2007a. ‘Factions, Feuds and Noble Power in the Lordship of Ireland, c.1356–1496’, Irish Historical Studies, 35:140, 425–54. (original) (raw)
Related papers
Factionalism and noble power in English Ireland, c.1361–1423
This thesis offers a reappraisal of noble power and political culture in the English colony in Ireland in the late middle ages. It seeks to move beyond narrowly-conceived studies of the colony's chief governors and institutional apparatus, which remain historiographical staples for this period. Implicit in such writings is the assumption that a firm central authority provided by the king was preferable to 'unruly' aristocratic power. This thesis is an attempt to interrogate that assumption by closely examining one 'negative' trait particularly associated with the English lords of late medieval Ireland:
Peter Crooks (ed.), Government, war and society in medieval Ireland: essays by Edmund Curtis, A.J. Otway-Ruthven and James Lydon (Four Courts: Dublin, 2008), pp 353–75
16th-century Ireland experienced revolutionary change, as the Tudor monarchy undertook comprehensive efforts at extending English political control throughout the island. These efforts, together with religious and legal reforms, met with a variety of responses from the native English and Gaelic communities, ranging from eager collaboration to stubborn resistance. This book offers a fresh perspective on Tudor state formation in Ireland by exploring the interplay between the royal government and the lesser nobility of the English Pale during a formative period, from the ascendancy of local magnate the earl of Kildare in the later 15th century to the beginnings of an intensified extension of English authority under Sir Henry Sidney in Queen Elizabeth’s reign. It argues that the default position of this regional frontier elite was loyalty and service to the monarch and to the monarch’s representative in Ireland – an attitude based on the peers’ traditions and identity, their locations close to the royal capital Dublin, and their relative economic and military frailties. None the less, the nobility of the English Pale did not evolve into a kind of ‘service nobility’ observable in parts of Britain and continental Europe, whereby aristocrats were co-opted by a combination of inducements and threats into the increasingly centralised and powerful Renaissance state. Rather, relations between Tudor government in Ireland and the Pale nobility were fragile and liable to acrimonious break-down; by the later 1560s the relationship between both groups was one of profound mutual distrust. This development, it is argued, was not caused by conflicting ideological dispositions, but instead was a function of the nobles’ comparative weakness and the dictatorial tendencies of Tudor government in Ireland, and forms part of a wider failure of Tudor policy towards Ireland. The fortunes of the nobility of the English Pale therefore demonstrate the complex and unpredictable nature of Tudor interventions in Ireland, and, more broadly, the variety of noble responses to state formation in early modern Europe.
“To Serve Well and Faithfully”: The Agents of English Aristocratic Rule in Leinster, c.1272-c.1315
2003
The period between the early 1270s and ca. 1315 was a turning point in the history of the English lordship of Ireland. It was during these years that the balance of power between the English settlers in Ireland (the Anglo-Irish) and the Gaelic Irish began to change, the balance starting to tip in favor of the native Irish who consequently began to encroach on the Anglo-Irish settlements. As far as landholding in Ireland by lords based in England is concerned, the period has been seen as a critical one that led to changes in how English lords viewed their lands in Ireland, and in their capacity to administer and defend these lands from a distance. This is a view that can be challenged in various ways, and in this paper a prosopographical approach to the study of the men who administered the Irish estates of four major English lords in the province of Leinster in this period is employed. This demonstrates that these English lords maintained a close interest in their Irish lands throughout the period, taking care to employ experienced and trustworthy men as seneschals whenever possible, and to keep a close eye on the activities of these seneschals through the agency of council members, attorneys , auditors, and messengers. It concludes that English lordship in Ireland was clearly still a viable option for the lords of the substantial liberties of Leinster in this period, and that the employment of Anglo-Irish knights , particularly as seneschals, was integral to this success, bringing as they did military and political advantages to the administrations they headed.
It is a well-known fact that the las t three Mortimer earls of March each perished in Ireland whilst in r.he service of the E nglish crown. Having convened a meeting of the lrish council at Clonmel in August 1381 , Edmund, third earl of March, was taken ill whilst travelling south to Cork. Despite reaching the port-town before Christma s, Edmund died suddenly on 27 D ecember 1381 within the city's Dominican friary. 2 E dmund's body was subsequently taken to Wigmore Abbey for burial and his eldest son, Roger (d. 1398), inherited his father's considerable lands and titles. Roger, fourth earl of March, also pursued an active military career in Ireland and led several campaigns against the Gaelic Irish of Ulster and Leinster during the mid-to-late 1390s. Spurred on by the dynastic propaganda of the Welsh bard, Iola Gach (d. 1398), Roger enjoyed some notable military successes against the Ui Neill of Tir Eoghain. 3 However, the fourth ea rl eventually fell victim to what the Welsh chronicler Adam Usk (d. 1430) styled 'an excess of military a.rdour': the young earl was quite literally burchered by the Ui Bhroin in a skirmish near Kellistown in modern-day County Carlow in July 1398: 1 Roger's lands and titles thus passed to his infant son, Edmund (d. 1425), fifth ea.rl of !vfarch. In the mould of his paternal grandfather and namesake, Edmund fought for the English crown in France during the late 141 Os and early 1420s before being I Where possible, I have avoided Anglicised or L1tiniscd forms and rrndeml all Gndic pcrsnnul names in Early Modern Irish/ Classical Irish-the litcr:1ry language of lrel:md und the I lii,hl.111ds and Islands of Scotland, c. 1200-c. 1650. For example. O'Neill and O'N,•ills rhus rend O N,•ill (singular) and Ui Neill (plural); MacDonald and MncDonalds thus read Mac Dnmhm1ill (singular) and Mcie Domhnaill (plural). 6 Conchobhair Donn (sin~ulnr) is rendered as Ui Chonchob hmr Dhuinn in the plural; 6 Conchobhair Ruadh (singular) is rendered as Ui Chond1obhnir l\11n1dh in the plural. From c. 1350 onwards, de Bur~h nnd J c Burghs urc «•ndered as follmving: de Hi1rc-.1 (sin1, 'lllar) and de Burcaigh (plural). 2 C. Given-Wilson (ed.) , The Chronirl, of Adon, Usk, /J77-I.J2 / lhcm1f1cr Ch,vn. Usk l (Uxford, I 997), 46-7.
'Irishmen and Islesmen in the kingdoms of Dublin and Man, 1052-1171', Ériu, 43 (1992), 93-133
The period between the battle of Clontarf and the Anglo-Norman invasion remains one of the most neglected in Ireland's history. Too late for the students of early Ireland, who often see Brian Boruma's death in 1014 as a convenient end-point, and too early for the later medievalists for whom the cataclysmic events of the late 1160s form a natural point of departure, it has fallen between both stools. Many aspects of this vital era may be said to have suffered as a result, but some remain more heavily shrouded in obscurity than others. One of the areas in greatest need of elucidation is the nature of the relationship at this point between the Irish and the descendants of those Vikings who had earlier settled both in Ireland and in the islands between it and Britain. This paper can claim to do little more than scratch the surface of the problem, by outlining the connectionprimarily political and military--between the two in the century or so before the fall of Viking Dublin.
Renaissance Quarterly, 2020
that is new, while the chapter on "Art and Society" is very dense. There is (unintended?) humor in the title of the chapter on "The Scandinavian Intervention" (better known to the world as the Viking invasions). The chapter on "Perception and Reality: Ireland c. 980-1229" is, in fact, a study of kingship as reflected in the native Irish literary sources of the period. That on "Conquest and Conquerors" provides an amusing contrast between the "fellowship of arms" exercised by the chivalric conquerors and the savagery of their native opponents: "So it transpired that when in May 1170 the English won their famous victory at Dún Domnaill (Baginbun, Co. Wexford), they eschewed their own military customs and slaughtered their captives" (162). This kind of special pleading is reminiscent of the bad old days of John Horace Round and his Irish disciple, Goddard Henry Orpen. Even worse, however, is the vista offered in the chapter on "Angevin Ireland" of the same benighted conquerors who "found themselves time-travellers to an Iron Age" society (205), one obviously crying out for the civilizing hand of the English (the term Anglo-Norman has been jettisoned). But how to explain "the murder, deposition and self-slaughter that characterises English elite politics in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries?" Their origins, we are told, "might better be traced to the Curragh of Kildare" (219) than to any innate disposition among the civilized elite.