The Norman-Welsh Invasion of Ireland—Their Landing in Wexford
POPE ADRIAN’S “gift” of Ireland to Henry II, absurd as it may appear in
this age, was not without precedent in the Middle Ages, when the Roman
Pontiff was regarded as supreme arbiter by nearly all of Christendom.
Such “gifts” had been made before the time of Adrian, and some
afterward, but they were not considered bona fide by the countries
involved. So also with the Irish people as a majority. They respected,
as they still respect, the Pope in his spiritual capacity, but rightly
conceived that he had no power whatever to make a present of their
country to any potentate, whether native or alien, without their
consent. An influential minority held otherwise, with most unfortunate
results, as we shall see. Some superzealous Catholic writers have sought
to discredit the existence of the “bull” of Adrian, but weight of
evidence is against them, and, in any case, it was “confirmed,” at
Henry’s urgent request, by Pope Alexander III. The king was engaged in
civil war with his own sons—in every way worthy of their rapacious
father—during most of his reign, for he held under his sway Normandy,
Aquitaine, and other parts of France, which they wanted for themselves.
Thus no chance to push his long meditated Irish scheme presented itself
until about A. D. 1168. Fifteen years prior to that date, Dermid, or
Dermot, MacMurrough (Mac Murro), King of Leinster, a very base and
dissolute ruler, had carried off the wife of O’Ruarc, Prince of Breffni,
while the latter was absent on a pious pilgrimage. The lady was a
willing victim, and added the dowry she brought her husband to the
treasure of her paramour. When Breffni returned to his castle and found
that his wife had betrayed him, he was overpowered by grief and anger,
and, not having sufficient military force himself to punish his enemy,
he called on Turlough Mor O’Conor, then titular Ard-Righ, to assist him
in chastising MacMurrough. O’Conor did so to such purpose that,
according to Irish annals, Dervorgilla, which was the name of O’Ruarc’s
wife, together with her dowry, was restored to her husband, who,
however, discarded her, and she died penitent, it is said, forty years
afterward in the cloisters of Mellifont Abbey. But Dermid’s evil conduct
did not end with his outrage against O’Ruarc. He entertained the most
deadly animosity to the O’Conor family on account of the punishment
inflicted on him by Turlough Mor, and when on the death in battle of
Ard-Righ Murtagh McLaughlin, Roderick, son of Turlough Mor, claimed the
national crown, MacMurrough refused him recognition, although nearly all
the other sub-kings had acknowledged him as supreme ruler of Ireland.
Incensed at his stubbornness, King Roderick, who had with him O’Ruarc
and other princes of Connaught, marched against Dermid, who, seeing that
he was overmatched, burned his palace of Ferns, and, taking to his
galley, crossed the Irish Sea to England and sought out King Henry II at
his Court of London. On arriving there he was informed that the king was
in Aquitaine, and thither he at once proceeded. The politic founder of
the Plantagenet dynasty received him quite graciously and listened
complacently to his story. Henry was secretly well pleased with the
treasonable errand of his infamous guest, which was to demand
Anglo-Norman aid against his own monarch, regardless of the after
consequences to the fortunes of his country. He enumerated his
grievances at the hands of the O’Conors, father and son, and related how
he had been the faithful ally of the former in his long war with one of
the Thomond O’Briens. Turlough Mor, he considered, had treated him badly
for the sake of O’Ruarc, and his son, Roderick, had been quite as
hostile, forcing him to seek Henry’s protection against further invasion
of his hereditary patrimony. The Anglo-Norman king said, in reply, that
he could not aid MacMurrough in person as he was then engaged in a war
with one or more of his own sons, but he consented to give him
commendatory letters to certain Norman chiefs, brave but needy, who were
settled in Wales and the West of England, and had there made powerful
matrimonial alliances. The traitor gladly accepted the letters, “did
homage” to Henry, and took his leave elated at the partial success of
his unnatural mission. Landing in Wales, he found himself within a short
time in the presence of Richard De Clare, surnamed “Strongbow,” a brave,
adventurous, and unscrupulous Norman noble, who bore the title of Earl
of Pembroke. He also made the acquaintance of other Norman knights—among
them Robert Fitzstephen, Maurice De Prendergast, Maurice Fitzgerald,
ancestor of the famous Geraldine houses of Kildare and Desmond; Meyler
FitzHenry and Raymond Le Gros—all tried warriors, all in reduced
circumstances, and all ready and willing to barter their fighting blood
for the fair hills and rich valleys of Ireland. They listened eagerly
while MacMurrough unfolded his precious plot of treason and black
revenge. The daring adventurers seized upon the chance of fortune at
once, and the traitor was sent back to Ireland to prepare his hereditary
following for the friendly reception of “the proud invaders,” his newly
made allies. Before leaving Wales he had made bargains with the alien
adventurers which were disgraceful to him as a native-born Irishman. In
a word, he had, by usurped authority, mortgaged certain tracts of the
land of Leinster for the mercenary aid of the Anglo-Normans, or, to be
more historically exact, the Norman-Welsh.
Soon after the departure of Dermid for Ireland, Robert Fitzstephen, the
readiest of the warlike plotters, and the first of the invaders, sailed
for that country at the head of thirty knights, sixty men in armor, and
three hundred light-armed archers. In the fragrant ides of May, 1169,
they landed on the Wexford coast, near Bannow, and thus,
inconsequentially, began the Norman invasion of Ireland. De Prendergast
arrived the following day with about the same number of fighting men.
Only a few years ago, in removing some débris—the accumulation of
ages—near Bannow, the laborers found the traces of the Norman camp-fires
of 1169 almost perfectly preserved. The two adventurers sent tidings of
their arrival to MacMurrough without delay, and he marched at once, with
a powerful force of his own retainers to join them. All three, having
united their contingents, marched upon the city of Wexford, many of
whose inhabitants were lineal descendants of the Danes. They made a
gallant defence, but were finally outmanœuvred, overpowered, and
compelled to capitulate. Other towns of less importance submitted under
protest to superior force. Indeed there seemed to be a total lack of
military foresight and preparedness in all that section of Ireland in
1169. Fitzpatrick, Prince of Ossory, descended from that ally of the
Danes who attacked the Dalcassians returning from Clontarf, alone
opposed to the invaders a brave and even formidable front. He committed
the mistake of accepting a pitched battle with MacMurrough and his
allies, and was totally defeated. King Roderick O’Conor, hearing of the
invasion, summoned the Irish military bodies to meet him at Tara. Most
of them responded, but the Prince of Ulidia, MacDunlevy, took offence at
some remark made by a Connaught prince, and, in consequence, most of the
Ulster forces withdrew from the Ard-Righ. King Roderick, with the troops
that remained, marched to attack MacMurrough at his favorite stronghold
of Ferns, where he lay with the Normans, or a part of them, expecting a
vigorous siege. Instead of assaulting the enemy’s lines at once, when
his superior numbers would, most likely, have made an end of the traitor
and his Norman allies, O’Conor weakly consented to a parley with Dermid,
who was a most thorough diplomat. The Ard-Righ consented, further, to a
treaty with MacMurrough, who, of course, designed to break it as soon as
the main body of the Normans, under Strongbow in person, should arrive
from Wales. He did not, nevertheless, hesitate to bind himself by a
secret clause of the treaty with the king to receive no more foreigners
into his army, and even gave one of his sons as a hostage to guarantee
the same. The Ard-Righ retired from Ferns satisfied that the trouble was
ended. The royal army was scarcely out of sight of the place when
MacMurrough learned that Maurice Fitzgerald, at the head of a strong
party of Normans, had also arrived on the Wexford coast. He now thought
himself strong enough to lay claim to the High Kingship and negotiated
with the Danes of Dublin for recognition in that capacity. Meanwhile,
still another Norman contingent under Raymond Le Gros landed at the
estuary of Waterford, on the Wexford side thereof, and occupied
Dundonolf Rock, where they intrenched themselves and eagerly awaited the
coming of Strongbow with the main body of the Norman army.
By this time Henry II began to grow jealous of the success of his
vassals in Ireland. He wanted to conquer the country for himself, and,
therefore, sent orders to Strongbow not to sail. But that hardy soldier
paid no attention to Henry’s belated command, and sailed with a powerful
fleet and army from Milford Haven, in Wales, arriving in Waterford
Harbor on August 23, 1171. The Normans, under Raymond Le Gros, joined
him without loss of time, and the combined forces attacked the old
Danish city. The Danes and native Irish made common cause against the
new enemy and a desperate and bloody conflict occurred. The Normans were
several times repulsed, with great loss, but, better armed and led than
their brave opponents, they returned to the breach again and yet again.
At last they gained entrance into the city, which they set on fire. An
awful massacre ensued. Three hundred of the leading defenders were made
prisoners, their limbs broken and their maimed bodies flung into the
harbor. King MacMurrough, who had already pledged his daughter’s hand to
Strongbow—a man old enough to have been her father—arrived just after
the city fell. In order to celebrate the event with due pomp and
circumstance, he caused the Princess Eva to be married to the Norman
baron in the great cathedral, while the rest of the city was burning,
and the blood of the victims of the assault still smoked amid the ruins!
An ominous and fatal marriage it proved to Ireland.
And now, at last, the blood of the native Irish was stirred to its
depths and they began, when somewhat late, to realize the danger to
their liberty and independence. In those far-off days, when there were
no railroads, no electric wires, no good roads or rapid means of
communication of any kind, and when newspapers were unknown,
information, as a matter of course, traveled slowly even in a small
country, like Ireland. The woods were dense, the morasses fathomless,
and, in short, the invaders had made their foothold firm in the east and
south portions of the island before the great majority of the
Celtic-Irish comprehended that they were in process of being subjugated
by bold and formidable aliens. There had existed in Ireland from very
ancient times five main roads, all proceeding from the hill of Tara to
the different sections of the country. That called “Dala” ran through
Ossory into the province of Munster. The road called “Assail” passed on
toward the Shannon through Mullingar. The highway from Tara to Galway
followed the esker, or small hill range, as it does in our own day, and
was called “Slighe Mor,” or great road; the road leading from Tara to
Dublin, Bray, and along the Wicklow and Wexford coasts was called
“Cullin”; the highway leading into Ulster ran, probably, through
Tredagh, or Drogheda, Dundalk, Newry, and Armagh, but this is not
positive. As it was the route followed by the English in most of their
Ulster wars, it is quite probable that they picked out a well-beaten
path, so as to avoid the expense and labor of making a new causeway.
McGee tells us that there were also many cross-roads, known by local
names, and of these the Four Masters, at different dates, mentioned no
less than forty. These roads were kept in repair, under legal enactment,
and the main highways were required to be of sufficient width to allow
of the passage of two chariots all along their course. We are further
informed that the principal roads were required by law to be repaired at
seasons of games and fairs, and in time of war. At their best, to judge
by the ancient chroniclers, most of them would be considered little
better than “trails” through the mountains, moors, and forests in these
times.
MacMurrough and Strongbow did not allow the grass to sprout under their
feet before marching in great force on Dublin. King Roderick, leading a
large but ill-trained army, attempted to head them off, but was
outgeneraled, and the enemy soon appeared before the walls of Leinster’s
stronghold. Its Dano-Celtic inhabitants, cowed by the doleful news from
Waterford, tried to parley; but Strongbow’s lieutenants, De Cogan and Le
Gros, eager for carnage and rich plunder, surprised the city, and the
horrors of Waterford were, in a measure, repeated. The Danish prince,
Osculph, and most of his chief men escaped in their ships, but the
Normans captured Dublin, and the English, except for a brief period in
the reign of James II, have held it from that sad day, in October, 1171,
to this.
Roderick O’Conor, that weak but well-meaning prince and bad general,
retired into Connaught and sent word to MacMurrough to return to his
allegiance, if he wished to save the life of his son, held as a hostage.
The brutal and inhuman traitor refused, and King Roderick, although
humane almost to a fault, had the unfortunate young man decapitated.
This was poor compensation for the loss of Waterford and Dublin. Those
pages of Irish history are all besmeared with slaughter.
Many of the Irish chroniclers, who are otherwise severe on Norman
duplicity, relate a story of chivalry, worthy of any age and people, in
connection with Maurice de Prendergast and the Prince of Ossory.
Strongbow had deputed the former to invite the latter to a conference.
The Irish prince accepted. While the conference was in progress, De
Prendergast learned that treachery was intended toward his guest. He
immediately rushed into Strongbow’s presence and swore on the hilt of
his sword, which was a cross, that no man there that day should lay
hands on the Prince of Ossory. The latter was allowed to retire
unmolested, and Prendergast and his followers escorted him in safety to
his own country. De Prendergast has been known ever since in Irish
annals as “the Faithful Norman,” and his fidelity has made him the theme
of many a bardic song and romantic tale.
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