THE CONQUEST OF IRELAND.
795–1172.
[Illustration: Map III.
IRELAND A. D. 1172.
_Ostmen’s settlements marked thus: Dublin._
Wagner & Debes’ Geogˡ. Estabᵗ. Leipsic. London, Macmillan & Co.
]
It is in the history of the settlements formed on the Irish coast by
the northern pirates in the ninth century that we must seek for the
origin of those relations between England and Ireland which led to
an English invasion of the latter country in the reign of Henry II.
The earliest intercourse between the two islands had been of a wholly
peaceful character; but it had come utterly to an end when Bishop
Colman of Lindisfarne sailed back to his old home at Iona after the
synod of Whitby in 664. From the hour when her missionary work was
done, Ireland sank more and more into the isolation which was a natural
consequence of her geographical position, and from which she was
only roused at the opening of the ninth century by the coming of the
wikings. In the early days of the northmen’s attack upon the British
isles it was the tradition of Ireland’s material prosperity and wealth,
and the fame of the treasures stored in her religious houses, that
chiefly tempted the “white strangers” from the Norwegian fiords across
the unknown perils of the western sea; and the settlement of Thorgils
in Ulster and those of his fellow-wikings along the eastern and
southern coasts of Ireland formed a chief basis for the operations of
the northmen upon Britain itself. The desperate fighting of the Irish
succeeded in freeing Ulster after Thorgils’s death; but by the middle
of the ninth century the wikings were firmly established at four points
on the Irish coast, Dublin, Waterford, Cork and Limerick.[369]
Under the leadership of Olaf the Fair, Dublin became the head of a
confederacy which served as a starting-point and furnished a constant
supply of forces for the Danish conquests in England;[370] and for
a hundred years afterwards, throughout the struggle of the house of
Ælfred for the recovery of the Danelaw, the support given by the Ostmen
or wikings of Ireland to their brethren across the channel was at once
the main strength of the Northumbrian Danes and the standing difficulty
of the English kings.[371]
[369] On Thorgils and the wiking settlements in Ireland see
_Wars of the Gaedhil with the Gaill_ (Todd), and Green,
_Conquest of England_, pp. 66, 67, 74, 76.
[370] Green, _Conquest of England_, pp. 90, 91, 107.
[371] _Ib._ pp. 213, 242, 252–254, 270–272.
To Ireland itself the results of the wiking invasions were far more
disastrous than either to Britain or to Gaul. Owing to the peculiar
physical character of their country, to their geographical remoteness
from the rest of Europe, and to the political and social isolation
which was a consequence of these, the Irish people had never advanced
beyond the primitive tribal mode of life which had once been common to
the whole Aryan race, but which every European branch of that race,
except the Irish, had long since outgrown. In the time of Ecgberht and
of Charles the Great Ireland was still, as at the very dawn of history,
peopled by a number of separate tribes or septs whose sole bond of
internal cohesion was formed by community of blood;--whose social and
political institutions had remained purely patriarchal in character,
unaffected by local and external influences such as had helped to mould
the life of England or of Gaul:--who had never yet coalesced into any
definite territorial organization, far less risen into national unity
under a national sovereign. The provincial kings of Ulster, Connaught,
Leinster and Munster were merely the foremost chieftains among the
various groups of tribes over whom they exercised an ever-shifting
sway; while the supremacy of the _Ard-Righ_ or chief monarch, to whom
in theory was assigned the overlordship of the whole island, was
practically little more than a sort of honorary pre-eminence attached
to certain chosen descendants of an early hero-king, Niall “of the
Nine Hostages”; it carried with it little effective authority, and no
territorial power; for the monarch’s traditional seat at Tara had long
been a heap of ruins, and a tribal under-king had ousted him from the
plain of Meath which in legal theory formed his royal domain.[372]
Neither in the monarch himself nor in the provincial chieftains of
a state thus constituted could there be found, when the storm-cloud
from the north burst upon Ireland, a centre of unity even such as the
peoples of Gaul found in their Karolingian sovereigns, far less such
as the West-Franks found in the dukes of the French, or such as the
English found in their kings of the house of Ecgberht. The stress of
the northmen’s attack, which elsewhere gave a fresh impulse to the
upgrowth of national life, crushed out all hope of its developement
in Ireland. The learning and the civilization of ages perished when
Columba’s Bangor, Bridget’s Kildare, Ciaran’s Clonmacnoise, Patrick’s
own Armagh, shared the fate of Bæda’s Jarrow and Hild’s Streoneshealh,
of Cuthbert’s Melrose and Aidan’s Lindisfarne; and in Ireland there was
no Wessex and no Ælfred.
[372] Maine, _Early Hist. of Institutions_, lect. i.–x.;
O’Donovan, Introd. to _Book of Rights_; Lynch, _Cambrensis
Eversus_, with Mr. Kelly’s notes; O’Donovan, notes to Four
Masters, vols. i. and ii.
On the other hand, the concentration of the wiking forces upon Britain
had given to the Irish an advantage which enabled them to check the
spread of wiking settlements in their country; and the failure of all
attempts to establish a Scandinavian dominion in Britain destroyed
all chance of a Scandinavian conquest of Ireland. The Ostmen never
even gained such a footing in Ireland as the followers of Hrolf
gained in Frankland: their presence never received the sanction of
any Ard-Righ; they were not a compact body occupying the whole of an
extensive and well-defined territory, but a number of separate groups
settled here and there along the coast, and holding their ground
only by sheer hard fighting against a ring of implacable foes. The
long struggle may be said to have ended in a defeat of both parties.
The Irish kings of Munster succeeded in establishing a more or
less effective overlordship over the Scandinavian communities of
Limerick and Waterford; and in 989 Malachi II., supreme monarch of
Ireland, reaped his reward for nine years of desperate fighting in
the submission of the Ostmen of Dublin. The city was blockaded and
starved into surrender, and a yearly tribute was promised to Malachi
and his successors.[373] Six years later “the ring of Tomar and the
sword of Carl”--two heathen relics probably of ancient heroes, which
seem to have been treasured as sacred emblems of sovereignty by the
Ostmen[374]--were carried off by Malachi as trophies of another
victory;[375] and in 999 or 1000 a renewal of the strife ended in a
rout of the Ostmen and a great slaughter of their leaders, and Dublin
was sacked and burnt by the victorious Irish.[376]
[373] Tighernach, a. 989 (O’Conor, _Rer. Hibern. Scriptt._,
vol. ii. pp. 264, 265).
[374] See O’Donovan’s introduction to the _Book of Rights_, pp.
xxxviii, xxxix.
[375] Tighernach, a. 995 (as above, p. 267).
[376] _Ib._ a. 998, 999 (p. 268). _Wars of Gaedhil with Gaill_
(Todd), pp. 109–117.
Malachi’s triumph, however, was gained at the cost of a disruption of
the monarchy. Malachi himself was displaced by a king of the rival
house of Munster, his colleague in the sack of Dublin, the famous Brian
Boroimhe;[377] Brian’s career of conquest ended in 1014 on the field
of Clontarf, where he was slain in battle with the men of Leinster and
the Ostmen;[378] and when Malachi, who now resumed his place, died
in 1022,[379] the downfall of the Irish monarchy was complete.[380]
The tradition which had so long linked it to the house of Niall had
been shattered by Brian’s successes; and Brian had not lived to
consolidate in his own house the forces which had begun to gather
around himself. Thenceforth the Scandinavian colonies simply furnished
an additional element to the strife of the Irish chieftains, and to
the rivalry between the O’Briens of Munster and the O’Neills of Ulster
for the possession of a shadowy supremacy, claimed by the one house as
descendants of Brian Boroimhe and by the other as heirs of Malachi II.
and of his great ancestor Niall.
[377] Tighernach, a. 1000, 1001 (as above, pp. 269, 270). _Wars
of Gaedhil with Gaill_ (Todd), p. 119. Brian’s victory was won
by the help of the Ostmen, with whom he stooped to ally himself
for the sake of overcoming his rival; but the alliance was only
momentary. On Brian’s reign see _Wars of Gaedhil with Gaill_,
pp. 119–155.
[378] _Wars of Gaedhil with Gaill_ (Todd), pp. 155–211. Four
Masters, a. 1013 (O’Donovan, vol. ii. pp. 773–781). Ann. Loch
Cé, a. 1014 (Hennessy, vol. i. pp. 1–13).
[379] Tighernach, a. 1022 (as above, p. 274). Four Masters, a.
1022 (as above, p. 800). Ann. Loch Cé, a. 1022 (as above, p.
23).
[380] “From the death of Maelseachlainn II. the legitimate
monarchy of all Ireland departed from all families during
seventy-two years, until the joint reigns of Muircheartach
O’Briain and Domhnall MacLochlainn; during that time no Feis
or general assembly, so agreeable to the people, was held,
because Ireland had no supreme king.” Quoted by Mr. Kelly, note
to _Cambrensis Eversus_, vol. ii. p. 38, from Gilla-Modud, an
Irish poet of the twelfth century.
The social and political system of Ireland was powerless either to
expel or to absorb the foreign element thus introduced within its
borders. Not only was such an union of the two peoples as had at last
been effected in England simply impossible in Ireland; the Irish
Danelaw was parted from its Celtic surroundings by barriers of race and
speech, of law and custom and institutions, far more insuperable than
those which parted the settlers in the “northman’s land” at the mouth
of Seine from their West-Frankish neighbours. Even the Irish Church,
which three hundred years before had won half England--one might add
half Europe--to the Faith, had as yet failed to convert these pagans
seated at her door. At the close of the tenth century the Ostmen were
still for the most part heathens in fact if not in name, aliens from
whatever culture or civilization might still remain in the nation
around them. Meanwhile their relations with England had wholly altered
in character. The final submission of the English Danelaw to Eadred
carried with it the alliance of the Irish Danelaw; it seems that the
Ostmen in their turn endeavoured to strengthen themselves against
the attacks of the Irish princes by securing a good understanding
with the English king, if not actually by putting themselves under
his protection; for the fact that Eadgar coined money in Dublin[381]
indicates that his authority must have been in some way or other
acknowledged there. The years of the Ostmen’s struggle with Malachi
and Brian Boroimhe were the years of England’s struggle with Swein
and Cnut; but the two strifes seem to have been wholly unconnected;
and throughout the long peace which lasted from Cnut’s final triumph
until the coming of the Normans, new ties sprang up between the
Ostmen and the sister-isle. Owing to their position on the sea-coast
and to the spirit of merchant enterprise which was, quite as much
as the spirit of military enterprise, a part of the wiking-heritage
of their inhabitants, the towns of the Irish Danelaw rose fast into
importance as seats of a flourishing trade with northern Europe, and
above all with England through its chief seaports in the west, Bristol
and Chester. The traffic was chiefly in slaves, bought or kidnapped
in England to be sold to the merchants of Dublin or Waterford, and
by these again to their Irish neighbours or to traders from yet more
distant lands.[382] Horrible as this traffic was, however, even while
filling the Irish coast-towns with English slaves it helped to foster
a more frequent intercourse and a closer relation between Ostmen and
Englishmen; and the shelter and aid given to Harold and Leofwine in
1151 by Dermot Mac-Maelnambo,[383] a prince of the royal house of
Leinster who had acquired the sovereignty over both Leinstermen and
Danes, shews that the political alliance established in Eadgar’s day
had been carefully renewed by Godwine.
[381] Green, _Conquest of England_, p. 323.
[382] Green, _Conquest of England_, pp. 440, 443, 444.
[383] See Freeman, _Norm. Conq._, vol. ii. pp. 154.
To these commercial and political relations was added soon afterwards
an ecclesiastical tie. The conversion of the Ostmen to Christianity,
completed in the early years of the eleventh century, was probably due
to intercourse with their Christianized brethren in England rather than
to the influence of the Irish clergy, whose very speech was strange
to them; and their adoption of their neighbours’ creed, instead of
drawing together the hostile races, soon introduced a fresh element
into their strife. About the year 1040 the Ostmen of Dublin set up a
bishopric of their own. Their first bishop, Donatus, was probably Irish
by consecration if not by birth.[384] But when he died, in 1074,[385]
the Ostmen turned instinctively towards the neighbouring island with
which they had long been on peaceful terms, where the fruits of the
warfare waged by generation after generation of wikings upon the shores
of Britain were being reaped at last by Norman hands, where William of
Normandy was entering upon the inheritance alike of Ælfred and of Cnut,
and where Lanfranc was infusing a new spirit of discipline and activity
into the Church of Odo and Dunstan. The last wiking-fleet that ever
sailed from Dublin to attack the English coast--a fleet which Dermot
Mac-Maelnambo, true to his alliance with their father, had furnished
to the sons of Harold--had been beaten back six years before.[386]
Since then Dermot himself was dead;[387] the Ostmen were once more
free, subject to no ruler save one of their own choice and their own
blood; with the consent of their king, Godred,[388] they chose a priest
named Patrick to fill Donatus’s place, and sent him to be consecrated
in England by the archbishop of Canterbury.[389] No scruples about
infringing the rights of the Irish bishops were likely to make Lanfranc
withhold his hand. At the very moment when the Ostmen’s request
reached him, he had just been putting forth against the archbishop
of York a claim to metropolitical jurisdiction over the whole of
the British isles, founded on the words of S. Gregory committing
“all the bishops of the Britains” to S. Augustine’s charge.[390] He
therefore gladly welcomed an opportunity of securing for the authority
of his see a footing in the neighbour-isle. He consecrated Patrick
of Dublin and received his profession of obedience;[391] and for the
next seventy-eight years the bishops of Dublin were suffragans not of
Armagh but of Canterbury. When in 1096 the Ostmen of Waterford also
chose for themselves a bishop, they too sought him beyond the sea; an
Irishman, or more probably an Ostman by birth, a monk of Winchester
by profession, Malchus by name, he was consecrated by S. Anselm and
professed obedience to him as metropolitan.[392]
[384] That is, he was certainly not consecrated in England;
Lanigan, _Eccles. Hist. Ireland_, vol. iii. pp. 433–436. But
might he not have been consecrated by some of the bishops in
Scotland and the Isles, with which the Ostmen were in constant
intercourse and alliance?
[385] Tighernach, a. 1074 (O’Conor, _Rer. Hibern. Scriptt._),
vol. ii. p. 309. Four Masters, a. 1074 (O’Donovan, vol. ii. p.
907).
[386] Eng. Chron. (Worc.) a. 1067, 1068; Flor. Worc. (Thorpe),
vol. ii. p. 2; Ord. Vit. (Duchesne, _Hist. Norm. Scriptt._),
p. 513; Will. Jumièges, l. vii. c. 41 (_ib._ p. 290); Freeman,
_Norm. Conq._, vol. iv. pp. 225–227, 243–245, 788–790.
[387] He fell in battle with the king of Meath in 1072,
according to the Four Masters _ad ann._ (O’Donovan, vol. ii.
pp. 901–903), and the Ann. Loch Cé (Hennessy, vol. i. p. 67).
The Chron. Scot. (Hennessy, p. 291) places his death in 1069;
Mr. Freeman (as above, p. 245) adopts this date.
[388] At the time of Donatus’s appointment in 1040, one Sihtric
ruled in Dublin (see Lanigan, _Eccles. Hist. Ireland_, vol.
iii. pp. 434, 435)--doubtless under the overlordship of Dermot.
On Dermot’s death the Ostmen flung off the Irish supremacy and
took for their king, first a jarl named Godred, who died in
1072, and then another of the same name, who seems to have been
already king of Man. (Freeman, as above, p. 528 and note 5).
Lanfranc addresses this Godred as “King of Ireland” (Lanfranc,
Ep. 43, Giles, vol. i. p. 61); and no other prince is mentioned
in connexion with Patrick’s consecration. But it is plain
from Lanfranc’s correspondence, if from nothing else, that
Terence O’Brien was acknowledged overlord of Dublin for some
time before his death (see Lanfranc, Ep. 44, _ib._ p. 62; and
Lanigan, as above, p. 474 _et seq._); and he died in 1086.
[389] Lanfranc, Ep. 43 (as above, p. 61). Eng. Chron. Winch.,
Appendix (Thorpe, vol. i. p. 387). Cf. Lanigan, as above, pp.
457, 458.
[390] Lanigan, _Eccles. Hist. Ireland_, vol. iii. pp. 464–466.
[391] _Ib._ p. 458. Eng. Chron. Winch., Appendix (Thorpe, vol.
i. p. 387).
[392] Eadmer, _Hist. Nov._ (Rule), pp. 76, 77. Cf. Lanigan, as
above, vol. iv. pp. 15, 16.
Through the medium of these Irish suffragans the archbishops of
Canterbury endeavoured to gain a hold upon the Irish Church by
cultivating the friendship of the different Irish princes who from time
to time succeeded in winning from the Ostmen an acknowledgement of
their overlordship. In the struggles of the provincial kings for the
supreme monarchy of Ireland it was always the Ostmen who turned the
scale; their submission was the real test of sovereignty. The power
which had been wielded by Dermot Mac-Maelnambo passed after his death
first to Terence or Turlogh O’Brien, king of Munster,[393] a grandson
of Brian Boroimhe, and then to Terence’s son Murtogh.[394] Both were
in correspondence with the successive English primates, Lanfranc and
Anselm,[395] and both were recognized as protectors and patrons, in
ecclesiastical matters at least, by the Ostmen,[396] whose adherence
during these years enabled the O’Briens to hold their ground against
the advancing power of Donnell O’Lochlainn, king of Aileach or western
Ulster,[397] a representative of the old royal house of the O’Neills
which had fallen with Malachi II. On Murtogh’s death in 1119[398] a new
aspirant to the monarchy appeared in the person of the young king of
Connaught, Terence or Turlogh O’Conor. A year before, Terence had won
the submission of the Ostmen of Dublin;[399] in 1120 he celebrated the
fair of Telltown,[400] a special prerogative of the Irish monarchs;
and from the death of Donnell O’Lochlainn next year[401] Terence
was undisputed monarch till 1127, when a joint rising of Ostmen and
Leinstermen enabled both to throw off his yoke.[402] Meanwhile Murtogh
O’Lochlainn, a grandson of Donnell, was again building up a formidable
power in Ulster; at last, in 1150, all the provincial kings, including
Terence, gave him hostages for peace;[403] and Terence’s throne seems
to have been only saved by a sudden change in the policy of the Ostmen,
whose independent action enabled them for a moment to hold the balance
and act as arbitrators between northern and southern Ireland.[404] Four
years later, however, they accepted Murtogh as their king,[405] and two
years later still he was left sole monarch by the death of Terence
O’Conor.[406]
[393] Four Masters, a. 1073–1086 (O’Donovan, vol. ii. pp.
905–927).
[394] _Ib._ a. 1087–1119 (pp. 929–1009).
[395] Lanfranc, Ep. 44 (Giles, vol. i. pp. 62–64); Anselm, Epp.
l. iii., Epp. cxlii., cxlvii. (Migne, _Patrol._, vol. clix.,
cols. 173, 174, 178–180); Lanigan, as above, vol. iii. pp. 474
_et seq._, vol. iv. pp. 15, 19, 20.
[396] Samuel of Dublin in 1095 and Malchus of Waterford in 1096
were both elected under Murtogh’s sanction and sent to England
for consecration with letters of commendation from him. Eadmer,
_Hist. Nov._ (Rule), pp. 73–76; Lanigan, as above, vol. iv. pp.
12–15.
[397] Four Masters, a. 1083–1119 (O’Donovan, vol. ii. pp.
921–1009). Cf. Ann. Loch Cé, a. 1083–1119 (Hennessy, vol. i.
pp. 73–111).
[398] Four Masters, a. 1119 (as above, p. 1009). Ann. Loch. Cé,
a. 1119 (as above, p. 111).
[399] Lanigan, _Eccles. Hist. Ireland_, vol. iv. p. 48, says:
“The Annals of Innisfallen have at _A._ 1118, ‘Turlogh O’Conor
became king of the Danes of Dublin.’” (This passage does not
occur in either of the two editions of Ann. Inisfal. printed
by O’Conor.) The Four Masters, a. 1118 (as above, p. 1007),
say that Terence took hostages from the Ostmen in that year.
He was, at any rate, acknowledged as their overlord by 1121,
for it was he who in that year sent Gregory, bishop-elect of
Dublin, to England for consecration. Lanigan, as above, p. 47.
[400] Four Masters _ad ann._ (as above, p. 1011).
[401] _Ib._ a. 1121 (p. 1013). Ann. Loch Cé, a. 1121 (as above,
p. 113).
[402] Ann Loch Cé, a. 1127 (p. 123).
[403] Four Masters, a. 1150 (as above, p. 1093).
[404] Something of this kind must be meant by the phrase of the
Four Masters (_ib._ p. 1095): “The foreigners made a year’s
peace between Leath-Chuinn and Leath-Mhogha.” This is in
1150, after Murtogh’s appearance as “King of Ireland” and the
Ostmen’s submission to Terence (II.) O’Brien, whom his namesake
of Connaught had set up as king in Munster.
[405] Four Masters, a. 1154 (as above, p. 1113).
[406] Four Masters, a. 1156 (O’Donovan, vol. ii. p. 1119).
The anarchy of the Irish state was reflected in that of the Church. If
Lanfranc, when he consecrated Patrick of Dublin, knew anything at all
of the ecclesiastical condition of Ireland, he may well have thought
that it stood in far greater need of his reforming care than England
itself. The Irish Church had never felt the organizing hand of a
Theodore; its diocesan and parochial system was quite undeveloped; it
had in fact scarcely advanced beyond the primitive missionary stage.
Six centuries after S. Patrick’s death, the Irish clergy were still
nothing but a band of mission-priests scattered over the country or
gathered together in vast monastic establishments like Bangor or Durrow
or Clonmacnoise; the bishops were for the most part merely heads of
ever-shifting mission-stations, to whose number there was no limit;
destitute of political rank, they were almost equally destitute of
ecclesiastical authority, and differed from the ordinary priesthood by
little else than their power of ordination. At the head of the whole
hierarchy stood, as successor and representative of S. Patrick, the
archbishop of Armagh. But since the death of Archbishop Maelbrigid
in 927 the see of Armagh had been in the hands of a family of local
chieftains who occupied its estate, usurped its revenues, handed on
its title from father to son, and were bishops only in name.[407]
The inferior members of the ecclesiastical body could not escape the
evil which paralyzed their head. The bishops and priests of the Irish
Church furnished a long roll of names to the catalogue of saints; but
they contributed little or nothing to the political developement of
the nation, and scarcely more to its social developement. The growth
of a class of lay-impropriators ousted them from the management and
the revenues of their church-lands, reduced them to subsist almost
wholly upon the fees which they received for the performance of their
spiritual functions, stripped them of all political influence, and
left them dependent solely upon their spiritual powers and their
personal holiness for whatever share of social influence they might
still contrive to retain.[408] The Irish Church, in fact, while
stedfastly adhering in doctrinal matters to the rest of the Latin
Church, had fallen far behind it in discipline; to the monastic reforms
of the tenth century, to the struggle for clerical celibacy and for
freedom of investiture in the eleventh, she had remained an utter
stranger. The long-continued stress of the northern invasions had cut
off the lonely island in the west from all intercourse with the world
at large, so completely that even the tie which bound her to Rome had
sunk into a mere vague tradition of spiritual loyalty, and Rome herself
knew nothing of the actual condition of a Church which had once been
her most illustrious daughter.
[407] S. Bernard, _Vita S. Malach._, c. 10 (Mabillon, vol. i.
col. 667). Cf. Lanigan, _Eccles. Hist. Ireland_, vol. iii. p.
382.
[408] On these lay impropriators, “comorbas” and “erenachs,”
see Lanigan, _Eccles. Hist. Ireland_, vol. iv. pp. 79–86.
But it was the northmen, too, who were now to become the means of
knitting up again the ties which had been severed by their fathers’
swords. The state of things in Ireland, as reported to Canterbury from
Dublin and Waterford, might well seem to reforming churchmen like
Lanfranc and Anselm too grievous to be endured. Lanfranc had urged
upon Terence O’Brien the removal of two of its worst scandals, the
neglect of canonical restraints upon marriage and the existence of a
crowd of titular bishops without fixed sees;[409] Anselm used all his
influence with Murtogh O’Brien for the same end;[410] at last, finding
his efforts unavailing, he seems to have laid his complaints before
the Pope. The result was that, for the first time, a papal legate was
appointed for Ireland. The person chosen was Gilbert, who some two or
three years before Anselm’s death became the first bishop of the Ostmen
of Limerick. Gilbert seems, like the first Donatus of Dublin, to have
been himself an Irish prelate; he lost no time, however, in putting
himself in communication with Canterbury,[411] and displayed an almost
exaggerated zeal for the Roman discipline and ritual.[412] In 1118 he
presided over a synod held at Rathbreasil, where an attempt was made
to map out the dioceses of Ireland on a definite plan.[413] Little,
however, could be done till the metropolitan see was delivered from the
usurpers who had so long held it in bondage; and it was not until 1134
that the evil tradition was broken by the election of S. Malachi.
[409] Lanfranc, Ep. 44 (Giles, vol. i. p. 63).
[410] Anselm, Epp. l. iii., Epp. cxlii., cxlvii. (Migne,
_Patrol._, vol. clix., cols. 173, 174, 178–180).
[411] On Gilbert’s relations with Anselm see Lanigan, _Eccles.
Hist. Ireland_, vol. iv. pp. 23–26.
[412] _Ib._ pp. 26–29.
[413] _Ib._ pp. 38, 40–43.
Malachi was the wisest and most enlightened as well as the most
saintly Irish prelate of his time; he had already been labouring for
nearly ten years at the reform of the diocese of Connor; in that of
Armagh itself he had earlier still, as vicar to Archbishop Celsus,
laid the foundations of a similar work which he now took up again as
primate.[414] After a successful pontificate of three years he again
retired to the humbler position of a diocesan bishop at Down;[415]
but he still continued to watch over the interests of the whole Irish
Church; and in 1139 he went to Rome specially to lay its necessities
before the Pope, and if possible to obtain from him the gift of a
pallium for the archbishop of Armagh, and another for the bishop of
Cashel as metropolitan of southern Ireland.[416] The pallium was now
generally regarded as an indispensable note of metropolitical rank,
but it had never been possessed by the successors of S. Patrick.[417]
Innocent II. refused to grant it save at the request of the Irish
clergy and people in council assembled; he sanctioned, however, the
recognition of Cashel as metropolis of southern Ireland, and moreover
he transferred to Malachi himself the legatine commission which Gilbert
of Limerick had just resigned.[418] Gilbert seems to have died shortly
afterwards: his successor in the see of Limerick went to Theobald of
Canterbury for consecration; but his profession of obedience was the
last ever made by an Irish bishop to an English metropolitan.[419] In
1148 a synod held at Inispatrick by Archbishop Gelasius of Armagh,
with Malachi as papal legate, decided upon sending Malachi himself
to the Pope once more, charged with a formal request for the two
palls, in the name of the whole Irish Church. Malachi died on the
way, at Clairvaux;[420] but he left his commission in safe hands.
Nine years before, when on his first journey to Rome he had passed
through the “bright valley,” its abbot had recognized in him a kindred
spirit.[421] From that moment S. Bernard’s care of all the churches
extended itself even to the far-off Church of Ireland; and if it was
not he who actually forwarded his dying friend’s petition to Eugene
III., there can be little doubt that Eugene’s favourable reception of
it was chiefly owing to his influence. The result was the mission of
John Paparo as special legate to Ireland. Stephen’s refusal to let
John pass through his dominions caused another year’s delay;[422] but
at the close of 1151 John made his way through Scotland safe to his
destination.[423] In March 1152 he held a synod at Kells, in which
the diocesan and provincial system of the Irish Church was organized
upon lines which remained unaltered till the sixteenth century. The
episcopal sees were definitely fixed, and grouped under not two but
four archbishoprics. The primacy of all Ireland, with metropolitical
authority over Ulster and Meath, was assigned to Armagh; Tuam became
the metropolis of Connaught, Cashel of Munster; while the rivalry
of Armagh and Canterbury for the spiritual obedience of the Ostmen
was settled by the grant of a fourth pallium, with metropolitical
jurisdiction over the whole of Leinster, to Bishop Gregory of Dublin
himself.[424]
[414] For S. Malachi see his _Life_ by S. Bernard, and Lanigan,
as above, pp. 59 _et seq._
[415] S. Bern., _Vita S. Malach._, c. 14 (Mabillon, vol. i.
cols. 671–672).
[416] _Ib._ c. 15 (col. 672).
[417] _Ibid._ Cf. Lanigan’s note, _Eccles. Hist. Ireland_, vol.
iv. pp. 110, 111.
[418] S. Bern., _Vita S. Malach._, c. 16 (as above, col. 674).
Lanigan, as above, p. 112.
[419] Lanigan, _Eccles. Hist. Ireland_, vol. iv. pp. 114, 115,
116.
[420] S. Bern., _Vita S. Malach._, cc. 30, 31 (Mabillon, vol.
i. cols. 687–692). Lanigan, as above, pp. 129, 130.
[421] S. Bern., _Vita S. Malach._, c. 16 (as above, cols. 673,
674).
[422] See above, vol. i. p. 380.
[423] Four Masters, a. 1151 (O’Donovan, vol. ii. p. 1095).
[424] On the synod of Kells see Four Masters, a. 1152 (as
above, p. 1101); Rog. Howden (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 212; and
Lanigan, as above, pp. 139–151.
It is plain that Bernard and Eugene aimed at applying to Ireland’s
troubles the same remedy which they were at that very time applying to
those of England. They hoped to build up an united nation and a strong
national government on the basis of a free and united national Church.
But the foundation-stone of their work for Ireland was scarcely laid
at Kells when both the wise master-builders were called away. On the
other hand, their labours for England were crowned by the accession
of the young Angevin king, whose restless temper, before he had been
nine months on his throne, was already seeking for another sphere of
activity still further beyond the sea; overwhelming the newly-crowned,
English-born Pope with suggestions of work and offers of co-operation
in every quarter of Christendom,[425] and proposing to begin at once
with the reduction of Ireland to political, ecclesiastical and social
order after the pattern of England and Normandy.[426] Adrian IV. would
have needed a wisdom and a foresight greater than those of S. Bernard
himself to enable him to resist the attractions of such an offer. The
so-called “Donation of Constantine”--a donation which is now known
to be forged, but whose genuineness no one in Adrian’s day had ever
thought of doubting--vested the ultimate sovereignty of all islands
in the Papacy.[427] The best and greatest Popes, from S. Gregory down
to Adrian himself, seem to have interpreted this as making them in
a special way responsible for the welfare of such outlying portions
of Christendom, and bound to leave no means untried for providing
them with a secure and orderly Christian government.[428] The action
of Alexander II. in sanctioning the Norman conquest of England was
a logical outcome of this principle, applied, however unwisely or
unjustly, to a particular case. But there was infinitely greater
justification for applying the same principle, in the same manner, to
the case of Ireland. Neither the labours of S. Malachi, nor the brief
visit of John Paparo, nor the stringent decrees passed at the synod
of Kells, could suffice to reform the inveterate evils of Ireland’s
ecclesiastical system, the yet more inveterate evils of her political
system, or the intellectual and moral decay which was the unavoidable
consequence of both. On the Pope, according to the view of the time,
lay the responsibility of bringing order out of this chaos--a chaos of
whose very existence he had but just become fully conscious, and which
no doubt looked to him far more hopeless than it really was. In such
circumstances Henry’s proposal must have sounded to Adrian like an
offer to relieve him of a great weight of care--to cut at one stroke a
knot which he was powerless to untie--to clear a path for him through a
jungle-growth of difficulties which he himself saw no way to penetrate
or overcome. John of Salisbury set forth the plan at Rome, in Henry’s
name, in the summer of 1155; he carried back a bull which satisfied all
Henry’s demands. Adrian bade the king go forth to his conquest “for
the enlargement of the Church’s borders, for the restraint of vice,
the correction of morals and the planting of virtue, the increase of
the Christian religion, and whatsoever may tend to God’s glory and the
well-being of that land;”[429] and he sent with the bull a gold ring,
adorned with an emerald of great price, as a symbol of investiture with
the government of Ireland.[430]
[425] Pet. Blois, Ep. clxviii. (Giles, vol. ii. pp. 116–118).
See above, vol. i. p. 497.
[426] “Significâsti siquidem nobis, fili in Christo carissime,
te Hiberniæ insulam, ad subdendum illum populum legibus et
vitiorum plantaria inde exstirpanda, velle intrare; et de
singulis domibus annuam unius denarii beato Petro velle solvere
pensionem; et jura ecclesiarum illius terræ illibata et integra
conservare.” Bull of Adrian IV. to Henry (“Laudabiliter”), in
Gir. Cambr. _Expugn. Hibern._, l. ii. c. 5 (Dimock, vol. v. p.
317), etc.
[427] “Nam omnes insulæ, de jure antiquo, ex donatione
Constantini qui eam fundavit et dotavit, dicuntur ad Romanam
ecclesiam pertinere.” Joh. Salisb. _Metalog._, l. iv. c. 42
(Giles, vol. v. p. 206).
[428] “Sane Hiberniam et omnes insulas, quibus sol justitiæ
Christus illuxit, et quæ documenta fidei Christianæ ceperunt,
ad jus beati Petri et sacrosanctæ Romanæ ecclesiæ, quod tua
etiam nobilitas recognoscit, non est dubium pertinere. Unde
tanto in eis libentius plantationem fidelem et germen gratum
Deo inserimus quanto id a nobis interno examine districtius
prospicimus exigendum.” Bull “Laudabiliter,” Gir. Cambr.
_Expugn. Hibern._, l. ii. c. 5 (Dimock, vol. v. p. 317).
[429] Bull “Laudabiliter,” Gir. Cambr. _Expugn. Hibern._, l.
ii. c. 5 (Dimock, vol. v. pp. 317, 318); R. Diceto (Stubbs),
vol. i. pp. 300, 301; Pet. Blois, Ep. ccxxxi. (Giles, vol.
ii. pp. 201, 202); Rymer, _Fœdera_, vol. i. p. 19; etc. Its
authenticity has been fiercely disputed, but is now admitted
by all Irish scholars. See proofs in Lanigan, _Eccles. Hist.
Ireland_, vol. iv. pp. 165, 166, and O’Callaghan’s edition of
_Macariæ Excidium_ (Irish Archæol. Soc.), pp. 242, 245, where
it is reprinted from Baronius’s copy, found by him in the
Vatican archives.
[430] Joh. Salisb. _Metalog._, l. iv. c. 42 (Giles, vol. v. p.
206).
This strange crusade was postponed for the moment, as we have seen,
in deference to objections made by the Empress Matilda.[431] Adrian’s
bull and ring were stored up in the English chancery, and there, long
after Adrian was dead, they still lay,[432] unused and, as it seemed,
forgotten amid an ever-increasing throng of more urgent cares and
labours which even Henry found to be quite as much as he was capable
of sustaining. At last, however, the course of political events in
Ireland itself took a turn which led almost irresistibly to a revival
of his long-forsaken project. Two years before Henry’s accession Dermot
Mac-Murrough, king of Leinster, had made a raid upon the district of
Breffny in Connaught, on the borders of Ulster and Meath, and carried
off Dervorgil, the wife of its chieftain Tighernan O’Ruark.[433] From
that hour Tighernan’s vengeance never slept. During the next fourteen
years, while Murtogh O’Lochlainn was striving for the mastery first
against the veteran Terence O’Conor and after Terence’s death with
his son Rory or Roderic, the swords of the men of Breffny were thrown
alternately into either scale, as their chieftain saw a hope of
securing the aid of either monarch to avenge him of his enemy.[434]
In 1166 the crisis came. Murtogh drew upon himself the wrath of his
people by blinding the king of Uladh, for whose safety he was pledged
to the archbishop of Armagh; Ulster, Meath, Leinster and Dublin rose
against him all at once; he was defeated and slain in a great battle at
the Fews; the Ostmen of Dublin acknowledged Roderic as their king, and
all the princes of southern Ireland followed their example. Dermot’s
submission, however, was in vain; the first act of the new monarch was
to banish him from the realm.[435] The Leinstermen forsook him at once,
for their loyalty had long been alienated by his harsh government and
evil deeds.[436] Left alone to the justice of Roderic and the vengeance
of O’Ruark, he fled to Cork and thence took ship to Bristol. Here he
found shelter for a while in the priory of S. Augustine, under the
protection of its founder Robert Fitz-Harding;[437] at the close of the
year he made his way to Normandy, and thence, with some difficulty,
tracked Henry’s restless movements into the depths of Aquitaine,[438]
where he at last laid his appeal for succour at the feet of the English
king.
[431] Rob. Torigni, a. 1155. See above, vol. i. p. 431.
[432] Joh. Salisb. _Metalog._, l. iv. c. 42 (Giles, vol. v. p.
206).
[433] Four Masters, a. 1152 (O’Donovan, vol. ii. p. 1103).
Cf. Gir. Cambr., _Expugn. Hibern._, l. i. c. 1 (Dimock, vol.
v. pp. 225, 226), and the elaborately romantic account in the
Anglo-Norman Poem on the Conquest of Ireland, edited by M.
Francisque Michel, pp. 2–6. The two last-named authorities
represent this affair as the _immediate_ cause of Dermot’s
overthrow, and of all the consequent troubles. Chronology shews
this to be mere romance; yet, notwithstanding the criticisms
of some modern writers, there still seems to be some ground
for the earlier view which looked upon Dervorgil as a sort
of Irish Helen. If we follow carefully the thread of the
story in the Four Masters from 1153 to 1166 we can hardly
avoid the conclusion that throughout those years the most
important personage in Irish politics, the man whose action
turned the scale in nearly all the ups and downs of fortune
between Murtogh of Ulster and the kings of Connaught, was the
border-chieftain whose position made him the most dangerous of
foes and the most indispensable of allies--Tighernan O’Ruark;
and we can hardly help seeing in Dermot’s banishment the
vengeance less of Roderic O’Conor himself than of a supporter
whom Roderic could not afford to leave unsatisfied. On the
other hand, it is perfectly true that the opportunity for
executing that vengeance was given by the disaffection of
Dermot’s own subjects--and, as usual, more especially by the
rising of the Ostmen of Dublin.
[434] See Four Masters, a. 1153–1166 (as above, pp. 1107–1159).
[435] Four Masters, a. 1166 (O’Donovan, vol. ii. p. 1159–1163).
[436] Gir. Cambr. _Expugn. Hibern._, l. i. c. 1 (Dimock, vol.
v. pp. 225, 226). For specimens of his misdeeds see Four
Masters, a. 1141 (as above, p. 1065), and Ann. Clonmacnoise, a.
1135 (_ib._ p. 1051, note _f_).
[437] Anglo-Norm. Poem (Michel), p. 12.
[438] “In remotis et transmarinis Aquitannicæ Galliæ partibus.”
Gir. Cambr. as above (p. 227). Henry was in Aquitaine from
December 1166 till May 1167; see Eyton, _Itin. Hen. II._, pp.
103–106. The chase which he characteristically led the Irish
king is amusingly described in the Anglo-Norm. Poem (Michel),
p. 13:
“Bien est, seignurs, ke jo vus die Cum Dermod va par Normandie; Li rei
Henri va dunc quere, A munt, à val, avant, arere; Tant ad mandé et
enquis Que trové ad li rei Henris, A une cité l’ad trové, Que seignur
esteit clamé.”
On the last line the editor (notes, p. 168) remarks: “_Seignur_ (seigñ,
MS.)? Is it not: of which he was called lord?” One feels tempted to
suggest that it might be meant for the name of the place; but if so,
what can it be? Saintes?
At the crisis of his struggles with Thomas of Canterbury, with Louis
of France and with the rebel barons of Poitou, all that Henry could do
was to accept Dermot’s offer of homage and fealty,[439] promise to
send him help as soon as possible,[440] and furnish him with a letter
authorizing any loyal English, Norman, Welsh, Scottish or Angevin
subjects who might be so disposed to join the standard of the Irish
prince, as of a faithful vassal of their sovereign.[441] Another stay
of some weeks in Bristol[442] convinced Dermot that his best chance of
aid lay beyond the Severn. Wales was still in the main a Celtic land,
ruled in primeval Celtic fashion by native princes under little more
than nominal subjection to the king of England. The Norman conquest of
Wales, so far as Wales could be said to have been conquered at all,
had been effected not by the royal power but by the daring and prowess
of individual adventurers who did, indeed, seek the royal sanction for
their tenure of the lands which they had won, but who were scarcely
more amenable to the royal authority than their Welsh neighbours,
with whom they not unfrequently made common cause against it. It was
Robert of Bellême’s connexion with Wales, through his border-earldom
of Shrewsbury and his brother’s lordship of Pembroke, which had made
him so formidable to Henry I.; it was Robert of Gloucester’s tenure
of the great Welsh lordship of Glamorgan, even more than his English
honours, which had enabled him to act as an independent potentate
against Stephen. Another border-chieftain who played some part in the
civil war was Gilbert de Clare, whose father had received a grant of
Cardigan from Henry I. in 1107,[443] and upon whom Stephen in 1138
conferred the title of earl of Pembroke.[444] His son Richard appears
under the same title among the witnesses to Stephen’s proclamation
of the treaty of Wallingford in 1153;[445] the writers of the time,
however, usually describe him as earl of Striguil, a fortress which
seems to have occupied the site whence the ruins of Chepstow castle
now look down upon the Wye. His earldom of Pembroke, indeed, as one of
Stephen’s fictitious creations, must have been forfeited on Henry’s
accession; but the lord of Striguil was still a mighty man on the
South-Welsh border when in the spring of 1167 he promised to bring all
the forces which he could muster to aid in restoring Dermot, who in
return offered him his daughter’s hand, together with the succession to
his kingdom.[446] A promise of the town of Wexford and its adjoining
territory won a like assurance of aid from two half-brothers in whose
veins the blood of Norman adventurers was mingled with the ancient
royal blood of South-Wales: Maurice Fitz-Gerald, a son of Gerald
constable of Pembroke by his marriage with Nest, aunt of the reigning
prince Rees Ap-Griffith, and Robert Fitz-Stephen, son of the same Nest
by her second husband, Stephen constable of Cardigan.[447] Another
Pembrokeshire knight, Richard Fitz-Godoberd, volunteered to accompany
Dermot at once with a little band of Norman-Welsh followers.[448] With
these Dermot returned to Ireland in August 1167;[449] he was defeated
in a pitched battle with Roderic O’Conor and Tighernan O’Ruark;[450]
but in his own hereditary principality of Kinsellagh[451] he was safe;
there throughout the winter he lay hid at Ferns,[452] and thence, when
spring returned, he sent his bard Maurice Regan to claim from his Welsh
allies the fulfilment of their promises.[453]
[439] Gir. Cambr. _Expugn. Hibern._, l. i. c. 1 (Dimock, vol.
v. p. 227). Anglo-Norm. Poem (Michel), p. 15.
[440] Anglo-Norm. Poem, as above.
[441] Gir. Cambr. as above (pp. 227, 228).
[442] _Ib._ c. 2 (p. 228). He was at Bristol “quinzein u un
meins”; Anglo-Norm. Poem (Michel), p. 16.
[443] _Brut y Tywys._, a. 1107 (Williams, p. 105).
[444] Ord. Vit. (Duchesne, _Hist. Norm. Scriptt._), p. 917.
[445] Rymer, _Fœdera_, vol. i. p. 18. Richard de Clare became
known to later generations by the nickname of “Strongbow.” Its
use is convenient, as helping to avoid confusion with the other
Richards of the period; but it seems to have no contemporary
authority. See Mr. Dimock’s note, _Gir. Cambr._, vol. v. p.
228, note 4.
[446] Gir. Cambr. _Expugn. Hibern._, l. i. c. 2 (Dimock, vol.
v. p. 228). Anglo-Norm. Poem (Michel), p. 17.
[447] Gir. Cambr. as above (p. 229). The circumstances
of Fitz-Stephen’s enlistment illustrate the condition of
South-Wales at this time. He had been cast into prison three
years before by his cousin Rees, and at the moment of Dermot’s
arrival had just been released on condition of joining Rees in
an attack upon England. His Norman blood, however, was loyal
enough to revolt against the fulfilment of the condition; and
Rees, who had warmly espoused Dermot’s interest, was persuaded
to allow its exchange for service in Ireland. _Ibid._; cf.
Anglo-Norm. Poem (Michel), pp. 19, 20. For pedigree of Nest’s
descendants see Mr. Dimock’s edition of _Gir. Cambr. Opp._,
vol. v. App. B. to pref., pp. c, ci.
[448] Anglo-Norm. Poem (Michel), p. 21.
[449] About August 1, according to Gir. Cambr. _Expugn.
Hibern._, l. i. c. 2 (Dimock, vol. v. p. 229).
[450] Four Masters, a. 1167 (O’Donovan, vol. ii. pp.
1165–1167). Among the slain they mention “the son of the king
of Britain, who was the battle-prop of the island of Britain,
who had come across the sea in the army of Mac Murchadha.” This
can only mean a son or brother of Rees; but neither Gerald
nor the Welsh chronicles make any mention of such a person in
Ireland.
[451] The modern county of Wexford, or rather the diocese of
Ferns. The Four Masters (as above, p. 1165) say that Dermot
“returned from England with a force of Galls, and he took the
kingdom of Ui-Ceinnsealaigh.”
[452] Gir. Cambr. _Expugn. Hibern._, l. i. c. 2 (Dimock, vol.
v. p. 230).
[453] Anglo-Norm. Poem (Michel), p. 21.
In the first days of May[454] Robert Fitz-Stephen landed at Bannow,
between Wexford and Waterford, with thirty picked knights of his own
immediate following, and a body of auxiliaries to the number of sixty
men-at-arms and three hundred archers.[455] With him came three of
his nephews, Meiler Fitz-Henry, Miles Fitz-David[456] and Robert de
Barri;[457] and also a ruined knight called Hervey of Mountmorris,
uncle of Richard de Clare.[458] Next day an independent adventurer,
Maurice de Prendergast, arrived from Milford with ten more knights and
a band of archers.[459] Dermot himself came to meet them with some
five hundred Irishmen. The united force marched upon Wexford, and took
it in two days;[460] they then established their head-quarters at
Ferns,[461] and thence made an expedition into Ossory, whose chieftain
was specially hostile to Dermot. In spite of overwhelming odds, through
all the difficulties of an unknown country full of woods and marshes,
and traps laid against them by their skilful foes, the Norman-Welsh
knights and archers made their way into the heart of Ossory; and
a great battle ended in the rout of the Irish and the bringing of
two hundred heads to Dermot’s feet in his camp on the banks of the
Barrow.[462] A successful raid upon Offaly was followed by one upon
Glendalough, and a third upon Ossory again,[463] till in the following
year the state of affairs in Leinster had become threatening enough to
drive all the Irish princes and the Ostmen of Dublin into a confederacy
under Roderic O’Conor for the expulsion of the intruders.[464] Dermot
pledged himself to acknowledge Roderic as monarch of Ireland, and was
in his turn acknowledged by Roderic as king of Leinster on condition
that he should dismiss his foreign allies.[465] The agreement was
however scarcely made when Maurice Fitz-Gerald landed at Wexford with
some hundred and forty men;[466] these at once joined Dermot in an
expedition against Dublin, and harried the surrounding country till
the citizens were reduced to promise obedience.[467] Early in the next
year Dermot’s son-in-law Donell O’Brien, king of Limerick or Northern
Munster, succeeded by the help of Robert Fitz-Stephen in throwing off
the authority of Roderick O’Conor.[468] Encouraged by these successes,
Dermot now began to aspire in his turn to the monarchy of all
Ireland;[469] but his auxiliaries were numerically insufficient; and
the one from whom he had expected most had as yet failed to appear at
all.
[454] Gir. Cambr. _Expugn. Hibern._, l. i. c. 3 (as above). All
the later Irish historians, as well as Lord Lyttelton and Mr.
Dimock (_ib._ margin) date the arrival of Fitz-Stephen in May
1169. The reason apparently is that, as far as Dermot and his
English auxiliaries are concerned, the year 1168 is a blank in
the Four Masters, while under 1169 they say: “The fleet of the
Flemings came from England in the army of Mac Murchadha, _i.e._
Diarmaid, to contest the kingdom of Leinster for him; they were
seventy heroes clad in coats of mail.” But seeing that in the
following year, 1170, they for the first time mention Robert
Fitz-Stephen, and represent him as coming over with Richard
of Striguil (O’Donovan, vol. ii. pp. 1173–1175), it is by no
means evident that the foregoing entry has any reference to
him. It may just as well apply to Maurice Fitz-Gerald, who
certainly followed him after an interval of some months at
least. Gerald (as above, c. 2, p. 229) says that Fitz-Stephen
and Fitz-Gerald both promised, in the summer of 1167, to join
Dermot “cum zephyris et hirundine primâ.” Maurice undoubtedly
made a long delay; but there is not a word to shew that Robert
did otherwise than fulfil his engagement to the letter. Nay,
Gerald pointedly introduces him (_ib._ c. 3, p. 230) as “nec
promissionis immemor nec fidei contemptor.” He also tells
us (c. 2, _ibid._) that Dermot had _wintered_ at Ferns. Why
then are we to assume that by “wintered” he means “wintered,
summered, and wintered again”? What could Dermot possibly have
been doing there for more than twenty months?
[455] Gir. Cambr. as above, c. 3 (p. 230). For account of
Fitz-Stephen himself see _ib._ c. 26 (pp. 271, 272).
[456] Anglo-Norm. Poem (Michel), p. 22. On Meiler see Gir.
Cambr. as above, l. ii. c. 9 (pp. 324, 325); and for pedigree,
Mr. Dimock’s App. B. to pref. (_ib._ pp. c., ci.).
[457] Gir. Cambr. as above, l. i. c. 3 (Dimock, vol. v. p.
232). Cf. App. B. to pref., _ib._ p. c.
[458] Gir. Cambr. as above, l. i. c. 3 (p. 230). See also l.
ii. c. 11 (pp. 327, 328).
[459] Gir. Cambr. _Expugn. Hibern._, l. i. c. 3 (Dimock, vol.
v. p. 232).
[460] _Ibid._ (pp. 232, 233). Anglo-Norm. Poem (Michel), pp.
24, 25.
[461] Anglo-Norm. Poem (Michel), pp. 25, 26.
[462] Gir. Cambr. as above, c. 4 (p. 234). Cf. the long account
in Anglo-Norm. Poem (Michel), pp. 27–38.
[463] Anglo-Norm. Poem (Michel), pp. 42–51.
[464] Roderic, in 1169, met the northern chieftains at Tara,
thence marched to Dublin, and afterwards proceeded into
Leinster; and Tighernan O’Ruark, Dermot king of Meath, and the
Ostmen of Dublin “went to meet the men of Munster, Leinster and
Osraigh” [Ossory], “and they set nothing by the Flemings.” Four
Masters, a. 1169 (O’Donovan, vol. ii. p. 1173).
[465] Gir. Cambr. as above, c. 10 (p. 244).
[466] Ten knights, thirty “arcarii” or mounted archers, and
about a hundred “sagittarii pedestres.” _Ib._ c. 11 (pp. 244,
245).
[467] _Ibid._ (p. 245).
[468] Gir. Cambr. _Expugn. Hibern._, l. i. c. 11 (Dimock,
vol. v. p. 245). The date, 1170, comes from the Four Masters
(O’Donovan, vol. ii. p. 1175), who however do not mention
Fitz-Stephen’s share in the matter.
[469] Gir. Cambr. as above, c. 12 (p. 246).
The history of Richard of Striguil is far from clear. From the number
of troops which eventually accompanied him to Ireland it is evident
that he had been during these two years actively preparing for his
expedition; and it may even be that the extent of his preparations
had drawn upon him the suspicions of King Henry. We only know that,
for some cause or other, he was now a ruined man; his lands were
forfeited to the Crown;[470] and he seems to have lingered on, absorbed
in a desperate effort to regain Henry’s favour, and clinging to his
lost home with a feeling that if he once turned his back upon it, he
would never be allowed to see it again. A letter from Dermot, telling
of the successes of his party in Leinster and renewing his former
offers, forced him into action.[471] He made a last appeal to the
king, intreating either for restoration of his lands or for the royal
license to go and repair his fortunes elsewhere. Henry ironically bade
him go, and he went.[472] On S. Bartholomew’s eve, 1170, he landed at
Waterford with twelve hundred men;[473] next day he was joined by
Raymond “the Fat,” a young warrior whom he had sent over three months
before[474] with ten knights and seventy archers, and who with this
small force had contrived to beat back an assault of three thousand
Irishmen of Decies and Ostmen of Waterford upon his camp of wattle and
thatch, hastily thrown up on the rocky promontory of Dundonulf.[475]
On August 25 Richard and Raymond attacked Waterford; three assaults in
one day carried both town and citadel;[476] seven hundred citizens were
slaughtered,[477] and the officers of the fortress, whose names tell
of northern blood, were made prisoners.[478] A few days later Richard
was married at Waterford to Dermot’s daughter Eva.[479] He then joined
his father-in-law in a circuitous march across the hills and through
Glendalough,[480] whereby they avoided a great host which Roderic had
gathered at Clondalkin to intercept them, and arrived in safety on S.
Matthew’s day beneath the walls of Dublin.[481] Dermot sent his bard
to demand the instant surrender of the town, with thirty hostages for
its fidelity. A dispute arose, probably between the Irish and Danish
inhabitants, as to the selection of the hostages;[482] Archbishop
Laurence was endeavouring to compose the difficulty,[483] and Hasculf
Thorgils’ son, a chieftain of northern blood who commanded the citadel,
had actually promised to surrender it on the morrow,[484] when a sudden
attack made by Raymond the Fat on one side and by a knight called
Miles Cogan on the other carried the town before the leaders of either
party knew what had happened.[485] A second rush won the citadel;
Hasculf escaped by sea and took refuge in the Orkneys;[486] Dublin was
sacked,[487] and left throughout the winter under the command of Miles
Cogan,[488] while Richard of Striguil was guarding Waterford against
the men of Munster,[489] and Dermot, from his old head-quarters at
Ferns,[490] was making raid after raid upon Meath and Breffny.[491]
[470] The cause of Richard’s disgrace seems to be nowhere
stated, except by William of Newburgh. He has (l. ii. c. 26;
Howlett, vol. i. pp. 167, 168), as usual, an independent
version of the whole affair. According to him, Richard’s
chief motive for going to Ireland was to escape from his
creditors, he being deep in debt; he went in defiance of an
express prohibition from Henry, and it was on hearing of his
victories--_i.e._ some time in the latter part of 1170--that
Henry confiscated his estates. Dugdale (_Baronage_, vol. i. p.
208) gives 1170 as the date of the forfeiture, on the authority
of a MS. in the Bodleian library. But this is irreconcileable
with the very circumstantial story of Gerald. Gerv. Cant.
(Stubbs), vol. i. p. 234, dates the forfeiture three years
before Henry’s visit to Ireland, _i.e._ 1168.
[471] Gir. Cambr. _Expugn. Hibern._, l. i. c. 12 (as above, pp.
246, 247).
[472] _Ib._ cc. 12, 13 (pp. 247, 248). Cf. Gerv. Cant. as above.
[473] Gir. Cambr. _Expugn. Hibern._, l. i. c. 16 (Dimock, vol.
v. p. 254). Anglo-Norm. Poem (Michel), p. 72. The latter gives
the number of troops as fifteen hundred; Gerald makes them two
hundred knights and a thousand foot-men.
[474] So says Gerald, as above, c. 13 (p. 248); but Mr. Dimock
(_ib._ note 2) thinks this too early.
[475] _Ibid._ (pp. 248, 249). There is however a less heroic
version of this affair in the Anglo-Norman Poem (Michel), pp.
68–70. We are there told that Raymond and his men had provided
themselves with food by “lifting” all the cattle in the
neighbourhood and penning them within the camp. At the sound
of arms these creatures rushed out in a wild stampede, and it
was this which put the assailants to flight. On the site of
Dundonulf see Mr. Dimock’s _Glossary_ to Gir. Cambr., vol. v.
p. 421.
[476] Gir. Cambr. as above, c. 16 (_ib._ pp. 254, 255).
[477] Four Masters, a. 1170 (O’Donovan, vol. ii. p. 1177).
[478] Ragnald and “the two Sihtrics”; Gir. Cambr. as above (p.
255). The Four Masters (as above) give to the commandant of
the citadel--which Gerald calls “Ragnald’s tower”--the name of
Gillemaire. In the Anglo-Norm. Poem (Michel), p. 72, we read
that “les plus poanz de la cité” were Regenald and “Smorch.”
[479] Gir. Cambr. as above. Anglo-Norm. Poem (Michel), p. 73.
Four Masters, a. 1170 (as above).
[480] Gir. Cambr. as above, c. 17 (p. 256).
[481] Anglo-Norm. Poem (Michel), pp. 75–78. Cf. Gir. Cambr.
and Four Masters as above. The latter say that “there was a
challenge of battle between them” (_i.e._ between Roderic
and the foreigners) “for three days, until lightning burned
Ath-Cliath” [Dublin].
[482] Anglo-Norm. Poem (Michel), pp. 79, 80.
[483] Gir. Cambr. _Expugn. Hibern._, l. i. c. 17 (Dimock, vol.
v. p. 256).
[484] Anglo-Norm. Poem (Michel), p. 80. He is there called
“Hesculf”; in p. 79, “Mac Turkil Esculf.” In the Four Masters,
a. 1170 (O’Donovan, vol. ii. p. 1177), he is “Asgall, son of
Raghnall, son of Turcaill.” Gir. Cambr. (as above) calls him
simply “Hasculphus.”
[485] Gir. Cambr. as above (pp. 256, 257). Anglo-Norm. Poem
(Michel), pp. 80, 81.
[486] Four Masters, as above. Gir. Cambr. as above (p. 257).
[487] Anglo-Norm. Poem (Michel), pp. 81, 82.
[488] Gir. Cambr. as above. Anglo-Norm. Poem (Michel), p. 82.
[489] “A victory was gained by the son of Cormac, grandson of
Carthach, and the people of Desmond, over the knights who were
left to defend Port Lairge” [_i.e._ Waterford]. Four Masters,
as above. Earl Richard returned thither early in October;
Anglo-Norm. Poem (Michel), p. 82.
[490] Anglo-Norm. Poem (Michel), p. 83.
[491] Four Masters, a. 1170 (as above, pp. 1177, 1179).
In vain did the Irish clergy meet in synod at Armagh and strive
to avert the wrath which seemed to have been revealed against
their country by a solemn decree for the liberation of the English
slaves with whom, even yet, the houses of the Irish chieftains were
filled.[492] One sentence from an Irish record of the next year may
serve to illustrate the condition of the country: “Seven predatory
excursions were made by the Ui-Maine into Ormond from Palm Sunday till
Low Sunday.”[493] It made but little difference when at Whitsuntide
Dermot, “by whom a trembling sod was made of all Ireland,” died at
Ferns “of an insufferable and unknown disease--without a will, without
penance, without the Body of Christ, without unction, as his evil
deeds deserved.”[494] At that very moment a wiking fleet gathered from
all the lands where the old sea-rovers’ life still lingered--Norway,
the Hebrides, Orkney, Man--appeared in Dublin bay under the command
of Hasculf, the exiled leader of the Ostmen, and of a northern chief
whose desperate valour won him the title of “John the Furious”--in the
English speech of that day, John the Wode.[495] Something of the spirit
of the old northern sagas breathes again in the story of this, the last
wiking-fight ever fought upon the soil of the British isles. Bard and
historian alike tell of the mighty strokes dealt by the battle-axes
of John and his comrades,[496] and how they had almost hewed their
way into Dublin once more, when a well-timed sally of the besieged
caught them at unawares in the rear;[497]--how an Irish chief named
Gillamocholmog, whom Miles Cogan had posted on a neighbouring hill,
chivalrously bidding him watch the course of the battle and join the
winning side, rushed down with his followers at the critical moment and
helped to complete the rout of the Ostmen;[498]--how John the Wode fell
by the hand of Miles Cogan;[499]--how Hasculf was taken prisoner by
Miles’s brother Richard and brought back to be reserved for ransom, and
how his hot wiking-blood spoke in words of defiance which goaded his
captors to strike off his head.[500] Fifteen hundred northmen fell upon
the field; five hundred more were drowned in trying to regain their
ships.[501] From the shores of Ireland, as from those of England, the
last northern fleet was driven away by Norman swords.
[492] Gir. Cambr. as above, c. 18 (p. 258).
[493] Four Masters, a. 1171 (O’Donovan, vol. ii. p. 1185). The
Ui-Maine were a tribe in south-eastern Connaught.
[494] _Ibid._ (p. 1183). Cf. Ann. Loch Cé, a. 1171 (Hennessy,
vol. i. p. 145). The date, “circa Kalendas Maiæ,” is given by
Gir. Cambr. _Expugn. Hibern._, l. i. c. 20 (Dimock, vol. v. p.
263).
[495] “Duce Johanne agnomine the Wode,” Gir. Cambr. as above,
c. 21 (p. 264). “Johan le Devé,” Anglo-Norm. Poem (Michel),
p. 108. It is there added that, “solum les Yrreis,” he was
a nephew of the king of “Norwiche,” _i.e._ Norway. The Four
Masters, a. 1171 (as above, p. 1185) describe him as “Eoan, a
Dane from the Orkney Islands.”
[496] Anglo-Norm. Poem (Michel), p. 116. Gir. Cambr. as above.
[497] Anglo-Norm. Poem (Michel), pp. 111–114. Gir. Cambr. as
above.
[498] Anglo-Norm. Poem (Michel), pp. 109–111, 115.
[499] _Ib._ p. 117.
[500] Anglo-Norm. Poem (Michel), pp. 117, 118. (On his captor
cf. _ib._ p. 111). Gir. Cambr. _Expugn. Hibern._, l. i. c. 21
(Dimock, vol. v. pp. 264, 265).
[501] Anglo-Norm. Poem (Michel), pp. 116, 118. The date of this
siege is given by Gir. Cambr. (as above, p. 263) as “eâdem
fere tempestate” (_i.e._ about the time of Dermot’s death),
“circa Pentecosten.” This would be at the beginning of May. In
the Poem it comes much later in the year. There seems however
no reason to upset Gerald’s arrangement of events. See Mr.
Dimock’s remarks, Gir. Cambr. as above, note 2.
The garrison of Dublin fought in truth even more desperately than
their assailants; for they were fighting for their all. A remonstrance
addressed by some of the Irish princes to the king of England against
the aggressions of his subjects[502] can hardly have been needed to
open Henry’s eyes to the danger gathering for him and his realm beyond
the western sea. This little band of adventurers, almost all bound
together by the closest ties of kindred,[503] were conquering Leinster
neither for its native sovereign nor for their own, but were setting
up a new feudal state independent of all royal control, under the
leadership of a disgraced English baron. Such a state, if suffered
to grow unhindered, would soon be far more dangerous to England than
to Ireland, for it would be certain to play in every struggle of the
feudal principle against the royal authority in England the part
which the Ostmen had played of old in the struggles of the Danelaw.
At the beginning of the year 1171 therefore Henry issued an edict
prohibiting all further intermeddling of his subjects in Ireland,
and bidding those who were already there either return before Easter
or consider themselves banished for life.[504] Not a man went back;
Richard of Striguil sent Raymond over to Normandy with a written
protest to the king, pleading that his conquests had been undertaken
with the royal sanction and that he was ready to place them at the
king’s disposal;[505] but the “Geraldines,” as the kindred of Maurice
Fitz-Gerald called themselves, seem to have at once accepted their
sentence of exile and resolved to hold by their swords alone the lands
which those swords had won.[506]
[502] Gerv. Cant. (Stubbs), vol. i. pp. 234, 235.
[503] The close kindred of these Norman-Welsh settlers in
Ireland is a very remarkable feature of their settlement.
Robert Fitz-Stephen and Maurice Fitz-Gerald were half-brothers
(Gir. Cambr. as above, c. 2, p. 229); the two Fitz-Henrys,
Raymond the Fat, Miles Fitz-David and Robert de Barri were
their nephews (_ib._ cc. 4, 13, and l. ii. c. 10, pp. 234, 248,
335); Richard of Striguil was nephew to Hervey of Mountmorris
(_ib._ l. i. c. 3, p. 230), who afterwards married a daughter
of Maurice Fitz-Gerald, while Maurice’s eldest son married
Richard’s daughter Alina (_ib._ l. ii. c. 4, p. 314); another
daughter of Richard married his constable Robert de Quincy
(Anglo-Norm. Poem, Michel, p. 130); and his sister Basilea
became the wife of Raymond the Fat (_ib._ p. 145, and Gir.
Cambr. as above, l. ii. c. 3, pp. 312, 313).
[504] Gir. Cambr. _Expugn. Hibern._, l. i. c. 19 (Dimock, vol.
v. p. 259).
[505] _Ibid._ Cf. Gerv. Cant. (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 235. Raymond
was back again in time to share in the defence of Dublin
against Roderic O’Conor--_i.e._ by the end of May or beginning
of June. Gerald says he had to seek the king in “Aquitanic
Gaul,” but this time the phrase cannot be taken literally.
Eyton’s _Itinerary_ shews plainly that throughout 1171 Henry
never was further south than the Norman, or, at the utmost, the
Breton border.
[506] This seems to be the key-note of a speech which Gerald
puts into Maurice’s mouth; _Expugn. Hibern._, l. i. c. 23 (as
above, pp. 266, 267).
The hostility of the Ostmen had apparently ended with Hasculf’s defeat;
thenceforth they seem to have made common cause with the new-comers in
whom they were perhaps already beginning to recognize the stirrings of
kindred blood. But, on the other hand, the position of Earl Richard
and his comrades had been seriously weakened by Dermot’s death. The
king of Leinster’s devise of his kingdom to his son-in-law was, like
the grants which he had made to the Geraldines and like his own homage
to King Henry, void in Irish law. In Irish eyes his death removed the
last shadow of excuse for the presence of the strangers on Irish soil;
their allies rapidly fell away;[507] and by midsummer the whole country
rose against them as one man. Roderic O’Conor mustered the forces
of the north; Archbishop Laurence of Dublin, whose family occupied
an influential position in Leinster, called up the tribes of the
south; while a squadron of thirty ships was hired from Jarl Godred of
Man.[508] The aim of the expedition was to blockade Dublin, whither
Earl Richard had now returned, and where almost all the leaders of
the invasion, except Robert Fitz-Stephen and Hervey of Mountmorris,
were now gathered together. The whole Irish land-force amounted to
sixty thousand men; half of these were under the immediate command of
Roderic, encamped at Castle-Knock;[509] Mac-Dunlevy, the chieftain of
Uladh, planted his banner on the old battle-field of Clontarf;[510]
Donell O’Brien, the king of North Munster, posted himself at
Kilmainham; and Murtogh Mac-Murrough, a brother of Dermot, whom
Roderic had set up as king of Leinster in 1167, took up his position
at Dalkey.[511] To these were added, for the northern division, the
men of Breffny and of East Meath under Tighernan O’Ruark, those of
Oiriel or southern Ulster under Murtogh O’Carroll,[512] and those of
West Meath under Murtogh O’Melaghlin; while the archbishop’s call had
brought up the whole strength of Leinster except the men of Wexford and
Kinsellagh;[513] and even these, as the sequel proved, were preparing
to fight the same battle on other ground.
[507] Anglo-Norm. Poem (Michel), p. 83.
[508] Gir. Cambr. as above, cc. 22, 24 (pp. 265, 266, 269).
This is the archbishop afterwards canonized as S. Laurence
O’Toole.
[509] Cf. Anglo-Norm. Poem (Michel), p. 84, with Gerald’s
reckoning of Roderic’s own forces at thirty thousand. _Expugn.
Hibern._, l. i. c. 24 (Dimock, vol. v. p. 268).
[510] “A Clontarf ficha sa banere.” Anglo-Norm. Poem, as above.
[511] _Ibid._
[512] Four Masters, a. 1171 (O’Donovan, vol. ii. p. 1185). Gir.
Cambr. _Expugn. Hibern._, l. i. c. 24 (Dimock, vol. v. p. 269).
[513] Gir. Cambr. as above.
For nearly two months[514] the English knights were thus blockaded in
Dublin. Their sole hope of relief was in Robert Fitz-Stephen, who had
been left in command at Wexford. They were all but starving when Donell
Kavanagh, a half-brother of Eva Mac-Murrough and a devoted adherent
of her husband, slipped into the city with tidings that Wexford had
risen; Robert Fitz-Stephen was blockaded in the little fort of Carrick
by the townsfolk and the men of Kinsellagh, to the number of three
thousand; unless he could be succoured within three days, all would be
over with him and his men.[515] Earl Richard at once called a council
of war. It comprised nearly all the leaders of the English and Welsh
forces in Ireland:--Richard of Striguil himself; Maurice Fitz-Gerald
with three of his gallant nephews, Meiler Fitz-Henry, Miles Fitz-David
and Raymond the Fat; Miles Cogan, the captor of Dublin and its chief
defender in the recent siege; Maurice de Prendergast,[516] who two
years before had thrown up the adventure and gone home in disgust at
the faithlessness of his allies,[517] but had returned, it seems, in
Earl Richard’s train, and was yet to leave, alone of all the invading
band, an honoured memory among the Irish people;[518] and some fourteen
others.[519] They decided upon sending Maurice de Prendergast and
Archbishop Laurence to Roderic with an offer of surrender on condition
that Richard of Striguil should hold the kingdom of Leinster under
Roderic as overlord. Roderic rejected the proposal with scorn; the
knights might hold what the earlier pirates had held--Dublin, Waterford
and Wexford; not another rood of Irish land should be granted to the
earl and his company; and if they refused these terms, Dublin should be
stormed on the morrow.[520] That afternoon the little garrison--scarce
six hundred in all[521]--sallied forth and surprized Roderic’s camp
while he and his men were bathing; Roderic himself escaped with great
difficulty; fifteen hundred Irishmen were slain, many of them perishing
in the water; while at sunset the victors returned, after a long
pursuit, with scarcely a man missing, and laden with provisions enough
to supply all Dublin for a year.[522] The rest of the besieging army
dispersed at once, and the very next morning Earl Richard was free to
set out for the relief of Robert Fitz-Stephen.[523]
[514] _Ib._ c. 22 (p. 266). This would bring the beginning of
the siege to Midsummer at latest, for it was certainly over by
the middle of August. The Four Masters (as above) make it last
only a fortnight.
[515] Gir. Cambr. as above. The Anglo-Norm. Poem (Michel), pp.
85, 86, gives a very hasty and confused sketch of this Wexford
affair.
[516] Earl Richard, Meiler, the two Mileses and Maurice
Prendergast are mentioned in the Anglo-Norm. Poem (Michel), pp.
86, 87. Raymond is named by Gerald, _Expugn. Hibern._, l. i.
c. 22 (Dimock, vol. v. p. 266), as “a curiâ jam reversus”; his
presence also appears later in the Poem. Gerald alone mentions
the presence of Maurice Fitz-Gerald, whom the Poem never names
throughout the siege; while Gerald never names Maurice de
Prendergast. Is it possible that he has transferred to his
own uncle the exploits of his namesake? But if so, where can
Fitz-Gerald have been?
[517] Anglo-Norm. Poem (Michel), pp. 51–67.
[518] _Ib._ pp. 97–103.
[519] The Poem (as above), p. 87, reckons them at twenty in
all, and names four besides those already mentioned, viz.,
Robert de Quincy, Walter de Riddlesford, Richard de Marreis and
Walter Bluet.
[520] Anglo-Norm. Poem (Michel), pp. 87–90.
[521] The Anglo-Norm. Poem (Michel), pp. 90, 91, describes the
force as composed of three divisions, each consisting of forty
knights, sixty archers and a hundred “serjanz.” Gir. Cambr. as
above, c. 24 (p. 268), makes the three bands of knights contain
respectively twenty, thirty and forty, each accompanied by as
many archers and citizens as could be spared from guarding the
walls.
[522] Gir. Cambr. _Expugn. Hibern._, l. i. c. 24 (Dimock, vol.
v. pp. 268, 269). Anglo-Norm. Poem (Michel), pp. 90–94. Cf. the
brief account in Four Masters, a. 1171 (O’Donovan, vol. ii. p.
1185).
[523] Gir. Cambr. as above (pp. 269, 270). Anglo-Norm. Poem
(Michel), p. 95.
He was however already too late. Three thousand men of Wexford and
Kinsellagh, finding that they could make no impression by fair means
upon Robert Fitz-Stephen shut up in the fort of Carrick with five
knights and a handful of archers, at length had recourse to fraud. Two
bishops and some monks were made to stand under the walls of the fort
and swear upon relics brought for the purpose that Dublin was taken,
the earl and his comrades slain, and Roderic on the march to Wexford at
the head of his victorious host. On a promise of liberty to escape to
Wales[524] Robert in his despair surrendered, only to see his little
band of humbler followers slaughtered to a man, and himself and his
five knights cast into chains. The men of Wexford then fired their
town and took refuge with their captives on the neighbouring island of
Beg-Erin,[525] whence they sent word to Richard of Striguil that if
he dared to approach them he should immediately receive the heads of
his six friends.[526] Notwithstanding this disaster at Wexford, and
the failure of a plot to entrap the chief of Ossory--a well-deserved
failure, due to the loyalty of Maurice de Prendergast[527]--the
invaders were rapidly gaining ground. The king of North Munster, who
was married to Eva’s sister, again forsook Roderic and made alliance
with his English brother-in-law;[528] an attempt made by Tighernan
O’Ruark to renew the siege of Dublin ended in failure;[529] and at
last Murtogh of Kinsellagh was reduced to make a surrender of his
principality into Richard’s hands and accept a re-grant of it from him
as overlord, while Donell Kavanagh was invested on like terms with the
remaining portion of Leinster.[530]
[524] Gir. Cambr. as above, c. 25 (pp. 270, 271).
[525] _Ibid._ (p. 271). Anglo-Norm. Poem (Michel), pp. 85, 97.
[526] Gir. Cambr. as above, c. 28 (p. 273).
[527] See the story in Anglo-Norm. Poem (Michel), pp. 97–103.
[528] _Ib._ pp. 97, 98.
[529] Four Masters, a. 1171 (as above, pp. 1185–1187). Gir.
Cambr. as above, c. 29 (p. 274).
[530] Anglo-Norm. Poem (Michel), p. 103.
The earl’s triumphs, however, met with an abrupt check from over
sea. His uncle Hervey of Mountmorris, who had gone to plead his
cause with the king after the failure of Raymond’s mission, returned
to Waterford[531] with tidings that Henry himself was on his way
to Ireland and required the self-styled earl of Leinster to go and
speak with him without delay. Richard hurried over to Wales,[532]
met Henry on the border,[533] and was forgiven on condition that
he should surrender Dublin and the other coast towns absolutely
into the king’s hands and do him homage and fealty for the rest of
Leinster;[534] he then accompanied Henry into Pembrokeshire;[535]
where the royal fleet was assembling in Milford Haven. It consisted
of four hundred ships,[536] carrying a force of about four thousand
men, of whom some five hundred were knights and the rest archers,
mounted and unmounted.[537] The king embarked on the evening of
Saturday, October 16, and landed next day at Croch, eight miles from
Waterford.[538] On the morrow, S. Luke’s day, he entered the town of
Waterford;[539] there he was met by his seneschal William Fitz-Aldhelm,
his constable Humfrey de Bohun, Hugh de Lacy, Robert Fitz-Bernard,
and some other officers of his household whom he had sent over to
prepare for his coming.[540] The Irish of the district and the Ostmen
of the town, in the person of their chieftain Ragnald, made submission
to him as their sovereign;[541] while Richard of Striguil formally
surrendered the place into the king’s hands and did homage to him for
the earldom of Leinster.[542] The men of Wexford now, according to
an agreement which they had made with Henry while he was waiting for
a wind at Pembroke,[543] brought their captive Robert Fitz-Stephen
to his sovereign’s feet, to be by him dealt with as a rebel and a
traitor. Henry loaded him with reproaches and imprisoned him afresh,
but his anger was more assumed than real, and the captive was soon
released.[544] The submission of the English adventurers was followed
by that of the Irish princes. Dermot MacCarthy, king of Cork or South
Munster, was the first of them who came to Henry’s feet at Waterford,
swore him fealty, gave hostages and promised tribute.[545] On November
1[546] Henry advanced to Lismore, and thence, two days later, to
Cashel, where at the passage of the Suir he was met by the king of
Limerick or of Northern Munster, Donell O’Brien, with offers of tribute
and obedience. The lesser chieftains of southern Ireland followed the
example of the two kings; in three weeks from his arrival all Munster
was at his feet, and its coast-towns, Wexford, Waterford, Limerick and
Cork, were all in the custody of his own officers.[547] At Martinmas he
reached Dublin;[548] before Christmas he received hostages from all the
princes of Leinster and Meath, from Tighernan O’Ruark of Breffny, from
O’Carroll of Oiriel, and from the king of Uladh or eastern Ulster;[549]
his new vassals built him a dwelling of wattle or wicker-work, after
the manner of their country, outside the walls of Dublin, and there in
their midst he held his Christmas court.[550]
[531] Gir. Cambr. _Expugn. Hibern._, l. i. c. 28 (Dimock, vol.
v. p. 273). Hervey must have gone before Midsummer; he was
clearly not in Dublin during the second siege, and returned
shortly after its conclusion.
[532] _Ibid._ Anglo-Norm. Poem (Michel), pp. 105, 106.
[533] At Newnham in Gloucestershire, according to Gerald (as
above). The Anglo-Norm. Poem (p. 106), however, says they met
at Pembroke. This would make a difference of at least ten days
in the date. From the account of Henry’s movements in the _Brut
y Tywys._, a. 1171 (William, pp. 211–213), it seems that he
crossed the border about September 8 and reached Pembroke on
September 20.
[534] Gir. Cambr. as above. Cf. Will. Newb., l. ii. c. 26
(Howlett, vol. i. pp. 168, 169).
[535] _Brut y Tywys._, a. 1171 (Williams, p. 215).
[536] _Gesta Hen._ (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 25; Rog. Howden
(Stubbs), vol. ii. p. 29; Gerv. Cant. (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 235.
The Four Masters, a. 1171 (O’Donovan, vol. ii. p. 1187), and
Ann. Loch. Cé, a. 1171 (Hennessy, vol. i. p. 145), give the
number as two hundred and forty.
[537] Gerald (_Expugn. Hibern._, l. i. c. 30, Dimock, vol. v.
p. 275) reckons five hundred knights, with “arcariis [_var._
satellitibus equestribus] quoque et sagittariis multis.” The
Anglo-Norm. Poem (Michel), p. 123, makes the knights four
hundred, and a few lines later sums up the whole force as
“quatre mil Engleis.” Mr. W. Lynch (_View of Legal Inst. in
Ireland under Hen. II._, p. 2) argues from the payments for
arms, provisions, shipping, etc. recorded in the Pipe-Rolls
for 1171, that the army must have numerically “far exceeded
the force described in our printed historians.” He gives a
few details of these payments, extracted from the Pipe-Roll
in question (17 Hen. II., a. 1171); some more, from this and
the next year’s roll, maybe seen in Eyton, _Itin. Hen. II._,
pp. 161, 163. The host was no doubt composed almost wholly of
English tenants-in-chivalry; but whatever may have been its
numbers, there was a large proportion of these tenants who had
nothing to do with it except by paying its expenses next year
with a great scutage. See in Madox, _Hist. Exch._, vol. i. pp.
629–632, the extracts from Pipe Roll 18 Hen. II. “de scutagio
militum qui nec abierunt in Hyberniam nec denarios” (in some
cases “nec milites nec denarios”) “illuc miserunt.”
[538] _Gesta Hen._ (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 25; Rog. Howden
(Stubbs), vol. ii. p. 29. R. Diceto (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 348,
makes October 16 the day of Henry’s arrival in Ireland; Gerv.
Cant. (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 235, makes it “about S. Calixtus’s
day” (October 16 would be two days after). Gerald, _Expugn.
Hibern._, l. i. c. 30 (Dimock, vol. v. p. 275) makes him reach
Waterford “circa kalendas Novembris, die videlicet S. Lucæ.”
The Anglo-Norm. Poem (Michel, p. 123) turns this into “à la
Tusseinz”; the Four Masters, a. 1171 (O’Donovan, vol. ii. p.
1187) record his coming without any date at all; and the _Brut
y Tywys._ a. 1171 (Williams, p. 217), absurdly says he sailed
on Sunday, November 16. The Anglo-Norman poet seems to have
taken Croch--“à la Croiz” as he calls it--for the place of
embarkation.
[539] _Gesta Hen._, Rog. Howden and Gir. Cambr. as above.
[540] _Gesta Hen._ and Rog. Howden, as above. Anglo-Norm. Poem
(Michel), p. 124.
[541] _Gesta Hen._ as above. Rog. Howden (Stubbs), vol. ii. p.
30.
[542] Anglo-Norm. Poem (Michel), p. 124.
[543] See the curious story of their envoy’s arrival and
reception at Pembroke, _ib._ pp. 119–123.
[544] Gir. Cambr. _Expugn. Hibern._, l. i. cc. 31, 32 (Dimock,
vol. v. pp. 276, 277, 278). Anglo-Norm. Poem (Michel), pp. 125,
126.
[545] Gir. Cambr. as above, c. 31 (p. 277).
[546] Rog. Howden (Stubbs), vol. ii. p. 30, says he stayed at
Waterford fifteen days.
[547] Gir. Cambr. as above, cc. 31, 32 (pp. 277, 278). He adds
that Henry returned to Waterford, where he released Robert
Fitz-Stephen, and thence proceeded to Dublin. The Anglo-Norm.
Poem (Michel), pp. 126, 127, places this progress through
Cashel and Lismore in inverse order, after Henry’s first visit
to Dublin, and says nothing of a second visit to Waterford. Its
account is however much less circumstantial than Gerald’s. The
_Gesta Hen._ and Rog. Howden only name two places where Henry
stayed--Waterford and Dublin; and as they both say he reached
the latter at Martinmas, while Roger says he left Waterford
when he had been there a fortnight (_i.e._ on November 1),
Gerald’s story fills up the interval very well.
[548] _Gesta Hen._ (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 28. Rog. Howden (as
above), p. 32.
[549] Gerald (as above, c. 33, p. 278) enumerates the princes
who submitted at Dublin as follows: “Machelanus Ophelan
[O’Phelan], Machtalewi, Otuetheli [O’Toole], Gillemoholmoch
[Gillamocholmog of Fingal by Dublin--see above, p. 106],
Ocathesi [O’Casey], Ocaruel Urielensis [O’Carroll of Oiriel],
et Ororicius Medensis [O’Ruark]”. He then relates the
half-submission of Roderic of Connaught (of which more later),
and adds: “sic itaque, præter solos Ultonienses, subditi per
se singuli.” (_Ib._ p. 279.) He need not however have excepted
the Ulstermen; for the Ann. Loch Cé, a. 1171 (Hennessy, vol.
i. p. 145)--copying, it seems, the old Annals of Ulster (see
Four Masters, O’Donovan, vol. ii. p. 1187, note _c_, and
O’Kelly’s note to Lynch’s _Cambr. Evers._, vol. ii. p. 472,
note _d_)--say that Henry while at Dublin received hostages
from “Leinster, Meath, Breffny, Oiriel and Uladh.” This leaves
only Connaught and Aileach unsubdued. Gerv. Cant. (Stubbs, vol.
i. p. 235) and the _Gesta Hen._ (Stubbs, vol. i. p. 25) lump
all these submissions together, and the latter seems to place
them all, as well as the submission of the bishops, during
Henry’s stay in Waterford. Rog. Howden (Stubbs, vol. ii. p.
30) not only does the same still more distinctly, but he does
worse; he places the submission of the bishops first, and then
says that the lay princes submitted “exemplo clericorum.” It
is he, not Gerald or any one else, who is responsible for this
misrepresentation, which the champions of the Irish Church have
been justly denouncing ever since Dr. Lynch’s time.
[550] _Gesta Hen._ (Stubbs), vol. i. pp. 28, 29. Rog. Howden
(Stubbs), vol. ii. p. 32. Gerv. Cant. (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 236.
Gir. Cambr. _Expugn. Hibern._, l. i. c. 33 (Dimock, vol. v. p.
279).
Early in November two royal chaplains had been despatched to summon the
Irish bishops to a council and claim their submission.[551] We hear
not a word of Pope Adrian’s bull; but we can hardly doubt that its
existence and its contents were in some way or other certified to the
Irish prelates before, in response to the royal mandate, they met in
council at Cashel in the first weeks of 1172.[552] The archbishop of
Armagh absented himself on the plea of extreme age and infirmity;[553]
all his episcopal brethren, however, made full submission to Henry,
pledged themselves to conform in all things to the pattern of the
English Church,[554] gave written promises to support the English king
and his heirs as lawful sovereigns of Ireland,[555] and joined with
him in sending to Rome a report of his proceedings and their own.[556]
[551] _Gesta Hen._ (as above), p. 28. Rog. Howden (as above),
p. 31. The messengers were Nicolas, a chaplain of the king, and
Ralf archdeacon of Landaff. They were sent out “circa festum S.
Leonardi” (November 6). _Gesta Hen._ as above.
[552] The _Gesta Hen._ and Rog. Howden as above, both place
this council before Christmas 1171. Gir. Cambr. as above, c. 35
(p. 281), and R. Diceto (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 351, date it 1172.
It seems better to follow them, for though Gerald is certainly
no chronologist, he is the only writer who gives a detailed and
rational account of this synod; and the summary given by R.
Diceto also shews a fair knowledge of the subject, though he
makes the synod meet at Lismore instead of Cashel.
[553] Gir. Cambr. as above (p. 283). He adds that the primate
afterwards went to Dublin and there submitted to Henry; but see
Dr. Lanigan’s comment, _Eccles. Hist. Ireland_, vol. iv. pp.
205, 206.
[554] Gir. Cambr. as above. R. Diceto (as above), pp. 350, 351.
[555] They sent him “litteras suas in modum cartæ extra
sigillum pendentes:” _Gesta Hen._ (as above), p. 26. Cf. Rog.
Howden (as above), pp. 30, 31. This is however placed by both
writers some time before the council. See above, p. 114,
note 6{549}.
[556] Rog. Howden (Stubbs), vol. ii. p. 31, says that Henry
sent copies of the bishops’ letters of submission to Rome.
Dr. Lanigan (_Eccles. Hist. Ireland_, vol. iv. pp. 217, 218)
objects that this can only have been done some time later,
as Henry’s communications were cut off by the weather. But
this is not borne out either by the words of R. Diceto
(Stubbs, vol. i. p. 350) or by those of Gerald (_Expugn.
Hibern._, l. i. c. 36, Dimock, vol. v. p. 284). They both
say distinctly that a persistent contrary wind hindered all
communication _from England to Ireland_. For communication
in the opposite direction such a wind would surely be most
favourable. Moreover, it is quite certain that the Pope did,
some time before September 20, 1172, receive reports of Henry’s
proceedings in Ireland both from Henry himself and from the
Irish bishops, for he says so in three letters--one addressed
to Henry, another to the kings and bishops of Ireland, and the
third to the legate, Christian bishop of Lismore--all dated
Tusculum, September 20, and all printed in Hearne’s _Liber
Niger_, vol. i. pp. 42–48, as well as in the notes to _Macariæ
Excidium_ (O’Callaghan), pp. 255–262.
In all Ireland the king of Connaught was now the only ruler, spiritual
or temporal, who had not submitted to Henry.[557] Trusting to the
inaccessible nature of his country,[558] Roderic had at first refused
all dealings with the invader, declaring that he himself was the sole
rightful monarch of Ireland.[559] It seems however that he afterwards
came to a meeting with William Fitz-Aldhelm and Hugh de Lacy by the
banks of the Shannon, on the frontier of Connaught and Meath, and
there promised tribute and fealty like his fellow-kings.[560] The
promise was however worthless until confirmed by his personal homage;
and this Henry soon perceived was only to be extorted at the sword’s
point. The impossibility of fighting to any advantage in the wet Irish
winter compelled him to postpone the attempt until the spring;[561]
and when spring came he found that his intended campaign must be
abandoned altogether. From the day when he left Milford he had received
not one word of tidings from any part of his dominions.[562] This
total isolation, welcome at first as a relief from the load of cares
which indeed he had purposely left behind him,[563] became at the end
of nineteen weeks a source of almost unbearable anxiety. On March 1
he removed from Dublin to Wexford;[564] there for nearly a month he
remained eagerly watching for a ship from England; none came until
after Mid-Lent,[565] and then it was laden with such ill news that he
could only take such hasty measures as were possible at the moment for
maintaining his hold upon Ireland, and prepare to hurry out of it as
soon as the wind would carry him.[566] Richard of Striguil was suffered
to remain at Kildare[567] as earl of Leinster; the general direction
of government and administration throughout the king’s Irish domains
was intrusted to Hugh de Lacy,[568] who had already received a grant of
Meath in fee,[569] and who was also left in command of the citadel of
Dublin,[570] with a garrison of twenty knights, among whom were Maurice
Fitz-Gerald[571] and Robert Fitz-Stephen.[572] The grants of territory
made by Dermot to the half-brothers were of course annulled; Waterford
and Wexford were both garrisoned and placed in charge of an officer
appointed by the king;[573] and in each of these towns a fortress was
either erected or repaired by his orders.[574]
[557] Perhaps we should add the chief of Aileach; see above, p.
114, note 6{549}.
[558] R. Diceto (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 348.
[559] _Gesta Hen._ (Stubbs), vol. i. pp. 25, 26. Gerv. Cant.
(Stubbs), vol. i. p. 235.
[560] Gir. Cambr. _Expugn. Hibern._, l. i. c. 33 (Dimock, vol.
v. p. 279). See Dr. Lanigan’s refutation of Gerald’s comment on
the legal effect of this transaction, _Eccles. Hist. Ireland_,
vol. iv. pp. 203, 204.
[561] _Gesta Hen._ (as above), pp. 26, 29.
[562] Gir. Cambr. as above, c. 36 (p. 284). R. Diceto as above,
p. 350.
[563] See Gervase of Canterbury’s account of his motives for
going to Ireland (Stubbs, vol. i. p. 235).
[564] _Gesta Hen._ (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 29; Rog. Howden
(Stubbs), vol. ii. p. 33.
[565] Gir. Cambr. _Expugn. Hibern._, l. i. c. 37 (Dimock, vol.
v. p. 285).
[566] _Ib._ c. 37 (pp. 285, 286). In the Anglo-Norm. Poem
(Michel), pp. 128, 129, Henry is made to receive the bad news
before leaving Dublin, which is obviously too soon. Cf. _Gesta
Hen._ as above, and Rog. Howden (as above), pp. 33, 34.
[567] Anglo-Norm. Poem (Michel), p. 132.
[568] “Constituit eum justitiarium Hyberniæ.” Rog. Howden (as
above), p. 34.
[569] _Ibid._ _Gesta Hen._ (as above), p. 30. Gir. Cambr. (as
above), c. 38 (p. 286). Anglo-Norm. Poem (Michel), p. 130. See
the charter of donation in Lyttelton, _Hen. II._, vol. iv. p.
295.
[570] Gir. Cambr., _Gesta Hen._ and Rog. Howden, as above.
Anglo-Norm. Poem (Michel), p. 129.
[571] Gir. Cambr. as above.
[572] Anglo-Norm. Poem, as above--adding Meiler Fitz-Henry and
Miles Fitz-David.
[573] _Gesta Hen._, Rog. Howden and Gir. Cambr. as above.
[574] _Gesta Hen._ and Rog. Howden, as above. If we may believe
the Anglo-Norm. Poem (Michel, p. 130) Henry furthermore made
a grant of Ulster to John de Courcy--“si à force la peust
conquere.”
A better mode of securing his authority in Dublin was probably
suggested to him by the ravages which war and famine had made among
its population. Eight years before he had taken the burghers of
Bristol, so long the medium of trading intercourse between England
and Ireland, under his especial patronage and protection.[575] He now
granted to them the city of Dublin, to colonize and to hold of him and
his heirs by the same free customs which they enjoyed in their own
town of Bristol.[576] It is plain that Henry was already aiming at
something far other than a mere military conquest of Ireland; and the
long and varied list of English names, from all parts of the country,
which is found in a roll of the Dublin citizens only a few years
later,[577] shews how willingly his plans were taken up, not only at
Bristol but throughout his realm, by the class to which he chiefly
and rightly trusted for aid in their execution. Unluckily, they were
scarcely formed when he was obliged to leave their developement to
other hands; and the consequence was a half success which proved in
the end to be far worse than total failure. On Easter night[578] he
sailed from Wexford;[579] next day he landed at Portfinnan, hard by S.
David’s;[580] before the octave was out he had hurried through South
Wales to Newport;[581] in a few days more he was at Portsmouth;[582]
and before Rogation-tide he was once more in Normandy, ready to face
the bursting of a storm whose consequences were to overshadow all his
remaining years and to preclude all chance of his return to complete
his conquest of Ireland.
[575] In January 1164 “he granted a short charter of privileges
to the burghers of Bristol, whom as sovereign lord he calls
_his_ burgesses, although they were then under the lordship
of the earl of Gloucester. This charter contains only an
exemption from toll and passage and other customary payments
for themselves and their goods through the king’s own lands,
with a confirmation of their existing privileges and liberties”
(Seyer, _Mem. of Bristol_, vol. i. p. 494, with a reference to
“Charters of Bristol, No. 1”).
[576] Charter printed in Gilbert, _Hist. and Munic. Documents
of Ireland_, p. 1.
[577] _Ib._ p. 3 _et seq._
[578] R. Diceto (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 351, says at sunset on
Easter day (April 16); the Ann. Loch Cé, a. 1172 (Hennessy,
vol. i. p. 147), say on Easter day “after Mass.” Gerald,
_Expugn. Hibern._, l. i. c. 38 (Dimock, vol. v. p. 286), the
_Gesta Hen._ (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 30, and Rog. Howden (Stubbs),
vol. ii. p. 34, say he sailed early on the Monday morning,
the two latter adding a reason--he would not travel on the
feast-day, though he had suffered his household to do so. Most
probably he sailed at midnight, as seems to have been often
done. The _Brut y Tywys._ a. 1172 (Williams, p. 217), makes him
reach Pembroke on Good Friday, but this is impossible.
[579] _Gesta Hen._ as above, p. 30. Anglo-Norm. Poem (Michel),
p. 131. The household had sailed from Croch to Milford; _ibid._
Cf. Rog. Howden as above, p. 34.
[580] _Gesta Hen._ and Rog. Howden, as above. R. Diceto
(Stubbs), vol. i. p. 351. The name of the place, Portfinnan, is
given only in the Anglo-Norm. Poem (as above).
[581] See the itinerary in Gir. Cambr. _Expugn. Hibern._, l. i.
cc. 38–40 (Dimock, vol. v. pp. 286–291), compared with _Brut y
Tywys._ a. 1172 (Williams, pp. 217–219).
[582] _Gesta Hen._ (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 30. Rog. Howden
(Stubbs), vol. ii. p. 34. It is Porchester in R. Diceto
(Stubbs), vol. i. p. 351.