Superior Armament of the Normans—Arrival of Henry II
ALTHOUGH two of the chief Irish cities had fallen to the invaders, the
struggle was not entirely abandoned by the Irish nation. Ulster and most
of Connaught remained intact, and even in Munster and Leinster there
was, from time to time, considerable, although desultory, resistance to
the Anglo-Normans. The latter, clad in steel armor from head to foot,
and possessing formidable weapons, had a great advantage over the
cloth-clad Irish, although, of course, the latter greatly outnumbered
them. The weapons of the Irish were the skian, or short-sword—resembling
the Cuban machete—the javelin, and the battle-axe—the latter a terrible
arm at close quarters; but even the axe could not cope with the
ponderous Norman sword and the death-dealing long bow, with its
cloth-yard shaft. In discipline and tactics, also, the Irish were
overmatched. In short, they were inferior to their enemies in everything
but numbers and courage. But all would have been redeemed had they but
united against the common foe.
Why they did not may be justly, as we think, attributed to the tribal
system which taught the clans and tribes to be loyal to their particular
chiefs rather than to their country as a whole; the absence of a fully
recognized federal head, and the vacillations of an honest and patriotic
Ard-Righ, who, noble and amiable of character, as he undoubtedly was,
proved himself to be a bungling diplomat and an indifferent general. Had
his able and determined father, Turlough Mor, been on the Irish throne,
and in the vigor of his life, when Strongbow landed, he would have made
short work of the Norman filibusters. The king seemed ever behind time
in his efforts to stem the tide of invasion. He had rallied still
another army, and gained some advantages, when he was confronted by a
new enemy in the person of Henry II. This king, determined not to be
outdone by his vassals, had ordered Strongbow, who, because of his
marriage with Eva MacMurrough, had assumed the lordship of Leinster, to
return with all his chief captains to England, the penalty of refusal
being fixed at outlawry. Strongbow attempted to placate the wrathful
king and sent to him agents to explain his position, but the fierce and
crafty Plantagenet was not a man to be hoodwinked. He collected a
powerful fleet and army, set sail from England, in October, 1171, and,
toward the end of that month, landed in state at Waterford, where
Strongbow received him with all honor and did homage as a vassal. This
was the beginning of Ireland’s actual subjugation, for had the original
Norman invaders refused to acknowledge Henry’s sovereignty, and, uniting
with the natives, kept Ireland for themselves, they would eventually, as
in England, have become a component and formidable part of the nation,
and proved a boon, instead of a curse, to the distracted country. The
landing of Henry put an end to such a hope, and with his advent began
that dependency on the English crown which has been so fatal to the
liberty, the happiness, and the prosperity of “the most unfortunate of
nations.”
Henry having “graciously” received the submission of Strongbow and his
confederates, proceeded, at once—for he was a monarch of great energy—to
make a “royal progress” through the partially subdued portions of
Munster and Leinster. He took care, in doing this, to show Pope Adrian’s
mischievous “bull” to the Irish prelates and princes, some of whom, to
their discredit be it confessed, bowed slavishly to the ill-considered
mandate of the Pontiff. Many of the princes were even base enough to
give Henry “the kiss of peace,” when, instead, they should have rushed
to arms to defend the honor and independence of their country. The
prelates, trained to ecclesiastical docility, disgusted with the
everlasting civil contentions of the country, and fearful of further
unavailing bloodshed, had some feeble excuse for their ill-timed
acquiescence, but what are we to say of those wretched Irish princes who
so weakly and wickedly betrayed their nation to the foreign usurper?
They were by no means ignorant men, as times went, but they were
ambitious, vain, and jealous of the half-acknowledged authority of High
King Roderick, who, poor man, seems to have been the Henry VI of
Ireland. Those treasonable princes deserve enduring infamy, and foremost
among them were Dermid McCarthy, King of Desmond, and Donald O’Brien,
King of Thomond. Both lived to regret most bitterly their cowardice and
treason.
Henry II was a politic monarch. He flattered the pliable Irish bishops
and spoke to them gently about Church reforms, while he palavered the
despicable Irish princes, and, at the same time, pretended to favor the
common people and affected to check the rapacity of his Norman subjects.
Hostilities ceased for a time, except on the borders of Leinster and
Connaught, where King Roderick, deserted by many of his allies, and
deeply depressed at the absence of national union against the invaders,
kept up an unavailing resistance. In this he was encouraged and aided by
the patriotic Archbishop of Dublin, St. Lorcan O’Tuhill, who appears to
have been the only man among the entire Irish hierarchy who comprehended
the iron grip the Normans had on the throat of Ireland. Had all the
prelates been like St. Lorcan, and preached a war of extermination
against the invaders at the outset, Ireland could, undoubtedly, have
thrown off the yoke, because the princes would have been forced by their
people, over whom the bishops had great moral sway, to heal their feuds
and make common cause for their country. King Roderick, despite his
errors, deserves honor for his patriotic spirit. The Ulster princes,
too, with few exceptions, stood out manfully against the foreigner, and
a long period elapsed before the Anglo-Norman power found a secure
footing amid the rugged glens and dense forests of the western and
northern portions of the invaded island.
Geraldus Cambrensis, or Gerald Barry, a Norman priest of Welsh birth,
accompanied, A.D. 1185, King Henry’s son, John, as chronicler, to
Ireland. Like nearly every man of his race, he hated the native Irish,
but, occasionally, as if by accident, spoke well of some of them. In
general, however, his book is a gross libel on the Irish Church and the
Irish people. He purports to give Roderick O’Conor’s address to his army
on the eve of battle with the Anglo-Normans, and the concluding words of
the speech are alleged to have been as follows: “Let us then,” said the
Irish king, “following the example of the Franks, and fighting bravely
for our country, rush against our enemies, and as these foreigners have
come over few in numbers, let us crush them by a general attack. Fire,
while it only sparkles, may be speedily quenched, but when it has burst
into a flame, being fed with fresh materials, its power increases with
the bulk, and it can not be easily extinguished. It is always best to
meet difficulties half way, and check the first approaches of disease,
for (the Latin quotation of the king is here translated)
“Too late is medicine, after long delay,
To stop the lingering course of slow decay.
Wherefore, defending our country and liberty, and acquiring for
ourselves eternal renown, let us, by a resolute attack, and the
extermination of our enemies, though they are but few in number, strike
terror into the many, and, by their defeat, evermore deter foreign
nations from such nefarious attempts.”
Henry’s astute policy disarmed, for a time, even Roderick himself. The
Anglo-Norman monarch, who would have made an admirable modern
politician, does not seem to have desired the absolute ruin of the Irish
nation, but his greedy Norman captains were of a different mind, and
when Henry, after having wined and dined the Irish princes to their
hearts’ content, in Dublin and other cities, at last returned to
England, in the fall of 1173, the Norman leaders showed their teeth to
the Irish people, and forced most of those who had submitted into fierce
revolt. As a result, the Norman forces were crushed in the field.
Strongbow, himself, was shut up in Waterford, and his comrades were
similarly placed in Dublin, Drogheda, and Wexford. Henry, incensed at
this unlooked-for sequel to his Irish pilgrimage, sent over a commission
to inquire into the facts. The result was that an Irish delegation went
to London to explain, and, at Windsor, where Henry held his court, a
treaty was entered into, finally, between King Roderick and himself, by
which the former acknowledged Henry as “suzerain,” and Roderick was
recognized as High King of Ireland, except the portions thereof held by
the Normans under Henry. This was a sad ending of Roderick’s heroic
beginning. As usual with English monarchs, when dealing with the Irish
people, Henry, urged by his greedy dependants in Ireland, soon found
means to grossly violate the Treaty of Windsor, as the compact between
the representatives of Roderick and himself was called, thus vitiating
it forever and absolving the Irish nation from observing any of its
provisions. Another fierce rebellion followed, in which the southern and
western Irish—the Anglo-Normans having now grown more numerous and
powerful—were remorselessly crushed. Roderick’s rascally son, Prince
Murrough O’Conor, who thought his father should be satisfied with the
titular High Kingship, and that he himself should be King of Connaught,
rose in revolt and attempted to seize the provincial crown. The
Connacians, indignant at his baseness, stood by the old king. Murrough
was defeated and received condign punishment. This bad prince must have
been familiar with the unseemly course pursued by the sons of Henry II
in Normandy, for he allied himself with his country’s, and his father’s,
enemies, the Anglo-Normans, under the treacherous De Cogan, and this
act, more even than his filial impiety, inflamed the minds of his
countrymen against the unnatural miscreant. King Roderick, unhappy man,
whose pride was mortally wounded, and whose paternal heart, tender and
manly, was wrung with sorrow at the crime of his son and its
punishment—decreed by the Clans and not by himself—disgusted, besides,
with the hopeless condition of Irish affairs, made up his mind to retire
from the world, its pomps and vexations. He repaired to the ancient
monastery of Cong, in Galway, and there, after twelve years of pious
devotion, on the 29th day of November, 1198, in the 82d year of his age,
this good and noble but irresolute monarch surrendered his soul to God.
He was not buried at Cong, as some annalists have asserted, but in the
chancel of the Temple Mor, or Great Church, of Clonmacnois, in the
present King’s County, where he was educated. Tradition has failed to
preserve the location of the exact place of sepulture within the ruined
shrine. And so ended the last Ard-Righ, or High King, that had swayed
the sceptre of an independent Ireland.
King Henry’s claim that the Irish Church needed great reformation is
disproved by the enactments of his own reign in that connection, viz.:
1. That the prohibition of marriage within the canonical degrees of
consanguinity be enforced. 2. That children should be regularly
catechized before the church door in each parish. 3. That children
should be baptized in the public fonts of the parish churches. 4. That
regular tithes should be paid to the clergy, rather than irregular
donations from time to time. 5. That church lands should be exempt from
the exaction of livery and other burdens. 6. That the clergy should not
be liable to any share of the eric, or blood fine, levied off the
kindred of a man guilty of homicide. 7. A decree regulating the making
of wills.
Surely, this was small ground on which to justify the invasion of an
independent country and the destruction of its liberty!
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