2008. ‘Government, War and Society in Medieval Ireland: A Guide to Recent Work’, in Peter Crooks (ed.), Government, War and Society in Medieval Ireland: Essays by Edmund Curtis, A.J. Otway-Ruthven and James Lydon, pp 353–75. Dublin: Four Courts Press. (original) (raw)
Related papers
2009. ‘Medieval Ireland and the Wider World’, Studia Hibernica, 35, pp 167–86.
Studia Hibernica 35 (2009) 167–86, 2009
Review article of the following: THREE ARMIES IN BRITAIN: THE IRISH CAMPAIGN OF RICHARD II AND THE USURPATION OF HENRY IV, 1397–1399. By Douglas Biggs. Pp xvi + 295, illus. Leiden: Brill, 2006. €110 hardback (History of Warfare, vol. 39). INQUISITIONS AND EXTENTS OF MEDIEVAL IRELAND. Edited by PaulDryburgh and Brendan Smith.Pp vi, 290. Kew: List and Index Society, 2007. Distributed to subscribers: £17 members, £22.50 non-members paperback (List and Index Society, vol. 320). DE COURCY: ANGLO-NORMANS IN IRELAND, ENGLAND AND FRANCE IN THE ELEVENTH AND TWELFTH CENTURIES. Pp 205, illus. By Steve Flanders. Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2008. €55 hardback. IRELAND AND WALES IN THE MIDDLE AGES. Edited by Karen Jankulak and Jonathan M. Wooding. Pp 296.Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2007. €55 hardback. MEDIEVAL IRELAND: TERRITORIAL, POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC DIVISIONS. By Paul MacCotter. Pp 320, illus. Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2008. €55 hardback. MANX KINGSHIP IN ITS IRISH SEA SETTING, 1187–1229: KING RÖGNVALDR AND THE CROVAN DYNASTY. Pp 254, illus. By R. Andrew McDonald. Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2007. €55 hardback. IRELAND AND THE ENGLISH WORLD IN THE LATE MIDDLE AGES: ESSAYS IN HONOUR OF ROBIN FRAME. Pp xii + 241. Edited by Brendan Smith. Basingstoke: Palgrave MacMillan, 2009. £50 hardback. THE ANNALS OF IRELAND BY FRIAR JOHN CLYN. Edited by Bernadette Williams. Pp 303. Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2007. €65 hardback.
English Ireland may not have been set apart entirely from political developments in late-medieval Europe, but neither were its politics without their own distinctive flavour. Two of the most familiar structural features of Irish politics in the centuries after the English invasion are the island’s status as a lordship separate from, but dependent upon, the English Crown; and the division of the island into two peoples. Historians seek to understand and explain dependency and division by describing Ireland as a classic colonial situation. The problem with the colonial paradigm is not that it is wrong, but that, by itself, it explains too much and too little. What is most interesting about Ireland as a specimen of European political ideas in action is that the characteristics of dependency and division sat awkwardly – indeed, sat increasingly awkwardly – in the evolving thought-world of late-medieval Europe. This was the era when the ‘state’ was emerging as something more than an idea and was beginning to coalesce with conceptions of nationhood. As Andrea Ruddick has shown, the kingdom of England was being conceptualized in the late Middle Ages as a defined physical space that supplied the homeland of a distinct people. How, then, was one to define the status of those of the king’s English lieges who resided outside the realm yet claimed the liberties of freeborn Englishmen as their birth right? Since the king could not perform his office in person, how much of his sovereign authority devolved upon his representative in Ireland, who took an oath of office based upon the coronation oath? What were the king’s duties, whether of care or correction, towards the native inhabitants of Ireland whom the settlers had displaced and disenfranchised? And finally – a question prior to all of these – by what right did the monarch of England claim to rule Ireland in the first place?
History: the Journal of the Historical Association, 2023
Over the last number of decades, the relationship between king and magnate in medieval Ireland has been prominent in scholarship, but less attention has been given to the tenantry below. Drawing on a range of sources from chancery material to chronicle evidence, this article analyses one such tenantry community, the 'barons of Leinster'. During the first half of the thirteenth century, the Marshal lords of Leinster clashed with royal authorities in Ireland on three occasions, and in these circumstances, the tenants of Leinster had to choose between their king and their lord. For the lords of Leinster, the support of their tenantry was not to be presumed, and hence they had to relentlessly compete for the allegiance of their tenantry with the other lords in Ireland and the king of England. This essay argues that status and marital ties influenced tenantry allegiance in Ireland, in particular that assimilation into a new lord's household was more important for the lesser tenantry who held land in both Ireland and Wales than for the great landed barons who also benefited from royal patronage. Hence, this study contributes to the rich ongoing discussion on the importance and role of tenantry communities in the Plantagenet dominions. 1 'his sworn men and knights, in whom he trusted'.