Ireland Under the Earlier Edwards—The Younger Bruce Elected King by the
Irish—Battle of Athenry—Death of Bruce at Faughart Hill
AFTER the death of King John, affairs in Ireland proceeded tamely enough
until the repeated encroachments of the Anglo-Norman settlers and their
progeny, who occupied chiefly a comparatively small district called “the
Pale,” which consisted of most of the present counties of Dublin, Louth,
Meath, Westmeath, Kildare, and Kilkenny, forced the native Irish to rise
“in rude but fierce array” against them. The Norman family of De Lacy
disputed supremacy in Leinster with the Fitzgeralds, or Geraldines, but
the latter, finally, outshone their rivals both in court and camp. The
De Courcys, headed by the bold and chivalrous Sir John, “of that ilk,”
made some impression on the coast of Ulster. The De Burgos, ancestors of
all the Irish Burkes, became powerful in Connaught, and the old Irish,
headed by the O’Conors, fought against them fiercely from time to time.
But the gallant, if covetous, Norman captains beheld the Irish maidens,
and saw that they were fair. Love-making, despite frequent feuds,
progressed between Norman lord and Celtic virgin; and not uncommonly
between Irish prince and Norman lady. Many “mixed marriages” resulted,
and, naturally, racial animosities became greatly softened, “for love
will still be lord of all.” Very soon the warrior Normans, who
acknowledged but a doubtful allegiance to the English monarch, began to
assume Irish manners, wear the Irish costume, and speak in the Gaelic
tongue. All this did not suit the English policy, and the Norman Irish
were often described by their kindred across the sea as “Degenerate
English.” It was written of the Fitzgeralds, in particular, that they
had grown “more Irish than the Irish.” This alarmed England, for it
began to look as if Norman and Celt in Ireland would soon make common
cause against her power. But many Norman chiefs were land hungry, and
many of the Irish princes were fierce and filled with a just wrath
against their invaders. Gradually, therefore, the Geraldines swept all
before them in Kildare and Desmond, for they were very warlike, and many
native Irish joined their fortunes to theirs, because of “fosterage” and
other interests. The Butlers possessed themselves of large tracts of
country in the present counties of Kilkenny and Tipperary, and became
Earls of Ormond; and the De Burgos, as Earls of Clanricarde, became, in
great part, masters of Galway, Mayo, and other parts of the province of
Connaught. Factions among the Celtic chiefs made their conquests easy.
The Normans, wily as they were brave, fostered these feuds, and were
particularly delighted when the formidable O’Neills and O’Donnells of
Ulster wasted their strength in internecine strife. The politic
foreigners occasionally allied themselves to either one of the
contending septs, and generally succeeded in outwitting both
contestants. Yet, as time wore on, the Norman warriors, forgetting their
fathers’ speech, shouted their battle cries in the Gaelic tongue, and,
except for their armor, could hardly be distinguished from the Celts.
Henry III paid but small attention to Irish affairs. He ascended the
English throne a minor, and his mature years were spent mainly in
repeated civil wars with his barons, who finally compelled him to extend
and confirm the Magna Charta of his father. His son, Edward I, nicknamed
“Long Shanks,” the ablest king of the Plantagenet race, was almost
constantly occupied, during his stirring reign, in wars of conquest
against Wales and Scotland, and he succeeded in annexing the first-named
country to the English crown. His son and successor, Edward II, was the
first English Prince of Wales. This Edward inherited the Scotch war
which his father had left unfinished, after great effusion of blood. In
1314, his great English army, said to have numbered 100,000 knights,
archers, and men-at-arms, was disastrously routed at Bannockburn
(“Oaten-cake rivulet”), near Sterling, by King Robert Bruce, of
Scotland, who had under his command not more than 30,000 men, horse and
foot. This great victory did not entirely end the Anglo-Scotch wars,
which were always bitter and bloody down to the close of the sixteenth
century, but it preserved the independence of Scotland for nearly four
hundred years. That country ceased to be a separate nation in 1707. Many
Irish clans of Ulster aided Bruce at Bannockburn, and some Connaught
septs, under one of the O’Conors, fought on the English side, and were
nearly exterminated, which “served them right.” As the Irish princes
could not settle on one of their own number for High King, they, at the
suggestion of the wise and generous Donald O’Neill, King of Ulster,
agreed to elect Edward Bruce, brother of the Scotch monarch, king of all
Ireland. Their proffer of the Irish throne was accepted by the Bruces,
and Edward was duly crowned in 1315. This provoked a destructive three
years’ war. Brave King Robert came to Ireland to aid his brother, and,
in the field, they swept all before them, particularly in Munster. But
the Norman-Irish fought them bitterly, notably the Geraldines, the
Berminghams, and De Burgos. Felim O’Conor, the young and gallant king of
Connaught, was forced into a repugnant alliance with De Burgo, who was
powerful in the west. His heart, however, was with the Bruce, and he
soon found an opportunity to break away from his repugnant Norman ally.
Summoning all his fighting force, he marched upon the fortified town of
Athunree, or Athenry, “the Ford of the Kings,” in Galway, and came up
with the Anglo-Norman army, arrayed outside the walls, on the morning of
August 10, 1316. De Burgo and De Bermingham, two able veteran soldiers,
headed the Anglo-Normans. The conflict was fierce and the slaughter
appalling, particularly on the Irish side, because the heroic clansmen
did not have, like their foes, the advantage of chain armor and long bow
archery. Night closed upon a terrible scene. The Irish refused to fly
and died in heaps around the lifeless body of their chivalric young
king, who, with twenty-eight princes of his house, proudly fell on that
bloody field. Most of the Irish army perished—the loss being usually
estimated at 10,000 men. The Anglo-Normans also suffered severely, but
their armor proved the salvation of most of them. Connaught did not
recover from this great disaster for many generations. Athenry proved
fatal to the cause of Bruce, although, gallantly seconded by Donald
O’Neill, he fought on for two years longer, but was at last killed in
battle on Faughart Hill, in Louth, A.D. 1318. With him disappeared, for
that century at least, the hope of an independent Ireland.
After the battle of Athenry, the power of the De Burgo family, and of
all the allies of their house, became predominant in Connaught, but all
these Anglo-Norman chiefs became, also, much more Irish in manners and
sympathy than they had ever been before. The desperate bravery displayed
by O’Conor’s clansmen had aroused the admiration of those born warriors,
and they felt that to ally themselves in marriage with so martial a race
was an honor, not a degradation, such as the English sought to make it
appear. Ulster maintained its independence, and so also did much of
Connaught and portions of Munster and Leinster, and there were
periodical raids upon the Pale and carrying off of “Saxon” flocks and
herds, followed by feasts and general jubilation. The Palesmen, whenever
too weak to meet the Celts in the field, would resort to their
time-honored strategy of shutting themselves up in their strongholds,
and making, whenever opportunity offered, fierce retaliatory raids on
the Irish territory. This kind of warfare was unfortunate for Ireland,
because it kept the English feeling strong in the hearts of the
Palesmen, who were constantly recruited by fresh swarms of adventurers
from England. Outside of the Pale, however, the Old Irish and the
Normans continued to affiliate and intermarry, as we have already said.
Fosterage—a peculiarly Irish custom, which meant that the children of
the king, prince, or chief should be nursed by the wives of the
clansmen, instead of their own mothers—grew apace, and nearly every
Norman lord had his heirs suckled by the women of the Celtic race, thus
creating a bond of “kinship”—if so it may be termed—in many instances
stronger than even the brotherhood of blood.
Irish tradition abounds in examples of the devotion of foster-brethren
to each other; and in all written history there is given but one
instance of treachery in this connection, and that instance does not
involve a man of Celtic, but of Latin, lineage. We refer to the betrayal
of Lord Thomas Fitzgerald by Parez in the reign of Henry VIII, which
will be dealt with in the proper place.
------------------------------------------------------------------------