Ireland first emerges into the light of history with the introduction of Christianity in the 5th cent. in documents ascribed to the British missionary St Patrick. Thereafter it developed a highly literate society, which has left us a substantial corpus of Latin and vernacular literature. The 7th-8th-cent. law tracts, heavily influenced by the Scriptures, portray a society that was intensely hierarchical.
At the highest rung of the ladder stood the kings, around whom society revolved. Ireland was a land of many kings, the law tracts defining three grades: kings of petty local kingdoms, overkings ruling several of these, and ‘kings of overkings’ who effectively ruled a whole province. Although the laws rarely refer to a
Viking incursions in the late 8th cent. for a time seemed likely to overwhelm the country. Certainly, the Vikings increased the intensity of warfare, and by developing towns at Dublin, Waterford, Limerick, Wexford, and Cork, they added to the wealth of what was otherwise a largely pastoral economy. In time, the Viking enclaves were assimilated into the Irish political superstructure, and those Irish kings who succeeded in asserting dominance over them gained an advantage over their rivals in the race for the high kingship. This was especially true in the case of Dublin, overlordship of which was, by the late 10th cent., generally asserted by successful claimants to the high kingship.
What might have been the evolution of a national monarchy was cut short in the mid-12th cent. by the Anglo-Norman invasion. The invaders were led by Richard de Clare, earl of Pembroke, better known as Strongbow. At this point, late in 1171, Henry II (who had received a papal licence to invade Ireland) came to Ireland himself, the first English king ever to do so, and established the English lordship. A widespread process of colonization then began, which involved the introduction to Ireland of English common law and institutions. By the end of the 13th cent., English rule was effective over perhaps two-thirds of the island.
At this point a gradual decline began to take place in the fortunes of the English colony. This was accompanied by a dramatic revival in the power of the native Irish lords, whose culture many of the settlers had begun to adopt, in spite of frequent attempts by the Irish Parliament to legislate against it. Costly military campaigns in the second half of the 14th cent., two led by Richard II, failed to turn the tide. A preoccupation with the war with France meant a curtailment in the English commitment to the government of Ireland in the 15th cent., resources being channelled into a cordoned enclave surrounding Dublin known as the Pale.
A growing separatist tendency among the Anglo-Irish community, culminating in a declaration of parliamentary independence in 1460 (though checked by the passage of Poynings's Law in 1494), led to the emergence of the earls of Kildare as effective masters of the Pale, though nominally the king's deputy. The Kildare ascendancy continued until the rebellion by Thomas FitzGerald, son of the 9th earl, in 1534, which was used by Henry VIII as a pretext for destroying Kildare power. The Irish ‘Reformation Parliament’ convened in 1536 declared Henry supreme head of the church, while that of 1541 gave the English monarch for the first time the title of king (as opposed to lord) of Ireland, in the process bringing the medieval lordship to an end.
Lordship of Ireland
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The Lordship of Ireland was a lordship existing in Ireland during the Middle Ages, it was created in the wake of the Norman invasion of Ireland in 1169—71 and existed until 1541 when it was succeeded by the Kingdom of Ireland. It was governed from the Pale by the Parliament of Ireland and was a fief of the Angevin Empire, with the Lord of Ireland coming from the House of Plantagenet. As the Lord of Ireland was also King of England, he was represented locally by the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland.
The feudal system allowed a significant amount of practical autonomy for the Hiberno-Norman noble houses who carved earldoms out for themselves — they had almost as much authority as some of the native Gaelic kings. While the Lordship was nominally representing the whole island, several parts of it were never conquered by the Normans, for instance Thomond and Desmond in Munster, or Tyrconnell and Tyrone in Ulster. These remained separate sovereign entities until the Tudor era.
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Background
The authority of the Lordship of Ireland's government was seldom extended throughout the island of Ireland at any time during its existence but was restricted to the Pale around Dublin, and some provincial towns, including Cork, Limerick, Waterford, Wexford and their hinterlands. It owed its origins to the decision of a Leinster dynast, Diarmait Mac Murchada (Diarmuid MacMorrough), to bring in a Norman knight based in Wales, Richard de Clare, 2nd Earl of Pembroke (alias 'Strongbow'), to aid him in his battle to regain his throne, after being overthrown by a confederation led by the new Irish High King (the previous incumbent had protected MacMurrough). Henry II of England, who reigned over England and ruled over parts of France, invaded Ireland to control Strongbow, whom he feared was becoming a threat to the stability of his own kingdom on its western fringes (there had been earlier fears that Saxon refugees might use either Ireland or Flanders as a base for a counter-offensive after 1066); ironically, much of the later Plantagenet consolidation of South Wales was in furtherance of holding open routes to Ireland.
Laudabiliter 1155
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Another reason King Henry invaded Ireland was because Pope Adrian IV, the only Englishman to have occupied the papal throne, had issued a papal bull Laudabiliter (1155) authorising the English monarch to take possession of Ireland. Religious practices in Ireland and organisation had evolved divergently from those of areas of Europe influenced more directly by the Holy See, although many of these differences had been eliminated or greatly lessened by the time the bull was issued in 1155. Further, the former Irish church had never sent its dues ('tithes') to Rome. Despite this, many historians argue that Henry's primary motivation for invading Ireland was to control Strongbow and other Norman lords. Civility and inclusion had a cost.
The pope asserted the right to grant sovereignty over islands to different monarchs on the basis of a document, later found to be a forgery, called the Donation of Constantine. Doubts were cast on Laudabiliter in the 19th century, but its effect was confirmed by Pope Alexander III and then by the Irish bishops at the Synod of Cashel in 1172. The papal bull gave the Norman-English kings the title 'Lord of Ireland'.
John, Lord in 1185-1199
Having captured a small part of Ireland on the east coast, Henry used the land to solve a dispute dividing his family. For while he had divided his territories between his sons, one son, nicknamed "Jean sans-terre" (in English: "John Lackland"), was left without lands to rule, hence the nickname. Henry granted John his Irish lands, becoming Lord of Ireland (Dominus Hiberniae) in 1185, with the territory becoming the Lordship of Ireland.
Following the deaths of John's older brothers he became King John of England, and the Lordship of Ireland, instead of being a separate country governed separately by a junior Norman prince, became a territorial possession of the Norman-English Crown.
Progress and decline
The Lordship thrived in the 13th century, a time of warm climate and better harvests. The feudal system was introduced, and the Parliament of Ireland first sat in 1297. Some counties were created by shiring, while walled towns and castles became a feature of the landscape. But little of this engagement with mainstream European life was of benefit to those the Normans called the "mere Irish". "Mere" derived from the Latin merus, meaning pure.
The Norman élite and churchmen spoke Norman French and Latin. Many poorer settlers spoke English, Welsh and Flemish. The Gaelic areas spoke Irish dialects. The Yola language of County Wexford was a survivor of the early English dialects.
The Lordship suffered invasion from Scotland by Edward Bruce in 1315-18 which destroyed much of the economy. The earldom of Ulster ended in 1333 and the Black Death of 1348-50 impacted more on the town-dwelling Normans than on the remaining Gaelic clans. In 1366 the Statute of Kilkenny tried to keep aspects of Gaelic culture out of the Norman-controlled areas, but in vain. Historians refer to a Gaelic revival between 1350 and 1500, by which time the area ruled for the Crown - 'the Pale' - had shrunk to a small area around Dublin.
Between 1500 and 1541 a mixed situation arose. Most clans remained loyal most of the time, using a Gaelic-style system of alliances centred around the Lord Deputy who was usually the Earl of Kildare. However a rebellion by the 9th Earl's heir Silken Thomas in 1535 led on to a less sympathetic system of rule by mainly English-born administrators. The rebellion and Henry VIII's seizure of the Irish monasteries around 1540 led on to his plan to create a new kingdom based on the existing parliament.
Lordship to Kingdom, 1541
English monarchs continued to use the title "Lord of Ireland" to refer to their position of conquered lands on the island of Ireland. The title was changed by the Crown of Ireland Act passed by the Irish Parliament in 1541, when on Henry VIII's demand, he was granted a new title, King of Ireland, with the state renamed the Kingdom of Ireland. Henry VIII changed his title because the Lordship of Ireland had been granted to the Norman monarchy by the Papacy; Henry had been excommunicated by the Catholic Church and worried that his title could be withdrawn by the Holy See. Henry VIII also wanted Ireland to be become a full kingdom to encourage a greater sense of loyalty amongst his Irish subjects, some of whom took part in his policy of Surrender and regrant.
Parliaments and great Councils 1318 - 1369
Government was based in Dublin, but the members of parliament could be summonsed to meet anywhere:
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See also
References
- ^ W. G. Perrin and Herbert S. Vaughan, 1922, "British Flags. Their Early History and their Development at Sea; with an Account of the Origin of the Flag as a National Device", Cambridge University Press: Cambridge, pp. 51-52
- ^ "The insignia of Ireland have variously been given by early writers. In the reign of Edward IV, a commission appointed to enquire what were the arms of Ireland found them to be three crowns in pale. It has been supposed that these crowns were abandoned at the Reformation, from an idea that they might denote the feudal sovereignty of the pope, whose vassal the king of England was, as lord of Ireland." - Chambers's Encyclopædia: A Dictionary of Universal Knowledge, 1868, p. 627
- Norman Davies, The Isles: A History (Palgrave-Macmillan, 1999) (ISBN 0-333-76370-X)
- Robin Frame; English Lordship in Ireland 1318 - 1361 (Clarendon Press, 1982) ISBN 0-19-822673-X
| Preceded by High Kings of Ireland |
Lordship of Ireland | Succeeded by Kingdom of Ireland |
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Mentioned in
- Adrian IV
- John (king of England)
- Mary I (history 1450-1789)
- Stephen Langton
- Annaly
- Duke of Ireland
- Elections in Ireland
- Ireland (history 1450-1789)
- Irish rebellions
- Irish states since 1171
- Gerard Clifford (Roman Catholic Bishop)
- 1155
- Gaelic Ireland
- Ireland (disambiguation)
