the nature of the materials from which the _trouvère_ worked
and the exact share in their authorship due to Regan have been, and
must remain, to some extent matters of conjecture. Mr. Orpen himself
inclines to the belief that Regan supplied the unknown _trouvère_
with a tale already “put into metre”; but Dr. Liebermann has rightly
urged the improbability of our poem being merely an adaptation of
one previously composed. Indeed, that eminent scholar has advanced a
theory of his own, namely, that the real original source was a “lost
chronicle” about the conquest of Ireland which Giraldus Cambrensis
had used in 1188 for his Expugnatio.’ And this theory he bases on
some striking parallel passages.[342] To the few typical parallels
adduced by Dr. Liebermann I would myself add some taken from the
stirring tale of the saving of Dublin when, mad for revenge, the ousted
Northmen assembled from all the isles of the north to regain their
lost dominion. This sudden upleaping, for a moment, of the old wiking
flame was but a splendid anachronism: like the Highland rising of the
‘forty-five,’ it was curiously out of date. Yet the old Scandinavian
spirit, if dulled among the traders of Dublin, still burnt in the hardy
rovers they had now summoned to their aid; and the Irish chieftain who
stood aloof watching with his men the surging fray as the little band
of Anglo-Normans strove to repel the onslaught, saw not merely rival
conquerors, quarrelling, like vultures, for the spoil, but deadly foes
whose own lives hung on the issue of that fight. But while in a fit of
‘berserker’ fury, ‘John the Mad’ led the attack against the eastern
gate, Richard de Cogan, the governor’s brother, had privily sallied
from another one:--
Este vus Johan le deue Duce Johanne agnomine
Vers dyuelyn tut serre, the Wode ... viri
Vers la cite od sa gent bellicosi ... ordinatis
En dreite la porte del orient, turmis ad portam orientalem
* * * * muros invadunt.
La cite unt dunc asaillie.
Then, marching round till he reached the rear of the assailants, he
fell on them suddenly with a mighty shout, and the Northmen, caught
between his brother and himself, wavered at last in their attack. The
Danish axe still whirled in the hands of ‘John the Mad,’ cleaving its
way, as of old, through helm and coat of mail:
De une hache ben tempre Militis quoque coxa ferro
Cosuit le ior un chevaler utrinque vestita uno securis
Que la quisse lui fist voler; ictu cum panno loricæ præcisa.
Od tut la hache de fer blanc
Lui fist voler la quisse al
champe.
But John himself fell at last; and the sons of the wikings fled to
their ships. Hasculf, their king, captured alive, hurled at his captors
words of scorn, and was by them promptly beheaded, “pur son orgoil e
ses fous dis,” or, as Giraldus tersely puts it, “insolenti verbo.”
If Dr. Liebermann’s theory be accepted, it would involve, as he
reminds us, the important consequence that we have in our poem and the
‘Expugnatio’ not two independent authorities, but narratives drawn from
a common source. The discrepancies, however, between the two are so
numerous and so significant that we cannot accept this new view as at
all satisfactorily proved.
But turning to a third source of information, known as “the Book of
Howth,” I have no hesitation in saying that its nature has been quite
misunderstood. It is difficult to render clear, within a short compass,
the hopeless confusion that surrounds the subject, and that is,
virtually, all to be traced to an error of that ardent collector, but
most untrustworthy antiquary, Sir George Carew, whose voluminous MSS.
at Lambeth include both the ‘Regan’ poem and the Book of Howth, and to
whom we should have felt more grateful if he would only have left them
alone. But the worst offender was Professor Brewer, whose work it is
the fashion to rate very highly indeed, though I have found it by no
means unimpeachable even in his calendars of the state papers of Henry
VIII.[343] Now the Professor ought to have been quite at home on this
Irish subject, for it fell to his lot to edit the first four volumes
of Giraldus as well as the Book of Howth; yet he not only stereotyped
and carried further Carew’s original error, but found fault, somewhat
unjustly, with Mr. Dimock’s remarks in his preface to the ‘Expugnatio.’
The real facts of the case are these. So popular were the works of
‘Master Gerald,’ as Mr. Dimock observed, that they survive, not only
in many MSS., but in several early translations. The pedigree of these
translations has not been properly worked out. At Trinity College,
Dublin, we have two in E. 3, 31, and F. 4, 4, while at Lambeth we have
the so-called ‘Conquest of Ireland’ by Bray--published by Messrs.
Brewer and Bullen, with the Book of Howth--and in the latter (pp.
36–117) there is included another and more modernized version. Of these
the one assigned to Bray was held by Professor Brewer to have been
written about the end of the 14th or beginning of the 15th century,
and to be “so interesting and curious a specimen of English as spoken
in the Pale” that he decided to print it in full and to retain the
original orthography. But E. 3, 31 was, he admitted, “a still earlier
version.” Yet this latter MS., when submitted by Mr. Dimock to so
competent an authority as Mr. Earle, was pronounced by him to be “a
truly interesting specimen of fifteenth (_sic_) century Hibernian
English.” He added that it well deserved publication, in which remark I
certainly concur, its language being most curious. Professor Brewer (p.
xxiii.) declared it “an error” of Mr. Dimock and others to term this
MS. a translation of Giraldus, but the real error, we shall find, was
his own. The other Dublin MS. (F. 4, 4), to which he does not allude,
is assigned by Mr. Dimock to “the sixteenth century” (p. lxxvii.), and
declared to be “a transcript from the earlier E. 3, 31,” a description
which, unfortunately, misses the point. The solution, I believe, of
the whole mystery is that there was a very early and exceedingly free
translation of Gerald’s ‘Expugnatio,’ which, after the mediæval
fashion, spoke of him at times in the third person, and thus assumed,
in places, a quasi-original form. This original translation, which
seems to be now lost, was copied both by the writer of E. 3, 31 and by
Bray in his ‘Conquest of Ireland,’ the latter only modernizing somewhat
the language. Then come the two other MSS., both of the latter part of
the 16th century. Of these the distinctive feature is that while still
copying, though further modernizing, the original translation--for
internal evidence seems to prove that the Book of Howth at least
was derived from neither of the above copies--they interlard it
with certain passages taken from another and distinct source. This
discovery, which corrects Mr. Dimock and overthrows the conclusions of
Professor Brewer, is based on collation of the essential passage in the
Book of Howth with its parallel passage in the Dublin MS. F. 4, 4 as
given in Hardy’s ‘Catalogue of Manuscripts relating to the History of
Great Britain,’ on the authority of Mr. W. M. Hennessy:
BOOK OF HOWTH. TRIN. COLL. MS. F. 4, 4.
This much Cameransse left out This much Camerans left out of
in his book aforesaid with other his book ... with other things
things, more for displeasure more for displeasure than any
than any truth to tell, the truth to tell, the cause before
cause afore doth testifie. God do testifie, God forgive them all.
forgive them all. This much that This much that is in this book
is in this book more than more than Camerans did writ of
Camerans did write of was was translated by the Primet
translated by the Primate Dowdall in the yere of o^r Lord
Doudall in the year of our God 1551 out of a Latin book
Lord 1551 out of a Latin book into English, which was found
into English, which was found with O’Neil in Armaghe.
with O’Nell in Armaghe.
Nothing can be more clear than this reference to the interlarded
portions, which can all, I may add, be identified and separated from
the ‘Giraldus’ portion. But Carew carelessly wrote, in the margin
on fo. 6, that the _whole_ narrative “was translated out of an old
book of O’Neale’s written in Latin, and put into English by Dowdall,
Primate of Ardmaghe, beginning in anno 1167.” Though Professor Brewer
had the words of the original before him, and though he could not but
admit that Bray “follows closely the footsteps of Giraldus,” yet he
was so misled by Carew’s unlucky slip as to assert that the MS. E. 3,
31 was “nothing more than a translation of the Latin chronicle once
in O’Neil’s possession, which Carew calls ‘the Conquest of Ireland,
written by Thomas Bray’” (p. xxiii.). These, on the contrary, are
precisely the versions which have no interpolations from that source.
The Armagh book was devoted to the deeds of John de Courcy, Conqueror
of Ulster, though, by a crowning error, Professor Brewer was careful
to distinguish it from “A Chronicle of the Gests or Doings of John de
Courcey, Earl of Ulster.” Apart from the interest of its contents,
the “book” has a special importance from a significant allusion by
Giraldus, when closing his chapter on John, who was never, by the way,
“Earl of Ulster”:
Sed hæc de Johanne summatim, et quasi sub epilogo commemorantes,
grandiaque ejusdem gesta suis explicanda scriptoribus
relinquentes, etc., etc.
Having now cleared up all this confusion, I need not dwell on Professor
Brewer’s further failure to detect the share taken by Christopher lord
of Howth in the compilation of the book that bears the name of his
house, but will resume our discussion of the Anglo-Norman poem.
Although, as I have said, the nature of the materials supplied to
this 13th century _trouvère_ must remain as yet conjectural, the
question is of some literary interest in its bearing on the relation
of the ‘Carmen Ambrosii’ to the ‘Itinerarium Peregrinorum,’ if not to
the chronicle of Richard of Devizes, in which cases, by a converse
process, we find a French poem utilized by a Latin chronicler. It is
the plausible suggestion of M. Paul Meyer that the _trouvère_
to whom we owe this poem composed it by desire of the countess of
Pembroke, daughter of the earl, and granddaughter of Dermot, just as
the great ‘Marshal’ poem, now in course of publication, was written for
the glorification of her husband’s family.[344] That the writer was
a Pembrokeshire man is rendered extremely probable by his evidently
close acquaintance with that district, and his recognition of the
Flemish element in ‘little England beyond Wales.’ A curious test of his
accuracy is afforded by his mention of the king’s departure for Ireland:
Li rei henri, quant eskipa,
A la croiz en mer entra.
It is a warning to the critical school of historians that Miss Norgate
very naturally supposed the poet to have here mistaken Crook, in
Waterford harbour, where Henry disembarked, for the place where he
took ship. Mr. Orpen has shown conclusively, from records, that the
‘croix’ was the usual place of embarkation for those leaving Pembroke
for Ireland. We have thus a peculiar feature of the poem in its
combination of the Irish knowledge possessed by the original informant
with the acquaintance of its later versifier with men and places in
that district from which the adventurers had so largely come.
Among the points on which this poem gives us special information we
may note its mention of a man who played no small part in the royal
administration of Ireland.[345] We read that, on the coming of king
Henry,--
Willame le fiz audeline
Od lui vint a cel termine (ll. 2603–4).
Belonging to the same type as the men whom the first Henry had steadily
raised to office and to power as a check upon the turbulent feudal
nobility, William was called upon to play a similar part in Ireland
as the representative of the royal power among the eager adventurers
who had flocked to the land of promise. Hence their bitter complaints
against his rule to the king, and the violent criticism of his personal
character to which Giraldus gave utterance from the point of view of
his kinsmen. Now Professor Tout rejects the statement, in the two lines
we have quoted, that William came with the king, and infers from the
‘Gesta’ that Henry had despatched him some time before from Normandy to
govern till he came. But there is evidence--though unknown, it would
seem, to historians--that throws fresh light upon the question. Mr.
Eyton, in his ‘Court and Itinerary’ of the king, could not discover
any document belonging to his stay at Pembroke (29th September to 16th
October), while waiting to cross to Ireland. It was there, however,
on the 7th of October (as the date is, in this case, given) that he
granted a charter to the men of Maldon,[346] from which we learn that
with him at the time were the earls of Cornwall and Clare (Hertford),
Roger Bigod, three of his ‘dapiferi,’ or household officers, William
Ruffus, Alvred de St. Martin, and William Fitz Audelin, with two men,
Hugh de Gundeville and Robert Fitz Bernard, whom he took with him to
Ireland and left there. It is clear then that if William Fitz Audelin
and Robert Fitz Bernard met him on landing at Waterford, they can only
have preceded him, at most, by a few days. This discovery vindicates
the virtual accuracy of the poem.
Mr. Eyton’s work, to which I have referred, records (p. 165) another
charter of interest for its date. It belongs to Henry’s stay at
Wexford, in March, 1172, on his way back to England. As only the first
two witnesses were known to Mr. Eyton, a full list may here be appended
as illustrating the king’s _entourage_ on this expedition.
Testibus; Comite Ricardo filio Gilberti; Willelmo de Braosa;
Willelmo de Albin[eio];[347] Reginaldo de Cortenay; Hugone de
Gundevilla; Willelmo filio Aldelini dapifero; Hugone de Cresy;
Willelmo de Stotevilla; Radulfo de Aya (_sic_); Reginaldo
de Pavily; Radulfo de Verdun; Willelmo de Gerpunvilla; Roberto
de Ruilli; Apud Wesefordam.[348]
Turning now to other subjects, one of the most curious allusions in
this poem is that which refers to the practice of tendering a folded
glove as a gage for waging one’s law. Maurice de Prendergast is accused
of treason in protecting the king of Ossory from the perfidy of his
foes:
E Morice a sun guant plee,
A son seignur lad baille,
Quen sa curt ad dressereit
De quant quil mespris aueit.
Asez lunt replegeez
De vassals engleis alosez.
So, too, when Robert Fitz Stephen was brought as a traitor before king
Henry:
Le fiz estephene pleia sun guant
Al rei le tendi meintenant:
De quantque lui sauerat retter
Lui vodrat robert adrescer
En sa curt mult uolenters
Par la garde de tuz sez pers.
Asez le plegerent errant
Franceis, flamengs e normand.
Mr. Orpen aptly quotes the case of the dying Roland, when ‘por ses
pechiez Dieu porofrit lo guant,’ and refers us to ‘vadium in duello,’
and ‘plicare vadia’ in Du Cange. But the most instructive remarks on
this custom will be found in Professor Maitland’s introduction to
precedents for the Court Baron.[349] The formula he finds for this
antique wager runs thus: “He shall wage his law with his folded glove
(_de sun guant plyee_) and shall deliver it into the hand of the
other, and then take his glove back and find pledge for his law.”
The learned, writer explains that the folded glove typified that
chattel of value which “in very old times” was the _vadium_, _wed_,
or gage constituting the contract, and that this was now supplanted
by a contract with sureties, who had become the real security for
the party’s appearance in court. This procedure, it will be seen, is
brought out in our poem, which was written about a century earlier
than the treatise Mr. Maitland quotes. The mention here, I may add, of
“his peers,” and the phrase, as Mr. Orpen points out, ‘Li reis receut
le cors’ (l. 2635) suggest surely that the writer of the poem had a
special knowledge of legal formulas.
The careful reader will detect also a constitutional hint in the
summons to the tenants by knight service to come to the assistance of
king Henry in the rebellion of 1173:
Chevalers, baruns e meyne,
_A chescun barun par sei_,
Par le commandement le rei,
Que tuz passassent la mer
En normandie li reis aider.
For we see here an allusion to that special summons, to which,
whether for council or for war, each ‘baron’ was entitled. One of the
grievances of Becket, it may be remembered, at Northampton was that
he had not been summoned ‘par sei,’ but only through the sheriff.
Perhaps, however, the most important contribution made by this poem
to institutional history is found in that most important passage, ll.
3064–3177, which the editor describes as “a sort of original Domesday
Book of the first Anglo-Norman settlement,” and as presenting all
the appearance of being, in substance, a contemporary account. For,
apart from its obvious value as “the only connected account of the
subinfeudation of Leinster and Meath by earl Richard Fitz Gilbert and
Hugh de Laci, respectively,” it affords a very striking confirmation
of the new theory on knight service advanced by me in the pages of
the ‘English Historical Review,’ in which, as against the accepted
view maintained by Dr. Stubbs and Mr. Freeman, I contended that the
_quota_ of knight service was determined not by the area of the fief,
but by “the unit of the feudal host,” and is therefore reckoned in
round numbers, and is almost invariably a multiple of 5, if not of
10.[350] I proved this to be the case for England, and appealed to
the Irish evidence as confirming the discovery. But I did not quote
this remarkable passage, from which we learn that in Meath--which
Henry had granted to Hugh de Lacy for the service of fifty knights (l.
2730)--Richard Fleming was enfeoffed to serve with twenty knights, and
Gilbert de Nugent (as we learn from charter evidence) with five; while
in Leinster, which the Earl, as we learn from charters, held by the
service of a hundred knights, Maurice de Prendergast received his fief
“pur dis [10] chevalers servise,” Walter de Riddlesford was bound to
furnish twenty knights, and a certain Reginald was assigned fifteen as
his quota. Our confidence in the poem is increased by the fact that
it names fifty knights as the service due from Meath, which we know
to be correct, while so good an authority as the ‘Gesta’ makes it a
hundred. The whole of this curious passage is ably annotated by Mr.
Orpen, and the puzzling place-names identified. But, familiar though he
clearly is with almost every source of information, he would seem to
be unacquainted with the valuable Gormanston Register, which contains,
I believe, a transcript (fo. 190 _a_) of the actual charter by which
earl Richard granted to Maurice Fitz Gerald Naas and Wicklow (ll.
3085–92)--the former for the service of five knights.[351] The same
Register has copies of three charters (fos. 5_b_, 188_b_), showing how
the lands spoken of in the poem as granted to Gilbert de Nangle came,
under Richard I., to Walter de Lacy, who granted them in turn to his
brother Hugh.
The comparative ease and rapidity with which a handful of adventurers
had parcelled out among themselves the most fertile portions of the
island is perhaps the most surprising feature of the whole story. It
is certain that the native Irish were by no means wanting in courage;
indeed, they were then, as they always have been, only too ready
to fight. Their weapons were good and were skilfully wielded; but
like the wild Celts of Galloway, who had hurled themselves in vain,
at the Battle of the Standard, against a line of mailed warriors,
they scorned the use of defensive armour. Their mode of warfare was
essentially suited to woods and bogs and passes, while their assailants
were accustomed, from continental warfare, to cavalry actions in the
open. Combining the evidence of our poem with that of Master Gerald,
we can see clearly that, as in so many decisive encounters, from
Hastings itself to Culloden, the issue turned on the conflict of
wholly differing tactics. Precisely as at Hastings, the Normans--now
the Anglo-Normans--enjoyed the enormous advantage derived from the use
of the bow. Giraldus, whatever his defects, was a shrewd and sound
observer; and he tells us of the demoralizing effect on the natives, in
the early days of the conquest, of the arrows against which they had
no means of defence. Careful investigation shows that each band of the
invaders landed with a force of knights and archers, the latter being
usually found in the proportion of ten to one. In the combined action
of these two arms, as at the great battle which had decided the fate
of England, the Normans excelled. “In Hibernis conflictibus,” wrote
Gerald, “hoc summopere curandum, ut semper arcarii militibus turmis
mixtim adjiciantur.” As Harold had discovered, before the Conquest,
how unsuitable was a force composed of heavily-armed English infantry
for pursuit of the nimble Welsh, as Richard was shortly to find his
host of mailed knights and men-at-arms harassed to death by the swift
movements of the light Saracen cavalry, so, writes Gerald, the Irish
could only be successfully attacked by troops able to pursue them among
their mountain fastnesses. Nor are his criticisms less true for being
animated, as they evidently are, by the scorn of his gallant relatives,
as the pioneers of the conquest, for those later comers who despised
their experience, and on whom they looked in their fierce warfare, as a
rough colonist of the present day would look on a pipeclayed guardsman.
The very first battle in which the invaders took part proved that the
Irish could not hope to stand against them in the open. Forcing their
way with Dermot into Ossory, through the woods and bogs, they found
themselves deserted at a critical moment by almost all their native
allies, who lost heart suddenly and fled. Maurice de Prendergast,
one of their leaders, saw that the little English band was likely to
be “rushed” by the natives, with whom the woods were swarming (“Que
els lur curusent sure”). In accordance with the old Norman tactics,
he detached his archers to form an ambush, and then spurred for the
open field: the natives followed in hot pursuit, and their wily foes,
reaching ground on which cavalry could act, turned and rode them
down. The archers in their rear completed their discomfiture, like
the English sharpshooters at Poitiers, and the native “friendlies,”
with their beloved axes, were soon spread over the field, pleasantly
engaged in decapitating the corpses of their fellow-countrymen. I see
no reason to doubt the tale of king Dermot gloating over the heads that
his followers brought and piled before him, and leaping for joy as
with a loud voice he rendered thanks to his Creator on detecting among
them the face of a specially hated foe. It may have been the thought
of his own son, blinded by his kingly rival, that made him, we read,
clutch the head and gnaw the features with his teeth. Such a ‘deviation
from humanity’ (to quote a famous phrase) will not seem incredible to
those who have seen his countrymen, centuries later in the history of
civilization, burn alive a woman as a witch,[352] deliberately mutilate
defenceless men, or dance in the very blood of the murdered Lord
Mountmorres.