have recorded, "perishing without sacrament, of a loathsome disease;" a
manifest judgment, in the eyes of the Chronicler, for the crime of
bringing the Normans to Ireland. In the year that saw his death, "Henry
the Second, king of the Saxons and duke of the Normans, came to Ireland
with two hundred and forty ships." He established a footing in the land,
as one of many contesting powers, but the immediate results of his
coming were slight. This we can judge from the record of three years
later: "A brave battle was fought by the Foreigners under Iarl Strangbow
and the Gaels under Ruaidri Ua Concobar at Thurles, in which the
Foreigners were finally defeated by dint of fighting. Seventeen hundred
of the Foreigners were slain in the battle, and only a few of them
survived with the Iarl, who proceeded in sorrow to his home at Port
Lairge--Waterford." Iarl Strangbow died two years later at Dublin.
Norman warriors continue to appear during the succeeding years,
fighting against the native chieftains and against each other, while the
native chieftains continue their own quarrels, just as in the days of
the first Norse raids. Thus in the year of Iarl Strangbow's death, Kells
was laid waste by the Foreigners in alliance with the native Ui-Briain,
while later in the same year the Foreigners were driven from Limerick by
Domnall Ua-Briain, who laid siege to them and forced them to surrender.
Two years later, four hundred and fifty of the followers of De Courcy,
another great Norman warrior, were defeated at Maghera Conall in Louth,
some being drowned in the river, while others were slain on the
battlefield. In the same year De Courcy was again defeated with great
slaughter in Down, and escaped severely wounded to Dublin. For At-Cliat,
from being a fortress of the Danes and Norsemen, was gradually becoming
a Norman town. The doorway of Christ Church Cathedral, which dates from
about this time, is of pure Norman style.
In 1186 we find a son of the great Ruaidri Ua Concobar paying a band of
these same Foreigners three thousand cows as "wages," for joining him in
some plundering expedition against his neighbors. The genius of strife
reigned supreme, and the newcomers were as completely under its sway as
the old clansmen. Just as we saw the Dark Norsemen of the ninth century
coming in their long ships to plunder the Fair Norsemen of At-Cliat, and
the Fair Norsemen not less vigorously retaliating, so now we find wars
breaking out among the Normans who followed in the steps of the
Norsemen. In 1205 the Norman chieftain who held a part of Meath under
his armed sway, and who had already built a strong castle at Kells, was
at war with the De Bermingham family, who at that time held the old
Danish stronghold of Limerick. Two years later another contest broke out
between the De Berminghams and William Marescal, and yet another
struggle between Hugo de Lacy and De Bermingham, very disastrous to the
retainers of the latter, for the Chronicler tells us that "nearly all
his people were ruined."
Thus the old life of tribal struggle went on. The country was wealthy,
full of cattle and herds, silver and gold, stored corn and fruit, rich
dyed stuffs and ornaments. The chieftains and provincial kings lived in
state within their forts, with their loyal warriors around them,
feasting and making merry, and the bards and heralds recited for their
delight the great deeds of the men of old, their forefathers; the
harpers charmed or saddened them with the world-old melodies that
Deirdré had played for Naisi, that Meave had listened to, that Credé
sang for her poet lover.
The life of the church was not less vigorous and vital. There are many
churches and cathedrals of that period of transition, as of the epoch
before the first Norman came, which show the same fervor and devotion,
the same faith made manifest by works of beauty. In truth no country in
the world has so full and rich a record in lasting stone, beginning with
the dwellings of the early saints who had seen the first Messenger face
to face, and passing down through age after age, showing the life and
growth of the faith from generation to generation.
The schools, as we saw, carried on the old classical tradition, bringing
forth monuments like the Annals of Tigearnac; and there was the same
vigor and vital force in every part of the nation's life. The coming of
the Normans changed this in no essential regard. There was something
added in architecture, the Norman modifying the old native style; the
castle and keep gradually taking the place of the earthwork and stone
fort. And in the tenure of land certain new principles were introduced.
But the sum of national life went on unbroken, less modified, probably,
than it had been by the old Norse raids.
XII.
THE NORMANS.
A.D. 1250-1603.
When summing up each epoch of Irish history, we may find both interest
and profit in considering what the future of the land and the people
might have been had certain new elements not been added. Thus we may try
to picture to ourselves what would have been our history had our life
moved forward from the times of Cuculain and Concobar, of Find and
Cormac son of Art, without that transforming power which the fifth
century brought. We may imagine the tribal strife and stress growing
keener and fiercer, till the whole life and strength of the people was
fruitlessly consumed in plundering and destroying.
Or we may imagine an unbroken continuance of the epoch of saintly
aspiration, the building of churches, the illumination of holy books, so
dividing the religious from the secular community as almost to make two
nations in one, a nation altogether absorbed in the present life, with
another nation living in its midst, but dwelling wholly in the thought
of the other world. Religion would have grown to superstition, ecstasy
would have ruled in the hearts of the religious devotees, weakening
their hold on the real, and wafting them away into misty regions of
paradise. We should have had every exaggeration of ascetic practice,
hermitages multiplying among the rocks and islands of the sea, men and
women torturing their bodies for the saving of their souls.
The raids of the Norsemen turned the strong aspirations of the religious
schools into better channels, bringing them to a sense of their identity
with the rest of the people, compelling them to bear their part of the
burden of calamity and strife. The two nations which might have wandered
farther and farther apart were thus welded into one, so that the spirit
of religion became what it has ever since remained, something essential
and inherent in the life of the whole people.
After the waning of the Norsemen, a period opened full of great national
promise in many ways. We see the church strengthened and confirmed,
putting forth its power in admirable works of art, churches and
cathedrals full of the fire and fervor of devotion, and conceived in a
style truly national, with a sense of beauty altogether its own. Good
morals and generous feeling mark the whole life of the church through
this period, and the great archbishop whose figure we have drawn in
outline is only one of many fine and vigorous souls among his
contemporaries.
[Illustration: Dunluce Castle.]
The civil life of the nation, too, shows signs of singular promise at
the same time, a promise embodied in the person of the king of Connacht,
Ruaidri Ua Concobar, some of whose deeds we have recorded. There was a
clearer sense of national feeling and national unity than ever before, a
recognition of the method of conciliation and mutual understanding,
rather than the old appeal to armed force, as under the genius of tribal
strife. We see Ruaidri convoking the kings, chieftains and warriors to a
solemn assembly, presided over by the king and the archbishops of the
realm, and "passing good resolutions" for the settlement of religious
and civil matters, and the better ordering of territories and tribes.
That assembly was convened a half-century before the famous meeting
between King John and his barons, at Runnymead among the Windsor
meadows; and the seed then sown might have brought forth fruit as full
of promise and potency for the future as the Great Charter itself. The
contrast between these two historic assemblies is instructive. In the
one case, we have a provincial king from the rich and beautiful country
beyond the Shannon, gradually gaining such influence over the kings of
the provinces and the chieftains of the tribes that he had come to be
regarded as in a sense the overlord of the whole land, not through
inherent sovreignty or divine right, but first as the chosen chief of
his own tribe, and then as the elect of the whole body of chieftains,
first among his peers. In this character we see Ruaidri settling
disputes between two sections of the great Northern clan, and fixing a
boundary between them; giving presents to the chieftains of the south
for their support in this difficult decision, and exercising a
beneficent influence over the whole people, a moral sway rather than a
sovereign and despotic authority. It is pleasant to find the same king
establishing a college foundation for the instruction of the youth of
Ireland and Scotland in literature.
This is what we have on the one hand. On the other, we have the Norman
king surrounded by his barons, over whom he claimed, but could not
exercise, despotic authority; and the Norman barons taking advantage of
his necessity to extort promises and privileges for their own order
rather than for the whole people. For we must remember that the Angles
and Saxons had been reduced by conquest to a servile condition, from
which they never wholly recovered. The ruling classes of Britain at the
present day are at least nominal descendants of those same Norman
barons; and between them and the mass of the people--the sons of the
Saxons and Angles--there is still a great gulf fixed. It is quite
impossible for one of the tillers of the soil to stand on a footing of
equality with the old baronial class, and the gulf has widened, rather
than closed, since the battle of Hastings and the final overthrow of the
Saxon power.
We see here the full contrast between the ideal of kingship in Ireland
and that which grew up among the Norman conquerors of the Saxons. The
Irish king was always in theory and often in fact a real representative,
duly elected by the free suffrage of his tribesmen; he was not owner of
the tribal land, as the duke of the Normans was; he was rather the
leader of the tribe, chosen to guard their common possessions. The
communal system of Ireland stands here face to face with the feudal
system of the Normans.
It would be a study of great interest to consider what form of national
life might have resulted in Ireland from the free growth of this
principle of communal chieftainship. There are many analogies in other
lands, all of which point to the likelihood of a slow emergence of the
hereditary principle; a single family finally overtopping the whole
nation. Had this free development taken place, we might have had a
strong and vigorous national evolution, an abundant flowering of all our
energies and powers through the Middle Ages, a rich and vigorous
production of art and literature, equal to the wonderful blossoming of
genius in the Val d'Arno and Venice and Rome; but we should have missed
something much greater than all these; something towards which events
and destiny have been leading us, through the whole of the Middle Ages
and modern times.
From this point forward we shall have to trace the working of that
destiny, not manifested in a free blossoming and harvesting of our
national life, but rather in the suppression and involution of our
powers; in a development arrested by pressure from without and kept thus
suspended until the field was ready for its real work. Had our fate been
otherwise, we might now be looking back to a great mediaeval past, as
Spain and Austria look back; it is fated that we shall look not back but
forwards, brought as we are by destiny into the midst of the modern
world, a people with energy unimpaired, full of vigorous vital force,
uncorrupted by the weakening influence of wealth, taught by our own
history the measureless evil of oppression, and therefore cured once for
all of the desire to dominate others. Finally, the intense inner life
towards which we have been led by the checking of our outward energies
has opened to us secrets of the invisible world which are of untold
value, of measureless promise for all future time.
We have, therefore, to trace the gradual involution of our national
life; the checking and restraining of that free development which would
assuredly have been ours, had our national life grown forward unimpeded
and uninfluenced from without, from the days when the Norse power waned.
The first great check to that free development came from the feudal
system, the principle of which was brought over by Robert FitzStephen,
Richard FitzGilbert, the De Courcys, the De Lacys, the De Berminghams
and their peers, whose coming we have recorded. They added new elements
to the old struggle of district against district, tribe against tribe,
but they added something more enduring--an idea and principle destined
almost wholly to supplant the old communal tenure which was the genius
of the native polity. The outward and visible sign of that new principle
was manifested in the rapid growth of feudal castles, with their strong
keeps, at every point of vantage gained by the Norman lords. They were
lords of the land, not leaders of the tribe, and their lordship was
fitly symbolized in the great gloomy towers of stone that everywhere
bear witness to their strength, almost untouched as they are by the
hand of time.
When the duke of the Normans overthrew the Saxon king at Hastings, he
became real owner of the soil of England. His barons and lords held
their estates from him, in return for services to be rendered to him
direct. To reward them for supporting him, first in that decisive
battle, and then in whatever contests he might engage in, they were
granted the right to tax certain tracts of country, baronies, earldoms,
or counties, according to the title they bore. This tax was exacted
first in service, then in produce, and finally in coin. It was the
penalty of conquest, the tribute of the subject Saxons and Angles.
There was no pretence of a free contract; no pretence that the baron
returned to the farmer or laborer an equal value for the tax thus
exacted. It was tribute pure and simple, with no claim to be anything
else. That system of tribute has been consecrated in the land tenure of
England, and the class enriched by that tribute, and still bearing the
territorial titles which are its hall-mark, has always been, as it is
to-day, the dominant class alike in political and social life. In other
words, the Norman subjugation of Saxon and Angle is thoroughly effective
at this moment.
This principle of private taxation, as a right granted by the sovereign,
came over to Ireland with the De Courcys and De Lacys and their like.
But it by no means overspread Ireland in a single tide, as in England,
after Hastings was lost and won. Its progress was slow; so slow, indeed,
that the old communal system lingers here and there at the present day.
The communal chiefs lived their lives side by side with the Norman
barons, fighting now with the barons, now with each other; and the same
generous rivalry, as we have seen, led to abundant fighting among the
barons also. The principle of feudal ownership was working its way,
however. We shall see later how great was its ultimate influence,--not
so much by direct action, as in the quite modern reaction which its
abuse provoked--a reaction from which have been evolved certain
principles of value to the whole world.
Leaving this force to work its way through the centuries, we may turn
now to the life of the times as it appeared to the men and women who
lived in them, and as they themselves have recorded it. We shall find
fewer great personalities; nor should we expect this to be otherwise, if
we are right in thinking that the age of struggle, with its
efflorescence of great persons, had done its work, and was already
giving way before the modern spirit, with its genius for the universal
rather than the personal. We shall have contests to chronicle during the
following centuries, whether engendered within or forced upon us from
without; but they are no longer the substance of our history. They are
only the last clouds of a departing storm; the mists before the dawn of
the modern world.
The most noteworthy of these contests in the early Norman age was the
invasion under Edward Bruce, brother of the Scottish king, who brought a
great fleet and army to Larne, then as now the Irish port nearest to the
northern kingdom. The first sufferers by this invasion were the Normans
of Heath, and we presently find these same Normans allied with Feidlimid
son of Aed Ua Concobar and the Connachtmen, fighting side by side
against the common foe. This was in 1315; two years later Robert Bruce
joined his brother, and it was not till 1319 that Edward Bruce finally
fell at Dundalk, "and no achievement had been performed in Ireland for a
long time before," the Chronicler tells us, "from which greater benefit
had accrued to the country than from this; for during the three and a
half years that Edward had spent in it, a universal famine prevailed to
such a degree that men were wont to devour one another."
A ray of light is thus shed on the intellectual and moral life of the
time: "1398: Garrett Earl of Desmond--or Deas-muma--a cheerful and
courteous man, who excelled all the Normans and many of the Irish in the
knowledge of the Irish language, poetry, history and other learning,
died after the victory of peace." We see that the Normans are already
fallen under the same influence of assimilation which had transformed
the Danes two hundred years before.
A half-century later, we get a vigorous and lurid picture of the
survival of the old tribal strife: "1454: Donell O'Donell was installed
in the lordship of Tyrconnell, in opposition to Rury O'Donell. Not long
after this, Donell was treacherously taken captive and imprisoned in the
castle of Inis--an island in Lough Swilly. As soon as Rury received
tidings of this, he mustered an army thither, and proceeded to demolish
the castle in which Donell was imprisoned with a few men to guard him.
Rury and his army burned the great door of the castle, and set the
stairs on fire; whereupon Donell, thinking that his life would be taken
as soon as the army should reach the castle,--it being his dying
request, as he thought--that he might be loosed from his fetters, as he
deemed it a disgrace to be killed while imprisoned and fettered. His
request was granted, and he was loosed from his fetters; after which he
ascended to the battlements of the castle, to view the motions of the
invading army. And he saw Rury beneath, with eyes flashing enmity, and
waiting until the fire should subside, that he might enter and kill him.
Donell then, finding a large stone by his side, hurled it directly down
upon Rury, so that it fell on the crest of his helmet, on the top of his
head, and crushed it, so that he instantly died. The invading forces
were afterwards defeated, and by this throw Donell saved his own life
and acquired the lordship of Tyrconnell."
There is a whole historical romance in that single picture; the passage
could not easily be surpassed for direct and forcible narrative. A few
years later, we come on one of the most amusing things in the whole
series of annals, a perfect contrast to the grim ferocity of the feud of
the O'Donells. In 1472 "a wonderful animal was sent to Ireland by the
king of England. She resembled a mare, and was of a yellow color, with
the hoofs of a cow, a long neck, a very large head, a large tail, which
was ugly and scant of hair. She had a saddle of her own. Wheat and salt
were her usual food. She used to draw the largest sled-burden behind
her. She used to kneel when passing under any doorway, however high, and
also to let her rider mount." It is evident that the Gaelic language in
the fifteenth century lacked a name for the camel. The same year, we are
told, "the young earl of Desmond was set at liberty by the MacCarthys;
he disabled Garrett, son of the earl of Kildare."
Here is another passage which vies in vividness and force with the story
of the death of Rury O'Donell: "1557: Two spies, Donough and Maurice by
name, entered the camp of John O'Neill by Lough Swilly, and mingled with
the troop without being noticed; for in consequence of the number and
variety of the troops who were there, it was not easy for them to
discriminate between one another, even if it were day, except by
recognizing their chieftains alone. The two persons aforesaid proceeded
from one fire to another, until they came to the great central fire,
which was at the entrance of the son of O'Neill's tent; and a huge
torch, thicker than a man's body, was continually flaming at a short
distance from the fire, and sixty grim and redoubtable warriors with
sharp, keen axes, terrible and ready for action, and sixty stern and
terrific Scots, with massive, broad and heavy striking swords in their
hands, ready to strike and parry, were guarding the son of O'Neill. When
the time came for the troops to dine, and food was divided and
distributed among them, the two spies whom we have mentioned stretched
out their hands to the distributor like the rest, and that which fell to
their share was a measure of meal, and a suitable complement of butter.
With this testimony of their adventure they returned to their
own people."
Here again, what a picture of the camp-life of the age; the darkness of
night, the great central fire with the sixty grim and redoubtable
warriors armed with keen axes, terrible and ready for action, and the
sixty stern and terrific Scots with their massive swords. The admirable
manner of the narrative is as striking as the fierce vigor of the life
portrayed. So we might go on, adding red pages of martial records, but
in reality adding nothing to our understanding of the times. The life of
the land was as full and abundant as of old, and one outcome of that
life we may touch on rather more at length.
We have said much of the old religious schools of Ireland, with their
fine and vigorous intellectual life, which did so much to carry forward
the torch of culture to our modern world. For nearly seven hundred years
these great schools seem to have developed wholly along indigenous
lines, once they had accepted the body of classical culture from the
Roman Empire, then tottering to its fall. The full history of that
remarkable chapter in the world's spiritual life has yet to be written;
but this we can foretell, that when written, it will abound with rich
material and ample evidence of a sound and generous culture, inspired
throughout with the fervor of true faith.
About the time when the Norman warriors began to mingle with the
fighting chieftains of the old native tribes, a change came over the
religious history of the country. After sending forth men of power and
light to the awakening lands of modern Europe, Ireland began to receive
a returning tide, to reap a harvest from these same lands, in the friars
and abbots of the great Continental orders founded by men like Saint
Bernard, Saint Dominick and Saint Francis of Assisi. A change in the
church architecture of the period visibly records this spiritual change;
continental forms appear, beginning with the rounded arches of the
Normans, and passing gradually into the various forms of pointed arches
which we know as Gothic. Very beautiful Abbeys belonging to this epoch
remain everywhere throughout the island, making once more evident--what
strikes us at every point of our study--that no country in the world is
so rich in these lasting records of every step of our national life,
whether in pagan or Christian times.