the foreign troops landed and beached their boats, to high tide at night, when they sought their boats' in order to flee seaward. But the low tide of midday had carried the boats out to sea, and they had no place of retreat, seeing that they were cut off between the Bay and Dubhgall's bridge on the one hand, and between it and Tomar's wood on the other. They retreated to the sea "like a herd of cows from the heat of the sun, or pursued by gadflies." There they were cut off and lay dying in heaps and hundreds. To the watchers on the battlements of Dublin Castle it seemed all day like the reaping down of a field of oats. Sitric believed that it was his mercenaries who were gaining ground. "Well do the foreigners reap the field," he said brutally to his wife, whose secret heart he knew to be with her countrymen; "many a sheaf do they cast from them." "By the end of the day the result will be seen," was her reply. Later, when the terrible rout of the Danes on the shores of Clontarf was going on, Brian's daughter had her revenge. "It seems to me," she said, "that the foreigners have gained their patrimony. They are going to the sea, their natural inheritance. I wonder are they cattle, driven by the heat? But if they are, they tarry not to be milked." The answer of her husband was a blow across the mouth. Close to the weir of Clontarf, where the river Tolka seeks the sea, Turlogh, the young grandson of Brian, pursued a flying Norseman across the stream. But the rising tide flung him against the weir, and, being caught on a post, he was drowned, still grasping the hair of the Norseman, who lay dead beneath him.
The age of Brian, who was seventy-three years old when the battle was fought, prevented him from taking a leading part in the fight. His tent was pitched at some distance behind the fighting hosts, on a slight height, from which the contest could be seen. He had, in any case, been unwilling to engage on Good Friday, and he remained all day from dusk to eve absorbed in prayer. A lad who tended him stood at the door of his tent and reported from time to time the ebb and flow of the battle. Toward nightfall a viking chief from the Isle of Man, named Brodir, made his way to the tent. This Brodir bore an ugly character, even in the North. He had been a Christian, but, in the words of the saga, he had become "God's dastard, and now worshipped pagan fiends and was of all men most skilled in sorcery." He came up the hill with intent to kill Brian, for his wizard arts had told him that if the fight were on Good Friday, though Brian's hosts would win the day, he himself would fall. Brian's lad had just reported the disastrous news that the banner of Morrogh, Brian's son, which led the Irish troops, had fallen, and he was in the act of endeavouring to induce Brian to mount his horse and fly, when Brodir entered the tent. Brian had refused to take refuge in flight, and was making his last bequests, still kneeling on his cushion, as he had knelt all day, with his psalter open before him. But as the blue-armoured foreigner rushed in he rose and unsheathed his sword.
Brodir passed him by, and noticed him not. One of his two followers had in former times been in Brian's service, and he said, "Cing, Cing, this is the King." "No, no," said Brodir, "but Prist" ("it is a priest"). "By no means so," replied the man; "this is the great King Brian." Then Brodir turned, and swung his gleaming, double-bladed axe above Brian's head. The old King made a cut at the ferocious viking with his sword, wounding his leg, and both fell together, Brian's head being cleft through by the axe. Then Brodir stood up and with a loud voice exclaimed, "Now may man tell his fellow-man that Brodir hath felled King Brian." But his triumph was shortlived; he was taken by the Munstermen and put to a horrible death on the spot. The slaughter on that day was terrible. Hardly a leader on either side was left alive. Both Morrogh, Brian's son, and Maelmora, King of Leinster, on the other side, were among the slain. Jarl Sigurd the Stout of Orkney fell, carrying the fatal raven's banner under his cloak. A young Icelander of his bodyguard, as fearless as he was brave, took up his stand with a few others beside Tomar's Wood, refusing to fly. When, seeing the rout, all beside him turned to run, Thorstein stooped down to tie his shoestring. An Irish chief, coming up at the instant, asked him why he did not fly with the others. "Because I am an Icelander," said Thorstein, "and were I to run ever so fast I could not reach home to-night." Struck by his coolness, the Irish chief set him at liberty, and Thorstein went to Munster with Brian's sons, and was well beloved in Ireland. When, a week later, Hrafn the Red, one of Sigurd's men, returned to Orkney, having escaped with his life, he was asked by Jarl Flosi, "What hast thou to tell me of my men?" Hrafn could make no reply other than, "They all fell there."
Considerable differences are to be observed in the accounts of the battle as to the part taken in it by King Malaughlan. A long Munster report, put into Malaughlan's own mouth, says that he was so horrified by the storm and contest of the battle that he and his forces were too frightened to take part in it. Nothing could be more unlikely than that the victor of the battle of Tara, during whose reign the foreigners had been repeatedly beaten down and reduced to slavery, would have been affected in such a way by the sight of a battle. Still less is it likely that he would have publicly proclaimed himself a coward. The Annals of the Four Masters distinctly assert that he took part in the battle, and that the enemy forces "were afterward routed by dint of battling, bravery, and striking by Malaughlan from the river Tolka and Finglas to Dublin against the foreigners and Leinstermen." The Annals of Ulster say nothing of his defection. It would seem that the Meath troops were stationed behind the Dalcais, at some distance in the rear, and the Wars of the Gael with the Gall states that an understanding had been entered into between Malaughlan and the Danes that if he would not attack them they would refrain from attacking him. It is quite likely that Malaughlan, who had all to regain by Brian's overthrow, was, as the Annals of Clonmacnois say, "content rather to lose the field than win it." In the earlier part of the day he probably stood aside, but when he saw the foreigners apparently winning he broke in with his troops and took his part in the struggle. This theory at least would reconcile the conflicting accounts. The death of Brian restored Malaughlan to the throne of Ireland, and up to the last days of his life he continued without intermission to harry and attack the foreigners. He reigned eight years after Clontarf, dying in 1022. Those of the annalists who do not admit the right of Brian to the throne of Tara give him a reign of forty-three years in all. He died in retirement at Cro Inis, opposite his fort of Dun-na-sciath on Lough Ennell, in Westmeath, with the Abbot of Armagh and the leading men of Ireland beside him.
The battle of Clontarf was an incident rather than a conclusion. It did not close the Danish period in Ireland, but it inaugurated a new phase. For the next two hundred years or more we find the Norse existing in the country as a separate nationality, adhering to their own interests and holding the cities they had founded round the coasts. Dublin remained in Danish hands. Kings of Norway and jarls of the Isles and Man could still look to Ireland with the assurance of a friendly welcome or even with the hope of a possible reconquest, and the fleets of both nations met on the seas for merchandise or war. Some of the Northern jarls claimed great possessions in Ireland as well as in Scotland. Thorfinn, youngest son of Earl Sigurd the Stout of Orkney, who fell at Clontarf, held rule "from Thurso-skerry to Dublin" and was everywhere beloved in his wide-flung dominions. Important battles, not mentioned in the Irish chronicles, are remembered in the sagas. A great battle, much heard of in the North, was fought at Ulkfeksfiord (?Dundalk Bay) by a jarl of Orkney, in which an Irish king Konofogor (Conor) gained a victory, so that Earl Einar had to flee back to Orkney after losing his men and all his booty. This was in 1018, and is not mentioned in the Irish annals.[1] Of Guthorm, the nephew of St Olaf, King of Norway, it is said about the year 1050 that Ireland was for him a land of peace and that he had his winter-quarters in Dublin and was in great friendship with King Margad.[2] They are found plundering together in Bretland (Wales), but they quarrelled about the division of the booty, and in this unfriendly fight Margad fell. They fought on St Olaf's Day, and the booty was so great that Guthorm is said to have made an image of St Olaf out of every tenth penny of the loot.[3] This Irish king would seem to have been a king of Dublin called in the annals Eachmargadh (?Each-marcach, "The Rider of a Steed"), who came to the throne in 1035, was deposed by Ivar, son of Aralt, in 1038, but was restored in 1046, when Ivar was expelled. In spite of his Irish name he was a nephew of King Sitric, who left the kingdom to him when he went overseas to Rome. In 1052 Eachmargadh also went overseas, apparently on the Welsh expedition from which he never returned. At this time the kingship of the Danes of Dublin seems to have been disputed between princes of the Norse or Danish race and the kings of Leinster, for Dermot, son of Maelnambo, King of Leinster, succeeded him. He was the ancestor of King Dermot MacMorrogh, who took his family title from this Dermot's son. He and his son Morrogh were both styled "Kings of the Danes of Dublin."
[1] Saga of St Olaf Haraldsson, ch. lxxxvii (Heimskringla, Laing's edn., ii, 382.
[2] Saga of Harald Hardrade, ch. lvi (op. cit., iii, 410).
[3] Ibid., ch. lvii (op. cit., iii, 412).
But the Norse king whose memory is most clearly preserved in Ireland was Magnus Barelegs (reigned 1093-1103), so called because on his return from his Western viking raids he and his men adopted the Scottish and Irish custom of wearing the plaid and kilt. "They walked barelegged in the streets and wore short kirtles and over-wraps" to the great astonishment of their people. Magnus came three times on expeditions to the West and spent many years in Ireland. His close relations with Murtogh Mór [4] O'Brien, King of Munster, make it necessary that we should take up the course of events in Ireland after the battle of Clontarf.
[4] It is not to be supposed that such words as Mór ='Great,' Oge = 'Junior,' Fionn = 'Fair,' Donn = 'Dark,' Liath = 'Grey,' Boy (buidhe) = 'Fairhaired,' Reagh (riabhach) = 'Swarthy,' etc., were part of the Christian name or surname ; they were personal adjectives, which sometimes were adopted to distinguish different branches of the family. The MacCarthys Reagh were a junior branch of the MacCarthys, of which the MacCarthy Mór was the head ; the O'Conor Donn (now Don) was the senior branch in rank of the O'Conors. In other cases the adjective denotes the district ruled over, as O'Conor Faly (Failghe) or O'Conor Kerry (Ciarraidhe). We use the double 'n' in this name where the family seems to be distinct from the ruling family of Connacht, such as the O'Connors of Offaly, or O'Connors Faly, Offaly being a district comprising parts of Leix.
The shattered army of Munster had fought its way back to the Shannon carrying the wounded on litters, but they were impeded by the unpatriotic attempt of the prince of Ossory to hinder the return by throwing his clansmen across the path of the marching troops. But the wounded warriors caused themselves to be tied upright to stakes set in the ground among the fighting men, so that they might bear their part in the conflict. Struck with fear and pity, the army of Ossory refused to fight such dauntless heroes and allowed them to pass on.
The rise of Brian and the intrusion of a king of Munster into the line of the High Kingship of Ireland, hitherto alternating between the Ulster and Meath branches of the race of Niall, had interrupted the custom of centuries. The interruption was more than momentary, for it had established a precedent which the princes of the South naturally thought might well be followed by Brian's descendants. Hence a new uncertainty arose regarding the succession to the throne of Ireland and a fresh cause of strife. Brian, during the course of his long reign, had come nearer than any king before him to establish his authority over the whole island; only Ulster, as always, had refused to recognize him and gave him, only when forced into it, a grudging and unwilling submission. The personal nobility of Brian, his benevolence and wisdom, added much to the dignity of his reign. To the Northmen he was "the best-natured of all kings, who would thrice forgive outlaws the same offence before he would have them judged by the law," while the Munster Chronicles loudly proclaim the justice of his rule and the benevolence of his heart, praising his patronage of learning and devotion to religion. Though on his fall Malaughlan, King of Meath, returned to the position from which Brian had ousted him, the brilliant possibility of attaining to the High Kingship was never absent from the minds of Brian's powerful family. A short interregnum was filled by the joint regency of two good and learned men, Cuan O'Lochain, a chronicler and judge as well as a poet, of the distinguished family of the O'Lochains of Meath, and Corcran the cleric, who was connected with the Waterford district of Lismore. They governed the land like a free state, and not as kings; but the arrangement was brought to an end by the slaying of Cuan by the men of Teffia two years afterward, in 1024, an act which brought that family into great disrepute. The interregnum, however, lasted for eighteen years after his death.
Then began a series of reigns most of which are accounted by the chroniclers reigns "with opposition," that is, they were not acquiesced in by the whole country, and there was generally a rival king who disputed the title to the throne. Three kings of the O'Brien family of Munster, two of the O'Conors of Connacht, and two of the O'Lochlans of Ulster held at various times the coveted title, though "with opposition"; and more than once a monarch of Leinster aspired to it. Some of these kings, in particular Murtogh O'Brien (d. 1119) and Turlogh O'Conor (d. 1156) were men of great power as well as of vast ambition. Each fought steadily for his own hand, and between them "great storms of war" swept through Ireland or, as the annals express it, Ireland became between them "a trembling sod." They succeeded in making their names and influence felt outside their own country, willingly entering into foreign alliances in order to strengthen their claims at home. The respect felt outside Ireland for Murtogh Mor (called Murchad by the Norse), the strongest representative of his house next to King Brian, is shown by the request that came to him from "the nobility of the Isles," that is, from the Hebrides and Man, who, on the death of their ruler Lagman, son of Godred Croven, asked Murtogh to send them some worthy person to act as regent until Godred's son should come of age to govern. Murtogh sent over his nephew Donald MacTeige, impressing upon him the duty of ruling a country which was not his own with all possible bounty and moderation. But the choice was unfortunate. Donald's rule was so tyrannical and his crimes so great that the Hebridean chiefs formed themselves into an association and expelled him from the Isle of Man. He is said to have been killed by the men of Connacht in 1115 during a raid into his own country.[5]
[5] P. A. Munch, Chronica Regum Manniae, at 1095.
Murtogh Mór instituted friendly relations not only with the Northmen of Dublin, the Isle of Man, and Norway, but also with the kings of England. William of Malmesbury tells us that Murtogh, King of Ireland, and his successor were so "devotedly attached" to Henry I that they wrote no letters but such as tended to soothe him and did nothing but what he commanded. He adds, however, that on one occasion Murtogh acted for a short time rather superciliously toward the English and had to be brought to a better mind by the suspension of navigation and foreign trade, upon which Ireland largely depended; this seems to have had the desired effect, seeing that "soon after his insolence subsided." "For," adds the chronicler, "of what value could Ireland be, if deprived of the merchandise of England?" [6] This mercantile dependence on England is illustrated in the twelfth century by the facility with which the largest of the towns, such as Dublin, could be reduced to starvation when an English blockade was established by sea, the inland trade being evidently quite insufficient to cope with an emergency.[7] That there was a trade in fine cloth as well as provisions is shown by the well-known story of the Skrud-viking, or "Broadcloth cruise," of the great viking chief of the Orkneys, Swein Asliefsson, who, when he was approaching Dublin with his ships for a raid about 1150, met two merchant ships coming from England laden with English cloth and other merchandise bound for Dublin. He set upon and plundered the vessels and "took every penny out of them," leaving to the merchants "only a small quantity of provisions and the clothes they stood up in." They sailed away to the Orkneys with the fine cloth sewn to their sails, so that it looked as though these were made entirely of rich cloth.[8]
[6] Chronicle of William of Malmesbury, Bk. V, 1119.
[7] Giraldus Cambrensis, Conquest of Ireland, ch. xix, xxii.
[8] Orkneyinga Saga. Skrud means fine or costly material.
It is possible that King Murtogh found it difficult to keep on good terms with princes so much opposed to each other as King Henry I of England and King Magnus of Norway, for both of them accused him of uncertain conduct. Murtogh was second son to Turlogh O'Brien and reigned thirty-three years. A letter from Lanfranc, Archbishop of Canterbury, written in 1074 to this Turlogh, styles him, "Magnificent King of Ireland," and the Archbishop remarks that the Almighty showed great mercy toward the Irish people when He gave Turlogh supreme power over that land. But it detracts a little from this praise that by the very same messenger who transmitted this letter to Turlogh, Lanfranc sent another epistle to Godred, or Godfrey, at that moment Danish king both of Man and Dublin, calling him also "glorious King of Ireland." This letter recommends to him Patrick (Gilla-Phadraic), whom he had just consecrated as the second Danish bishop of Dublin in 1074.[9] Turlogh was never, in fact, supreme king of Ireland, though he came near to asserting his claim when, in 1080, he marched at the head of an army into Meath attended by the clergy of Munster. He then received the submission of Malaughlan, King of Tara, who brought with him the Bishop of Armagh carrying the famous relic, the Bachall Isa, or "Staff of Jesus," supposed to have been given by our Lord to St Patrick.[10] But his claims were never acknowledged by the princes of the North, and after his death, six years later (1086), he is usually styled "King of Ireland with opposition." [11] Turlogh died at Kincora after a long illness. His son Murtogh Mór who succeeded him, as we have seen, set about immediately to assert his claim to the throne of Ireland, in opposition to a formidable rival in Western Ulster, Donal MacLochlan, who claimed the overlordship against the O'Briens. During the greater part of a long reign this contest continued. The fury with which it was waged is shown by the frequent efforts made by the abbots of Armagh to bring the sanguinary struggle to an end, but the most they could do was to impose a truce upon the combatants from time to time.[12] The hewing down of several of the sacred trees under which from very early times the kings had been inaugurated shows also the bitterness with which these wars were conducted.[13] Both princes were men of determination and ability, and both felt that the contest was finally to decide the rival claims between the North and South. In the course of the struggle each combatant razed to the ground the principal palace of the other, Murtogh ordering his men, in the vehemence of his anger, to carry away the very stones of which the fortress of Aileach, the royal seat of the Hy-Neill, was built, a stone in every sack of their provisions, all the way from Donegal to Kincora. He declared that he would rebuild his own destroyed residence out of the ruins of that of his enemy.
[9] Godred styled himself Rex Hiberniae. In the Annals of Loch Cé his death is recorded under 1075 . "Goffraidh, son of Ragnall, King of Ath Cliath [Dublin] mortuus est."
[10] Giraldus Cambrensis, Topography of Ireland, ch. xxxiv.
[11] The Annals of Loch Ce call him King of Erin.
[12] Ibid., under dates 1097, 1099, 1102, 1105, 1107, 1109, 1113, etc.
[13] In 1099 the craebh-thelcha or "spreading tree of the hill," under which the kings of Ulidia were inaugurated, was cut down by the Cinel Eoghan. It gave its name to Crewe, a townland in Co. Antrim. In 1111, in retaliation, the sacred trees or grove of the Cinel Eoghan at Telach-og, or Tullyhog, in Co. Tyrone were hewn down by the Ulidians ; and in 1143 Turlogh O'Brien hewed down the Ruadh-Bheithigh, or Red Birch, the royal tree of the Hy-Fiachrach of Connacht. The inauguration tree of Murtogh's own race had been cut down by Malaughlan, King of Tara, in his wars with Brian Boromhe; it stood on Magh Adhair in Co. Clare.
It was in the course of this struggle that Murtogh came into close relations with King Magnus Barelegs, who came three times to Ireland and affianced his son Sigurd to Murtogh's daughter. The marriage took place in 1102 on Magnus's last visit to the country. The Norse King came over with the definite intention of making himself master of the country. "On hearing of the delightfulness of Ireland, the abundance of its pro duce and the salubrity of its climate, Magnus could think of nothing else but the conquest of the country." His first step was to send over his shoes from the Isle of Man to Murtogh, "bidding the Irish King carry them on his shoulders through his palace on Christmas Day, in presence of the envoys," in token of Magnus's superior authority. The courtiers, furious at such a request, prayed the King not to agree to it. But Murtogh said that he "would not only carry the shoes, but eat them, rather than that Magnus should ruin a single province of Ireland." [14] They renewed their friendship, plundering together in Dublinshire, and the Norse King passed a winter in Kincora with the King of Munster. "Why should we think of faring home?" he sang shortly before his death. "My heart is in Dublin. Youth makes me love the Irish girl better than myself." He was fated to fall in the country of his affection. While waiting for the arrival of some cattle needed to provision his homeward voyage from Ulster, he and his men fell a prey to an ambush in the swampy ground at the head of Strangford Lough below Downpatrick. The King was conspicuous by his armour and the emblems on his shield. He fell under a stroke from an Irish axe, such as the Danes had taught the Irish to use. This was in 1103.[15] This is the last descent of a Norse king upon the shores of Ireland until King Hakon Hakonsson's abortive attempt in 1263, shortly after the fatal battle of Down. But viking raids continued regularly up to the Norman period, well-known vikings such as Swein Asliefsson plundering the Isles and the coasts of Ireland twice a year, in their spring and autumn seafaring. It is probable that the landing of the first band of Normans on the Southern shores was looked upon by many of the inhabitants as one of these old accustomed viking raids. But the Normans had come to dispute with the Norse the possession of the towns. An interesting remark made by MacFirbis the genealogist early in the seventeenth century tells us that up to his own day the greater part of the merchants of the city of Dublin belonged to the descendants of the son of Olaf Cuaran, that is Sitric Silkenbeard, showing that the Norse commercial activity survived in the old Norse city even after the Norman conquest. It is difficult to imagine the posterity of this fierce and ambitious prince developing into a trading community; but the Norse added to the original population a fresh and vigorous stock possessed of much practical ability. At the end of the thirteenth century the Annals of Clonmacnois mention the families of Dalemare, Ledwitch, ffrayne, and MacCabe as of the remnant of the Danes who remained in the kingdom.[16]
[14] P. A. Munch, op. cit., 1098; Keating, History, iii, 309.
[15] Magnus Barelegs' Saga, ch. xxvii (Heimskringla, Laing's edn., iv, 111).
[16] Annals of Clonmacnois, 1299.
They evidently looked on the Normans as of Danish or Norse stock. There were of true Norse stock the MacCabes and MacLeods, the MacKeevers (Ivar), the O'Hagans (Hakon), MacSorleys (Somhairle), Kettles (Ketel), MacManus (Magnus), MacCaffereys (Godfred), Cottars (Ottar), and MacAwleys (Olaf), who not only became thoroughly nationalized but in some cases chiefs of Irish districts. It is difficult not to see in the MacLochlans and the fierce MacSweeneys, or MacSwines, the descendants of mixed Norse and Irish blood. Lochlann was the common Irish name for Norway or, perhaps, rather for the Hebrides, from which so many of the race descended upon the North of Ireland. MacFirbis gives a considerable list of Danish settlers in different parts of the country. The intermarriages and consequent interchanges of name began early and went on apace, showing the terms of comradeship and familiarity on which, in spite of wars, the two peoples stood.[17] A number of Norse place-names replaced the earlier Irish names, especially on the east coast. Howth, Skerries, Lambay, Dalkey, Leixlip, near Dublin, are names given by the foreigners, as are also Smerwick in Kerry, Waterford, Wexford, Arklow, and Carlingford and Strangford Loughs or fiords. Donegal means "the Fort of the Foreigners," and the old Irish names of three provinces added the Norse termination 'ster' to the original Irish name.[18]
[17] MacFirbis, On the Fomorians and the Norsemen, ed. Alexander Bugge (1905).
[18] Joyce, Names of Places; A. Walsh, Scandinavian Relations with Ireland during the Viking Period (1922).
The adoption of Christianity by the Danes about the beginning of the eleventh century brought about great changes in the life, as in the architecture, of the Danish towns of Dublin, Waterford, and Limerick. Olaf Cuaran, Sitric's father, died at the Columban monastery of Iona, which in the past the Danish vikings had ruthlessly wrecked, and his brother-in-law, King Olaf Tryggvsson (995-1000) had been baptized "to the West over in Ireland," probably in the Skellig Isles off the Kerry coast.[19] They would therefore appear to have united themselves to the Irish native Church. But Sitric and his successors were sharply divided from it. Their bishops sought consecration from Canterbury and held no intercourse with the Irish clergy for at least half a century. We may ascribe this adoption of the non-Celtic system of Church government to Sitric's visits to Rome, where he probably received baptism. On his return he set up a Church organization in the city of Dublin in every way formed on the Roman model. Bishops, and not abbots, ruled in the Danish cities, and each bishop had his own diocese. The men chosen by the Danes as their first bishops appear all to have been Irishmen, but they were Irishmen who had received their training in England or abroad, and had been brought up under the discipline of the Anglo-Roman Church. [20] Donogh O'Hanley had been a monk at Canterbury; Samuel O'Hanley, a monk at St Albans; Patrick of Dublin, "who had been nourished in monastic institutions from his boyhood," was well known to Archbishop Lanfranc, and Gilbert of Limerick was the friend of Anselm, whom he had met in Rouen when Anselm was called over to the deathbed of William the Conqueror. Malchus of Waterford had been a monk at Winchester. They were all men with a knowledge of affairs outside their native land, and they had been educated in the Roman methods of Church government. From the first they set about to organize their dioceses on the model in which they had been trained. They professed obedience to Canterbury, from which they had received consecration, five bishops of Dublin, one of Waterford, and one of Limerick having been consecrated in Canterbury in the time of Archbishop Theobald (1138-61). When Cellach of Armagh, as Primate of the Irish Church, claimed the obedience of the Danish bishops to his authority, they wrote to Ralph, the then Archbishop of Canterbury, in 1121, "We will not obey his command, but desire to be always under your rule." [21]
[19] This is Worsaae's opinion. It is erroneously assumed that Olaf was baptized in the Stilly Isles, off Cornwall. Olaf was for some time in Ireland, and took home an Irish wolfhound, which never left his side during his life. After Olaf's death at the fatal battle of Svold the dog was found dead on the mound which he thought contained the remains of his master. See Saga of Olaf Tryggvsson, ch. xxxii, xxxv (Heimskringla, Laing's edn., ii, iii, 115).
[20] The dates of the earliest bishops of Dublin are; Donat, 1038-1074; Patrick, 1074-84; Donat O'Hanley 1085-9 ; Samuel O'Hanley, his nephew, 1095-1121; Greine, or Gregory, first Archbishop, 1121-61; Laurence O'Toole, 1162-80.
[21] See also the submission of Patrick, second Bishop of Dublin, to Canterbury, in Ussher, Works, iv, 564.
The churches that they erected bore foreign names, such as St Olaf (or Olave), St Werburgh, and St Audeon, and they enshrined in them the relics of foreign saints. The rapidity of their church building shows that the Danish people as well as their princes had become Christian. About 1040, twenty-five years after the battle of Clontarf, the foundations were laid of the church of the Holy Trinity, known later as Christ Church Cathedral, church dedications to native saints beginning about this time to give way in favour of dedications to the Trinity, or to the Blessed Virgin and Church saints. Its history had a complete parallel development to that of Christ Church at Trondhjem. It remained so Danish in sympathy that even at the end of the fourteenth century no Gael could get employment in connexion with this church. All these churches were crowded together within the narrow limits of Danish Dublin, close round the fort or castle. In later days the Norman successor to Archbishop O'Toole built St Patrick's outside the walls as a rival to the Danish cathedral, the ancient differences between the two cathedrals and their struggles for priority witnessing to the double national and spiritual life existing side by side. In the end priority was secured by the older church.
Nevertheless, just as the Danes had bishops of Irish nationality, so they were supported in their church extension by the Irish population of the towns. The Irish contributed grants of land to Dunan, or Donatus, the first bishop, for the foundation of his church and the episcopal palace beside it. The Danes seem to have taken part in the popular election of the bishops, a novel and interesting feature of the Danish Church system in Ireland, and at the Synod of Athboy in 1167 Ragnall, chief of the foreigners, attended, surrounded by a bodyguard of a thousand horsemen. At the Synod of Kells (Ceanannus), held in 1152 and presided over by Cardinal John, who brought the pallia for the four archbishops, Dublin, Cashel, Tuam, and Armagh, Danish and Irish bishops sat together and conferred in common on the new arrangement of the dioceses.[22] Possibly the example of the Danish Church in their midst may have helped to bring about the abandonment of the ancient system of Church government, hitherto so tenaciously adhered to, and consecrated by the example of the founders of the Church. Leading ecclesiastics, both of the Irish and Danish sees, united in an effort to bring the Celtic Church into conformity with the Roman discipline. The energy with which they applied themselves to the task is shown by the number of conferences and synods held during this century, seven meetings having been held between 1110 and 1167. They must have been imposing assemblies. As many as twenty-five bishops and over three hundred clergy "both monks and canons" attended one of them. At the Synod of Usneach in 1105 "three hundred and sixty priests and one hundred and forty deacons and many other clerics" were present.[23] At later meetings large numbers of laity attended, thirteen thousand horsemen, of whom, as we have seen, one thousand were Danes, having been present at the Synod of Athboy in 1167. It was at the Synod of Rath-breasal, held in 1110 and presided over by Gilbert of Limerick in his capacity of legate of the Holy See, that the question of regulating the diocesan system was seriously taken up.[24]
[22] Keating, History, iii, 315.
[23] Keating, History, iii, 297.
[24] Gilbert was an Irishman though he was bishop of the Limerick Danes. His name is a Latinized form of the Irish Gilla espuig or "Servant of the Bishop," often anglicized to Gillespie. He signed his name in Irish below the Acts of this Synod, for which see Keating, History, iii, 299-307, quoting from the lost Annals of Clonenagh. See also H. J. Lawlor, St Malachy, xxxvii seq.
The general plan adopted was that of two archbishoprics, Armagh and Cashel, under whom ten bishops were appointed for the North of Ireland and ten for the South. It is noticeable that their decisions in respect of Leinster and Connacht are put in the form of suggestions rather than commands, these two provinces being too independent of the rule of Cashel or Armagh for it to be taken for granted that they would adopt the decisions of the archbishops and clergy of either. The views of the Danes of Dublin, in particular, were, no doubt, an uncertain factor in the situation. But the first bold step had been taken. The principle had been laid down that a bishop, in Ireland as elsewhere, must be attached to a diocese, and the first efforts were made to mark out these new dioceses, which naturally followed the general limits of the tribal boundaries. The wandering unattached bishop and the bishop attached only to a monastery disappeared as an institution with the signing of the Acts of the Synod of Rathbreasal (1110).
As the head of his diocese the bishop took henceforth an independent and superior position. He was brought out of the monastery into the world. There does not seem to have been any wide opposition to the change among the bishops, but the old abbacies naturally resented a change which placed them under the jurisdiction of the bishop in whose diocese the abbey stood. Great foundations, proud of their descent from the early saints and counting their origin from the first days of Irish Christianity, could not easily accustom themselves to the new position. In spite of all efforts to bring them into the general scheme, monasteries like Clonmacnois, Derry, and Fenagh remained even up to the fifteenth century quite outside it.[25] The old "evil custom" of hereditary succession and the familiar tribal organization were too deeply rooted to be broken through. While, in general, the South and East of Ireland, with the towns, conformed, Connacht and Ulster stood out for the preservation of their independence. The reformers got much support from the O'Briens and MacCarthys of Munster, but they got none from the O'Neills of Ulster, and with Ulster went Connacht and the West. Ecclesiastically as well as politically, the North and West lay outside the radius of reforming movements, and their customs and ways of life underwent little change.
[25] Book of Fenagh, ed. W. Hennessy (1875).
The chief agent in bringing about the new system was St Malachy, the friend and correspondent of St Bernard, whose beautiful life of the Irish Primate [26] is an invaluable record of the conditions of Church life in Ireland as seen from the Roman standpoint. Malachy, whose real name was Maél Maedóc ua Mórgáir, was born in Armagh in 1095. He was educated by a Danish recluse, Ivar O'Hacon, or Hagan, from whom and from a three years' stay with Malchus, Bishop of the Danish church of Waterford, he imbibed the ideas of church discipline of which he became so ardent a champion. He became Bishop of Connor and Abbot of Bangor and in 1137, for a short time, and most unwillingly, Primate of Armagh. His humility, his love of voluntary poverty, and his energy as a missionary teacher in his backward diocese, of the condition of which he gives a distressing account, disinclined him to undertake the duties of the Primacy. But he was called to larger work even than this. The decisions of the Synod of Rathbreasal were incomplete without the bestowal of palls on the two Archbishops, and Malachy was empowered to undertake the long journey to Rome to beseech their bestowal on the Archbishops of Armagh and Cashel. Twice he had to make the journey across the Alps, the Pope not considering his credentials sufficient on the first occasion; but the labour was atoned for to Malachy by the opportunity it gave him of cultivating the friendship of St Bernard, at whose Cistercian monastery he rested and where, on his second visit, death overtook him. The almost womanly tenderness felt for him by St Bernard is shown by the letters he addressed to him and by the beautiful memorial sermons delivered to his monks by the great saint on the anniversaries of Malachy's death. When St Bernard died five years later he was buried in the habit worn by his friend.
[26] St Bernard's Life of St Malachy has been translated by H. J. Lawlor (1902). The letters and sermons are included.
The formal appeal for the palls was not without effect. At the Synod of Kells (1152) Cardinal John Paparo brought over four palls, one for each province, thus erecting Dublin and Tuam into archbishoprics along with Armagh and Cashel, an unexpected act of generosity not altogether pleasing to the Irish people, who saw the new Danish see of Dublin placed on a level with the ancient Primacy of St Patrick. But the gift had a purpose; it severed the connexion between the Danish Church and Canterbury, and made it part of the Church of Ireland.[27] Henceforth, in spite of local differences, there was up to Elizabeth's day but one Church in the country with four Archbishops, and Rome as the final court of appeal. It was largely to the untiring energy of St Malachy that this consummation was due.
[27] For the Synod of Kells see Keating, History, iii, 313-317.
St Malachy had fallen upon an evil time. The synods which met during the twelfth century were not altogether occupied with questions of organization; they were also called upon to deal with social reform. The sweeping condemnation of Malachy when he first undertook the charge of the diocese of Connor, however much we may discount its bitterness as the result of a different point of view in ecclesiastical matters, must have been true of many of the outlying parts of Ireland. There were few priests and neither preaching nor singing in the churches. The people were "dead in regard to rites, impious in regard to faith, barbarous in regard to laws, and shameless in regard of morals"; "though Christians in name, they were in fact pagans." The Acts of the Synods and the pages of the annals alike bear out these terrible accusations. The restraints of life had been removed during the long Norse sway. The old monastic system had broken down over large parts of the country, and the new diocesan and parochial system had not yet been established to take its place. It is no wonder that St Malachy was so anxious for a change of organization. Raid-ings, burnings of dwellings and villages, and the marchings and assaults of bodies of armed men made peaceful occupations impossible. Feuds between bishops and abbots became more frequent. Wars and pestilences were not occasional; they never ceased; the country lived under arms, not only for certain seasons as the vikings did, but at all times.
The annals of the eleventh and twelfth centuries give a lamentable account of the general state of the country, especially in the North and West. There was no sanctity for church or abbot; abbots were killed at the door of their own monasteries, and churches and round towers full of people were ruthlessly fired if they stood in the path of a passing body of troops. The sanctity of oaths, even when sworn on the most sacred objects, was disregarded, and men were killed by treachery and guile even when placed under the special protection of the clergy.[28] The different states were at constant war with one another, and the uncertainty of succession to the chieftainship opened the way for interminable broils within the limits of each state. Among the numerous aspirants within the same family who were more or less eligible for election to the chieftainship the most sanguinary wars arose, all the more embittered because the warfare was between men of the same kith and kin. Even after the introduction of tanistry, by which the successor was designated by the reigning chief and recognized by the people during his lifetime—a system intended to put an end to these tribal disputes—personal ambition or force of character continued to disturb the regularity of the succession. To guard against this there were to be found in every chieftain's courtyard a number of unfortunate youths of high position who were held in confinement, either to secure them from disputing the position of the chief or as hostages for the fealty of their families. Many of them passed long periods in imprisonment, and they were liable at any moment to be blinded or killed in their fetters if their friends showed any disposition to support their claims or if their captors had any reason to doubt the fidelity either of their relations or of their clan. On almost every page of the annals we read of the blinding or execution of some one or more of these unhappy lads, whose only crime was to have been born within the limits of the succession to the lordship of their people.[29]
[28] Annals of Loch Cé, 1055, 1060, 1089, 1128, 1138, 1170, 1185, etc.
[29] No less than eight young men of the O'Brien family were blinded by their near relations between 1153 and 1185, four of them by Donal Mór, who died in 1194. See also Annals of Loch Cé, 1092, 1093, 1265, 1266, 1368, etc.
Nor, when the chief was elected and inaugurated, was the clan permitted to settle down in peace. Every prince or chief, as soon as he was elected, thought it incumbent on him to prove his right to the chieftaincy above his competitors, whom his elevation had defeated and disappointed, by reducing any outstanding province or state that declined to recognize his authority. These expeditions were known as the creacht righi, or regal raids, and they were a constant pretext for external wars. The rule of succession to the High Kingship equally forbade any possibility of quiet; for any aspirant to the high position from the North to become eligible must possess, besides his own province of Ulster, one province in the South; and an aspirant from Munster must in like manner have the command of Connacht or one of the other provinces besides his own kingdom. Hence the warlike expeditions and circuits made by princes aiming at the supreme power, often undertaken even before the death of the reigning monarch, with a view to establishing their right to the succession. Such a custom cut at the root of any consolidation of the monarchy and led to interminable wars for the supreme authority.[30] Thus, although in many directions progress had been made during the eleventh and twelfth centuries, the political organization showed no tendency toward settling down into any shape that promised a peaceable or progressive native rule. The Ireland into which the Normans precipitated themselves toward the close of the latter century found the country, so far as the general administration of the provinces was concerned, in a state of anarchy. They added one more factor to the already entangled situation.
[30] Annals of the Four Masters, 1083, 1265, 1559, 1562.
If from a political point of view the country showed little progress, it is otherwise when we turn to art, architecture, and poetry. The Irish continued to build their churches on the small scale founded on traditions believed to have been handed down by St Patrick, and when St Malachy, fresh from seeing the great churches of York, Clairvaux, and Rome, proposed to erect a stone oratory at Bangor in 1140 the people were scandalized. They "drew attention to Malachy's frivolity, shuddered at the novelty, and exaggerated the expense." [31] But the richness with which these small buildings were decorated gives them a distinct place in the original developments of Romanesque. Cormac O'Cillan, Abbot of Clonmacnois (d. 964), King Brian (d. 1014), and Conor O'Kelly, who built Clonfert in 1166-67, were all great ecclesiastical architects working on purely Irish models. The chapel erected by King Cormac MacCarthy on the Rock of Cashel in 1127 shows this type of design in its greatest luxuriance.[32] Most of the round towers also date from the Norse period, and the finest of the high crosses and metal work. Before the coming of the Normans the erection of the first Cistercian monastery, Mellifont on the Boyne, consecrated in 1157, began a new era in church building.
[31] Lawlor, Life of St Malachy, pp. 109-110.
[32] Margaret Stokes, Early Christian Architecture in Ireland (1920), pp. 126 seq.
It is of great interest that there remain certain charters given to monasteries, written both in Irish and Latin, dating from the eleventh and twelfth centuries, which show that grants of land and privileges were legally witnessed and executed before the coming of the Normans to Ireland. The earliest of the Gaelic charters conveys a grant of land at Kells, "with its vegetable garden, to God and pious pilgrims," no pilgrim having any right in it until he should have devoted himself to God and proved his piety. The grant included two tracts of pasture-land "with their meadows and their bogs...with their houses and outhouses, and with their lawns as far as the Cathach of Domnach Mòr [Donaghmore]." This charter, which was drawn up about 1080, was made by the King of Tara and the Abbot of Kells, with all the clergy, for a priest of Kells and his kinsmen who had purchased the ground for twenty ounces of gold, and a large number of influential persons became securities for the grant "as they were passing round the land and through the middle of the land;" an early example of 'beating the bounds.' A similar grant in Irish was made to Kells (c. 1128-40) also for the support of pilgrims, "in the year when the cattle and swine of Erin perished by a pestilence." This deed is witnessed, among others, by Tiernan O'Rorke, whose wife ran away to Dermot MacMorrogh, in the presence of his sons, Donchad and Sitric. Most of these early grants secured the land given from any future claims of rent, tribute, or coigny from king or chief.[33]
[33] Gilbert, Facsimiles of National Manuscripts of Ireland, Pt II, Nos. LIX, XLIV.
Even more interesting is a Latin charter founding the monastery of Duisk,[34] in which the signature of King Dermot MacMorrogh himself appears as the founder along with those of the donor, Dermot O'Ryan, chief of Odrone, Lawrence, Archbishop of Dublin, and others. These charters show that lands were regularly conveyed or purchased in the ordinary manner, and also that the Latin hand and language as well as Gaelic were used for such purposes before 1170.
[34] Now the monastery of Graigue-na-managh, Co. Kilkenny See ibid., No. LXII (1).
It was while the country was in this unsettled condition that a new turn was given to the course of events by the appeal of Dermot MacMorrogh, King of Leinster, to King Henry II of England to become his ally in his quarrel with Tiernan O'Rorke, Prince of Breifne (Counties of Leitrim and Cavan). This was the first step in the drama of events which led to the permanent establishment of the English in Ireland. The coming of the English has been often treated as if it were an isolated occurrence, a sudden bolt from the blue for which nothing in the previous history of Ireland had made preparation. But, as we have seen, the relations between the two countries had become increasingly close in the twelfth century, and both in politics and commerce the two neighbouring kingdoms had frequent interaction. When, therefore, an Irish prince made his appeal for help to an English king against his personal enemy there was nothing to cause special surprise either to his own people or to the sovereign to whom he applied. Nor was the idea of adding Ireland to his great empire a new one to Henry. Lord already of Normandy, Anjou, Aquitaine, Maine, Touraine, Poitou, suzerain of Brittany, King of England, prince of dominions which made England the centre of power in the West, Henry had long turned his thoughts toward Ireland. Already in 1155 he had considered that the island to the west would be a fair gift to make to his favourite brother William, and he had made tentative preparations by consulting his Council of Winchester about its conquest and had sent the learned John of Salisbury, then coming into notice as one of the most remarkable men of his day, to the English Pope, Adrian IV, to request permission to add the island of Ireland to his dominions. But the King's mother, the Empress Maud, or Matilda, resisted the project, and it was temporarily dropped, though after the death of Prince William in 1164 the thoughts of the King still occasionally returned to the idea, with the object of making his son John lord of Ireland.
But the Papal permission and benediction, often erroneously styled a Bull, lay in his archives unused till long after Adrian's death, and the ensuing contest between rival Popes made it, for the moment, of little avail for the purpose for which it had been given.[1] Henry's mind was fully occupied with the affairs of his unwieldy and disunited empire; most of his time was spent in France, and to his English subjects this king, who only visited his English kingdom for short intervals with absences of from four to eight years between the visits, was almost a foreigner. He spoke no English but only French or Latin with a smattering of many other tongues "from the Bay of Biscay to the Jordan." Only gradually did this descendant of the conquering Normans, who by marriage or inheritance was also lord of the greater half of France, come to recognize the superior importance of his English possessions. He was absorbed at the moment in the affairs of his French territories, and the dream of a conquest of Ireland might never have been revived but for the sudden appearance of an Irish King coming in his own person to request that Henry would help him in the recovery of the kingdom of Leinster, from which his rebellious sub-chiefs had driven him. This unexpected appeal revived all Henry's old ambitions; it gave an excellent opening, which might prove profitable to himself, for interference in the affairs of Ireland. His gracious reception of Dermot showed that the proposal was not unwelcome to him.
[1] For the Bull Laudabiliter see Appendix I.
It was soon after Christmas in the year 1166 that Dermot MacMorrogh, King of Leinster (b. 1110), sought Henry's aid to extract him from the difficulties that his own misconduct had brought upon himself and his province. Wild as were the times in which he lived, Dermot is singled out among the princes of his period as being so intolerable that he was expelled by the chiefs over whom he ruled. Gerald of Wales avers that "the cruel and intolerable tyranny which he imposed upon the chiefs of the land" was the result of youth and inexperience, but this can hardly be accepted as an excuse for a prince who had occupied the throne for over thirty years when he was driven out. Already in 1133 he is stated to have imposed "great tyrannies and cruelties" upon his Leinster nobles, seventeen of whom he had blinded or slain. He had confirmed himself in the possession of his kingdom by the killing of two princes and the blinding of a third. He spoiled churches without compunction. A still more brutal and unseemly act was the forcing of the Abbess of Kildare to leave her convent and to marry one of his people; at the same time he slew nearly two hundred of her nuns and townsmen who endeavoured to defend her. He was in perpetual strife with the men of Ossory and the King of Meath, as well as with the O'Rorkes of Breifne and the O'Kellys of Oriel.[2]
[2] A large district west of Lough Neagh and the Lower Bann.
He fought with the Dublin Danes against the Danes of Waterford. All this was much in the manner of the times, but the fact that Leinster was 'confirmed' to Dermot on more than one occasion shows that he held his position with an unusual degree of precariousness. He is said to have been "hated by his Leinstermen." Dermot is described by Gerald, the historian of the conquest, as very tall, "of a large and great body, a valiant and bold warrior of his nation and by reason of his continual halowing and crying, his voice was hoarse; he rather chose to be feared than loved; a great oppressor of his nobility, but a great advancer of the poor and weak. To his own people he would be rough, and grievous and hateful to strangers. He would be against all men and all men against him." [3] The act for which, according to the popular judgment, Dermot was driven out of Ireland, his abduction of Dervorgil, wife of Tiernan O'Rorke, Prince of Breifne, occurred in 1152, fourteen years before his expulsion.[4] Tiernan belonged to a family noted for its pride and turbulence from the days of Art O'Rorke, "the Cock," who in 1031 had descended the Shannon in boats to menace Thomond (Clare) and had met with a signal defeat at the hands of Donogh O'Brien, to those of Elizabeth. Descended from old kings of Connacht, they never forgot their high estate or ceased to try to recover it. They had been ousted by the O'Conors, and pushed back into the narrower limits of Breifne, which they shared with the O'Reilleys. Standing thus in the gangway between the warlike Cinel Eoghan of Tyrconnel in Ulster and the province of Connacht, their country was perpetually overrun with armies in whose wars they became involved; but in the eleventh century they were chiefly bent on recovering their position by a series of wars with Thomond. In 1084 the son of "the Cock" had fallen in battle with Murtogh O'Brien, and his head had been cut off and exposed by O'Brien on the hills above Limerick. It was recovered four years later by Rory O'Conor and Donell MacLochlan, and Limerick and Kincora were burned by them in revenge.
[3] Giraldus Cambrensis, or Gerald of Wales, was of the great family of the FitzGeralds, or Geraldines. He came over twice to Ireland, first in 1183 with his brother Philip de Barry and Richard de Cogan, and later, in 1185, with Prince John. To him we owe much of our knowledge of contemporary events and personages.
[4] Grace, Annales Hiberniae, 1167, says that Dermot MacMorrogh, Prince of Leinster, "while O'Rorke, King of Meath, was far from his country, ravished his wife with her own consent, and at her own solicitation." The date, at least, is incorrect.
Tiernan (or Tighernan) O'Rorke, who now plays an important rôle in the annals of his country, had been stripped of fresh portions of his territory alike by the kings of Ulster and Connacht. In the Book of Fenagh, written in O'Rorke's own district of Breifne, Dervorgil, his unfaithful wife, is called "the wife of one-eyed Tiernan of many crimes." One of these crimes for which the annalist says no equal had previously been found in Erin, and which earned the malediction of both laymen and clergy, was the profanation, openly in his own presence, of the Abbot of Armagh and the plundering of his retinue, many of whom were slain; even a young cleric, specially protected, was killed. The annalist exclaims that this act was like contempt of the Lord Himself and that it produced a universal distrust of any protection throughout the country.[5]
[5] Annals of Loch Ce, 1128.
Dervorgil may have been weary of life with such a man; she is said to have been carried off by her own consent and at the instigation of her brother, who had his own scores to pay off against Dermot for the latter's rebellion against their father the King of Meath. A year later, Dervorgil was restored, with the rich dowry of cattle and valuables that she had carried with her on her elopement. But though this act made some sensation at the time, and though years afterward O'Rorke demanded a heavy eric of a hundred ounces of gold from Dermot (probably nearly £5000 of our money), "more for the shame than the loss that he had suffered," the event had no immediate influence on Irish affairs beyond the fresh cause of revolt and disaffection that it provided. It had all been over long before Dermot sought King Henry in Aquitaine. The restless energy and ceaseless journeyings of Henry II made it always difficult to know in what part of his widespread dominions he would be found. "The King," said one of his courtiers, "never sits down, but is on his legs from morning till night." When Dermot, after searching for him "up and down, forwards and back," at last arrived before him, he was far away beyond seas in the remote parts of Aquitaine and, as always, "much engaged in business." The meeting of these two men, who represented in their persons the future relationship and destiny of their two countries, is interesting. There was probably something sympathetic between the English King, with his square, stout build, his muscular arms and neck bent forward, and his grey eyes that flashed so readily into anger, and the Irish Prince, whose huge frame and tall stature announced the warrior and whose voice had become hoarse by constantly raising his war-cry in battle. Henry, brought unexpectedly face to face in a French city with a representative of a country that had often been in his thoughts, at once agreed to Dermot's request. He gave him a letter authorizing all who desired it to go with Dermot, and liberally provided him with gifts and with the money necessary for his enterprise. Dermot returned to Bristol, where he stayed on both journeys with one Robert FitzHarding, an influential citizen and friend of King Henry, who assisted him in his efforts to induce the nobles of South Wales to accompany him to Ireland.
Though Dermot was forced to return to Ireland alone and to lie hidden for a time in his house at Ferns or at the monastery near by, he had been successful in securing a promise of help from several of the Norman lords who had recently carved out for themselves at the sword's point properties in South Wales, and who promised to follow him as soon as their preparations were complete. Many of them were men of good birth but broken fortunes, who, in the free manner of the Norman kings, had been granted lands in different parts of England and Wales "if they were able to conquer them," as rewards for their services at the battle of Hastings and elsewhere. Others were mere freebooters, whose advent into Wales was marked by the most frightful cruelties to the inhabitants and many of whom were in sore need of money to support their impecunious families. To all of them Dermot held out a variety of tempting baits; and to the most powerful of them all, Richard of Striguil, Earl of Pembroke, the ancestor of the house of the de Clares, later to be more familiarly known by his sobriquet of "Strongbow," he offered the great bribe of the hand of his daughter, Aoife, or Eva, with the succession to the kingdom of Leinster after his own death. Earl Richard had forfeited the royal favour by his support of King Stephen, and to a man who possessed high titles, but little means to support them, the prospect of restoring his fortunes in Ireland out of the way of the royal displeasure must have been an attractive one. To Robert FitzStephen, who had been kept a close prisoner by Rhys, the Welsh king, for three years, but who was now released at Dermot's request, were promised the town of Wexford and some adjoining lands to be held in fee by him and his half-brother Maurice FitzGerald. The town of Wexford, being a Danish city and in Danish hands, could, like most of Dermot's other gifts, only be obtained by conquest.
"A knight, bipartite, shall first break the bonds of Ireland." So ran an ancient prophecy attributed to Merlin, and men thought they saw the prophecy fulfilled when FitzStephen, who was on his father's side an Anglo-Norman, or rather Welsh-Norman, and on his mother's a Cambro-Briton, and whose armorial bearings were bipartite, gave his word to follow Dermot across seas. He was the first of that remarkable family who supplied no less than eighteen knights to take part in the conquest of Ireland, and who were the progenitors of the famous line of the Geraldines, Earls of Kildare and Lords of Desmond. They brought with them also one of their own family to be the historian of the conquest, the Archdeacon Gerald de Barry, called Cambrensis, or "the Welshman," through whose vivid pages, supplemented by an old French poem for which the materials were supplied by the scribe and interpreter of Dermot MacMorrogh, we are enabled to follow the fortunes of each member of the family. It is an unusual piece of historical good fortune that we should possess these two independent reports, which supplement each other and which tell the same story from two different points of view, both of the writers being closely interested in the persons and events of which they supply the record.
Though the adventure which Dermot-na-nGaill, or "Dermot of the Foreigners," set on foot is commonly spoken of as the coming of the English to Ireland, few of the adventurers could be called Englishmen. The leaders were Normans, French-speaking Lords, recently settled in Wales, the most westward offshoots of that turbulent and ambitious race which, starting from the same Northern homes from which the earlier race of Northmen had come, had in their piratical raids southward gradually established their rule in Normandy and up the Seine, and swept round the coasts of Spain to find a footing in Sicily, Apulia, and Calabria. Just a hundred years before Dermot sought the help of Henry II, William of Normandy had completed the onward march of his race by his conquest of England, but the two nations were only slowly uniting into a homogeneous population. All the differences of language, tradition, and systems of law and tenure, which were to complicate the future relations of the two peoples in Ireland, were now in process of being fought out in the neighbouring country. As later in Ireland, the conquering knights who were spreading over the land stood haughtily aloof from the main body of the population, whom they were endeavouring to accustom to new feudal relations as their underlings. Most of the knights who volunteered to follow Dermot to Ireland had made their homes in the extreme south-west of Wales, from which Earl Richard de Clare, or "Strongbow," took his title of Earl of Pembroke, a district often known as "little England beyond Wales." Their men-at-arms were largely Flemings who had come over from Flanders in the reign of Henry I, and had been settled by him among his enemies the Welsh, in the hope that their solid virtues, their love of industry and commerce, and their brave and robust character, might ease his task in subduing the rebellious Welshmen. These Flemings were destined to form a useful and permanent element in the towns of Leinster, and to give their name to the family of the Flemings, Lords of Slane.[6] Of these Normans, Welsh, and Flemings, few would have styled themselves Englishmen, though there may have been an admixture of English citizens from Bristol, interested through the efforts of FitzHarding in Dermot's enterprise. The Annals of the Four Masters speak of the "fleet of the Flemings" which Dermot induced to come over, and of "seventy heroes, dressed in coats of mail." The Irish looked on this little army with contempt; the great hosts collected by Rory O'Conor and O'Rorke "set nothing by the Flemings." The arrival of these new gaill, or foreigners, may have seemed to them only one more attack, and an insignificant one, of their old foes the vikings, who still from time to time descended on the coasts, carried off their prey, and departed again. What the coming of these "seventy heroes" meant for Ireland they were only slowly to discover.
[6] A Richard Fleming established himself in a castle at Slane before 1176. In that year all his followers, a hundred or more, were destroyed by the King of the Cinel-Eoghan of Ulster. See Annals of Loch Ce, 1176.
The so-called conquest of Ireland falls into three sections: the arrival of the first-comers under FitzStephen, FitzGerald, and Maurice de Prendergast in May 1169; the landing of Earl Richard, or "Strongbow," and the events following this in August 1170; and, finally, the visit of Henry II in October of the next year, 1171.
When Dermot had returned to his own country it did not seem as though the Norman lords who had promised him their aid were in any hurry to carry out their engagements. No forces seemed to be arriving to the support of the few men who had accompanied him on his return. In his impatience Dermot sent over his companion and interpreter, Morice Regan, to whom we owe the French poetical version of this history, to stir up the dilatory barons. He increased his offers by a general promise of land, horses, armour, and money to any who would volunteer. Robert FitzStephen led the way, and in his party came Meiler FitzHenry, Miles FitzGerald, son of the Bishop of St Davids, Maurice de Prendergast, and Hervey de Montmaurice, all Norman-Welsh scions or connexions of the great house which derived from Nesta, or Nes, the daughter of Rhys ap Teudwr, last independent king of South Wales, by her two husbands and by Henry I, who was grandfather to Meiler and Robert FitzHenry. They were thus closely allied by blood with Henry II. FitzStephen marched straight on Wexford, and after a short contest the town surrendered and was handed over, with the adjoining lands, to the newcomers. The victorious army then marched northward into Ossory to reinstate Dermot; by a sudden charge of cavalry they met and defeated a large body of men who had entrenched themselves behind stockades in a difficult country of woods and bogs. To the savage delight of King Dermot two hundred heads of his enemies were laid dripping at his feet.
But a strong combination was being formed against Dermot. "The wheel of fortune turned and those that were above were threatened with a sudden fall." Rory (or Roderick) O'Conor, King of Connacht, had just succeeded to the sovereignty of Ireland on the death of Murtogh O'Lochlan, a prince of the house of Ulster. Rory was destined to be the last king of an independent Ireland. A hundred years before, the aged Donogh, son of King Brian Boromhe, being deposed, had taken the pilgrim's staff and set out to end his days in Rome. It was said that he took with him the crown of Ireland, which remained in the possession of the Popes until Pope Adrian gave it to King Henry II after the latter's conquest of the country. The story must be metaphorical, for we hear of no crown in the possession of Henry, nor did he even style himself King of Ireland. But it symbolizes the condition of the supreme monarchy during the century that elapsed between the death of Donogh and the death of Rory O'Conor, in whose time the overlordship came to an end. All the kings who reigned between these two had ruled with disputed authority. The balance of power had swung from the O'Briens of Munster away to the O'Lochlans of the north-west of Ulster; but Connacht, which had been advancing in power and influence, was able to place on the throne two of her princes during the twelfth century. The policy of Rory O'Conor, who for years had been reigning king of Connacht before he attained to the throne of Ireland, had been to try to weaken the other provinces and at the same time to satisfy the rival aspirations of the underlords by subdividing the provinces between them. Three times he had enforced a division of Munster between the O'Briens and MacCarthys, princes ever at war for ascendancy; twice he had divided Meath and once Tyrone (Tir Eoghan) in Ulster. But the only result of his policy had been still further to weaken the already enfeebled country. So far from showing a disposition to unite, Ireland during the last years of her independence was more broken up into rival chieftainries than ever before.
Rory had usually sided with O'Rorke and Malaughlan of Meath against Dermot, and on hearing of his advance northward accompanied by foreign troops armed in such coats of mail as had never before been seen in Ireland he sent messengers all round the island and convoked a great assembly to march against him. He also tried to detach FitzStephen from Dermot's side with large offers, and when these were declined he appealed to Dermot to come over to his side and aid him in exterminating the foreigners, on an undertaking to restore to him his kingdom of Leinster. These offers having been likewise refused, the armies were drawn up in battle, but at the last moment peace was made between the rival kings, on condition of the restoration of Dermot to the throne of Leinster and his recognition of Rory as King of Ireland Dermot gave his son Canute (Cnut) to Rory as a hostage and secretly engaged to bring no more foreigners over to Ireland.
The peace was a fortunate one for Dermot, for already some of his 'fair-weather friends' were falling off and desiring to return to Wales. The most serious defection was that of Maurice de Prendergast, who fell out with Dermot and offered his services to MacGillapatrick of Ossory, Dermot's old enemy, who "leaped to his feet with joy" when he heard the news. Henceforth Prendergast is known as Maurice of Ossory, but he did not long remain in Ireland. Hearing of plots to massacre him and his followers, he watched an opportunity to escape to Waterford and take ship to Wales. His defection was partly atoned for by the arrival of FitzGerald, half-brother to FitzStephen; but still Dermot's plans, which had been expanding with each success, did not ripen as he wished. Leinster, which he had won back, no longer sufficed him; he aspired to replace Rory as King of Ireland. In the autumn he wrote to Earl Richard in this strain: "We have watched the storks and swallows; the summer birds have come and are gone with the wind of the south; but neither winds from the east nor the west have brought your much-desired presence." Strongbow had indeed been prudently waiting to hear the result of the successes of the first adventurers. He was of a more gentle build and retiring nature than most of Dermot's helpers. His grey eyes, feminine features, and weak voice bespoke the quiet gentleman rather than the bold man-at-arms. Out of the camp he had the air of a simple soldier, and he was at all times more disposed to be led by others than to command. But, encouraged by Dermot's assurances that he had regained his kingdom, he set about preparing for the great hazard. Having obtained the King's permission to go, he sent forward Raymond le Gros, a brave and stout soldier, who crossed over, erected a fort between Wexford and Waterford, and after a sharp skirmish brought to his camp seventy of the principal townsmen as hostages. The first act of wanton cruelty shown by the adventurers stained their bravery on that day. Raymond, in a noble speech, prayed for pity on these citizens, but the fighting men, worked upon by Hervey de Montmaurice, gave their voices for their immediate execution; and the unfortunate hostages were beheaded, it is said by a girl, and their bodies thrown over the cliff into the sea.
When Earl Richard arrived from Milford Haven he took Waterford by assault after severe fighting and entered the town, slaughtering as he went. The Danish rulers, Reginald (Ragnall) and the two Sitrics, held out for a time in Reginald's Tower, the massive Danish stronghold which still stands to prove the solidity of their defences, but the Sitrics were finally taken and put to the sword, Reginald and an Irish chief named MacLoghlan of Offaly being saved by Dermot's intervention. Then, the town having been garrisoned, Dermot was sent for to bring his daughter, Strongbow's promised wife and prize, and the marriage of Strongbow and Eva was solemnized with great state, a symbol of the union, for good and evil, between the two countries.[7] The news of the fall of the Danish towns of Wexford and Waterford filled the citizens of Dublin with dismay. From all parts of Ireland they summoned help, and Dermot received tidings that between Dublin and the South all roads were blocked and passes barricaded, and that Rory with an immense army lay at Clondalkin ready to oppose his passage. He summoned the Earl and laid before him a bold plan. Avoiding the open ways, he marched straight across the mountains of Glendalough, appearing before the gates of Dublin with an army of over five thousand men. The citizens, having the fate of the Danish cities of the South before their eyes, sent Laurence O'Toole, Archbishop of Dublin, to treat for peace. While negotiations were going on, young Miles de Cogan, with a party of hot-headed followers, grew impatient of the delay and fell suddenly on the city, taking it by a surprise attack. Asculf, the Danish king, fled away by sea, and Strongbow entered the town, of which, in reward for his services, he appointed de Cogan the Warden.
[7] The celebrated picture of this event painted by Maclise errs in making the marriage take place immediately after the slaughter of the inhabitants and among the slain. This is a pictorial exaggeration.
At this critical stage of the story a break occurs. In the manuscript of the poem which has related his history there are dashed across the page the words Si est mort li rei Dermot. Propitius sit Deus anime! ("King Dermot is dead. May God have mercy on his soul!").[8] He died, according to the Annals of the Four Masters, on May 1, 1171, at his home in Ferns "without will, without penance, without the body of Christ, without unction, as his evil deeds deserved." To his own retainers in Ireland he had a better aspect. "Very rich and powerful" they held him; "he loved the generous, hated the mean, the noble king who lies buried at Ferns." Dermot of the Foreigners had some good qualities. He founded the priory of All Hallows in Dublin, and the Cistercian monastery at Baltinglas; and the famous Book of Leinster, which preserves the records of his Province, was drawn up at his instigation. It was written by a Bishop of Kildare in Dermot's reign. Dervorgil also devoted herself to church-building. The beautifully decorated church of the nuns of Clonmacnois was erected by her, and she made munificent gifts to the new Cistercian monastery of Mellifont near Drogheda, which the enthusiasm of Archbishop Malachy was founding on the Continental pattern. He had liberal helpers in Tiernan O'Rorke, Dervorgil's husband, and in Donagh O'Carroll of Oriel, while the erring wife presented a chalice of gold to the new church, with fine cloth for the altars and threescore ounces of gold. Dervorgil, who died in 1195, at the age of eighty-five, was buried in the monastery she had helped to endow. The abbey church had been consecrated with great solemnity in 1157, several princes and seventeen bishops, with the Papal legate, being present. It was the mother-church of five Cistercian houses founded about this time by Irish princes. These buildings mark in a definite way the dying out of the old native forms of organization and the closer union with the Roman Church and system. The visits of Papal legates, beginning at the date when Cardinal Paparo presided over the Synod of Kells in 1152, also point to a definite change of position. The liberality of Dervorgil to two religious foundations, of which one belonged to the old form of Irish Christianity and the other to the foreign orders now for the first time making their home in Ireland, is symbolic of the double allegiance of the people, and of their lingering affection for a system now gradually to pass away. Between 1139 and 1272 thirty-four abbeys of the Cistercian order were founded in Ireland, of which twelve were established before 1172. These include St Mary's, Dublin, and Mellifont, founded in 1142, with the latter's daughter-abbeys—Bective, in Meath, called De Beatitudine; Baltinglas, in Wicklow, called De Valle Salutis; and Boyle, in Roscommon.[9] The introduction of the Cistercian and Augustinian orders led to a great architectural outburst all over the country, in which the Irish princes took the lead. The Norman adventurers, men of the race which was covering England and Normandy with splendid cathedrals and abbeys, entered into the work, and, besides the massive keeps and castles which gradually replaced the earlier earthen forts all over the provinces, there arose during the thirteenth century stately abbeys, whose outlines we admire in their ruin to-day.
[8] The Song of Dermot and the Earl, ed. G. H. Orpen (1892).
[9] See the list given in Grace's Annales Hiberniae, Appendix I, pp. 169-170.
At this moment it must have seemed to Strongbow that he had realized all the hopes with which he had come to Ireland. He had married Aoife (Eva), who brought him a rich inheritance; and Leinster, from Waterford to Dublin, was subdued. King Dermot was dead, and it only remained to enter peacefully into his promised lordship as his successor. But, just when all seemed fair, he found himself encompassed with difficulties. First came a demand from Henry, who in his far realm of Aquitaine had from time to time received exaggerated reports of the doings of his knights in Ireland, that all his feudatories should return to England before Easter on pain of forfeiting their lands, a command that he followed up by ordering a blockade of the Irish ports. All supplies and reinforcements at once ceased, and the Earl, much embarrassed, sent off Raymond le Gros to the King with the following letter: "It was with your licence, if I remember rightly, my Lord and King, that I crossed to Ireland to aid your faithful vassal Dermot...Whatever lands I have had the good fortune to acquire here, inasmuch as I owe them all to your gracious favour, I shall hold them at your will and disposal." The letter was a politic one and gave the Earl time to plan out his future movements. Events pressed upon him. The Irish, to whom the idea of an Irish prince bequeathing his kingdom outside his family, and moreover to a foreigner, was hitherto unheard of, rose in revolt; "all the Irish of Ireland" were suddenly ranged against Strongbow, save his wife's brother, Kavanagh, and two minor chiefs. They lay, sixty thousand strong under Rory's banner, at Castleknock outside Dublin, Tiernan O'Rorke being in their company. Archbishop Laurence O'Toole exerted himself to strengthen the combination by going through the country and rousing up the chiefs, and by inviting over Godred of Man and the lords of the Isles, who were to blockade the city on the sea-coast side, while the Irish, including the Archbishop's troops, surrounded it on the north, west, and south. A two months' siege ensued, during which, partly owing to the Norse blockade and partly to that carried out by Henry's orders, no food could be got into the town, and provisions were running short. Moreover, news was brought that Robert FitzStephen was closely besieged in his half-built fort at Carrick, and, soon after, that he had been captured and sent prisoner to Wexford. Strong-bow attempted to treat with Rory, but again the young knight-errant Miles de Cogan cut a straight road out of the difficulty. Keeping the matter secret, a little band of six hundred knights with some Irish under Donal Kavanagh suddenly sallied out of the town and crept close up to the stockades of the Irish camp before they were perceived, with Miles at their head shouting his war-cry of "De Cogan!" The Irish were quite unprepared for the attack. Rory and many of his men were bathing in the river at some distance from the camp, and, being left without leaders, the unarmed Irish "fled through the moors like scattered cattle."
After collecting the spoils, which sufficed for a whole year, Earl Richard marched straight to Wexford, hoping to release FitzStephen; but, hearing that his captors would put FitzStephen to death if he advanced, he abandoned the attempt, and, receiving an urgent message from Henry, who was now in England near Gloucester gathering a large force to take with him over to Ireland, Strongbow hastily delivered Dublin into the care of Miles de Cogan and Waterford to Gilbert de Boisrohard, and set out to face his angry liege. It required some courage to confront the blazing eyes of Henry "Curtmantle" when "the demon blood of Anjou" mounted to his face, but the Norman poem says that Henry assumed a friendly manner toward the Earl and at this time made no show of anger. On reflection the King may well have thought that a subject who had gained a fifth of Ireland with its two chief towns, and who was ready to resign all claim to Dublin and the coast towns and fortresses, holding the remainder as a fief under himself, had not done so badly for his kingdom. The matter was settled for the time, and the King set out with his usual promptitude for Waterford, accompanied by the Earl and a splendid fleet. He had in his army 4500 knights and archers. On October 17, 1171, Henry landed at Crook, a little below Waterford.
Henry's stay in Ireland had the aspect of a triumphal progress. As far west as Limerick and as far north as the borders of Ulster the Irish chiefs came in and made submission to him. It was recognized that the prime object of his visit was not to fight the Irish, but to take over the Norse towns and to check the growing power of his own barons; and kings who had stoutly withstood the aggressions of a set of Norman knights, apparently each fighting for his own hand, now came in without a contest and made their submission to the overlord. Dermot MacCarthy, King of Cork, Donal O'Brien, King of Limerick, who surrendered his capital into Henry's hands, MacGillapatrick, Lord of Ossory, and Malachy O'Phelan, chief of the Decies, and after them the lesser chiefs of Munster, came in, and were courteously received and sent away with gifts. In Dublin Tiernan O'Rorke and other chiefs submitted.
Henry brought over a considerable army, but he did not shed Irish blood. "All the Irish in Ireland" had risen against the barons when they found Dermot giving away the tribal lands, or the barons conquering them, but they did not rise against Henry; on the contrary, they seem to have looked on him as their natural protector against the aggression of his nobles. A curious instance of the general attitude is shown in the action of the citizens of Wexford, who had imprisoned FitzStephen. They informed Henry that they had acted on his behalf against his rebellious vassal, who had invaded the country without the King's licence. Henry, "who loved the baron much," taking his cue from this curious argument, had FitzStephen brought before him to Waterford, soundly rated him, and committed him to prison in Reginald's Tower with great show of wrath and anger, "for he feared the Irish would murder him." At Waterford he had him under his own eye. He took an early opportunity of setting him at liberty, though he did not hesitate to reap advantage from his present helplessness by requiring him to relinquish the town and lands of Wexford into the King's hands—a method of asserting his suzerainty which Henry had already practised with success in dealing with his barons in South Wales.[10]
[10] Giraldus Cambrensis, Conquest of Ireland, Bk. I, ch. xxxi.
The most significant of the submissions made to Henry was that of the Aird-ri of Ireland, Rory O'Conor, who took the oath of allegiance on the borders between his own province of Connacht and that of Meath, side by side with O'Brien, King of Thomond, his then ally. This submission of the High King to the foreign sovereign was an act of the greatest importance. It can hardly be said to have been obtained by conquest or even by an overwhelming show of military force. The Irish kings had bowed to the inevitable, but they do not seem to have bowed unwillingly, for they believed that Henry alone could keep in check his marauding nobles. Rory by his submission recognized an authority in the kingdom superior to his own, a High Kingship to which even his own must look up. From this moment the office of High King of Ireland practically came to an end, for Rory had no successor; he was the last of the historic line. The office from henceforth was felt to have been transferred into the hands of the English King.
The relations for the moment were of the friendliest kind. The festival of Christmas 1171 saw these Irish princes gathered with their retainers to the Danish city of Dublin, then "a very thronged port, emulating our London in commerce," [11] as the guests of the English King. They were entertained in so sumptuous a style that provisions threatened to run short and were sold at excessive prices, no cargo vessels having been able to cross on account of the severe tempests. For the accommodation of the guests Henry had a palace of peeled osiers or wattle constructed "after the manner of the country" just outside the then narrow walls of Dublin on the rise of the Howe over the Stein, where St Andrew's Church now stands, This was the site of the Danish Thing-mote, or national assembly, and was called in the tenth century Hoggen-green, from the Scandinavian word hoga or howe, a hill or tumulus. It is only within the last couple of centuries that this historic site has been levelled and its mould spread over the present Nassau Street. In Henry's day it looked out over the ' Green ' of the town, stretching down to the borders of the Liffey, which then flowed through open fields to the bay at Clontarf. The 'Stein,' then the usual landing-place for Dublin, was so called from the long stone on which capital sentences were carried out under Norse rule, after decrees of death had been passed at the Thing-mote; it was only removed in the seventeenth century. The novelty of Henry's entertainment and the splendour with which it was carried out astonished his guests, who "learned to eat crane's flesh, which they had hitherto disliked." Meanwhile the Norman archers stationed at Finglas amused their leisure by wantonly cutting down and burning as firewood the old yews and ash-trees which had been planted in former days by Abbot Kenach round the cemetery.[12]
[11] Chronicle of William of Newburgh, ed. Thomas Hearne (1719), pp. 194-195.
[12] Very old yews still form a walk at Glasnevin, close to Finglas, perhaps the descendants of these groves. It is now known as Addison's Walk.
From Christmas to Lent Henry was busy visiting parts of his new dominions and settling the future administration of the country. He appointed Hugh de Lacy first Justiciar, and garrisoned the towns. He visited Lismore and Cashel, and in pursuance of the conditions laid down by the Pope he arranged for a synod at the latter place for the correction of morals and to introduce the payment of tithes. He was occupied in planning a new fort for Lismore when, the wind changing at last, he received at Wexford ill news of great importance. Two legates, commissioned by the Pope, had arrived in England to inquire into the murder of Archbishop Thomas a Becket and were threatening to lay the country under an interdict; at the same inauspicious moment he learned that his sons had risen in rebellion against him. Such tidings were too urgent to be ignored, and, breaking off his plans in Ireland, the King set sail from Wexford on Easter Day 1172, "after the celebration of Mass," [13] landing in St David's Bay at noon of the next day. "Thus," say the Annals of Clonmacnois quaintly, "the King's Majesty made a final end of an entire conquest of Ireland."
[13] Annals of Loch Ce, 1172.
When Henry left Ireland he had received hostages as overlord from Leinster, Meath, Munster, and the chiefs of Oriel and of Eastern Ulster,[14] besides the still more important submission of Rory of Connacht. Thus every province was represented in the formal acts of submission to the King of England. Such general offers of fealty had never been made in Ireland save to the acknowledged Aird-ri, and even then, as a rule, only when exacted by force. It is the more remarkable that they should have been obtained by Henry without the use of compulsion and that the whole country should have participated in making them. This submission, however, did not include any acceptance of the rule of Henry's Norman barons, whose advance was checked in a practical way by the heavy defeat of Strongbow at Thurles by Donal O'Brien and King Rory in 1174, two years after Henry's departure, while in Meath the Irish demolished the forts which de Lacy was erecting to secure his new grants. But in the following year, after consultation, Rory O'Conor and Donal O'Brien were ready to renew their allegiance to the King of England in the most formal and solemn manner at the Council of Windsor (October 6, 1175), in the presence of the King, barons, and bishops of England. As his representatives at this council Rory sent three of the highest ecclesiastics in Ireland: the distinguished Laurence (or Lorcan) O'Toole, traveller, scholar, and statesman, who had been transferred from his abbey at Glendalough, in Wicklow, to the posts of Archbishop of Dublin and Chancellor; the Archbishop of Tuam (Co. Galway); and the Abbot of St Brendan. Through them, with every circumstance of solemnity, the Aird-ri ratified his former treaty, promising "to hold his lands well and peaceably of the English King as his liege lord," and in token of this to pay an annual tribute of a tenth of all choice skins of animals slain in Ireland, to be approved by dealers, and of birds (of the chase), and wolfhounds. The Danish cities of Dublin and Waterford, with the adjacent lands as far as Dungarvan, and the whole province of Leinster, pledged by Dermot MacMorrogh to Strongbow, were reserved to be held of the King directly. Apart from these reserved lands, Rory was to hold sway over the lesser chieftains and to receive their tributes as of old, King Henry's tribute being added as an additional claim.[15]
[14] Ibid., 1171.
[15] Henry of Hovenden, Annals, 1175. The destruction of wild birds in Ireland has been wholesale. In a Parliament held in 1480 duties were imposed on the export of hawks and falcons to restrain the carrying of them out of the land. Even at that date they were in danger of becoming extinct. The last golden eagle was shot at Killarney only some forty years ago.
In case any of the chiefs should rebel against the King or against Rory or refuse to pay tribute, the King of Connacht was authorized to judge them, and if necessary to remove them from their possessions, to be helped therein by the King's Constable of Ireland. Two years later, in 1177, a council was convened at Waterford, and the solemn compact of Windsor was renewed in the presence of the Papal legate, Cardinal Vivianus, "who openly showed the King's right to Ireland" and enforced it by a threat of Papal excommunication against all who should refuse obedience to Henry's authority. Thus in a series of explicit steps the office of overlord was confirmed to the King of England. Into the hands of the new overlord Rory and his successors placed their hostages in token of homage and fidelity, as formerly they had been committed to the Aird-ri. Rory's own hostage was his son, and it was while conducting him to Normandy in November 1180, to place him in Henry's keeping, that Archbishop O'Toole fell ill in the monastery of Eu and died there.[16]
[16] The common idea that Rory was ignorant of the import of his acts cannot be maintained. For some years he had considered the matter before sending his son as hostage. His adviser, Laurence O'Toole, was one of the most able and learned, as well as devout, prelates of the day, and fully qualified to deal with State affairs.
When exhorted by the monks of Eu to make his will, "God knows," he said, "out of all my revenues I have not a coin to bequeath." It was at the Council of Waterford that the much-disputed and misnamed "Bull" of Pope Adrian was first brought forward, conferring on Henry II the papal approval of his expedition to Ireland, and the right of dominion over the island. It was given in accordance with the general claim made by the Popes over all islands, which it was believed were under the special protection of the Papal See, and was conditional on his promise to endeavour to reduce the country to social and ecclesiastical order. Pope Adrian, who was an Englishman, bade the King of England go forth to the conquest "for the enlargement of the Church's borders, for the restraint of vice, the correction of morals and the planting of virtue, the increase of the Christian religion, and whatsoever may tend to God's glory and the well-being of that land." Shortly before, Pope Alexander II had given his approval in a similar manner to William I on his Norman conquest of England. In September 1172 the then Pope, Alexander III, also had given his benediction to the enterprise in Ireland in three letters, couched in very similar terms, to the King himself, to the Legate of the Apostolic See in Ireland with the archbishops and bishops, and to the kings and princes of Ireland, exhorting obedience to the sovereign, and saying that "he has learned with joy that they have taken Henry as their king." He commanded the prelates to assist Henry in his government of Ireland, and to smite with ecclesiastical censures any of its kings, princes, and people who shall dare to violate the oath of fidelity they have sworn." [17] Thus, supported by Papal authority, the Synod of Cashel met some time in 1172, soon after the departure of Henry, under the presidency of Christian O'Conarchy, Bishop of Lismore and Papal Legate; Gelasius (Gilla MacLiag), the Primate, being too far advanced in age to be present, though he later travelled to Dublin to express his approval of the measures passed. These chiefly made for Church discipline and for the contract and observance of lawful marriages; and the prelates took their first step in the Anglicizing Church policy afterward pursued by ordering that all divine offices should be celebrated according to the forms of the Anglican Church, "for it is right and just that as Ireland has received her lord and king from England she should accept reformation from the same source." Though several Irish bishops were present no voice was raised in dissent, and thus, approved and supported by ecclesiastical as well as secular authority, began the rule of England over Ireland.[18]
[17] Sweetman, Calendar of Documents, 1, No. 38.
[18] Gesta Henrici, i, 28; Roger of Hovenden, ed. W. Stubbs, ii, 31.
It must be allowed that the claim of the English kings to govern Ireland was at least as good as that by which any European monarch held his throne. The excuse provided by the invitation of Dermot to Henry made it even stronger than most of these others. It was better than that by which the Normans held England, which was purely the right of conquest, and in which no general submission of those in power had ever been obtained. Henry or his successors would undoubtedly have attempted the conquest of Ireland at some time; the island lay too close at hand for a people who had conquered large parts of Western Europe to remain indifferent to it, and we have seen that to acquire Ireland had been long projected in Henry's mind. The circumstances under which the new relations began were auspicious; but the retirement of the King placed the centre of authority at a distance, and the English monarchs were forced to leave the actual power in the hands of the ambitious Norman nobles who ruled in their name on the spot. To them the acquisition of lands and authority was the only object aimed at; and the quarrels of these foreigners among themselves for position and property were not less fierce and persistent than those they carried on with the Irish whose lands they coveted. The Crown could only step in at intervals, and its authority gradually faded into the distance before the always present domination of the barons, which soon developed into semi-independence; it became a matter of individual choice with them whether they became Irish and renounced their allegiance to the English Crown or whether they remained English and strangers in their adopted country. Thus a sense of division which no length of time has healed, sprang up from the beginning; neither good rule nor bad rule served to lessen it in the eyes of a considerable section of the people; to the native Irish the English remained a foreign nation, whose right was disputed, and whose rule was accepted only through necessity. They continued to be looked upon as interlopers.
A permanent result of the visit of Henry II to Dublin was the giving of a charter conferring that city on the inhabitants of Bristol, the town which had most cordially aided the King and Dermot MacMorrogh in raising troops for the Irish undertaking. This remarkable charter, the oldest municipal document relating to any Irish town, is the first of seven original extant charters of dates between 1172 and 1320 concerning Dublin issued by English kings. It was designed to bring to an end the Norse authority over the Irish capital, and to transfer the city definitely under English control. Up to this time the Norse rulers still looked upon it as the capital of their Irish dominions; though for some time back this assumption of authority had been challenged by the Irish princes of Leinster who had never abandoned their claims on Dublin as part of their possessions, so that we find both Irish and Norse governors styled kings of Dublin. Up to the arrival of the Normans all the larger towns were occupied chiefly by Danes or Norse, and had Danish or Norse governors. We have seen that when Miles de Cogan entered the city the governor of the capital was Asgall, or Asculf, son of Ragnall mac Torcaill, and that he fled away by sea. He is sometimes called king, but Ragnall, his father, is styled Mór Maer, or High Steward of Dublin, the latter title being probably a more correct designation; Asgall was taken and beheaded by the English in 1171, after a battle fought "on the green of Dublin" between de Cogan and Tiernan O'Rorke accompanied by the men of Meath and the Danish troops.[19] Henry, when making his grants to his barons, expressly retained in his own hands the Danish towns with some part of the surrounding districts.
[19] Annals of the Four Masters, 1171; Annals of Loch Ce, at same date; Giraldus Cambrensis, Conquest of Ireland, Bk. I, ch. xxi.
He designed to attach them directly to the Crown, and to make them centres of English influence, which, in fact, they remained through centuries. By the Bristol charter,[20] which gave to Bristol men settling in Dublin all the privileges possessed by them at home, he encouraged merchants of that city, doubtless old traders between the two towns, to come over and establish themselves in Ireland; the charter was enlarged in 1174, and gave to the burgesses of the capital liberty to transact business throughout the entire land of England, Normandy, Wales, and Ireland, free of any toll or customs whatever, and these privileges were confirmed more than once in the reign of King John. The giving of the Bristol charter was followed by a large influx of merchants from all parts of England, Scotland, South Wales, and even from Flanders, Brabant, and France. An old list of names of citizens shows that towns as far separated from each other as Edinburgh, Lincoln, Cardiff, and Cirencester, contributed their quota to the inhabitants of Dublin as tailors, mercers, spicers, goldsmiths, and followers of many other occupations. They formed themselves into merchant guilds, and carried on an active trade during the thirteenth century in corn,[21] cattle, and derivative products; live stock, fish, and skins; silk and cloth of gold; English and Irish and foreign cloth, worsted, linen, and the thick Irish mantle or 'falaing,' as well as iron, brass, steel, glass, lead, and timber. Irish products were on sale in England and abroad in 1207; a 'tymbre' of forty Irish marten-skins was ordained by Philippe Auguste to be furnished by merchants coming from Ireland to the port of Rouen; and both peltry and silk from Ireland paid tolls in Paris in the thirteenth century; while droguet, or drugget, is said to have taken its name from Drogheda.[22]
[20] Sir John Gilbert, Historical and Municipal Documents of Ireland (1870) charters of 1171 and 1185, at pp. 1, 2, 49.
[21] For the mention of large shipments of corn to France, see Gilbert, Facsimiles of National Manuscripts, Pt. II, No. LXXXIII; to England, Sweetman, Calendar, 1, Nos. 756, 1052, 1055, etc.; to Galloway and the Isles, ibid., No. 1040.
[22] Francisque Michel, Recherches sur le commerce des étoffes de soie (Paris, 1854), ii, 244.
Of these merchants a fair proportion came from Bristol, several of them becoming free citizens between 1225 and 1250, and holding posts of distinction such as those of Provost and Mayor of Dublin. As time went on, the old Scandinavian inhabitants were pushed out, and they settled on the north side of the Liffey in a suburb which became known as Villa Ostmannorum (later corrupted into Oxmantown),[23] similar settlements being made in Cork, Waterford, and Limerick, as the English colony increased in number in these cities. Though they are seldom named in charters, they kept a firm hold over trade, and they were associated by King John in an inquiry held in Dublin in 1215. One Richard Olaf was Keeper of the Exchange of the King of England in the reign of Edward I. In Waterford, a charter of denization was granted by Henry II, and later confirmed by Edward I, to certain old Ostman inhabitants of the town, and Ostman jurors served on inquisitions in all the old Danish cities. In Limerick, which long continued to be mainly a Danish town, twelve English and an equal number of Ostmen and Irish jurors took part in an inquisition as to the property of the See of Limerick, taken by William de Burgh in 1202. The cantred of the Ostmen in that town lay on both sides of the Shannon, and under its first charter the Provost was a Syward.
[23] Ostman, or Eastman, became a general title for the Scandinavian inhabitants about this time, and included all these nationalities.
In 1200 the King still retained in his own hands "the cantred of the Ostmen and the Holy Isle," when he granted the custody of the city to William de Braose. In these civic communities the Irish had no legal part unless they became Anglicized, though the fact that they acted as jurors in equal numbers with English and Danes in Limerick shows that they took more part in civic affairs than is generally supposed. There was constant traffic between them and the English settlers in the towns, as the list of native commodities proves; but the frequent changes of name at this time make attempts at identification impossible. Numbers of the sons of Irish chiefs were called by Norse names, Olaf, Sitric, Magnus, etc.; even Dermot MacMorrogh called his son Cnut. The Irish no doubt found it more convenient to trade with the newcomers under Norman or English names. An example of this is furnished by the deed of Anglicization of an Irish-born merchant of Dublin who called himself Robert de Bree. He only secured his charter of Anglicization in the reign of Edward I, but he held considerable properties in the city, and his descendants intermarried with leading citizens. There must have been many similar cases. The privileges of Dublin were enlarged both under Prince John and Henry III, and were extended to other towns. Traders who were not citizens might not tarry in Dublin beyond forty days, nor buy corn, wool, and hides except from citizens. They could not sell cloth by retail, nor keep wineshops except on shipboard.[24] The import of wine was very large and brought in a good revenue to the kings.
[24] Gilbert, Historical and Municipal Documents of Ireland (1870), charter of 1192, p. 51.
In pre-Norman days the principal drink seems still to have been mead or ale, though there had been a trade in French wines from the earliest times. When Kincora was burned down in 1107 it is recorded that sixty keeves, or vats, of mead and ale ('brogoid' or 'bragget') were destroyed. Later on, wine became more common, and we learn that when the army of Edward Bruce entered Dundalk in 1315 the abundance of wine found there made it difficult for him to keep his men in hand. English weights and measures were introduced into Ireland early in the thirteenth century, though the old Irish 'crannock,' or wicker basket, was still used as a measure; and strong walls and forts and good bridges were proceeded with, special aids of money being subscribed by the townsmen of Dublin and Drogheda for the purpose. The Dublin mayoralty was established in 1229. Annual fairs were permitted in all the chief cities for eight days each, and the afterward notorious Donnybrook Fair became the chief annual market for Dublin.
Merchants of Lucca seem to have been specially active in the Irish trade. They are frequently mentioned. In 1291 a petition was sent in by the company of Richardi of Lucca, praying for relief. They complained that they had been unlawfully seized by the King's Treasurer and his agents at Ross, Waterford, Limerick, Kilkenny, Youghal, and Cork, and imprisoned with confiscation of their goods. These Lucca merchants were money-lenders on a large scale.[25] But the forced prisages as loans taken from merchants became very oppressive, and in 1220 it was complained that the cities had become so impoverished by them that merchants hesitated to bring their merchandise thither. Dublin had become "odious to traders."
[25] Gilbert, Facsimiles of National Manuscripts, Pt. II, No. LXXXI.
We must return to the date of King Henry's departure for England. Neither to the Irish nor to the Norman knights left behind him was there any finality in Henry's 'conquest.' His last acts before his departure put an end to all hope of this He made a new disposition of the lands and offices of his grantees, plainly designed to weaken the power of Earl Richard and to divide the Geraldines. It was the first step in that policy of keeping the Norman colony weak and separated in order to preserve the distant influence of the Crown that was to prove in later days so frequent a source of demoralization to the settlers. Nothing, as we may well believe, could have prevented the ambitious and restless Norman barons who had reached the extreme westerly coasts of Wales from ultimately crossing to the country which on a fine day they could see distinctly from the opposite headlands. It became, therefore, the plain policy of the King either to support his vassals and bind them to the Crown by fair treatment, or to let them set up semi-independent, strong principalities of their own. But he did neither. He granted all Meath to Hugh de Lacy [26] by service of fifty knights, and made him Constable of Dublin, passing over Strongbow; the gallant Miles de Cogan he took with him to Wales, where Raymond le Gros, who had been refused Earl Richard's sister in marriage, soon followed him. His retention in his own hands of the coast towns, and of a strip of land on the Wicklow shore, was plainly designed to keep Strongbow in check and to weaken his power. On another of his nobles, the afterward famous John de Courcy, Henry, after the manner of many earlier Norman grants, bestowed Ulster "if he could conquer it." These are new names—barons who had come over with Henry and who had borne none of the struggles of the first-comers—and though de Courcy and de Lacy proved to be among the ablest of Henry's settlers and the best fitted for the work in hand, their appointments must have been received with chagrin by their predecessors.
[26] The de Lacys took their name from their property in Normandy. The first baron had fought with William the Conqueror at Hastings, and received in reward a grant of land in the Welsh Marches. Hugh was the fifth baron. The family estates included Ewyas Lacy, Stanton Lacy, and Ludlow Castle. One of the family founded Llanthony Abbey.
That the King, although he appeared to slight Strongbow, had not lost faith in him is shown by his sending for him and de Lacy shortly afterward to Normandy to aid him in his troubles with his rebellious sons. With them went many of the veteran troops that had served in Ireland to fight for the King, apparently with Irish followers, against the Earl of Leicester and the King of Scotland. Earl Richard's prompt obedience and valuable help restored him to favour, and he was shortly afterward sent back to Leinster, granted Wexford and the castle of Wicklow, and appointed to the custody of the coast towns. Strongbow returned none too soon; during his absence the country had risen in revolt against the new lords. Tiernan O'Rorke, who saw the castles of de Lacy advancing farther west and the foreigners pushing their way into his country, demanded redress. A meeting had been arranged at Tlachtgha, or the "Hill of Ward," near Athboy, in Meath, at which Tiernan attended with a large following. While the discussion was going on between him and de Lacy the latter was surrounded and would have been killed but that his bodyguard, who suspected treachery, had lingered within sight on the pretence of tilting in the French fashion, and came up to his rescue. One of them ran his spear through O'Rorke and the horse he was mounting, slaying at the same time three of his clansmen who at the risk of their lives had brought him his horse. This is the English version of the old chief's death. The Irish accounts say that he was treacherously slain by Hugh and Donal O'Rorke, members of his own family. His head was cut off and sent to the King in England, and his body was hung, feet upward, on the north side of Dublin. This was the first of those horrible exhibitions which defaced the walls and castle-gates of Dublin from century to century. With the country in revolt, and confronted with the prospect of his troops throwing down their arms and returning to Wales, Strongbow bethought him of Raymond le Gros. The troops roundly declared they would fight under no other leader. Raymond's cheerful easy temperament made him the favourite of his men. His care for his army was such that he would pass whole nights without sleep, taking the rounds himself to see that all was well in the camp, and though his stoutness brought him the nickname of "le Gros" his activity prevented this from being an encumbrance. In war he was prudent as well as fearless, and he thought more of the welfare of his men than of being their commander. They liked a general who allowed them to carry off booty and to raid at will. Hervey de Montmaurice, who had been placed in command of the forces on Raymond's withdrawal to Wales, was a very different man. He was no soldier, and his only thought in joining the expedition to Ireland had been to repair his broken fortunes. He was the rival and bitter enemy of Raymond, a cruel and ruthless man, who, when Raymond had pleaded for mercy, insisted (in the early days of the invasion) on throwing the unfortunate citizens of Waterford over the cliff.
Strongbow now sent for Raymond, promising that he would at last give him his sister if he would come over at once to his aid.
The most notable of Raymond's exploits was the capture of Limerick in October 1175. The events that led up to this expedition had occurred during the absence of Raymond in Wales; and to understand it we must revert to the condition of things in Munster. The family of the O'Briens, which had attained its greatest power during the century and a quarter between the reigns of King Brian and Murtogh Mór (d. 1119), was now represented by Donal O'Brien, who had made submission to Henry on his landing, owing perhaps to his alliance with Dermot MacMorrogh. Donal had married Dermot's daughter, resigning at the same time the city of Limerick into his hands. But no sooner was Henry back in England than the South rose in revolt, Dermot MacCarthy recapturing Cork, from which the English garrison had been withdrawn, and Donal O'Brien repossessing himself of Limerick. Hervey de Montmaurice saw in these moves an occasion to recover his waning popularity. He induced Strongbow to join him in an expedition against Munster, and called the Danes of Dublin to their aid. Rory O'Conor, hearing of the coming struggle, advanced into Ormond to the assistance of his former foe, O'Brien, who flung himself with his whole strength between the army of Strongbow and the advancing Danes from Dublin. He was completely successful in his manoeuvre. The English forces suffered their first considerable defeat at the pass of Thurles (Co. Tipperary) (1174), and left four of the leaders and a large number of men dead on the field.[27] Strongbow shut himself up in the fort of Waterford, while several of the Leinster princes, who had given in their submissions, headed by Donal Kavanagh, a natural son of Dermot MacMorrogh, declared against the English.
[27] The different authorities give accounts of this battle varying in some details.
In the North Rory was putting forth all his efforts to rouse the princes of Ulster to make common cause with the South. Raymond arrived in Ireland to find the Earl shut up in Waterford and the citizens threatening to massacre every Englishman they could lay hands on. His old troops, too, had broken out and had restored their spirits by a raid into Offaly, from which they returned with new mounts and an immense booty of food and plunder, fighting their way by sea through an attack by the ships of Cork, and sailing into Waterford Harbour with the captive vessels in tow. In the city Strongbow still held out in Reginald's Tower with the remnant of his garrison. Having relieved the Earl, and fought his way through with him to Wexford, Raymond demanded the fulfilment of the promises made to him, and messengers were dispatched in great haste to Dublin to bring Basilia, Strongbow's sister, to whom Raymond was married straightway with great festivities. In the midst of the wedding feast news was brought that Rory of Connacht had raided Meath right up to the walls of Dublin. "Forgetting wine and love," Raymond sprang to arms, but, before he could reach Meath, Rory, who had previously had experience of Raymond's furious onslaughts, prudently retired to his own country. For a time all was quiet. Raymond occupied himself in rebuilding the Meath castles which Rory had razed to the ground, while Strongbow and Hugh de Lacy set about the work of parcelling out the provinces of Leinster and Meath among their followers on a fixed feudal tenure which ignored completely the rights of the original inhabitants. Each of the new owners endeavoured to sustain himself in his possessions by building castles and forts in which he could lie entrenched against attack. At first the forts were mere erections of wood or earth, with wooden stockades, but gradually these gave way to massive and imposing buildings of stone, the remains of which are still to be seen wherever the Normans settled. Earl Richard's own castle at Kildare, Hugh Tyrrell's great fortress at Trim, Maurice FitzGerald's stronghold at Naas, of which the outlines still remain, are only examples of the solid fastnesses in which the barons entrenched themselves all over the East of Ireland. Some of the grants then made became permanent; such was that of Howth to St Laurent, which has been held by his heirs the St Lawrences as Barons or Earls of Howth in direct descent to the present day.
Donal O'Brien had celebrated his great victory at Thurles by an orgy of frightful atrocities on members of his own family, with the object of removing out of his way all possible competitors to the throne of Munster. He blinded two of his nearest relations, one of whom died soon after, and put two neighbouring princes to death. So great were his crimes that Rory O'Conor descended on Thomond and drove out O'Brien, who, in revenge, laid siege to the city of Limerick, where the garrison was ill-provided with food. Hearing of its condition, Raymond flew to the relief of the city. It was a hazardous expedition, for the town was now surrounded by a wall and dike, as well as by the strong waters of the Shannon. But Raymond had with him the intrepid Meiler FitzHenry, whom no force could daunt, and Donal MacGillapatrick, King of Ossory, whose services Raymond accepted with some mistrust, but who pledged his faith to commit no deceit or treachery against him and to conduct him safely to Limerick. When they arrived before the town they found the river so swollen by the winter rains that the ford was impassable. Two young soldiers plunged on horseback into the rushing stream, but one was carried away by the torrent, and no one seemed disposed to attempt to join the survivor on the opposite bank. Nevertheless, Meiler, spurring his horse, dashed furiously into the river. He managed to brave the flood, and crossed safely to the far shore, though attacked on all sides by the stones and darts of the Irish, which he warded off as well as he could with his helmet and shield. Raymond, seeing the danger to his friend, in great agitation called on his troops to follow him as he plunged into the river. They crossed with few losses, and drove back the enemy within the walls. They then followed them up and entered behind them, taking the town by assault, enriching themselves with a great spoil. Having placed the command of the town in the hands of his cousin, Miles de Cogan, Raymond returned into Leinster.
During his absence Raymond's crafty enemy Hervey de Montmaurice had been using his opportunity to undermine his influence with the King. He misrepresented his actions and assured Henry that Raymond was aiming not only at the dominion of Limerick, but at the sovereignty of Ireland. Raymond found himself faced with a recall to England; but, while he was preparing to obey, hurried messengers from Limerick arrived with the intelligence that the town was once more blockaded by a vast army under Donal O'Brien and that all the stores were exhausted; they implored that immediate help might be sent. Again the troops declared that except under Raymond's command they would not move, and in this strait, after consulting with the commissioners sent by the King to recall him, Raymond consented to lead the relief party, which consisted of some eighty knights and five hundred trained troops, with Irish contingents from Ossory and Wexford. On their way they learned that O'Brien had raised the siege and was awaiting them behind a strongly fortified and entrenched rampart at the pass of Cashel. On this spot the Prince of Ossory, whose kinsman O'Brien had murdered, made an ominous speech to the small body of Norman troops whom he was accompanying: "Brave soldiers," he proclaimed, "and conquerors of this island,...look well to yourselves, for if we find your ranks give way, which God forbid, it may chance that, in conjunction with the enemy, our Irish battleaxes may be turned against you. It is our custom to side with the winning party and to fall on those who run away. Trust to us, therefore, but only while you are conquerors." Spurred to action, as was intended by this threat, Meiler, who led the van, rushed like a whirlwind upon the enemy, cutting them down right and left, and forcing his way through with great slaughter. They entered Limerick, restored order, and held a lengthy conference with O'Brien and Rory O'Conor outside the city near Killaloe, in which these princes renewed their fealty to the English King and gave hostages for their obedience. Raymond also received a fresh submission from MacCarthy of Desmond in return for his help in replacing him on his throne, from which his own son had ejected him. Raymond accepted for his service to this prince a valuable grant of land in Kerry, which has ever since remained in the hands of a branch of the FitzGerald family, who hold the title of Knights of Kerry.
While Raymond was so occupied a secret letter from his wife, Basilia, was put into his hand. It ran thus: "Be it known to your sincere love that the great jaw-tooth which of late gave me so much trouble has just dropped out. Wherefore, if thou hast any regard for thyself or me, delay not thy return." He recognized in the cryptic message an intimation that her brother, Earl Richard, who had never approved of her marriage to Raymond le Gros, was dead. He had been very sick when Raymond left Dublin. Raymond hastened his return, and all arrangements for the burial of the Earl in the new Cathedral of the Holy Trinity were made before the news became generally known, and Richard de Clare was laid to rest under a stately tomb by Archbishop Laurence O'Toole in June 1176. So long as Strongbow lived and was present on his lands quiet seems to have prevailed. He was rather a statesman than a soldier of fortune, and his marriage with an Irish wife shows that he had definitely thrown in his lot with Ireland. His natural successor was Raymond le Gros, but the King's jealousy of the brilliant services he had performed, and the favour with which he was regarded, again stood in the way of his advancement. His recall was not waived, and he was allowed to leave Ireland, after the resignation of his offices. A noble, closely attached to the King's interests and allied to him by blood, William FitzAudelin, was sent over in his place, thus once more proving Henry's purpose to strengthen the authority of the Crown at the expense of that of his barons.
Meanwhile in Limerick things had not gone well. On his departure Raymond had committed the government of the town into the hands of O'Brien, as a baron of the King who had just renewed his oath of fealty and given his solemn promise to keep the peace. But hardly had Raymond evacuated the town than O'Brien cut down the bridge over the Shannon behind the departing troops, and, looking back, Raymond saw the city flaming in every quarter, the fierce descendant of Brian Boromhe having declared that Limerick should no longer be "a nest for foreigners." When the news of the taking of Limerick was reported to King Henry he shrewdly said: "The attack on Limerick was a bold adventure; greater still its relief; but only in its evacuation was there wisdom."
The man whom Henry sent over to replace Raymond was of very different character. FitzAudelin [28] is said by Gerald of Wales to have been a smooth and courtier-like man, but crafty as a snake in the grass. Whom he honoured one day he calumniated the next; a man who never, in the course of his tours of inspection, neglected his own interests, or failed to collect all the gold he could lay hands upon. Gerald displays a natural anger against a man who came over with the fixed intention of ruining the family of the Geraldines, but his prejudices are shown to have been well merited by all FitzAudelin's acts. One of the first incidents recorded of him on his arrival at Wexford, where Raymond le Gros awaited his coming in order to hand over the Sword of State, shows him in his true character. Seeing Raymond and Meiler on horseback surrounded by their followers all in polished armour and with the same Geraldine device upon their shields, he whispered to his friends, "I will bring all this bravery to a speedy end; those shields shall soon be scattered." Raymond, however, with apparent cordiality, offered him his congratulations, embracing him in a friendly manner and placing his official positions in his hands, retaining only his own personal baronies and those of Fotherd and Odrone in Carlow, which came to him with his wife. This is the last we hear of the most brilliant of the adventurers. With FitzAudelin came a group of twenty knights, and John de Courcy, Robert FitzStephen, and Miles de Cogan were ordered to attend him, each with a train of ten knights. About the same time Hugh de Lacy, who had long been sharing the King's wars in France, seems to have returned to Ireland, and his grant of Meath was confirmed to him with additions in Offaly, Kildare, and Wicklow. Hugh de Lacy was a great castle-builder, and his memory is chiefly preserved on account of the numerous moats, or forts, built by him to secure Meath and Leinster to the Norman lords.
[28] Wilham FitzAudelin and William de Burgh, who founded the family of the de Burghs, or Burgos, are often confused. They do not seem to have been Jdentical, though of the same family, FitzAudelin's ancestor, Arlotta, mother of the Conqueror, having married a de Burgh. Later the de Burghs became known as Burkes.
Castles were erected by him at Clonard, Kells, Kildare, and probably Drogheda; while Castleknock near Dublin, Granard on the borders of Breifne (Co. Longford) and other moats were the work of his feudatories. Among the later grantees he was the wisest ruler, a man of firm and steadfast character, very attentive both to his private affairs and to the administration of his province. He was not attractive in appearance, being short and ill-proportioned, with a swarthy complexion and black, sunken eyes; nor was he a successful commander. In private life he is said to have been avaricious and of lax morals. But, unlike the other Norman lords, he recalled the peasants who had been violently driven out, reinstated them on their lands, and ruled them with a firm and gentle hand. The unoccupied districts became cultivated and stocked with herds of cattle.
Quiet and order reigned in his territories, and he won the hearts of the Irish people and drew around him their native leaders, as none other of the newcomers had done. Like Strongbow, he showed his intention of throwing in his lot with his adopted country by marrying in 1180 an Irish wife, Rose, daughter of King Rory O'Conor of Connacht. He had previously been married to another Rose "of Monmouth" {Roysya de Monemue), by whom he had two sons, Walter and Hugh, who succeeded him in the Lordship of Meath. As the marriage of Strongbow to Eva had aroused the anger and suspicions of Henry, so that of de Lacy to Rose O'Conor, which had been carried through without asking his licence, moved him to jealousy.[29] Again a whisper went about that Hugh intended to make himself King of Ireland, and the strong fortresses that he was building all over his territories gave strength to the rumour. He had been appointed Constable or Governor, of Dublin in 1178, but in the midst of his work of settlement he was twice recalled, being finally superseded in 1184, when the King sent his son, Prince John, to Ireland But he remained in the country, continuing the erection of castles at every point of vantage, until an abrupt end was put to his career. He was out inspecting a new castle that he was building at Durrow, near the borders of Westmeath, beside or on the site of one of St Columcille's most famous monasteries when a youth whom he was superintending suddenly, as he stooped to show him how to work, struck off his head with one blow of his axe, having been instructed to perform the act by his foster-father, the chief of the O'Caharnys of Teffia. The desecration of so sacred a spot may have also inflamed the mind of the young peasant. Thus fell one of the best of the invaders, and we learn that Henry, on hearing the news, "rejoiced thereat." [30] The result of Hugh's efforts was that by 1186 "Meath from the Shannon to the sea was full of castles of foreigners." and Grace's Annals add that "the subjugation of Ireland went no further."
[29] The marriage is said to have been "according to that country's custom" (secundum morem patriae illius). Rose's eldest son, William Gorm, married a daughter of Llewelyn, Prince of Wales, and was killed in 1233 fighting with Cathal O'Reilly. The Lynches of Galway and Pierce Oge Lacy, the famous rebel of Elizabeth's day, were descended from him. Her other sons seem to have adopted the name of le Blund. Rose was still alive in 1224.
[30] Chronicle of William of Newburgh, ed. Thomas Hearne, 1, 285; Annals of Loch Ce, and Grace, Annales Hiberniae, 1186.
Among other sweeping grants made by Henry quite irrespective of the claims of the ruling princes were those of "the kingdom of Cork from Cape St Brandon [in Kerry] to the river Blackwater [in Waterford]," for the service of sixty knights, to Robert FitzStephen and Miles de Cogan, except the city of Cork, which the King retained in his own hands; and the equally extensive grant of the kingdom of Limerick, again excepting the city, to Herbert FitzHerbert and others. These grants did not take immediate effect, as the grantees declared that the country had not been conquered and was not subject to the King. They slowly set about taking possession of portions of these territories, but the fickleness of the King, who from time to time apportioned the same lands to different barons whom for the moment he wished to honour, made the settlement of the South impossible. The city of Limerick, especially, was kept in perpetual turmoil by the family of de Braose, to whom it was afterward (1203) granted for a large annual payment, which was seldom forthcoming; the squalid story of his wrangles with the authorities ended in miserable tragedy.[31] Miles de Cogan and Ralph FitzStephen retained some properties in Cork and Limerick, and endeavoured to extend them by speculative grants to their followers; but they fell victims to a treacherous assault upon their party by MacTire, chief of Imokilly, at a parley held near Lismore in 1182. The Barrys, de Prendergasts, and de Carews took land about this time, and the Geraldines, of whom Maurice FitzGerald was the head, were destined to become the great and unhappy line of the Earls of Desmond. Many of the massive castles which were to be scenes of sieges during the wars of Elizabeth's reign date from the end of the twelfth and the thirteenth century, such as Askeaton, Shanid, and Croom, Adare and Grene (or Pallas Green). Eventually all belonged to the Desmond family.
[31] Sweetman, op. cit., 1, Nos. 146, 235, 271, etc.
In the North also matters were stirring. John de Courcy had returned to Ireland among the advisers of FitzAudelin. This man, whose great stature, strong and muscular limbs, and love of fighting, marked him out as a born warrior, became from his exploits the centre of the most extravagant legends, so that it is now difficult to disentangle truth from fiction. Men told how, in later days, after he had been captured by Hugh de Lacy the Younger in 1202, King John sent for him from the Tower of London, where he had been long immured, and brought him over to France to fight on his behalf against a chosen champion of the King of France, whom no one dared approach. But the champion, on seeing the immense frame and grim aspect of the man opposed to him, was seized with terror and took to flight. De Courcy, in order to let off his ire, is said to have set up a helmet and coat of mail on a wooden block, and to have struck his sword clean through it, the weapon sinking so deep into the wood that no one could withdraw it. When asked by the princes why he had looked so terrible before he struck the blow, he replied "By St Patrick of Down in Ireland, if I had missed my purpose in striking this stroke, I would have slain both of you kings and as many as I could more, for the old sores I have felt at your hands." [32] Such a man was the conqueror of Ulster. The "stalwart doings" or gestes of this mighty warrior are related at length in the Book of Howth, and the narrative of the affection between him and the lord of Howth, Sir Amory St Laurent, and of their deeds together reads like one of the romances of the Round Table.[33] He was so eager for a fight that when he was in command he was apt to forget his duties as a leader, and to charge forward impetuously at the head of his troops; but in private life he was sober and modest, "giving God the glory of his victories."
[32] Book of Howth, in Carew, Miscellany, p. 114.
[33] Ibid., pp. 80-94.
It was natural that two men so unlike as FitzAudelin and de Courcy should not agree well together. The guile and smooth speech of the Governor, at once a bully and a coward, revolted the blunt soldier, and he determined to carve out an independent career for himself. Recalling Henry's former grant to him of Ulster "if he could take it," he gathered around him a little band of twenty-two men-at-arms and three hundred common soldiers, who were complaining in the garrison of Dublin of want of pay and provisions, and boldly set out on his raid upon Ulster. The attempt to force his way into a country which had hitherto resisted all efforts of the English to set foot in it, and which had maintained an independent position even in the native wars, seemed like an act of knight-errantry, but in spite of its hardihood it was destined to succeed. Men recalled the old saying: "A white knight sitting on a white horse and having birds on his shield shall be the first to enter Ulster by force of arms." John fulfilled the prophecy in every detail. Fair, and riding a white steed, he bore on his shield the device of three griphs or geires gules, crowned or. The resemblance was possibly not wholly accidental; de Courcy may have heard the tradition.[34] On the morning of his fourth day's march he entered the city of Down without opposition, the King, Roderick MacDonlevy, who was taken completely by surprise, having made a hasty flight before him.
[34] De Courcy is said to have kept a book of the prophecies of St Columcille constantly by him.
Down was an important ecclesiastical centre, the burial-place, as was commonly supposed, not only of St Patrick, but of St Brigit and St Columcille. It was the capital of Eastern Ulster, and quite independent of the princedoms of Tyrone and Tyrconnel. Its cathedral stood on a height, and below lay the marshlands of the river Quoile, west of Strangford Lough. At the moment of de Courcy's raid the Papal legate, Vivianus, had arrived in the city from Scotland and the Isle of Man. He attempted mediation between the combatants, but, all efforts failing, he advised the Irish to fight for their native land and heartened them with his blessing and prayers. Thus encouraged, the King of East Ulster sent to all parts to assemble forces. Within eight days ten thousand warlike men gathered round him, the men of the North being, as Gerald says, more truculent than those of the South. Distrusting the weak fort which was all the defence the city offered, de Courcy descended to the swampy marshes near the seashore. The battle must have been fought almost on the same spot as that on which King Magnus Barelegs fell seventy-four years before. A terrific struggle ensued. John was seen on every part of the field with flourished sword, "with one stroke lopping off heads, with another arms." As with the Norse in the earlier battle of Down, the vast multitudes of the Irish troops found it difficult to manoeuvre in the narrow dykes between the bogs, and great numbers fell as they tried to make their escape along the shore; they sank in the quicksands as their pursuers pressed them forward through water dyed with blood. Report said that this also had been foretold. A superstitious dread accompanied every action of de Courcy's little force, no doubt tending to ensure its victory. The battle was fought in 1177, and the Normans were completely victorious. In another battle contested shortly afterward on the same spot, in which the O'Neills joined the Irish forces, accompanied by the Primate of Armagh and many clergy with their sacred relics, the same result followed, even the precious Book of Armagh falling into de Courcy's hands. The book was restored, but the relics were captured and many of the clergy slain. De Courcy showed his interest in the Irish traditions of Down, which became his capital, by inviting Jocelyn, a monk of Furness Abbey in Lancashire, to write a life of St Patrick. This work is still extant. Gradually, in spite of some checks, de Courcy pushed forward his conquests, till nearly all Eastern Ulster was in his hands. His territory included Down and Antrim, which he ruled like an independent prince, free from the interference of king or viceroy. He strengthened his position by his marriage with Affreca, daughter of Godred, King of Man; and when in 1204 he was driven out by Hugh de Lacy the Younger the King of Man came to his assistance. He coined his own money, extended his moat-castles over the country, and made munificent benefactions to the churches and abbeys which he founded For twenty years Uladh seems to have been at peace under his strong rule.
But though de Courcy succeeded in establishing himself in Eastern Ulster he was by no means uniformly fortunate in the field. His worst defeats were in his wars in Connacht, and to understand them we must take up the history of that province from the date of King Rory's submission to Henry at the Council of Windsor in 1175. Having sent his son to England as hostage for his fidelity and wedded his daughter Rose to Hugh de Lacy, Rory might well have expected quiet in his old age. But revolts in his own family put an end to all hope of this. Already, in 1177, his son Murtogh had led an army into Connacht with the help of Miles de Cogan and the English, but they had been driven out with the loss of their men. Now his eldest son, Conor Moinmoy, headed a rebellion against him and succeeded in driving him into Munster. This may have been the determining cause of Rory's retirement from the throne into the monastery of Cong, where, except for a short interval when he attempted to regain his kingdom, he remained till his death in 1198. His retirement was the signal for a general war among his sons and grandsons on the one side and his brother, Cathal Crovdearg "of the Red Hand" on the other. Each party was supported by one of the rival Norman barons, who hoped to reap advantages for himself. Cathal of the Red Hand was aided by John de Courcy, and the opposite party, of whom another Cathal, grandson of Rory, was the head, by William de Burgh of Limerick with the O'Briens of Munster. The war between these cousins went on for years, William de Burgh changing sides with surprising facility. Twice Cathal of the Red Hand was banished from the province, but on the death of Cathal Carragh in 1201 he assumed the kingship. At this juncture we find William de Burgh fighting on his side. The story of Cathal Crovdearg is so characteristic of the times that it will be well to tell it more at length.[35]
[35] A full account of the Norman Settlements will be found in Mr. Goddard H. Orpen's Ireland under the Normans, 1169-1233 (1911-20).
Cathal Crovdearg was younger brother of Rory, and son of Turlogh Mór O'Conor, the powerful prince whose successful wars against Ulster and Munster had prepared the way for the supremacy of his son. Turlogh built the first three stone castles of Irish Ireland and the first stone bridges over the Shannon and the Suck. He will ever be remembered as the founder of the cathedral of Tuam with its splendid chancel-arch and the unique cross, thirty feet high, which stands beside it. At Clonmacnois, where he is buried, the great belfry was built under his auspices. But more interesting still is the cross of Cong—a magnificent specimen of Irish filigree metal work, inlaid with precious stones. In its centre a polished crystal contained a relic of the wood of the true Cross sent to the King from Rome in 1125, and round it runs the inscription, "A prayer for Turlogh O'Conor, King of Ireland, for whom this shrine was made." He was justly proud of the exquisite workmanship and purpose of this cross, ordering it to be carried in procession throughout Ireland and honoured with the greatest devotion. His reign and that of his sons formed the climax of Connacht's pre-eminence He erected a mint at Clonmacnois for the coinage of silver money, and the arts of peace as well as of war flourished under his rule. The artists who designed and the men who ordered such delicate works of art as the cross of Cong, the Ardagh chalice, or the shrine of St Manchan, all produced by this school, must have been possessed of taste and culture. There had been, from early times in Ireland, families or castes of metal-workers, devoted to their craft, and these may still have existed; but it may have been a daughter of Rory O'Conor who designed the lovely adornments of the chalice of Ardagh, "the silver chalice with a burnishing of gold upon it," which we still admire to-day. She died in 1247 at Clonmacnois. In 1129 a great misfortune occurred. A Dane entered the church of Clonmacnois and stole from the high altar the precious vessels with which it was adorned. These included three gifts bestowed upon the church by King Turlogh: a silver cup with a gold cross over it, a drinking-horn with gold, and a silver chalice, besides a model of Solomon's Temple among other valuables. The thief was taken and executed a year later, and the treasures were restored. [1]
[1] Annals of the Four Masters, 1129.
The story of Cathal of the Red Hand is a romantic one. Tradition says that he was the illegitimate son of Turlogh, whose wife pursued him with such hatred that his mother was obliged to flee with him into Leinster. She also, with a magical charm, turned his hand wine-red. When he grew up he took service with a farmer, always keeping his right hand covered. He was one day reaping rye in a field when a herald passed by, proclaiming that the King of Connacht was dead, and that the people would elect no other successor save Cathal, if he could be found. He would be known, it was said, by his right hand, which was red like wine. For some minutes Cathal Crovdearg stood on the ridge in silent thought. Then, pulling off his glove, he exhibited his hand to the herald, who, recognizing him by his likeness to his father, fell at his feet. Flinging away his sickle on the ridge, the youth exclaimed, "Farewell, sickle; now for the sword." "Cathal's farewell to the rye" is a proverb meaning a farewell never to return.[2]
[2] Annals of the Four Masters, 1224, and note. The story is not alluded to by the O'Conor Don in his history of his family, or by Dr O'Conor. But it follows an old tradition.
According to more historical sources Cathal was the son of Turlogh's second wife, Dervorgil, daughter of O'Lochlan of Ulster, later monarch of Ireland, and thus stepbrother to Rory, Turlogh's successor. Cathal's life was spent in struggles with the members of his own family to maintain himself on the throne. Rory, on his retirement to the monastery of Cong in 1183, had resigned the sovereignty to his son Conor Moinmoy, thus carrying out the English principle of primogeniture. But on his "return from his pilgrimage" in 1185 his son refused to resign the throne, and a general war broke out between the different members of the family, no less than five of whom aspired to the kingship. These were, besides Rory himself, his two sons Conor Moinmoy and Conor O'Dermot; Cathal Carragh, son of Conor Moinmoy; and Cathal Crovdearg, Rory's brother. The inherent weakness of the Irish rule of succession, by which a group of relatives could all claim the kingship, could not be better illustrated. The murder of Conor Moinmoy by his own people in 1189 and the death of Rory in 1198 removed two of the competitors and left the two Cathals face to face to fight out their contest for the throne. A fierce and prolonged struggle ensued, in which the local chiefs, especially Crovdearg's mortal foes the O'Flahertys of West Connacht, took part. It seemed as though the contest would terminate in favour of Cathal Carragh, who was supported by two of the O'Briens and the fierce and ruthless Norman baron William de Burgh, whose combined armies pillaged the province, stripping the priests in the churches, carrying off the women, and plundering the country without pity.[3] Crovdearg, on his side, appealed for help to the O'Neills of Ulster and to John de Courcy. The O'Neills refused to be drawn into the warfare, and Hugh de Lacy the Younger took their place, only to share in a severe defeat at Kilmacduagh, and to escape ignominiously with his allies across Lough Ree back into his own district of Meath. This was in 1202. Finding Cathal and de Courcy both in his power, de Lacy, who was aiming at the downfall of de Courcy, took advantage of his opportunity, arrested both the fugitives, and sent John de Courcy to Dublin, where he was forced to give pledges for obedience to the Government, of which he had hitherto been practically independent.
[3] Annals of Loch Cé, 1200, 1202.
On his release Cathal Crovdearg seems to have thrown himself into the hands of his old enemies, William de Burgh and the O'Briens, who marched with him into Connacht, devastating as they went. Cathal Carragh himself was accidentally killed while watching a fight between his own army and that of his former supporter, de Burgh. But a fearful vengeance fell on de Burgh and his people for their destruction of the province. A rumour was circulated that he had been killed, and one night every man in the province who had any of de Burgh's soldiery quartered in his household rose and murdered his guests, nine hundred in all, so that he returned with a remnant only into Munster. To chastise de Burgh, Meiler FitzHenry, who had become Justiciar of Ireland in 1200, came into Munster with Walter de Lacy; they marched to Limerick and banished de Burgh, handing over the custody of Limerick to William de Braose. William de Burgh was called over to England to answer for complaints made against him by FitzHenry, but he eventually returned to Munster with his castles of Askeaton and Kilfeakle restored to him, though the King retained Connacht in his own hands. William's stormy career came to an end in 1205 or 1206. He had established himself in Munster and is said to have married a daughter of Donal O'Brien to strengthen his connexion there; and he had vigorously exerted himself to make good a vague grant in Connacht made to him by Prince John, first by his war-alliance with Cathal Carragh and, when he died and the cause of Cathal Crovdearg was taken up by the English Government, by going over to the winning side. His actual possessions seem to have been limited to the castle of Meelick, which he had built in Co. Galway, using for the core of his structure the largest church in the place. He made an attempt also to fortify the monastery of Boyle (Ath-da-Larag) and to use it for a barracks, but was interrupted in the course of this work. In later days it frequently became a centre of war and one of the stormiest districts in the whole province. No sense of having desecrated sacred sites seems to have troubled de Burgh in carrying out these schemes. William was the founder of the family of the de Burghs or Burkes, future Earls of Ulster, and of the Burkes of Munster and Connacht, the latter province being regranted to his son Richard in 1222-23.
We must now return to the later history of Cathal Crovdearg and his immediate successors. It was probably at the synod held at Athlone in 1202 under the presidency of the Cardinal John, and soon after the death of his rival, Cathal Carragh, that the claims of Cathal to Connacht were formally ratified. Either then or earlier he had received the regular inauguration of his people, which was still carried out with all the old solemn ceremonial up to the reign of his grandson, Felim, whose chief chronicler, O'Mulconry, has left an interesting account of the ritual at which, in 1315, he acted as the principal official. Twelve bishops and twelve of the greater chieftains must always be present at the ceremony, with representatives of the minor septs. It took place at the huge cairn called Carnfree (Carn Fraoich) on the plains of Rathcrogan, in Co. Roscommon.[4] Only a prince chosen by the suffrages of his people was eligible for this popular election. The Irish steadfastly held to the old habit of selection between candidates who, being born within the limits prescribed by Irish law, were all equally eligible for election to the sovereignty. They knew nothing up to Rory's time of the English system of primogeniture.
[4] Transactions of the Kilkenny Archaeological Society (1852-53), ii, 341-347; Hardiman's edition of O'Flaherty's Iar Connacht (1846), pp. 139-140.
In the long disputes with the turbulent Hugh de Lacy the Younger, Cathal ranged himself on the side of the English King against their common enemy, as he held de Lacy to be. But Prince John's grant to Hugh de Lacy of six cantreds of Connacht on the borders nearest Meath was destined to prove a thorn in the side of Cathal. With his elder brother Walter, Hugh had inherited the rich grant of Meath made to their father, but, not satisfied with this, he aspired also to the rule of Eastern Ulster as well as to the lands in Connacht. In Ulster he spared no effort to dispossess John de Courcy by war and treachery.[5] That brave knight had fallen out of favour, it is said because he took no care to conceal his horror of King John's dastardly murder of his young nephew, Arthur, in Brittany. The King, therefore, was ready to further de Lacy's schemes to bring him to ruin. The brothers de Lacy pursued him into Ulster and two years later, in 1203, they defeated him at the battle of Down, taking him prisoner either in that or the following year. It is said that Hugh's soldiers were so afraid of the great warrior that they dared not attack him in his armour; therefore they fell on him on the Good Friday following the battle, when, unarmed and barefooted, he was making his devotions at the church of St Patrick in Down. With the help of some of his own men, who had been bribed by de Lacy, he was captured after a fight in which he defended himself with a cross-pole until it broke in his hand having killed thirteen of those who attacked him. But when the traitors appeared before de Lacy to claim their reward he had them hanged and their goods plundered. Hugh, however, had achieved his will. On May 2, 1205, he went over to England and in the same month he received a grant of all the lands held by de Courcy in Ulster, with the title of Earl of Ulster, the first Anglo-Norman dignity of which there is a record extant. The later career of de Courcy is something of a mystery.
[5] Hoveden, Annals ed. William Stubbs (1871), iv, 176.
The common story of his imprisonment in the Tower of London, and of his release in order to fight the French champion, may or may not be true. The Annals of Loch Ce (1204) speak of his having been released after being 'crossed' for the Crusades, but it is unlikely that he ever went to Palestine. The Chronicle of Man says that he sought help from his wife's relations in the Isle of Man, and that he returned with a large army and a hundred ships, which sailed up Strangford Lough, but they were surprised by Walter de Lacy and put entirely to rout. John de Courcy must have lived for some years longer, for there are licences extant permitting him to come to his friends in England in 1207. When King John came to Ireland in 1210 to drive out de Lacy, whose tyrannies had made his rule insufferable, de Courcy appears to have accompanied him and to have had the satisfaction of seeing his old enemy fleeing before him to Carrickfergus.[6] Thence de Lacy went to France, where he and his brother took refuge in a monastery at St Taurins in Normandy, working as lay brethren until their identity was eventually discovered by the Abbot. They were partially restored to favour through his intercession,[7] only to work still more havoc in Ireland in later life. On Hugh de Lacy's death in 1243 the lands of Ulster definitely reverted to the Crown, and were only regranted in 1264, twenty-one years later, to Walter de Burgh, having in the meantime been given as part of his appanage to Prince Edward, afterward Edward I, on his marriage with Eleanor of Castile.
[6] Sweetman, i, Nos. 358 (1207), 409 (1210); and cf. Nos. 482 (1213), 833 (1218).
[7] Grace, Annales Hiberniae, 1210.
It is evident that Cathal Crovdearg had sufficient grounds for believing that the turbulent de Lacy had by the year 1223 become as much the King's enemy as his own. Cathal's letters are of extreme interest as indicating the terms on which he stood as the ally of Henry III in Ireland. He complains that "Hugh de Lacy, enemy of the King, of the King's father, and of Cathal, whom King John by Cathal's advice expelled from Ireland, has without consulting the King, come to that country to disturb it. Against Hugh's coming, Cathal remains, as the Archbishop of Dublin [i.e., Henri, the then Justiciar] knows, firm in his fidelity to the King. But the closer Cathal adheres to the King's service the more he is harassed by those who pretend fealty to the King, but, as the Justiciar knows, shamefully fail against the enemy, so that, between Hugh de Lacy on the one hand and those who feign to be faithful on the other, Cathal is placed in extreme difficulty. Wherefore, unless it is better that the peace of Ireland should be subverted by this disturber and by default of some of the King's subjects, Cathal prays the King to send a force thither to restrain Hugh's insolence." [8] It seems likely from the tone of this letter that it was written just after the retirement of the allied troops from Ulster, and that Cathal had cause to suspect the sincerity of some of the combatants His second letter was probably written in 1224. It is addressed to his "very dear Lord, Henry King of England, Lord of Ireland, etc., to whom Cathal O'Conor, King of Connacht, sends greeting." O'Conor believes that Henry has heard, through the faithful counsellors of himself and his father, King John, that he had never failed in his fidelity; nor will he ever swerve therefrom. He possesses a charter of the land of Connacht from King John to himself and to his heirs and to his son and heir, Aedh; and for the latter he now solicits a similar charter from Henry. This would render his son and people more zealous for the King's interest, and he urges his request, that the lands of Ubriun, Conmacni, and Calad, in Connacht, held by his enemy, William de Lacy, brother of King Henry's enemy, should be given to his own son, who is ready to do homage for them; O'Conor prays an answer by the bearers of the present letter, in whom confidence may be placed.[9]
[8] Sweetman, 1, Nos. 1174, 1184; original in W. W. Shirley, Royal Letters (1862), 1. 183.
Cathal Crovdearg, after the death of his competitors, seems to have been in the favoured position of an elected King of Connacht who was also approved and supported by the English Government. On several occasions he addressed himself directly to the throne instead of to the deputy. In a mandate from Henry III appointing Archbishop Henri de Londres Justiciar in 1221, in the place of Geoffrey de Marisco, who was accused of using the revenues of the country for his own advantage, "Kathel of Connacht" is addressed first of the Irish kings; following him come "King of Kenelon [Aedh O'Neill, King of the Cinel Owen], Dunekan and Muriadac O'Bren [O'Brien], Dermot Macarthi [MacCarthy], Loueth MacDonahod [MacDonoghue], and the Norman barons." [10] Protections for Cathal "and for his chattels, lands, and possessions," were issued in 1219 and 1224, and a letter written by the Justiciar to the King speaks of Cathal and his son as "the King's faithful subjects, who have loyally assisted the Archbishop and obeyed the King's mandates." [11] There is no doubt, from the frequent friendly correspondence between Cathal and his immediate successors and the English kings, that they endeavoured faithfully to carry out the terms of compact made between Henry II and Cathal's brother Rory. Cathal made a personal submission to John at Ardbracken in Meath on that king's second visit to Ireland in 1210, and accompanied him on his tour as far as Carrickfergus, though he refused, on the advice of his wife, to entrust his son Aedh into the King's hands.
[9] This letter is given in Appendix II, and in Gilbert, Facsimiles, ii, No. LXXI.
[10] Sweetman, i, No. 1001.
[11] Ibid., 1, Nos. 530, 928, 1164, 1183; W W. Shirley, op. cit., p. 178.
The exact position of the King of England toward Cathal is not very clear. In 1204 we find the then Justiciar, Meiler FitzHenry, reporting that Cathal had quit-claimed to the King two-thirds of his province, retaining the other third by right of inheritance at a yearly rent of a hundred marks; for the two-thirds he was to pay three hundred marks, the King of England, however, claiming as his own portion "the best towns and harbours; those fittest for the King's interest and for fortifying castles." Cathal was to give hostages for his faithful service, and for the forwarding of the King's interests to the best of his judgment; he was to strengthen castles, found towns, and assess rents in those parts. To these immense claims Cathal seems to have agreed, raising his tribute first to four hundred marks for the whole province, and in 1215, when the charter was actually received by him, to five thousand marks, to be paid in two portions annually. This great advance in the payments given must have been the result of the consultations between the two kings during John's second visit to Ireland.[12] Cathal never seems to have grudged tribute; and when in 1224 his son Aedh appealed to the English, who were holding a court at Athlone, for aid against Turlogh O'Conor, his cousin, who had been elected by the popular vote and installed as King at Carnfree instead of himself, they willingly assisted him; for "every one of them was a friend of his, for his father's sake and his own; for he and his father before him were very liberal of stipends." [13] These large claims made and admitted over Connacht, whether enforced or not, practically transformed the kings of that province into feudal barons. They now held their lands as grants of the English monarchs and not by the old prescription and right. The King's gift, in 1214, of "scarlet robes, to be given to the kings of Ireland and other faithful subjects of the King" emphasized this new position; the recipients were regarded as the King's lieges.
[12] Sweetman, i, Nos. 222, 279, 654, 656. An equal tribute was demanded of William de Braose for the custody of the city of Limerick.
[13] Annals of Loch Cé, 1225.
This bestowal of robes of office had special reference to Cathal, for it followed immediately on the protection accorded to him and his men in that year, which led up to the final confirmation of his grant. This change of position must be clearly realized, for all that followed depends upon it. By the English sovereign the Irish princes, up till now independent rulers, came to be regarded as feudatories, ruling still as kings within their own domains, but holding their lands at the will of the English monarch, paying tribute to him, and being removable at his pleasure if they proved recalcitrant or failed to pay their dues. This claim was one that could easily be used for purposes of aggression when the occasion arose. In the case of the O'Conors the memory that they had once been independent kings seems to have quickly faded from the minds of the English monarchs, for we find Edward I, in an order to Richard de Burgh, Earl of Ulster, in 1305, speaking of King Felim of Connacht, son of Cathal Crovdearg, as "a certain Irishman named Felim O'Conor, who called himself King of Connacht." In the meantime things might have gone on quietly, Cathal and his successors paying tribute and receiving protection and support in return, but for the old vague grants made to the de Burghs before John became king. William de Burgh had never been able to enforce what he conceived to be his rights in spite of the support he had given to the two Cathals in turn, but the claim was to be revived by his son, Richard de Burgh, Earl of Ulster, in the reign of Cathal's son Hugh (Aedh). During Cathal's lifetime the King's claims proved abortive; Cathal continued to be styled "King of Connacht" and to exercise full authority. His appeal to the English King in the last year of his life for protection on behalf of his son, whom, adopting the English custom, he indicated as his successor, shows that the relationship between the two powers was friendly, and that Cathal had no intention of rupturing the new connexion. But, feeling death approaching and weighed down by the cares of a stormy life, he decided in 1224 to retire to the abbey of Grey Friars at Knockmoy, which he had himself founded in 1189. He and his favourite poet, Morrogh O'Daly, called Muredach Albanach, or "Murray the Scot," from his connexion with Scotland, entered the monastery on the same day, and there has been preserved a curious poem supposed to have been composed by them while their hair was being tonsured. This poet was the turbulent bard who was driven out of Ulster for killing a steward of the O'Donnells who was attempting to extract a rent from him. He was forced to take refuge in Scotland, where he wrote some beautiful religious poems, which seem singularly out of keeping with his irascible temper. He must have travelled, for a poem written from shipboard in the Levant to Cathal exclaims that it would be "the joys of heaven to find himself off the Scottish coast or breathe the breath, of Ireland."
This O'Daly, called "bard of Erin and Alba," was the first of the race of the Scottish MacVurrichs, bards of the MacDonalds of Clanranald.[14] Cathal must have been a favourite with the poets, for many poems are addressed to him. The Irish Annals, also, break out into lamentations of unusual sincerity on the death of Cathal of the Red Hand. Among his other virtues, one that seems to have struck the writers of his day as particularly surprising was that he was content with one married wife and that after her death he remained single.[15] It may well have been an example of extraordinary virtue in his family. Turlogh had three wives and at least twenty legitimate and illegitimate children, and it is said that the Pope offered to allow King Rory O'Conor six wives if he would be satisfied with that number. Rory refused the offer, and the annalists ascribe to this the extinction of the monarchy of Ireland in his line, as a punishment for his sins.[16] No doubt Cathal's death in the Grey Habit, his institution of tithes, and the splendid abbeys built by him in his native province partly serve to account for the warmth of the monastic chroniclers' praises. Even so, the panegyric pronounced upon him by Torna O'Mulconry, his own and his son's official bard, is so startling, as a symbol of the standards of virtue in the thirteenth century, that we quote a few words from it: "Cathal Crovdearg, son of Turlogh Mór O'Conor, King of Connacht, died. He was a man calculated to strike fear and dread more than any other Irishman of his day; he was a man who burned the greatest number of homesteads, and took the greatest number of preys from both the English and Irish who opposed him; he was the most valorous and undaunted man in opposing his enemies that ever lived. It was he who blinded, killed, and subdued the greatest number of rebels and enemies...He was the most gentle and peaceable of all the kings that ever reigned in Ireland." [17]
[14] For his poems see Book of the Dean of Lismore; S. H. O'Grady, Catalogue of Manuscripts in the British Museum, pp. 333-338; Hull, Poem-book of the Gael, pp. 156, 157, 159.
[15] His wife was More, daughter of Donal O'Brien; she died in 1218
[16] Annals of Loch Cé, 1233.
[17] Transactions of the Kilkenny Archaeological Society (1852-53), ii, 337-339.
Cathal was succeeded, in turn, by his two sons Aedh (1224-28) and Felim (1228-65), but their reigns were a long contest for the throne with their cousins, the sons of Rory, of the elder line. Cathal had endeavoured to provide against this by getting Aedh recognized as his successor before his death, and it augured well for the introduction of the hereditary form of succession that it was remarked that "no crime was committed on account of his accession, save one act of plunder and one woman violated." [18] But though the English upheld the claims of Aedh, the eldest son, the people supported the sons of Rory and inaugurated one of them, Turlogh, on the cairn of Carnfree, with the help of Hugh O'Neill. Three armies entered the province, from the north, east, and south, for the O'Briens, aided by the English of Munster, flung themselves into the conflict. The country was devastated, and the inhabitants died of sickness, cold, and famine. These wars led the English troops into parts of Connacht into which they had never before penetrated; and Aedh's appeals for help "were cheerfully responded to, for these expeditions were profitable to the Foreigners, who obtained spoils without encountering danger or conflict." [19] The O'Flahertys were persistent and bitter enemies of Aedh, but with the help of his English allies he succeeded in subduing them, even driving them for a time out of parts of West Connacht. He patched up a transient peace with Donogh Cairbrech O'Brien, who a few months before had made a treaty "of drowning of candles" [20] with Aedh's enemies. In Mayo he compelled the O'Haras to submit. Aedh was now at peace, and the English Justiciar, escorted by him, had retired for the second time over the Shannon and into Athlone. But behind Aedh's back Richard de Burgh was intriguing to get Connacht into his hands. Already in 1219 he had made large offers to Henry III for the realization of what, on the ground of King John's loose promise to his father, he professed to claim as his right.[21]
[18] Annals of Loch Cé, 1224.
[19] Ibid., 1225.
[20] Annals of Loch Cé, 1225. That is, with excommunication of the party who broke the peace, the extinction of candles being a part of the ceremony of excommunication. The expression is frequently used.
[21] Sweetman, i, No. 900.
During Cathal's life the matter was waived, but on his death Richard again began to urge his demands with offers of increased tribute to the Crown. By a sudden and disgraceful change of government policy Aedh was summoned to Dublin to surrender the land of Connacht, "forfeited by his father and himself," for it was to be handed over to de Burgh at a fixed rent. Aedh did not come. He was dealing with Geoffrey de Marisco, one of the most crafty Justiciars who ever ruled in Ireland, a man whose crooked ways got him twice into disgrace and ended in his flight to France, where he died friendless and in poverty. De Marisco was bent on capturing Aedh by fair means or foul. He attempted to detain him, and would have succeeded but for the timely warning of Aedh's faithful friend, the noble and incorruptible Earl William Marshal the Younger, second Earl of Pembroke, whose family, in an epoch of subtle craft and scheming, stands out as a line of great soldier-statesmen, stern, dignified, and faithful. As his father had befriended William de Braose when he fell into disgrace, so the son befriended Aedh; his steady opposition to the scheme of confiscation led to the enmity of the King toward his house, and to persecution from the Justiciar.[22] But in the following year, 1228, de Marisco again invited Aedh to his house, where, by accident or design, he was killed by the stroke of an axe from the hand of a carpenter, jealous of the handsome face of Aedh. The carpenter's wife, according to the custom of the times, had bathed the guest "with sweet balls and other things" and washed his head. The carpenter was immediately hanged by the Justiciar; but Connacht again became the scene of sanguinary quarrels for the kingship.[23]
[22] Annals of Loch Cé, 1227.
[23] The O'Conor Don, in his O'Conors of Connaught, has followed earlier writers in confusing the friend of Aedh with Marisco, or Marsh, his worst enemy; but see Transactions of the Kilkenny Archaeological Society, ii, 339. It was usual for guests to be bathed by women attendants.
It was in this year that Richard de Burgh, or, as he now came to be called, from the name of his father, MacWilliam Burke, replaced de Marisco as Justiciar, and was thus in a position from which he could carry out his projects. A fresh war broke out in Connacht led by the sons of Rory, whose followers, the MacDermotts of the Rock,[24] declared and pledged their word "that they would not own any king who would make them submit to the Foreigners," [25] and MacWilliam led an army into that province to expel Aedh, son of Rory, and place Felim, the late King's brother, on the throne. In this case the English seem to have ignored altogether their own principle of primogeniture. With a mixed army of English and Irish, who from this time onward are constantly found fighting on both sides, MacWilliam overran the province as far west as Mayo and Galway, and succeeded in placing Felim on the throne, banishing his cousin and rival to the O'Neill country. This happened in 1230. A steady policy on the part of Richard de Burgh might have settled the distracted province and consolidated the power of Felim, who appears to have been a man of greater force of character than his elder brother, the late King. But to settle the country was not MacWilliam's aim. The very next year we find him unseating Felim and imprisoning him at Meelick Castle and setting up his recently expelled rival in his place. But the flood of de Burgh's prosperity received a check. His near kinsman, Hubert de Burgh, who had been for fifteen years (1217-32) Justiciar of England, standing between the young King Henry III and the bad counsels of his French favourites, had fallen; and a band of hungry and mean-spirited Poitevins was filling England with anarchy and the Court with corruption. The change was reflected in Ireland in the disfavour into which Richard de Burgh suddenly fell. He was ordered to release Felim and deliver up the King's castles; and Felim, whose right to the sovereignty was strengthened by the defeat and death of his rival, Aedh, in 1233, began to carry out the order by himself, demolishing the castles that had been recently built, and setting up what promised to be a strong administration. But again de Burgh, who was partially restored to favour, gathered a great army, and assisted by Hugh de Lacy and Maurice FitzGerald (who is called "MacMaurice" or "MacMorrish" in the Annals, and who now became Justiciar), for the third time invaded Connacht and Thomond in his campaign of 1235. Felim made peace, and the five cantreds held by the English King were returned to him for a fixed tribute, which amounted to a practical partition of the province between him and de Burgh.
[24] I.e., the Rock of Loch Ce, famous for the Annals of that name; it was one of the principal residences of the MacDermott, who was chieftain of Moylurg.
[25] The technical term for such submission in Irish is "went into his house."
In 1240 Felim followed the example of his predecessors and appealed directly to the English King against the depredations of the barons and of their Irish allies. He was invited to visit London and lay his case in person before Henry; he was received with great honour by the King and "came home safely, joyfully, contentedly." The reception given to Felim in London undoubtedly changed his position at home for the better and put him out of reach of the designs of his enemies, and in 1245 we find him accompanying the Justiciar with a great Irish army to aid the King in his wars against Llewelyn in Wales. So effectually did he represent his case that the King sent his command to FitzGerald that he should "pluck up by the root that fruitless sycamore, de Burgh...nor suffer it to bud forth any longer." But the Justiciar himself soon fell into disgrace. His reply to the King's request for troops for the Welsh expedition had not been so prompt as might have been wished. The Norman-Irish barons had put in a plea for exemption from the duty of attending the King beyond the realm, and the King had to promise that the present occasion should not be taken as a precedent. But when at last FitzGerald and Felim presented themselves side by side in battle array with a numerous army, Henry thought it prudent to "wink awhile in policie at the tarriance and slow coming of Maurice FitzGerald," though he manifested his displeasure soon afterward by dismissing him from his post as Lord Justice. The provisions required for this miserable expedition, in which the troops suffered much from inclement weather and lack of food, were largely supplied from Ireland.
For the next twenty years affairs in Connacht went on much in the same manner. The rivals to the throne never relaxed their efforts, nor did de Burgh, whose lands were restored in 1247,[26] cease to push forward on every opportunity. More than once a delusive peace was patched up,[27] and from time to time Felim brought his case directly to the notice of the English King by ambassadors, "always obtaining from him everything he asked."[28] His son and successor took a prominent part in the wars of the province and kept at bay the rival princes. He seems to have been much with the English troops, for he is always styled Aedh-na-nGall, or "Hugh of the Foreigners," from his friendly relations with them. But the province was torn with dissensions, and the constant passage of great armies from end to end, preying and burning, brought it into a condition of wretchedness such as it had never experienced before.
[26] Sweetman, i, No. 2908.
[27] Annals of Loch Cé, 1255, 1256, 1257, etc.
[28] Ibid., 1255.
It was while things were in this condition that a determined effort was put forth to bring matters to a climax. An old Irish proverb says, "From the North comes help," and on more than one critical occasion it has been to Ulster that the warring factions have looked for a deliverer. The resolution of the Ulster kings to hold themselves aloof from the provincial wars of their neighbours had rarely been broken since the North had ceased to give its princes to the throne of Tara.
But at this moment a prince of more than usual force named Bryan O'Neill ruled in Tyrowen and Tyrconnel, whose septs he appears to have united under his sway. Probably he would still have held himself apart behind the protecting mountains that formed the frontiers of his territory but that the Justiciar, MacMaurice FitzGerald, harried him into action. Again and again the latter invaded Cinel Conaill on various excuses, and O'Neill felt that the castle of Caol-uisce, or "Narrow-Water," which had been built in 1212 by John de Gray, the then Justiciar of Ireland, in the gangway between Tyrconnel and Fermanagh to guard the main western pass of entry into his province, was a perpetual threat to his independence.[29] Since then it had been strengthened or re-erected by MacMaurice (1252), and he had forced Felim to build another castle not far off, at Sligo, out of stone and lime taken from a hospice that had been presented not long before by him to Bishop Claras MacMailin in honour of the Holy Trinity.[30] Thus threatened, Bryan O'Neill put forth all his strength to resist the invaders of his territory. On more than one occasion the English armies were forced to turn back, having obtained no pledges or hostages from O'Neill. In 1253 he made war on them on his own account; he demolished castles, burned 'street-towns'[31] and desolated the levels of Co. Down. In 1257 the castle of Caol-uisce was razed to the ground and its garrison slain, and the English of Sligo routed. The exploits of Bryan made all eyes turn to him as a possible saviour of the country, and a great meeting summoned to Caol-uisce in 1258 included not only Bryan O'Neill and Hugh, or Aedh, Felim's son, but also a representative of the O'Briens of the South. The Ulster and Connacht-men elected O'Neill sovereign of the Gael of Erin, and placed their hostages in his hands, Hugh at the same time receiving hostages from the O'Reilleys and other subject clans.
[29] The editors of the Annals of Loch Cé strangely confuse this place with Narrow-water, near Newry, Co. Down. See under 1252, note 4.
[30] Ibid., 1242, 1245, 1250.
[31] I.e., villages of one long street, of the kind still common in Ireland. At this period they are frequently mentioned in the Annals.
In 1260 the combination was complete, and Hugh hosted with the men of Connacht into the North, joining Bryan and his people in Tyrowen, and together they marched to Downpatrick. But their hopes were shattered by a terrible defeat. Bryan himself fell, and with him a long list of chieftains, both of Ulster and Connacht, fifteen being of the people of the O'Kanes (Muinter Cathain). The battle of Down put a definite end to the possibility of a combination strong enough to check the advance of the foreigner, and, until the confederation under another O'Neill, the great Tyrone, more than three centuries later, no similar united effort was organized by the Irish. Each provincial prince fought his own wars and made his own alliances, but there was no attempt to place themselves under a central ruler as King of Ireland. The special position of "Bryan of the battle of Down" was recognized by the English. His seal was afterward found near Beverley, in Yorkshire, with the inscription round a mounted warrior brandishing a long sword, Sigillum Brien, Regis de Kinel Eoghan. According to a poem written by his bard MacNamee, his head was carried to London and buried "under a white flagstone" in some church there, while his body was laid in Armagh.
MacWilliam Burke followed up the victory by fresh hostings into Connacht, and MacMaurice into Munster. They seem to have made an annual peace with their foes, Hugh O'Conor on one occasion even "sleeping cheerfully and contentedly in the same bed with MacWilliam Burke," but these were only momentary halts in the path of attempted conquest. MacWilliam's attention was distracted from Connacht for a time by his wars with the FitzGeralds of Munster, and meanwhile the strength of Felim and his son increased; in a conference at Athlone in 1264 they came so strongly attended that they secured their own terms, the English feeling it prudent to conclude a treaty with them. Felim died in the following year, having held his own with remarkable courage against the invaders. His tomb, bearing a dignified recumbent figure in white stone representing the King, still remains in the abbey of the Friars Preachers in Roscommon. About 1261, soon after the battle of Down, Felim had written to Henry III "returning infinite thanks to his Majesty for the various honours conferred on him, but chiefly for the King's orders to the Justiciar to cause restitution to be made to him for the losses which Gaultier [Walter] de Burgh had caused" of a portion of the lands in the cantreds of the King and elsewhere in the province, amounting in all to nine thousand marks. The Justiciar having died before the King's letter reached him, Felim states that Walter still continues to burn churches and slay nuns and ecclesiastics. The letter concludes: "For no promise made to him by the Irish had Felim receded, nor would he recede, from the King's service. He places himself, his people, and all he has under the protection of the King, and of the Lord Edward; and confides to the Lord Edward from then until the arrival of the latter in Ireland all his property and all his rights, if any he has, in Connacht." [32] There is something pathetic in the phrase "if any [property and rights] he has in Connacht," but between the various claimants among whom from time to time Felim heard of his lands being distributed, he may well have wondered where his own rights came in. The allusion to Lord Edward, the King's eldest son, afterward Edward I, refers to the proposal long entertained by Henry to make Prince Edward resident Lord of Ireland, and to transfer to him the practical government of the country. This proposal may have arisen out of the suggestion made on the King's accession by the then Justiciar, Geoffrey de Marisco, that the late Queen Isabella, widow of John, or her second son Richard should reside in Ireland, an admirable piece of advice which would have tended to check the insolent truculence of the barons and to give a much-needed central authority which the distant English kings could not wield.
[32] The original of this letter is in the Public Record Office, London; and see Gilbert, Facsimiles, ii, No. LXXIII.
Henry's later project to send over his eldest son, would have given the future king an intimate acquaintance with the affairs of Ireland, and it would undoubtedly have tended to consolidate that loyal sentiment of which the native kings were giving ample proof as opportunity arose. Unfortunately the plan broke down. In July 1255 the immediate departure of the Prince is spoken of; in August he is commanded to cross over from Gascony and proceed to Ireland for the winter as speedily as he can. But it does not appear that the Prince ever actually went over, and on his departure for the Holy Land vicegerents were appointed to act for him in relation to Ireland. Thus a plan fraught with favourable possibilities was allowed to drop, and the very rare visits of the English kings ill compensated for the actual residence of a prince of the royal blood in this part of the King's dominions.[33]
[33] It is seldom realized how rare and brief these visits were: Henry II, 1171; John, 1210; Richard II, 1394 and 1399; James II, 1689; William III, 1690; George IV, 1821; Victoria, 1849, 1853, 1861, 1900; Edward VII, 1903, 1904, 1907. These dates do not include visits before coronation.
Hugh, or Aedh, O'Conor succeeded his father, and during the years 1270-72 he made a most determined and successful stand against the English, defeating them in the field, demolishing their castles, and driving his victorious arms as far east as Meath. In 1271 his bitterest foe, Walter de Burgh, Earl of Ulster, suddenly died in Galway; and in 1274 the nine years of Hugh's vigorous reign were closed by his death, after he had cleared his province from the invaders. But his loss meant the revival of the old dissensions for the kingship, and in the same year three of his grandsons were successively kings of Connacht, each being slain by his rival cousins within a few weeks of his succession. Between 1274, when Hugh died, and 1315, when Edward Bruce landed in Ireland, there were thirteen kings of Connacht, of whom nine were slain, usually by their own brothers or cousins, and two were deposed. When Edward Bruce landed the throne was occupied by a foster-son of the powerful chief of the MacDermotts, who gathered round him a strong following, and called upon William Liath de Burgh to support him. The MacDermotts were violently opposed to any English connexion, and the young prince called on his adherents to swear "that for the future we will not stain our swords with the blood of Irishmen, or flourish them with parricidal hands, but will draw them against the Saxon assassins, the enemies of our country and of the human race." Matters were in this condition when the news of the landing of Brace on the coasts of Ulster in 1315 gave events a new direction.
We must now turn our attention to contemporary affairs in the South of Ireland. The country of Thomond during the latter years of the thirteenth and beginning of the fourteenth centuries was disturbed to an unusual extent by the wars between the O'Briens and de Clares, commonly known as the Wars of Thomond. It would seem that from the time of Donal, the prince who submitted to Henry II, the family had abandoned to a certain extent their claims to the sovereignty, though they continued to be inaugurated at Magh Adhair for some time longer. Donogh Cairbrech, Donal's son and successor (1194-1242) was the first O'Brien to adopt the name as that of his family "after having dropped the royal style and title that were ever customary to his ancestors." [34] Similar changes were going on all over Ireland, for many of the family names date from this period. In 1210, when King John landed, Donogh swore fealty, and the castle of Carrigogonnell was delivered over to him. He abandoned the ancient palace of Killaloe, the seat of the sovereignty since the time of Kennedy, father of Brian Boromhe, and built a new castle at Clonroad (Cluain-ramh-fhoda), near Ennis, which henceforth became the chief dwelling of the family. But it was one thing to swear allegiance to a distant sovereign and quite another to have the territories that had belonged to the sept of the Dalcais for many centuries trampled down and annexed by the subjects of that prince. The yearly encroachments of the "foreign adventurers, who, through excess of rapacity that grew and settled in them, were committing oppression and injustice, violence and constant pillage, on the old natives and stripping them of their estates and blood everywhere they could," aroused the Irish to the necessity of combining to elect a supreme king of Ireland, who should hold them together in a united effort to drive back the foreigner.
[34] The Triumphs of Turlogh (1194-1355), from which the following details are largely taken, is a lengthy tract written by John MacRory MacGrath, historian of the Dalcais, about 1459. Though it is compiled in the inflated style of the bardic chroniclers, it gives details not to be found elsewhere. But the dates need correction. The story of the meeting of Teige and Bryan at Caol-uisce, for example, is antedated by six years.
To the conference of Caol-uisce Conor O'Brien, the reigning prince, had sent his son Teige to represent him. But it would seem that both Teige and Bryan O'Neill expected to be the chosen candidate for the sovereignty, and when Teige sent a present of a hundred steeds to O'Neill, as from the lord to his vassal, O'Neill returned them with the addition of two hundred more, each decked out with a golden bridle. Furious at the return of his gift, Teige ordered an armed trooper to mount on every steed, and in this warlike guise the whole body swung back and drew up before O'Neill "in order to secure his submission by fair means or by force." But O'Neill, "seeing O'Brien's pride and haughty mind," drew away in anger, and the conference broke up, both the chief representatives returning home in wrath. Thus a much-needed combination between the North and the South ended in the old way, tribal pride weighing more with the leaders than even the desire to rid the country of the enemy. O'Neill, forsaken by his chief supporter, marched to the battle of Down and fell there with the men of Ulster and Connacht around him, while Teige returned to his own province to fight single-handed against an enemy "whom he hated and abhorred more than any animal or creature under heaven; nor would he suffer one of the English progeny to inhabit so much as a nutshell of a pauper's hut throughout the country under his sway." So says the panegyrist of his house, Rory McGrath, writing a couple of hundred years after him. He inflicted a severe defeat on the English at Limerick, but he died before he was of age. Conor O'Brien, after his son's death, "was filled with despondency and a loathing and contempt for the world." He retired into private life, and his subjects revolted from his rule and refused to pay their royal dues. But in 1267, summoning his resolution, he gathered together his forces for a raid northward against Conor O'Lochlan, leaving the country behind him "in red flashes of blazing fire and wreathed in crimson-tinted smoke," only to fall in a wood in Clare named Siudan, from which he is called Conor na Siudaine.
On Conor's death the whole province was rent between opposing claimants for the title of King of Thomond. His son Brian Roe O'Brien was unanimously elected at Magh Adhair, but the MacNamaras and O'Deas disputed his claim, and he was forced to fly across the Shannon, while the opposing party put up Turlogh, his nephew, son of Teige, in his stead. It was at this moment of family feud that Brian Roe took the resolution to follow Dermot MacMorrogh's example and to appeal to the English for help. He sent his son Donogh to Thomas, son of the Earl of Clare, in Cork offering to him and his heirs in return for his aid, all the land between Limerick and Athsollas. The offer must have been as agreeable as it was unexpected. Shortly before, de Clare had received permission from Henry III to make what acquisitions he could among the Irish, but he could scarcely have reckoned on the good fortune which, without effort on his own part, threw so fine a demesne into his grasp by gift. He readily consented, and in 1277 the de Clares and O'Briens, joined by the Geraldines and Butlers, with large bodies both of Irish and English, met at Limerick and marched from thence to Clonroad, hoping to find Turlogh there. But he was gone south to receive the fealty of the MacMahons, and was collecting an army which was to include the O'Kellys, O'Maddens, and O'Madigans from Connacht, and the MacNamaras, O'Deas, O'Quins, and MacMahons, supported by the de Burghs, who were never loath to have a fight with their hereditary foes the Geraldines. Thus the whole South was quickly astir with English and Irish fighting equally on both sides, as they were to fight for many centuries afterward. De Clare had found time, during the short pause, to erect at Bunratty a castle of lime and stone and to banish the old inhabitants and settle his expectant soldiers, both English and Irish, on his new lands; but the return of the Cullenans (Clann Culien), the former inhabitants, made their lives a burden. The great armies met at Moygressan, where Turlogh inflicted on Brian party a complete defeat, the remnant flying in rout to Bunratty. Many of the leaders were killed, among them the brother of de Clare's wife, Patrick FitzMaurice. In her anger at his loss she persuaded her husband to a frightful revenge upon their hapless ally. Brian was seized and "bound to stern steeds" to be torn to pieces, according to one account: but the Triumphs of Turlogh say that he was hanged.[35] In any case it was an act of inexcusable treachery, for the two allies had sworn a solemn oath together, and had formed 'gossipred' or sponsorship for their children, exchanging mutual vows "by the relics, bells, and croziers of Munster." According to the old Irish custom, they had even mingled their blood in the same vessel in token of unity.[36] The anger of the Dalcais was so great that de Clare had to build a double ditch round his castle for defence; subsequently the de Clares and Geraldines were driven into the Slievebloom Mountains, where they were forced by famine to capitulate and acknowledge the O'Briens as sovereigns of Thomond.
[35] So also the Dublin copy of the Annals of Innisfallen. The same account is given of the death of Tiernan O'Rorke in the Book of Fenagh, where he is said to have been drawn by wild horses, but there is no support for this. It was, however, a common form of punishment for great crimes at this period.
[36] Annals of Loch Cé, 1277.
This wasting and cruel war lasted for over fifty years with varying fortunes. De Clare dreaded the success of Turlogh, who was a strong prince and uniformly successful in the field, and he took the course of deliberately stirring up hostilities between the rival houses. The uproar was, even for Ireland, so unusual that it penetrated to Westminster, and the King sent for the Lord Justice to answer in person for the tumult that was going on in the land. Turlogh proved a formidable foe. In 1285 he defeated de Clare and laid waste English Thomond to the walls of Bunratty. In 1287 he repeated his success, and Thomas de Clare, FitzMaurice, and others were slain. He built in Ennis the first castle erected by a native prince of Thomond all of stone. In 1304 he received hostages from all the chiefs of North Munster, demolished the English castles as far as Youghal, and forced Richard de Clare to acknowledge him. His reign was one of uninterrupted prosperity. But the wars continued after his death in 1306, and were still in progress when Edward Bruce landed in 1315. The race of Brian Roe O'Brien was nearly extirpated at the battle of Corcomroe, leaving the line of Turlogh in the ascendant; and the de Clares were expelled from Thomond, leaving no trace of their occupation behind. After the fatal battle of Dysart O'Dea in 1318, in which de Clare was slain, his wife and followers abandoned the country and went back to England, never to return. The O'Briens had prevailed.
By the end of the thirteenth century the larger part of Ireland, except O'Neill's and O'Donnell's vast territories in Western Ulster, Oriell (Co. Louth), and the O'Rorkes' country of Breifne (Cos. Leitrim and Cavan), were claimed by various Norman barons in right of grants from English sovereigns, often overlapping each other, equally a matter of contention between opposing feudatories as between them and the Irish kings whom they were endeavouring to displace. The great Liberties of Meath, Carlow, Kilkenny, and Wexford were practically independent principalities, in which quiet was enforced by the garrisons occupying the motes or castles scattered thickly about the country. The family of the Butlers, later to become Earls, and finally Dukes, of Ormonde, who came over for the first time with King John in 1210, settled down on estates in Upper Tipperary; and the larger part of the estates of Strongbow had passed into the hands of the family of Mareschal, or Marshal, who became, by the marriage of William Marshal with the daughter and heiress of Strongbow, Earls of Pembroke and Striguil, and possessors of her great position and estates. Of all the Norman lords who founded families in Ireland, Earl Marshal bears the most unblemished character. He worthily carried on the tradition left by Strongbow in Leinster by endeavouring to build up a peaceable and settled principality in which the Irish inhabitants and English settlers could live in amity side by side. His was a romantic career. He had grown up during the wars of Stephen, when England was reduced to a condition of anarchy and misrule perhaps never equalled in her history.
As a boy he had been handed over to Stephen as a hostage, (1152), and he only escaped a horrible death by being shot out of a huge catapult used for storming castles by his childish prattle about the weapon, which he thought was only a pretty toy, thus attracting the attention and liking of Stephen, His youth was spent in the wars of Poitou and in the Crusades, where his exploits brought him into prominence and aroused the jealousy of his rivals. His whole early life was beset by the endeavours of enemies to undermine his influence with Henry II, whose part he took against his rebellious sons, John and Richard, but his incorruptible loyalty and his nobility of character carried him to the highest offices of the realm. He took his family name from the high position held by himself and by his father before him as Lords Marshal of England. He came to Ireland for the first time in 1207, but he was constantly recalled to England either on official business or by the intrigues of his enemies in Ireland, who envied him his great estates. Meiler FitzHenry, the younger de Lacy, and afterward Geoffrey de Marisco were the determined adversaries of his house, and plunged him and his sons and successors, William Marshal the Younger and Richard Marshal, into perpetual wars; but the earls showed their steadfastness and independence of mind by sheltering de Braose of Limerick from the wrath of his sovereign and Kings Aedh and Felim of Connacht from the designs of their enemies. The elder Marshal, of whom it was said that "He who made him was a great architect," spent the latter years of his long life, passed under four English monarchs, in his favourite town of Kilkenny,[37] beautifying it by building the splendid castle and abbeys by which it is adorned and founding the Cathedral of St Canice, from which the city takes its name. It quickly became a town of repute, second only to Dublin in historical interest, and several of the earliest Irish Parliaments assembled there. He and his sons developed Ossory, encouraged trade, established markets, and watched with interested eyes the progress of the new towns and villages springing up around the Norman keeps and castles all over Southern Leinster. New Ross they specially fostered as a possible rival to Waterford.
[37] Kilkenny Castle was purchased by James, third Earl of Ormonde, in 1392 from Sir Hugh le Despencer, Earl of Gloucester, to whom it had passed on the failure of male heirs to William Marshal the Younger, and it has ever since been the chief seat of the Ormonde family. See deed of transfer in Gilbert, Facsimiles, iii, No. XX.
When William Marshal the elder died in 1219 [38] he left five sons and five daughters; the sons were successively Earls of Pembroke and Marshals of England, and the two eldest succeeded him in his Irish estates, but they all died without issue. Giraldus remarks on the paucity of male descendants among the Geraldines; and in the second generation the lack of legitimate sons to the Norman lords continued. Neither Richard de Burgh nor the de Lacys left adult male heirs, and the great inheritance of the Earls Marshal was parcelled out among the five daughters of the first of their line. By the marriages of these ladies into the families of the Bigods, Earls of Norfolk, the de Clares, Earls of Gloucester, the de Warennes, Earls of Surrey, and others of the highest families of England, King Dermot's daughter Eva (Aoife) became the ancestress of many English lines of distinction closely connected in some cases with the throne. Richard Marshal, the third earl, with the usual fearless rectitude of his house endeavoured to resist the evil influence which "the mean brood of Poitevin favourites" was exercising over the mind of young Henry III, and suffered outlawry for his fidelity; in Ireland he was beset by intrigues and finally fell a victim to a combination formed against him; abandoned by his own people, he fought single-handed against his enemies and was mortally wounded in the battle of the Curragh of Kildare in 1234. The annalist adds, "This deed was one of the greatest deeds committed in that time."
[38] The father and son were buried in the Temple Church, in London. The office of Earl Marshal passed to the Bigods, Earls of Norfolk, and through them to the Mowbrays and Howards, the present Earls Marshal.
There are various indications that at this time many of the Irish leaders desired to throw themselves on the side of law and order and to support any honourable officer who set himself to bring about peaceable relations between the contending parties in the country. An instance of this is found in the action of certain Irish chiefs in Ulster, who had been assisting Sir William FitzWarenne to restore peace between the English and Irish in that district and who wrote to the King that they had endeavoured with all their might to support the seneschal by pursuing and routing the King's Irish enemies, but had only been oppressed by some of the Council of Ireland as their reward. They pray that these evildoers may not escape punishment, otherwise they fear that this war will serve as an example for others to follow.[39] They are referring especially to the discord stirred up in the district by the evil deeds of Sir Henry de Mandeville, who had been appointed bailiff in Twescard, in the north of the present Co. Antrim, at a moment when, through the exertions of de Warenne, the whole land of Ulster had been brought into a condition of peace, and hostages had been rendered for the continuance of these good relations. But with the entry of this fire-eating knight all was changed. Though himself an Anglo-Norman, he set himself to stir up the Irish to commit crimes on all the surrounding Norman settlers and their dependents, in order to secure their properties for himself; he had defrauded the revenue and "by rapine and unjust extortion to his own use had brought the land into a state of ruin." The whole community "as well of English as of Irish" threatened to rise if the bailiwick were granted to Sir Henry, "saving their fealty to Lord Edward." No country could settle down with violent men like de Mandeville setting his neighbours by the ears, and instigating one party to murder the other, and there were unfortunately always some officials in the Government in Dublin to support these evildoers. A three-cornered contest between the de Burghs, FitzWarennes, and de Mandevilles, which was carried on from father to son, culminated in 1333 in the awful tragedy of the murder of the youthful Brown Earl of Ulster, William de Burgh, by Richard de Mandeville, when they were quietly riding home together from morning prayer in apparent friendship.
[39] Sweetman, ii, Nos. 929, 952, 953.
In Ulster, Munster, and Connacht alike jealousies and treacheries between the Anglo-Norman families were ever ready to break out, as one member more ambitious or warlike than the others got the upper hand; each was ready to combine with the Irish princes against his own compatriots or to use Irish quarrels to further his own ends. From time to time the distant kings intervened, pointing out how "Ireland is depauperated by discord and wars," and expressing their disturbance and anxiety of mind thereat; "desiring much that these controversies and wars should be appeased and that peace and tranquility should prevail." [40] But these desires had little effect on men intent upon their family disputes and ambitions in Ireland. In the year 1311 the compiler of the Annals of Clonmacnois, copying from an earlier writer "whom he would take to be an authentic author who would tell nothing but the truth," says that in his time "there reigned more dissensions, strifes, warres and debates, between the Englishmen themselves than between the Irishmen, as by perusing the warres betweene the Lacies of Meath, John Courcy, Earl of Ulster, William Marshal and the English of Meath and Mounster, mac Gerrald [FitzGerald], the Burkes, Butlers and Cogan may appear." In addition, the constant changes of policy in England produced a perpetual ferment. They were always destined to be a source of weakness and unrest in Ireland, and especially so during the frequent revolutions and changes of dynasty which disturbed England throughout the period of the Plantagenet and Yorkist wars. Though not directly concerned in the dynastic conflicts raging round the English throne, the Anglo-Irish barons were inevitably dragged into them, and rival parties were formed which took different sides in these distant struggles.
[40] Sweetman, ii, No. 1155.
From the time of John's visits in 1185 and 1210, first as prince and later as king, the barons in Ireland began to experience sudden changes of royal favour. From his day the old settlers began to fall into disfavour and were forced to make way for the "new English," as the later comers were loosely called. John had brought with him to Ireland a swarm of dissolute favourites, "talkers, boasters, enormous swearers," Angevin and Poitevin by birth, men who were "bold in the town but cowards in the field" and "who in Ireland would be far from the west and nigh to the east and the sea, as though they had a mind to flee rather than to fight." They clung round the Court in order to receive favours, though they gave none. The Irish christened the new lords, French and English alike, the Dubh-Gaill, or "Black Foreigners," when comparing them with the great barons of an earlier day, as in times gone by they had so named the Danes in comparing them with the more friendly Norsemen who had preceded them.[41] These men of the old nobility were thrust aside and only young favourites were called to the Council. Thus, while busily engaged in building up their Irish estates, the Anglo-Irish lords were forced all the time to keep one eye fixed on affairs in England and on the policies of English kings. At any moment they might find themselves fallen into disfavour, either through a change in State policy or through the whispering of some malicious enemy near the throne who was anxious to undermine their influence. They became, in consequence, more and more independent of outside interference, and each baron ruled within his own domain like a free prince in his palatinate.
[41] Annals of Ulster, 1310, and Annals of the Four Masters, at same date.
The wars with Scotland, which occupied so much of the reigns of Edward I and Edward II, and into which Ireland was now to be drawn, had arisen largely out of the new relations which existed between England and Scotland after the marriage of Henry I with Matilda, daughter of King Malcolm, a princess of the Scottish line. The Court of Malcolm became filled with families from the South, of which two, the Norman Bruces and Balliols, were destined to play a leading part in Scottish history. The enforced consent of William the Lion, extracted from him during his captivity in England, to hold his crown in fief from the English kings, with the right of homage from the Scottish lords, though for nearly a hundred years held in abeyance, provided a convenient pretext for interference when the occasion should arise; and the passing of the succession from the direct line of William the Lion to that of the daughters of his brother David brought into the field a number of claimants, who were quite ready to appeal to Edward I to support their rival pretensions. Of these John Balliol was descended from David's eldest daughter and Robert Bruce from the second daughter. Their appeal to the English King gave the latter the opportunity of asserting a right to overlordship not expected by the Scottish claimants and vigorously resisted by the general body of the Scottish lords. Balliol gave way; his claim to the sovereignty as a representative of the elder line was allowed, but he received it as the suzerain of the English King. The wars that followed were a protest against the carrying out of the pact in its various implications; and the terrible massacre at Berwick (1296), which compares in horror with Cromwell's later sack of Drogheda, the battle of Falkirk in 1298, and the surrender of Stirling in 1305, completed the conquest of Scotland.
Wallace, the hero of these earlier struggles, had refused mercy, and his head was placed on London Bridge; Balliol was confined in an English prison. For a short time after the Convention of Perth quiet reigned in the North, but it was soon to be broken by a revolt of the whole country under Robert Bruce, who again came forward on the death of Balliol to lay claim to the Scottish crown. For four years his enterprise was a desperate adventure, until the weakness of the second Edward and his absorption in the internal troubles of his kingdom gave Bruce his chance. One after another the towns fell into his hands, and in 1313 he was strong enough to invest Stirling. It was under those exalted walls that the battle of Bannockburn was fought on June 24, 1314, when the footmen of Bruce totally overthrew the thirty thousand horsemen sent to oppose them, and "the feld so cleyn was maid of Inglis men, that nane abad."[1] The King of England himself barely escaped from the field. The news of the English defeat at Bannockburn stirred the Irish as no event for many years had done. Their attention had been frequently turned to the Scottish wars by the drawing off of troops from Ireland to aid the English kings, whose appeals for help in their Scottish expeditions had been made not only to their Norman barons, but also to the Irish princes. The Red Earl of Ulster was the natural leader in these expeditions. His vast estates and claims in Ulster and Connacht gave him almost the position of an independent prince, the maker and unmaker of Irish kings and the most powerful man in Ireland. He took a foremost place in the Parliaments of the country and signed his name in important documents before that of the Justiciar. In 1302 he took what appeared at the time a strange step in marrying his daughter Elizabeth to Robert Bruce, then practically an outlaw; for his struggle for the independence of his country had only just begun. Yet we find de Burgh in the following year (1303) again carrying over a great Irish army to fight against his son-in-law. This marriage had the natural result of casting suspicion upon the fidelity of the Red Earl, especially during the wars of Edward Bruce in Ireland. He seems, indeed, throughout their course to have played a double and uncertain game.
[1] This and the following Scottish quotations are taken from Barbour's Bruce, a poem which deals, among the other exploits of the Bruce family, with the expedition of Edward Bruce to Ireland.
The arrival of Edward Bruce in the North of Ireland in 1315 was not an unexpected event. His brother Robert had since 1312 been coasting round North Ulster and had been repulsed by the inhabitants; he had then sailed out for the Isle of Man, where he destroyed MacDowell's castle and hanged its owner. His marriage with the daughter of the Red Earl had brought the two countries into close connexion; and the news of his wonderful success at Bannockburn had been received with enthusiasm among the Irish. A definite resolution was taken by the native princes of Ulster to invite over a member of the house of the successful leader and to make him king of the whole country. They regarded the Braces as in some sort belonging to their own nation, by virtue of their descent from Dermot MacMorrogh in the female line, while de Burgh's daughter, Bruce's wife, was of the race of Rory O'Conor It is quite probable that those who planned the invitation to Bruce's brother, Sir Edward, believed that an outside claimant to the throne might unite the Irish princes as no one of themselves could hope to do; and they might well consider that a king living and ruling in Ireland itself would be more effectual in keeping quiet in the country than a monarch across seas could ever be. An old account says that the envoys sent were Hugh O'Neill, Bishop of Derry, Brian, son of Donal O'Neill, Manus O'Hanlon, Lord of Orior, and the chief 'ollave' or law-adviser of the O'Neills. Bishop Hugh was the speaker.[2]
[2] Louth Archaeological Journal, 1, 77 seq. This tract is called "The Battle of the Fochart of S. Bridget," ed. H. Morris.
Among other steps they appealed for help and countenance to Pope John XXII, in a Remonstrance which has ever since been regarded as the extreme statement of the views and sufferings of the Irish people at the time in which it was written. The Remonstrance begins thus: "It is extremely painful to us that the vigorous detractions of slanderous Englishmen and their iniquitous suggestions against the defenders of our rights should exasperate your Holiness against the Irish nation. But alas! you know us only by the misrepresentations of our enemies, and you are exposed to the danger of adopting the infamous falsehoods which they propagate, without hearing anything of the detestable cruelties they have committed against our ancestors and still continue to commit, even to this day, against ourselves." They then recite a number of bad cases, such as the murder of O'Brien by de Clare, in which the Norman barons had behaved with cruelty to the Irish lords. They speak of the gift of Ireland to Henry II by the Pope's predecessor, Adrian, and complain that the terms of the grant had been violated, and the bounds of the Church narrowed. "Through the oppressions of the English," they exclaim, "we have been driven to the woods and the rocks, and fifty thousand of both races have perished by the sword alone in virtue of Adrian's Bull." They complain of the uneven laws directed against the Irish, and declare that "the middle nation" in Ireland differs so widely in their principles of morality from those of England and all other nations that they may be called a nation of the most extreme degree of perfidy. The Remonstrance is addressed to Pope John by "his attached children, Donaldus Oneyl, Rex Ultoniae, true heir by hereditary right of all Ireland" (a title which would certainly not have been admitted by the princes of Munster) "as well as the kings, nobles, and Irish people in general of the same realm." The appeal prays the support of the Pope for Bruce, whom the Irish people have chosen as their deliverer, and in whose favour O'Neill is ready to resign his rights to the throne. It speaks as though this decision had only recently been come to, but, as Pope John was not elected till August 1316, the appeal must have been written after that date, certainly after Edward Bruce had been crowned king in May 1316, and probably when the sudden turn in his fortunes had made his permanent success doubtful.[3]
[3] Miss Olive Armstrong, in her Edward Bruce's Invasion of Ireland (1923), summarizes the arguments for a late date in her note on p. 113.
The appeal had little effect; the Pope merely passed it on to King Edward II, with a recommendation that he should inquire into the complaints contained in it, and if they were true should endeavour to put them right. He was, at that very moment, contemplating the excommunication of Robert Bruce for rebellion against England, and the time was not favourable for an appeal on behalf of a member of his house.
The Irish invitation to Bruce came most auspiciously to the young Scottish lord, for Edward, like his brother, was ambitious, and he desired to share with his brother the throne of Scotland. He was now Earl of Carrick, a brave man and proving himself a successful general, and he had no liking to take a second place in the kingdom. The idea of making himself king of Ireland and ousting the English was a tempting one, and on May 26, 1315, he crossed over with a fleet of three hundred ships and six thousand men-at-arms, having with him Sir Philip de Mowbrey, the Earl of Moray, Sir Alan and John Stewart, Sir John Campbell, and Sir Robert Boyd; with these he landed on the coast of Antrim.[4] But his reception was hardly such as he had been led to expect. Of the Irish, only the O'Neills and their 'urraghs,' or dependent chieftains, such as O'Kane, O'Hanlon, and O'Hagan, rose; many held back because they were dissatisfied with O'Neill's alliance, "for they held their own power, dignity, and course of policy in too high estimation." [5] The old Scottish and English settlers in Co. Antrim, such as the Bysets, Logans, and Savages, far from welcoming a Scottish ruler, united with the Mandevilles to resist him and fight for their own, and an alliance was made between them and the Red Earl of Ulster, Richard de Burgh, to oppose him. But in a great battle on the Bann this formidable army was put to flight, and "the Flower of Ulster was tane and slain," the Red Earl himself flying from the field. After this propitious victory Sir Edward Bruce cut his way through to Dundalk, forcing the Pass of Moira, called by Barbour the Pass of Endnellan, which was held by two Irish chiefs against him. The English combination which resisted Bruce's entry into Dundalk included the Justiciar, Edmond le Boteler, or Butler; Maurice FitzThomas, who was later created first Earl of Desmond; and John FitzThomas FitzGerald, afterward first Earl of Kildare. They were usually commanded by Richard de Clare, who held a position of great authority in the army during the wars of Bruce.[6] He is called by Barbour "lieutenant of all Ireland," an error to which his prominence as commander in the field may well have given rise. He was later pardoned a debt and given special privileges " for his great labour and cost in repelling...the Scottish enemies." [7] The combination was joined by the Red Earl with an army that had ravaged its way through Connacht with savage cruelties, the Earl having sworn to the Justiciar that he would deliver to him Bruce alive or dead.
[4] Barbour calls the place "Wokingis Fyrth," which was probably Larne , Pembridge calls it "Clondonne" and Grace's Annals "Glondonne" or Glendun; these are all in Co. Antrim. The course of events and the names of the associates of Bruce also differ in the different authorities.
[5] Louth Archaeological Journal, loc. cit.
[6] Bain, Calendar of Documents relating to Scotland, iii, No. 469.
[7] Ibid., iii, No. 488.
Persuaded by O'Neill, Bruce thought it prudent to retire on Eastern Ulster, where he was followed by the English armies. His retreat was beset with difficulties. He was led astray by an Irish chief, named O'Dempsey, who had sworn fealty to him, but who guided his men into a morass from which the weary army had much ado to get away. At the passage of the Bann Bruce found no boats sufficient for his wants until a pirate vessel or "scummer of the sea" came up and ferried them over. Nevertheless, he inflicted another total defeat on the English at Connor, Co. Antrim, killing many of the leaders and capturing William de Burgh, 'the Grey'; the defeated English fled for refuge into Carrickfergus Castle, where they valiantly maintained themselves against the Scots during a long siege, while the Red Earl led the shattered remnants of his army back to Connacht.
The terror of Bruce's successes spread through Ireland, all the land being said to "shake with fear." He again marched south, routing an army of fifteen thousand men under Roger Mortimer at Kells, and sending him and the de Lacys flying to Dublin. He kept Christmas triumphantly in Meath, and caused himself to be crowned King of Ireland, Fleming and de Lacy offering their submission and promising their support. At the opening of the New Year he defeated the Lord Justice at Ardscull, near Athy. Wherever the Scottish army went it ravaged the country, destroying the remnants of an already bad harvest and leaving famine and suffering in its train. Acts like the burning of Ardee Church full of refugees—men, women and children—on its first march south added to the dread of veterans who in nine months had dispersed and defeated three armies. The Lords of Leinster and Meath met in solemn consultation and bound themselves with an oath to unite in defence of the country against the Scots. Famine, partly caused by his own devastations, forced Bruce to retire into Ulster while he sent to Scotland for reinforcements. There, as King of Ireland, he took hostages, collected the revenues, and forced the lords to deliver to him the regalities belonging to the King of England. This would have been the moment for concerted action on the part of his Irish adherents had they really desired to drive the English from their country. But the most powerful of them made no move, save to appeal to these very English for help. Bruce intrigued first with King Felim, who had followed the army of de Burgh out of Connacht and then with his rival Rory, as he thought each in turn was getting the upper hand. To Felim he offered undivided sway in Connacht if he would forsake the Earl; to Rory a free hand to expel the English, but not to "commit spoliation on Felim or enter his lands." Such a stipulation had little effect on Rory, and soon Felim was forced to fight his way step by step home across the Shannon, for news came from Connacht that Rory was using his opportunity during Felim's absence to advance his own cause; he had good hopes of being elected king of the province, since all the chiefs except MacDermott, Felim's foster-father, had by this time submitted to him. The affairs of Connacht were in a desperate state, there being three native princes alive who each claimed to have been duly elected king; and the country was "entirely convulsed" their internal quarrels, even at the moment when a foreigner was rapidly advancing into the heart of the land.
Felim fell at the early age of twenty-three years, with his standard-bearers around him, bearing the leopard flag, the arms of the O'Conors. Twenty-eight of the O'Kelly family lay dead in that rout, with a host of other chiefs and tanists. On the return of the Red Earl, who was practically in flight before Bruce, the dispossessed chieftains "flocked to his house" to acknowledge his authority and claim his help. But de Burgh was in no position to render aid at this moment. His castles had been burnt down in the wretched struggles for power that had afflicted the province; he had been turned out of Ulster by the victorious arms of Bruce; he was in ill-odour with the authorities because he had tartly told the Justiciar at Dundalk that he did not need his assistance to drive Bruce out of the country, but could deal with him alone; and he was shrewdly suspected of a leaning to the Scottish cause. For a year he wandered about, unable to intervene, while his brother, the Grey William de Burgh, was a prisoner in Scotland, whither he had been conveyed by the Earl of Moray.
It was now noised abroad that Edward Bruce was again moving southward with twenty thousand men and that his brother, the King of Scotland, was come over to join him. From time to time the people of Dublin had heard of the stern justice that Bruce had been meting out in his Parliaments in the North. He had put the Logans to death and hanged many others; while rumour said that the English shut up in Carrickfergus were "living upon hides for want of victuals and had eaten up eight Scots whom they had taken"! Before long Edward Bruce was at Castleknock, close to Dublin, and had formed a junction with his brother at Leixlip. Moreover, the O'Mores, the O'Tooles, and the O'Byrnes were reported to be 'out,' and David O'Toole was discovered hiding with eighty of his men in the woods of Cullinswood, almost beneath the walls. On that "Black Sunday" grave citizens thought they saw the dead rising from their tombs and fighting with each other, shouting their old battle-cry of "Fennok aboo!" Stricken with fear, they hastened to burn down Thomas Street, St John's Church, and other buildings to make the town more easy to defend, but the flames extended farther than was intended, and most of the suburbs were destroyed. The city authorities showed unwonted activity. The de Lacys, who appear sometimes on one side and sometimes on the other, were called upon to clear themselves of collusion with the Scots, and the Red Earl was apprehended by the Mayor as a measure of security, even the intervention of the King not proving sufficient to set him free. Sir Thomas de Mandeville had thrown himself across the path of the Scots near Carrickfergus, with men from Drogheda, having previously replenished the beleaguered city with men and provisions during a time of truce agreed upon for the celebration of Easter; de Mandeville deliberately broke the truce for this purpose. But, "as falsat [falsehood] evir mair sall haif [have] unfayr and ewill ending," the attack ended in the defeat of the Government troops, "auld Schyr Thomas" falling on the field of battle. On emerging into the plain from the Moira Pass, where Sir Richard de Clare was awaiting them, hoping to cut in twain the two divisions led respectively by Robert and Edward Bruce, the six thousand hardy and seasoned veterans led by King Robert fell upon de Clare's troops and cut them to pieces.
But from this moment the luck of Edward Bruce seemed to desert him. Together the two brothers marched to Naas and thence to Tristledermot, the de Lacys being again in their party. Here, however, they were defeated by Edmond Butler, and the resolution made by the invaders "to hold their ways through all Ireland, from one end to the other," was brought to an end within sight of Limerick, where they turned and began a disastrous retreat to the north, on receiving the news that Roger Mortimer had landed at Youghal on April 7, 1317, to take over the administration. The Pope, who a short time before had intervened to endeavour to call a two years' truce between Robert Bruce and the King of England, which had been refused by Robert, now excommunicated the two Scottish brothers and the clergy who supported them. On the other hand, a general pardon was sent over from England to all who would come in; but the de Lacys, who refused it, Were driven into Connacht and their lands taken from them.
Dearth and famine prevailed over the whole country, and when by forced marches the Braces arrived in Ulster, having slipped past the English army by another route, they found the province so impoverished and poverty-stricken that the people were digging up dead bodies and using them for food. The two Bruces were not on the best terms, Edward being determined to take the credit of any victory to himself, and it was this jealousy that brought about the final scene in the drama of King Edward's attempt on Ireland. Learning that Sir John Bermingham was marching north against him with fifteen hundred troops, Edward, whose army, except for the Irish contingents, was much reduced, declared that he would fight before his brother could come up, even if, as he said, the English army were "tryplit or quadruplit" in number. His best advisers besought him to await the arrival of other troops, but his "outrageous succudry [pride] and will" prevailed; the Irish leaders, however, refused to take any part in the battle. The battle was fought between Faughard and Dundalk, on October 13 or 14, 1318, after a long lull in hostilities. The Scots were unwisely drawn up in three divisions, too far apart to support each other, and were completely routed, most of their leaders being mortally wounded or falling in the fight.[8] Edward Bruce was slain by John Maupas, whose body was found stretched across the dead body of Bruce. A story in Barbour says that Edward refused on that day to wear his surcoat bearing his coat-of-arms, and that his faithful body-servant, Gib Harper, "that men held als withouten peir," donned it and was killed in mistake for the King. It seems, however, unlikely that anyone else could be mistaken for Bruce, who certainly fell in the battle, though the change of armour may have caused a momentary doubt. Sir John Bermingham brought Bruce's head to the English King and received the earldom of Louth and the barony of Ardee as his reward; and, though the country people still point out the grave of Bruce in the burial-ground of Faughard, it is probably true that his hands and heart were carried to Dublin and his limbs were sent to different places The remnant of the troops fought their way out to Carrickfergus, but with difficulty, "for they were mony tymes that day assalit by the Irischry," who turned against them on their defeat; finally they made their way back to Scotland.
[8] The numbers that fought are very variously estimated, from 5800 to 8274 Scots being stated to have fallen. Bruce seems to have had only a small Scottish army, with a very large following of Irish, who would not fight.
A universal cry of relief went up both from the English and the Irish on the defeat of Bruce. The man to whom the Irish had looked to drive the English out of their land, the man whom they had formally invited over as their king, and for whom they had besought the Pope's assistance, had become in their experience a more formidable danger than the English whom they wished him to displace. The Annals of Clonmacnois, representing Connacht opinion, exclaim: "Edward Bruce, destroyer of all Ireland in general, both English and Irish, was killed by the English in main battle by their valour, at Dundalk, October 14, 1318, together with MacRory, King of the Isles, and MacDonnell, prince of the Irish of Scotland, with many other Scottish men. Edward, fearing his brother Robert would get the credit of the victory over the English...was himself slain, as is declared, to the great joy and comfort of the whole kingdom; for there was not done in Ireland a better deed that redounded better or more for the good of the kingdom since the creation of the world and since the banishment of the Fomorians out of the land than the killing of Edward Bruce; for there reigned scarcity of victuals, breach of promises, ill performance of covenants, and the loss of men and women throughout the whole realm for the space of three and a half years that he bore sway, insomuch that men did commonly eat one another for want of sustenance during his time." [9] A still more remarkable expression of opinion on the career of Bruce in Ireland was given by a Connacht bard, chief poet to the family of Eoghan (or Owen) O'Madden, who died in 1347. His relations with the foreigners of whom he speaks in the passage about to be quoted had been chiefly confined to the near neighbourhood of the de Burghs, who had established themselves in his district of Hy-Many and possessed themselves of great slices of his territory.
[9] We may hope that this final disaster is, like the eating of the eight Scots at Carrickfergus, added for rhetorical effect.
Though he had fought the invaders in his youth, Eoghan appears to have accepted a compromise with the Red Earl, to whose fortunes he and his people attached themselves with the utmost fidelity. He united his forces to de Burgh's on the side of Felim against that prince's rivals for the throne of Connacht, and carried his arms successfully as far as Meath and Ulster. He refused a lordship equal to the extent of his own territory rather than prove unfaithful to the Earl, and won from his bard the praise of having "taught truth to the chieftains and kept his people from treachery and fratricide, checking their evil customs and dissentions and instilling charity and humanity throughout his goodly territories." He did not, like other chiefs, find it necessary to take hostages for fidelity, nor did he have recourse to fetters; and to all he was ready to extend gifts of food, horses, or kine. He improved his lands and enlarged them, built a castle of stone, and repaired churches. It is the bard of this enlightened ruler who speaks thus of the Brace adventure: "In his [Eoghan's] time Scottish foreigners less noble than our own foreigners [i.e., the Norman barons] arrived; for the old chieftains of Erin prospered under those princely English lords who were our chief rulers, and who gave up their foreignness for a pure mind, their surliness for good manners, and their stubbornness for sweet mildness, and who had given up their perverseness for hospitality. Wherefore it was unjust to our nobility to side with foreigners who were less noble than these, like the O'Neills, who first dealt treacherously with their own lords, so that at this juncture, Ireland became one trembling wave of commotion, except the territory of Eoghan [O'Madden] alone, seeing that he would not violate his truth, fearing to act treacherously towards his lord [the Red Earl] without strong cause...Therefore the chieftains of Ireland in general perished through their excessive pride, except Eoghan only, whom God protected in consequence of his good deeds."[10]
[10] Tribes and Customs of the Hy-Many, ed. J. O'Donovan (Irish Archaeological Society, 1843), pp. 136-139.
Such a statement as this shows a new aspect of the relations between the English barons and the Irish chieftains among whom they settled; it is one that makes us reflect that the whole truth about those relations has not generally been understood. There were evidently instances where the position of the Anglo-Irish lord and that of his Irish neighbours was of a friendly nature, recognized as beneficial to both. De Burgh acceded to the wish of Eoghan that no English steward should have authority over his Gaels, but that his own (Irish) stewards should act for both the English and Irish resident in his territory, either in towns or castles; and the same conditions were adhered to by his son William de Burgh. Richard, great fighter as he was, seems to have won his way with the Irish, to whom a forcible character appealed, and even his misfortunes did not lower their esteem for him. When he died in 1326 he is spoken of as "the choice Englishman of all Ireland."[11]
[11] Annals of Clonmacnois, 1326.
In spite of the original invitation to Bruce there was no general rising to support him, even at the moment of his sweeping successes. On the contrary, even those bodies of Irish who were nominally under his banner forsook him on critical occasions, and in more than one instance it was through the misleading of his Irish allies that his troops got into difficulties. The Irish showed no disposition to seize the opportunity of a distracted and weakened authority to combine in an effort to rid themselves of the English; the favourable opportunity to drive the foreigner out of Ireland passed harmlessly away.
The end of the wars of Bruce found the English diminished in numbers, their positions isolated and scattered, and in many instances surprised and cut off. In Ulster, Connacht, and Munster the native Irish were to a great extent regaining their former possessions, and they had followed the example of the Normans in building castles all over the country, into the bawns of which the cattle could be driven on the warning of a raid. The de Clares were gone from Munster,[12] and the Power of the de Burghs in Ulster and Connacht had been seriously weakened. On the death of the Red Earl his grandson, styled the Iarla Donn, or "Brown Earl," born in 1312, succeeded him. He married Maud Plantagenet, granddaughter of Henry III, and daughter of Henry, Earl of Lancaster, thus allying himself to the royal family of England. But the treacherous murder of this young earl in 1333, by his neighbour, Richard de Mandeville, extinguished the senior male line of the de Burghs; and the chiefs of the junior branches of the family in Connacht, fearing the transfer of his possessions into strange hands by the marriage of his only daughter and heiress, Elizabeth, seized upon his estates in that province. The Earl's widow fled into England with her infant daughter, then only a year old. In later life the child was to return as the wife of Prince Lionel, Duke of Clarence, third son of Edward III, who became Viceroy of Ireland in 1361, and whose daughter's descendants, the Mortimers, laid claim on her account to the earldom of Ulster and the lordship of Connacht in addition to their great patrimonial estates in England and Scotland. In the reign of Edward IV these titles became the appanage of the Crown.
[12] Their downfall occurred before the death of Edward Bruce. See Chapter 6.
In Connacht the two most powerful of the great family of de Burgh's or Burkes, as we may henceforth call them, were Sir William (or Ulick) Burke, ancestor of the Earls of Clanricarde, and Sir Edmond Albanach, the "Scottish" Burke, ancestor of the Earls of Mayo. They banded themselves together and declared themselves independent, adopting the Irish title of MacWilliam Uachtar, or the "Upper" Mac William, i.e., the Clanricardes of Galway, and MacWilliam Iochtar, or the "Lower" MacWilliam, Lords of Mayo, under which names they terrorized the entire province. They flung off English dress and habits with the English or French tongues to which they were accustomed, and adopted the ways of life of the Irish around them, their territories descending by the native rule of tanistry, which led to perpetual broils between the aspirants. So well did they accomplish their purpose that Sir Henry Docwra in Elizabethan days thought the Lords of Mayo were of Irish descent, and the compiler of the Book of Howth seems to have regarded the Clanricarde family as of the old Gaelic race. In Sidney's day it had become worthy of note that MacWilliam spoke "very good English."
The English Government was too feeble to enforce English law in Connacht, and the decline of its influence in the province was rapid. From this time onward we hear little of the doings of the native princes, but much of the wild deeds of the Norman Burkes, grown Irish. Joined with the O'Rorkes and O'Conors, they formed a league of "the proudest, wildest, and fiercest clans" in Ireland, and they and the O'Flahertys were considered "the greatest nation and possessors of the strongest country of any people in Ireland," "noble of mind and of good courage."[13] Sir John Davies in the reign of James I says that "there were more able men of the name of Burke than of any name whatsoever in Europe,"—high praise from an English judge. The Clanricarde branch of the family had the wildest reputation. Their nicknames of "Burke of the Heads," "The Devil's Hook," etc., show what manner of men they were. Many of the Burkes, from the close of the thirteenth century onward, added an Irish 'Mac' to their Norman names [14] and became MacPhilbin, MacMeyler, or MacHubert; others became Jennings or Gibbons, with many other variations which effectually concealed their name of origin. The Berminghams became the Clann Fheorais, or MacPheorais (Piers), a name probably adopted from the time of Piers Bermingham (d. 1308), who is called in Grace's Annals "the noble tamer of the North." Their Leinster lands round Carberry were called Claniores (Clann Fheorais); in Connacht their possessions lay round Dunmore and Athenry. In like manner the de Nangles became MacCostellos; the Stauntons, MacEvillys; the FitzSimons of Westmeath, MacRudderys. The Jordans, Prendergasts, FitzStephens, and others, all descended from old Norman families, threw off the English Government; it was powerless to protect them, and its energies for the next three centuries had to be concentrated on holding its own within the limits of the Pale. This district, which included only the present counties of Louth, Dublin, and Kildare, with part of Meath, was so called from a wall or ditch which was erected to enclose it as a protection from the Irish, who came up to its very borders. Outside, the old families speedily became indistinguishable in manners and language from the native septs among whom they dwelt. They were looked upon as rebels, and large portions of their lands were confiscated as such in the seventeenth century. While Sir Henry Sidney was Viceroy, he used to try to recall them to the memory of their origin by reverting to their original family names; MacCostello (Lord Nangle) he styled de Angulo; MacSurtan (Lord Desert) he addressed as Jordan de Exetore; but in his time they had become "very wild Irish," and he had no easy task to reclaim them.[15]
[13] Lord Deputy to Walsingham, 1589.
[14] The 'Ua' or 'O' was never adopted by the Normans; it remained as the patronymic of the pure Gaelic families.
[15] Book of Howth, in Carew, Miscellany, p. 23.
It is strange to find such families as the d'Exeters of Gallen, who became known as the MacJordans from Jordan d'Exeter, and who had entered the province as English sheriffs of Connacht, thus grown into "very wild Irish" in 1571. In days to come the Stauntons had to set forth to the Privy Council their English descent and protest that they had revolted from their old loyalty because some of her Majesty's officers had cast longing eyes on their pleasant lands and their lives had been endangered in consequence. It was this universal sense of danger that caused Barrys of Cork to become Mac-Adams; de la Freignes of Kilkenny to become MacRickies; Bysets, MacEoin or M'Keon; FitzUrsules, MacMahons; and so on. Early in the seventeenth century it was still recognized that some who called themselves MacNamaras had once been Mortimers, as some MacSwines had been Savages, some O'Dowds had been Dowdalls, some O'Byrnes Barnewells. The Desmond FitzGeralds had long been commonly known as MacMorishes i.e., sons of Maurice FitzGerald. To say which of these families now bearing Irish names are of Irish and which of English or Norman origin would be quite impossible.
Some of these old Norman lords even took service under Irish chiefs and princes. An instance of this was the case of Gilbert de Nangle, or de Angelo, to whom Hugh de Lacy gave Morgallion in Meath; he took service under Cathal Crovdearg in 1195 against his own people and was rewarded by a grant of land near Loughrea. The Irish called him Gillipert MacGoisdealbh (Costello), i.e., son of Jocelyn. The original dependence of the Irish kings upon the help of the Norman barons was slowly, all over the country, changing into the dependence of their descendants upon the Irish chiefs. They threw themselves eagerly into the quarrels of the Irish septs and at times took their part against the Government. The battle of Knockdoe (Cnoc Tuadh), the "Hill of the Battleaxes," was fought in 1504 between Gerald, the Great Earl of Kildare, then Deputy, and MacWilliam Burke, who is said to have had on his side "the greatest power of Irishmen that had been seen together since the conquest," the O'Briens, MacNamaras, and O'Carrolls. It was caused by the bad treatment received by a daughter of the Deputy at the hands of Mac-William, her Connacht husband, and resulted in the complete defeat of MacWilliam's forces, great as they were.[16] The English become Irish are said by Campian to be "quite altered into the worst rank of Irish rogues; such a force hath education to make or to mar." To the Irish chiefs found fighting on the English side, the title of Gall, or 'Foreigner' was often given.
[16] See the Book of Howth, op. cit., pp. 181-186, for a detailed and lively account of this battle.
The family of Dermot, elected King of Connacht in 1315, for instance, were so named.[17] The old Welsh and British settlers, such as the Brannachs, Barretts, Joyces, Lawlesses, Merricks, etc., who had come into the country in early times, were at least as turbulent in their lives as the ' original Irish ' among whom they dwelt. The savage incident of the blinding of the Lynnotts by the Barretts of Tirawley is unequalled for its cruelty in the annals of the country; the Barretts, in vengeance for the murder of a brutal rent-collector employed by themselves, drove their tenants of the Lynnott family Minded across the stepping-stones of Cloghan na nDall, and, if any passed without stumbling, blinded him a second time.[18] But everywhere the Irish families were re-establishing themselves and winning back their old lands from the Normans. The O'Kellys reasserted their authority over Hy-Many, and the O'Dowds of Hy-Fiachrach settled down again on their hereditary lands, and the old free life was reorganized among them. In 1351 William MacDonogh O'Kelly invited to his house at Christmas "all the Irish poets, brehons, bards, harpers, gamesters, jesters, and others of their kind in Ireland," where every one of them was well entertained and used, and departed thanking him for his bounty.[19]
[17] Annals of Loch Cé, 1315, 1328.
[18] Dugald MacFirbis, Tribes and Customs of Hy-Fiachrach, ed. J. O'Donovan (1844), pp. 335-339.
[19] Annals of Clonmacnois, 1351.
As far as was possible, the town of Galway held itself aloof from the stirs of the province. From the fifteenth century it prided itself, and justly, on the solid, handsome buildings of hewn stone, erected by Galway citizens or Spanish merchants, which still show above their portals the arms of their founders, and on its splendid bay which became, through the energy of the citizens, the chief commercial port of the West, surpassing even the older merchant city of Limerick in the extent of its French and Spanish commerce. Vaults capable of storing 1000-1400 tuns of foreign wines were built at Athboy in Meath in early Tudor times, to contain the imports of wines from Galway, which were transmitted to Drogheda and Dublin for sale. The Blakes, d'Arcys, ffrenchs. Martins, Lynchs, Kirwins, and other families of Norman, Irish, and Welsh descent, who had settled in the town between the twelfth and fourteenth centuries, later were to become known to the scoffing Cromwellian army as "the Tribes of Galway" on account of their attachment to each other and to their city. Already in 1375 the town was of sufficient commercial importance to have the king's staple established for the sale of wool, sheepskins, and leather, a privilege hitherto conceded only to Cork and Drogheda. In spite of enemy ships constantly hovering round the Aran Islands at the entrance to the bay, and in spite of the turmoils of the O'Conors outside their gates, foreign and home trade steadily increased. Though themselves of mixed descent, they looked down with urban superiority and the pride of unstained loyalty to English rule on the "mountainous and wild people" of the countryside, by whom they "were sometimes robbed and killed." [20] They passed severe laws against trade with the Irish, or letting to them any land or tenement within the walls. "No 'O' or 'Mac' should strut or swagger through their streets." In ancient days the furious descents of the inhabitants of the mountainous districts of Joyce's country and West Connacht had inspired the petition inscribed above the west portal of the town, "From the ferocious O'Flahertys, good Lord deliver us."
[20] See letter to Pope Innocent VIII, in Dutton, Statistical Survey of County Galway (1824), Appendix, p. 6.
But even the O'Flahertys settled down in time, and became so observant of the law that in the seventeenth century during thirty years of peace "there was not one person executed out of their whole territories for any transgression."[21] Intermarriages and the necessities of life were stronger than trade laws, and the Mayors of Galway granted the country people certain protections, which were, however, liable to be removed on account of "wilful disobedience, lying and deceit, or of the impossibility of recovering debts or robberies." But the townspeople found the wheat, barley, oats, and rye, as well as the cheese, beef, butter, tallow, and hides, none the worse because they were brought to market from the Aran Isles or from West Connacht. The ground manured with seaweed was so prolific that they sowed in March with as little seed as possible, being sure that not a grain would fail to fructify. Like all the chief merchant towns of Ireland, Galway held closely to the English interest. Its fine church of St Nicholas was, in 1484, erected into a collegiate body with warden and vicars, and was taken over from the jurisdiction of the Archbishop of Tuam in order that it might follow the English rite and custom in matters of religion. There was an ordinance enacting that all should wear cloaks and gowns and doublets and hose after the English fashion, even if made of the country's cloth. Society in Galway prided itself on keeping in touch with the latest output in English literature. Sir John Harington, on visiting the city early in Elizabeth's reign, found that his recently published translation of Ariosto had been "entertained into Galway" before he came. With the pardonable conceit of the literary man at finding his work appreciated and known in so remote a city as Galway, he exclaims delightedly: "When I got thither, a young lady, a fair lady, a great lady, read herself asleep, nay, dead, with a tale of it."
[21] Roderick O'Flaherty, Iar-Connacht, ed. J. Hardiman (1846), pp. 16-17.
There were fleets of galleys belonging to the O'Malleys and the O'Flahertys on the Galway coasts, and on the southern coasts the O'Driscolls of Baltimore and the le Poers, or Powers, of Waterford had each their fleet, carrying on constant hostilities with each other and with the citizens of Cork and Waterford. There were numerous sea-fights, which must have kept the coasts lively, between the "merchants, strangers and Englishmen," who were plying their trade along the shores, and the galleys of these lords; mayors and sheriffs seem to have taken part in them. In one of these small naval battles in 1368 the le Poers and O'Driscolls made a united attack on the citizens of Waterford, in which the Mayor and sheriffs and justices of the peace were slain, together with thirty-six citizens and sixty merchants, strangers and Englishmen. Sometimes there were reprisals. In 1413 Mayor Simon Wicken and the bailiffs of Waterford with a band of men in armour arrived at supper-time on Christmas Eve at O'Driscoll's great house in Baltimore. A message was sent in that the Mayor of Waterford had arrived with a ship of wine, always good news in an Irish port. The Mayor and his company were readily admitted. Bidding O'Driscoll and his guests not to fear, for "he meant not to draw no man's blood of them, but to dance and drink and so depart," the Mayor sat down among them to sup, after which all joined in the dance. "After singing a carol," at a sign from the Mayor, each of his men held his partner fast, and O'Driscoll and his family found themselves being borne away to the ship, the Mayor explaining that they should finish their carol at Waterford and make merry with them that Christmas.[22]
[22] Carew, Miscellany, pp. 470-471; and cf. p. 474, apparently taken from the Waterford Book.
The condition of the 'march' or borderlands scattered throughout the island between the native and the English districts was much more pitiable. Though nominally under the authority of English proprietors, they were usually barren and waste lands, chiefly inhabited by Irish, and they were the natural paths by which the incursions of disaffected Irish were made into the districts of English occupation. By day and night they were the channel for surprises and raids. Laws were constantly being passed ordering the protection of the marches by owners of property, and forbidding intercourse with such natives on the borderlands as were in arms against the Crown. Special efforts were made to prevent private wars, so that "there be one peace and war throughout the entire land," in which all were to be called on to assist. But in spite of this the petty raiding and feuds never ceased, and all attempts to improve the march-lands ended in failure. In the circumstances it is not surprising that a large proportion of the proprietors of these borderlands became absentees; no fines or threats of punishment sufficed to keep them from flying to England to escape their costly and unpleasant duties at home. The heavy fines collected from absentees were spent in keeping up horses and soldiery to guard the marches; border castles were ordered to be built, 'paces' or wide avenues cut through the forests, and the highroads kept passable.[23] It was impossible, nevertheless, to secure quiet in these districts; bands of lightfooted Irish marauders swooped down on the villages and towns, or waylaid passing travellers, while the heavy-armed soldiery were unable to follow them into the wild and tangled country into which they disappeared again with marvellous swiftness. The evil system of 'black rents' (dubh cios) had to be resorted to in order to buy off these border-septs, especially the O'Mores of Leix, the O'Byrnes of Ranelagh, and the O'Tooles of Wicklow, who were in the habit of making sudden and terrifying descents on the inhabitants of Dublin from the west and south.
[23] For statutes regarding the march-lands and absentees see the Acts of 25 Edw. I (1297), 3 Edw. II (1310), 1 Hen. IV (1399), in Berry, Statutes and Ordinances, i, 199, 273, 500.
These black rents were gradually extended throughout the country. In 1360 Mahon Moinmoy exacted them from the English of North Munster, and in 1380 Brian O'Brien in alliance with Richard de Burgh forced the payment of "great gifts and tribute" from Munster. Two years earlier the warlike Murchad O'Brien of Ara began to spoil the demoralized English of the Pale, and a special Parliament was called at Tristledermot to deal with him. "With a great force of Irishmen he threatened to destroy parts of Leinster," and a hundred marks were paid to him to induce him to withdraw. It was a ruinous policy, which increased the evil it was designed to prevent. In the reign of Edward IV large sums of money had to be paid annually to O'Connor of Offaly, O'Carroll of Tipperary, O'Brien in Limerick, and MacCarthy in Cork. All these rents were raised out of the incomes of the English settlers. Wexford had to contribute eighty marks yearly to pay off MacMorrogh Kavanagh, while the English of Ulster paid black rents to O'Neill. According to a tract called An Abbreviate of the getting of Ireland and of the decaye of the same the black rents amounted annually to £740 of the contemporary currency. To maintain themselves against such odds became to the English a matter of constant anxiety; they had to keep armed retainers about their houses; and in 1475 even a bishop of Meath when summoned to repair to England pleaded that he was so occupied with hostings that he dare not leave his camp even to meet Parliament.
The English resident in Ireland had no easy time of it. There were exactions from Viceroys and English kings, black rents to Irish chiefs, and heavy costs for maintaining troops, with the continual harassing strife alike with their own countrymen and with the "Irish enemy." Absenteeism grew, and could not be checked; even the appropriation by the Council of two-thirds of the rents of absentees did not suffice to bring back those who had left their estates in the hands of stewards while they lived in England. In 1361 Edward III summoned before him in London sixty-three landowners, lay and clerical, earls, countesses, knights, and abbots, who were absentees from their establishments in Ireland, and ordered them at once to proceed to their Irish estates; but all threats and commands proved useless. In 1371 a case was brought into court, and it was decided that a baron refusing to go into Ireland could not be forced to do so, because, under the provisions of Magna Charta, no free man could be obliged to abandon the realm of England unless by Act of Parliament.[24] Ecclesiastics and landowners alike represented themselves in appeals to the English kings as "continuing in a land of war, environed by Irish enemies and English rebels, and in point to be destroyed." [25]
[24] Gilbert, Viceroys of Ireland, p. 233.
[25] Ibid., pp. 216, 229, 244, etc.
It was often as much a desire of self-preservation as a matter of choice to fall back upon the native method of life, adopt Irish dress, customs, and language, and become one with the people among whom they lived. All of them were dependent on Irish labourers to till their fields and serve their families, and all of them were followed to war by troops of Irish kerne. They envied the provisions of the Brehon law, which punished homicide only with a fine, whereas under English law the culprit (always excepting when the victim was an Irishman) was liable to capital punishment. They had necessarily to learn the language of the country if they would hold any communication at all with their neighbours and dependents, and the native garb, a tunic with a wide, hooded cloak over it, they found to be well suited to the life and climate. Above all, they were glad to be free of the exactions of successive Governments, and they rejoiced in the Irish custom of 'coyne and livery' or free entertainment for man and beast at the expense of their dependents, a habit of which they took full advantage. Gradually most of those who lived outside the Pale dropped into all the native ways, even to the adoption of the 'culan' (cuilfhionn), or long lock at the back of the head, or the 'gibbe' in front over the forehead, while the use of the moustache, "a beard on the upper lip alone," and the Irish manner of riding without a saddle became habitual.
One outcome of the invasion of Bruce was the creation of the great earldoms of Kildare, Ormonde, and Desmond. On May 16, 1316, John FitzThomas, Baron of Offaly, was created Earl of Kildare for his steady loyalty during Bruce's advance into Leinster. In 1328 James Butler became Earl of Ormonde, with a grant of the liberties of Tipperary, and in 1329 Edward III conferred on Maurice FitzThomas the title of Earl of Desmond, with the County Palatine of Kerry added to his already great possessions. Thus came into existence within the same century the three most powerful earldoms of Ireland. Several of the descendants of these Earls became Viceroys during the ensuing centuries. It was hoped that the erection of these three peerages, held directly under the King, would have kept the Anglo-Norman gentry of the South of Ireland quiet and loyal to English rule. But a variety of causes tended to prevent this wished-for result. In the first place there was the tendency already showing itself to relapse into the habits and ways of the people by whom they were surrounded. This was especially the case with the Desmond family, whose palatinate was far from the Pale and who gradually became Irish in all but origin. Against such tendencies the Irish Parliaments in vain directed laws forbidding imitation of, or union with, the native race. Intermarriages were always going on, even in the families reckoned the most English in the land; in the fifteenth century Sir James Butler, who became Deputy under Edward IV, was married to an Irish wife, Sabh (or Sabina) Kavanagh, daughter of Donal MacMorrogh of Leinster, and her third son, Sir Piers Butler, became Earl of Ormonde in 1515. Her husband styled himself Chief Captain of his nation, after the Irish form, and had great influence among the people of his district. An Act of the Irish Parliament had to be obtained to entitle Sabh, as a native Irishwoman, to rights under English law. The father of this Sir James Butler, Edmond MacRichard, had assumed the Irish title as an Irish chief, and evidently spoke and read Gaelic, for two books in that language were compiled for him by one of the O'Clerys about 1453, called The Gaelic Book of MacRichard Butler [1] and the Book of Carrick. They were given as part of his ransom when he was defeated in battle by Thomas, Earl of Desmond, in 1462, such manuscripts having a high value in mediaeval Ireland. If such an intermixture of races was going on even among the Butlers, it is less surprising to find the frequency with which marriages with the daughters of Irish houses occurred among the Burkes.
[1] Now in the Bodleian Library, Oxford. It contains parts of the Psalter of Cashel, The Book of Cong, The Yellow Book of Ferns, etc.
It was one such marriage, that of Richard MacWilliam Burke, Lord of Clanricarde (d. 1383), to the Lady More O'Madden, which brought the estate of Portumna into the Clanricarde family. Such households would naturally be conducted in the Irish way, and the children would learn from their earliest days to speak the language of their adopted country. These powerful lords grew restive under the interference of successive Deputies, who never ceased to thwart them in order to check their increasing influence, and who constantly transmitted to England official reports which were calculated to bring their acts into suspicion. These causes, and universal fighting and broils in the country among the English of Norman descent, made frequent Parliaments necessary during the half-century succeeding the invasion of Edward Bruce. The last public appearance of the Red Earl of Ulster was at a Parliament at Kilkenny in 1326, when he entertained the barons in splendid style, retiring after the ceremony to die in the abbey of Athassel; his heir, William Donn, or 'the Brown Earl,' being then a boy of fourteen. By 1327 the quarrels between the barons had become so violent that the de Burghs, the le Poers of Waterford, the de Berminghams, Butlers, and Geraldines, were commanded, on pain of forfeiture, to desist from mustering soldiery and making war on one another. In the South these broils were so constant that the inhabitants of Cork, Kinsale, and Youghal addressed a petition to the Viceroy and Council begging them to send down "two justices and some good English captains and men," without which they say, "we are all cast away, and then farewell Munster for ever." The citizens dared not walk outside the walls for recreation without a body of armed attendants, and as a result of this seclusion they were forced to intermarry, so that "well-nigh the whole city is allied together." [2] The restlessness of men's minds was aggravated by rumours of heresies and trials for witchcraft, but still more by repeated outbreaks of the plague. These outbreaks in Ireland were the final wave of the Black Death, which had swept away more than half the population of England in 1348.
[2] Campian's History, in Ware's Ancient Irish Histories (1809), Bk. II. pp. 141-142. Campian wrote in 1571.
The succession of viceroys reflects the attempts of English monarchs to govern Ireland by a series of experiments. In early times the office of Justiciar (Capitalis Justiciarius) was placed in the hands of the most powerful of the Norman nobles; but their jealousies led to the substitution for them of a series of ecclesiastical rulers, men of European experience, but with little knowledge of the country they were called upon to administer. After them a return was made to the rule of nobles on the spot. The most beneficial tenure of office in the early period was that of Sir John Wogan, who arrived in Dublin in 1295 and brought about a short truce in the Burke and Geraldine wars. In 1307 he suppressed the Knights Templars, whose pretensions had become intolerable, and whose priors, ruling from Kilmainham, defied Deputies in a way difficult to be borne. During his tenure of office he held three Parliaments at Kilkenny, that of 1310 being memorable as the first to which elected representatives of the cities and boroughs were summoned, as well as the spiritual and lay peers, and knights who represented the counties and Liberties. But it was not until 1541 that members of Irish blood were called on to attend. The early Parliaments were exclusively of Anglo-Normans, occupied with the interests and quarrels of their own class. They were, as a rule, anti-Irish in spirit. The condition of things existing in the fourteenth century had never been contemplated in the early days of English rule. All the records go to show that it was the original intention of the sovereigns of England to make no distinction between the people of the two nationalities, but to treat them in every respect alike. Various early Church grants were signed together by Norman and Irish lords, and Irish bishops signed the ordinances of synods or joined the barons in such matters as the decree of 1205 about the body of Hugh de Lacy.[3] The King's mandate appointing Henri de Londres as Justiciar in 1221 was sent to the Irish princes as well as to the Norman knights.[4] In the following year, 1222, when a question as to a writ of bounds came up which was contrary to the law of England, it was laid down that "the laws of Ireland and England are, and ought to be, the same," though in a later comment on the same subject it was arranged that in the lands inhabited by Irishmen Irish custom was to be adhered to, and in the English parts that used in England was to be enforced.[5]
[3] Register of the Abbey of St Thomas, Dublin, ed. J. Gilbert, pp. 315-316, 348-349.
[4] Sweetman, i, No. 1001.
[5] Ibid., 1, Nos. 1033, 1081.
It was one consequence of the submission of the Irish princes that they became henceforth eligible for the protection of English law. Their oath of fealty placed them in this new position. When O'Neill of Ulster, O'Conor of Connacht, O'Brien of Thomond, MacMorrogh of Leinster, and Malaughlan of Meath made th