Alternate Irelands: Refreshing by Nature
By Gary Oswald.
In 1154, Nicholas Breakspear became Pope Adrian IV and ruler of the Papal States. He was the first, and so far only, Pope from England, being born in Hertfordshire. Adrian’s time as Pope, four years, was filled with opposition both from within the church and without, with him notably clashing with the Holy Roman Empire. Like all Popes in the pre-reformation era, Adrian held influence throughout Western Europe but probably the greatest legacy he left in terms of effect is the Laudabiliter.
This was a letter he wrote to Henry II of England in 1155, giving that monarch papal support and backing in a theoretical invasion of Ireland, which the Pope claimed jurisdiction over, as long as the Irish Church would be both respected and bought closer in line to Rome. This letter was read aloud in 1175 in Ireland and lead to the Irish clergy largely accepting Henry’s overlordship and pushing through further reform to bring their church closer to England’s.
The Irish church had traditionally been seen as one which drifted from orthodoxy with Bernard of Clairvaux famously referring to the Irish Church as “men so shameless in regard of morals, so dead in regard of rites, so stubborn in regard of discipline, so unclean in regard of life, that they were Christians in name, but in fact pagans.” This was an exaggeration but the Irish church was, like Irish society, hereditary with positions passed through families and as such, the marriage laws of the Church were often disregarded. Beyond that, the church was short of priests rather than monks and tended to collect less tithes and face more violence than other churches, Irish Christians attacking churches at a rate far outweighing Vikings. It is perhaps worth noting that the Norse-Gael towns such as Dublin tended to look towards England rather than Ireland for spiritual guidance after converting to Christianity for this reason.
However, it also must be said that the church in Ireland had also produced some of the Catholic Church’s most brilliant and respected theologians who ran abbeys throughout Europe, and the church had recently gone through a forty year long process of reorganisation and reform to bring it closer to Rome. The synods of Cashel (1102), Ráth Breasail (1111) and Kells (1152) saw all of Ireland divided into sees, with even the Norse-Gaels switching from following Canterbury to Armagh, meaning it for the first time had a proper pastoral organisation rather than a monastic one. Ireland had made huge strides in reforming itself in orthodox lines prior to the Laudabiliter. By the time Adrian wrote that letter, it no longer really made sense to write.
Now it’s possible that the Pope was simply prejudiced and badly advised on Ireland and thought it was worse off than it actually was thanks to men like Bernard of Clairvaux. But there is something odd here, which has led to a series of theories.
One is that the letter simply isn’t real. After all, no copy of it in the Vatican has ever been found, though a lot of letters were thrown out and likewise it was not preserved in the English Exchequer archives. Also, it was written in 1155 but never mentioned until twenty years later in 1175 when Henry bought it out to justify the invasion of Ireland that he’d already completed. If it was real, why not mention it earlier, when the invasion was about to happen in 1171?
Well, the counter argument goes, because Thomas Becket, Archbishop of Canterbury, had been killed in 1170 on Henry’s orders and it was not a good time for Henry to make a big deal about the faith the clergy had in him. Certainly in 1175 Henry is showing people something that they identify as a letter from a Pope and Occam’s Razor has an answer for us here as to what that might be. Likewise, we know that Henry and Adrian exchanged letters about Ireland so there is reason to think he would have a letter.
Another theory then is that Adrian was simply a biased Englishman justifying conquest for his king. This was proposed by Irish kings at the time but runs into the problem that come 1171 and Henry’s invasion, the Pope at the time was Alexander III from Siena, Italy, and Alexander also wrote a letter supporting English rule in Ireland, though less decisively. Which makes it hard to view Adrian as an outlier here.
So there’s a third theory. The Church were genuinely uncomfortable with a Christian country without a single king ruling that state and hoped that English conquest would bring that single ruler, who would then bring order and peace and a hierarchal structure. The nature of Christianity in the 12th Century is that so much of it was built with the cooperation of kings that the church simply didn’t know how to cope with anything else. And, beyond that, turning down the King of England was more politically risky than selling out the Irish, a country which had already had a bad reputation. Or to be slightly less cynical, if the Vatican thought Henry was going to invade anyway, at least this way the Pope could get something for it himself and the Laudabiliter does contain some conditions demanding consent of the Irish clergy, and crucially princes, as part of the deal.
Which brings us to the last theory, one proposed recently by Anne Duggan of King’s College, London. That in actuality the insistence on that consent means the letter was meant to discourage an invasion without saying no, but it was misrepresented by Henry and his scribes, which was why he didn’t keep a copy of it in his files and only used it once the man involved was long dead. After all we have a copy of a letter Adrian sent to the King of France saying he should only campaign in Spain with the consent of the clergy and princes there, and there is no doubt in the full text, which unlike the Laudabiliter we have seen unedited, that this is meant to discourage the planned invasion. Alexander then is following Adrian’s lead in reluctantly condoning the invasion while demanding concessions.
Regardless of which is true, the fact that Henry apparently asked for this in 1155 points to the fact that he had Ireland on his target list, which is why the general views of people at the time was that his invasion was a case of when rather than if. Ireland was free real estate, with a people much less organised in terms of state building and less advanced in armour, archery and cavalry. Moreover, Dublin held the best fleet in the Irish Sea, control of that fleet would aid Henry’s wars in Wales and Scotland.
And yet when it did happen, it happened under very different circumstances to what it would have done in 1155. It happened in the aftermath of an invasion from England that had no intentions of adding Ireland to Henry’s dominion in the way the letter to the pope asked for.
The key man was Diarmait Mac Murchada, a king in Leinster who spent most of his life fighting rival kings in Ireland to extend his power and influence, including stealing the wife of the King of Briefne and blinding the King of Laoighis. His star rose and fell during decades of constant warfare but finally in 1166 he had been beaten thoroughly by his enemies and saw no hope in Ireland. So, he fled the country to become an exile in England. There he met up with Henry and pledged his friendship and fealty. Henry however would offer no direct aid in restoring Diarmait to power as he was occupied with affairs in France. What he gave instead was permission for Diarmait to recruit any of his subjects as Soldiers of Fortune in his war.
The first man he found, was the man who more than anyone else would be the key figure in the English conquest of Ireland. Richard FitzGlbert de Clare. A man known to history simply as Strongbow.
Strongbow was a Norman man in his fifties, a descendent of the bastard son of a Duke of Normandy, whose grandfather had been in the army that had won the Battle of Hastings against the English. He was a military veteran and an earl but was un-landed after his estate had been confiscated because of his support of King Stephen during the Anarchy. He agreed to support Diarmait in return for marrying his daughter, Aoife. He also told him that another Norman knight, Robert FitzStephen, was a captive of the Welsh King Rhys ap Gruffudd, an ally of Diarmait, and could he counted on to support the Irish king in return for his release.
With these two men on side, more and more began to gather to Strongbow’s banner: Norman lords, Flemish mercenaries and Anglo-Saxon men at arms. In return, Diarmait began to promise his followers land and titles in his territory, though mostly those lands were in the Norse-Gael towns like Wexford and Dublin. Diarmait was replacing one set of foreigners with another.
With his army collected, Diarmait set off to Ireland. But it was not an invasion, bringing a large fleet of ships would be too obvious. Instead, they trickled in one ship at a time. First Diarmait arrived with a handful of men in 1167 and then came Robert Fitzstephen in 1169, Maurice Fitzgerald slightly later that year, and finally Strongbow himself in 1170. This gave huge opportunities for the native Irish, who could easily have picked them off one at a time, but they lacked the ruthlessness to do so. They did defeat Diarmait before his foreign mercenaries could join him but only demanded gold and hostages in victory.
This was a mistake, which was made apparent when the Normans did arrive, as though small in number they were by far the most efficient fighting force that had ever landed in Ireland, with armour and bows far beyond that of the existing kingdoms. Armies that fought them tended to lose and then, encouraged by the clergy who had favoured Diarmait due to his donations to the church, surrendered rather than fight to the death. In this way Wexford was captured and handed out to the new foreigners to rule.
Diarmait’s new unstoppable army continued to advance when he reached his first setback. Two hundred of his foreign soldiers, led by Maurice de Prendergast, got tired of fighting in Ireland and tried to desert and return home. When this was blocked by Diarmait, Maurice switched sides to join another Irish kingdom out of spite, only to find out they couldn’t afford his wages and after a dispute with his new allies, ended up going home anyway. The king he had joined then immediately surrendered. By sheer luck Diarmait had avoided having to face Norman troops against him.
Taking advantage of some of Diarmait’s foreigners leaving him, the clergy attempted to arrange a new peace between Diarmait and his enemies, primarily Ruaidrí Ua Conchobair. Diarmait would be given complete control of Leinster as long as he did not advance out of that province and, crucially, he would send all his foreigners home after the campaign was completed. Diarmait agreed but he was only buying time until Maurice Fitzgerald could arrive with more men. By this point, Diarmait had seen enough of his allies to know that he had an opportunity to become the first undisputed true ruler of Ireland since Brian Boru. So why give them up?
Instead in 1170 Diarmait took submission from Dublin and sent messages both to possible allies across Ireland and back to Wales, telling Strongbow that all of Ireland could be theirs if only he acted. Strongbow duly arrived in May 1170, where he married Aoife, and quickly captured both Waterford and Dublin and drove off an Irish army.
This is when things begin to go wrong for Diarmait and his dreams of power become unravelled. First of all, his heirs, his son and grandson, had been given up as hostages in 1167 and when Diarmait attacked outside of Leinster, breaking that treaty, Ruaidrí had them executed. Shortly after that Diarmait himself, who was not a young man, died of a disease he had picked up while campaigning. Though there were still kin of his around, as far as the Normans were concerned that meant that the new king was Strongbow through his marriage to Aoife, and in 1171 he was crowned as such. Of course, this was not how Irish law worked but Irish law no longer mattered.
Suddenly a foreigner had illegally taken the throne of one of the major Irish Kingdoms and appointed officials in his occupied territories that were not from the local families. The other Irish kings which had viewed the fighting so far as a private fight between Diarmait and his enemies with some foreign mercenaries involved, now saw it as an actual invasion and began to form an alliance against them, as they had done so against the Vikings. Rebellions broke out throughout Strongbow’s kingdom, while large armies gathered against him, not just from the other Irish led by Ruaidrí Ua Conchobair, but also from the Norse-Gaels who were gathering in the Hebrides to retake Dublin.
At this point Strongbow seems to have given up on any ambitions to hold onto his position by himself and sent a letter to King Henry offering to give up all of his conquests to the King of England in return for his protection. Henry however wasn’t willing to accept it just yet. He didn’t reply until Strongbow could prove himself truly ruler of the land he claimed.
The initial Irish-Norse-Gael counterattack proved incredibly successful at first, with both Waterford and Wexford captured, but the attack on Dublin went badly awry for the anti-Strongbow force. The Norse-Gael force reached Dublin slightly ahead of the Irish force, and instead of waiting to coordinate, attacked recklessly and were defeated. The Irish army then arrived, but Ruaidrí wanted to talk terms, happy to give away the Norse-Gael towns of Dublin, Waterford and Wexford if the Normans surrendered any other ambitions. The Normans instead, despite being vastly outnumbered, launched a surprise attack which saw them attack Ruaidrí’s camp while they were bathing.
With their leader defeated, the rest of the Irish army drifted off home. Strongbow had won, securing control of his chosen Kingdom, and Henry was ready to make sure that now he had, he hadn’t forgotten his promise that he had do so on behalf of the King of England.
In October 1171, the English Invasion of Ireland began, with a fleet taking King Henry and five thousand men to Dublin, a fleet escorted by the Irish fleet of Ruaidrí Ua Conchobair, who felt he’d rather deal with the King of England than Strongbow. Here Henry displayed anger at his subjects for daring to try and escape their submission to him by forming their own kingdom but pardoned them and gave them positions of power in Ireland as constables. Dublin, Wexford and Waterford were announced as crown land and Strongbow had to maintain his position as ruler of Leinster, but as an earl rather than a king.
Moreover he won over the Irish clergy and the Irish kings, with over fifteen submitting to him in order to keep their own thrones and not be conquered by the Normans. Henry presented himself effectively as the lesser of two evils, with his subjects eager for direct conquest while he himself would maintain the old law and structure of Ireland, just with him as High King. Of all the provinces, only the fiercely independent Kings of Ulster refused to pay homage.
In 1175, this was cemented in the Treaty of Windsor, in which Ruaidrí Ua Conchobair agreed to pay England one hide for every ten cattle he owned a year in return for remaining on his throne. All other kings would have the same agreement, but they would pay their tribute through Ruaidrí. Leinster would be directly run by England, with Strongbow’s death in 1176 meaning Henry picked its new ruler, but the rest of Ireland would just be linked by tribute.
This status quo lasted until the moment Henry left Ireland. War broke out immediately as ambitious settlers marched into Irish lands, theoretically paying tribute for peace, to create their own fortunes. The English were not invincible, attrition and the size of the territory before them stopped them from conquering the whole island, but they could build castles that no Irish force could capture, assuming there was men enough to man them, and were unmatched in pitched battles.
Within eighty years of the invasion, three quarters of the country had been taken by the invaders and the idea of the Treaty of Windsor had been entirely replaced with the idea of a Lordship of Ireland, part of the Kingdom of England. This bought advantages of trade, relative peace and order but also disadvantages of foreign conquest, imposition of foreign customs, massacres and dispossession of the existing elite. It also bought massive infighting between various Irish-Norman nobles, who, much like the Vikings, were happy to fight each other as well the Irish. And like the Vikings, they increasingly intermarried with the Irish and took up Irish language and customs. The difference being they were not independent kingdoms like the Norse-Gaels of Dublin but subjects of a powerful monarchy just next door, and so much more difficult to defeat.
Irish Rule in England was never a priority of the English ruling class, who were far more concerned with France and Scotland, and they largely let the government in Dublin take care of itself. For this reason, no major reinforcements would come to the Island and a stalemate ensued with the native Irish being unable to drive out the English but also still holding on to some land and power. That would not change until the 16th century, and in fact English power would retreat for much of the time before that but they were still there and they weren’t going anywhere. That very fact defines pretty much all of Irish history since 1171.
So what if it didn’t? What if that initial invasion had never happened?
The easy answer is a later invasion would probably replace it but Henry II was unusually powerful for an English King, his successors had other problems to distract them. It is possible that if Henry doesn’t create that English power, Ireland gets several centuries before someone else does and several centuries is enough for Ireland to be very different when it does.
But avoiding that invasion can mean so many different things. What if the Irish had defeated the invasion at any point? What if Diarmait never invited in the foreigners in the first place? What if he did, but they never took power but remained as his followers? What if Strongbow became an independent king rather than bowing to Henry II? And finally, what if the Treaty of Windsor with mostly independent Gaelic Kings was abided by?
The first two I think are the most likely to stick. Ruaidrí could have defeated the Normans at so many points had he been bolder, luckier and more competent and if he did Henry is unlikely to want to avenge that defeat. Likewise, it is easy to imagine no invasion being launched.
The other three I am unconvinced by. Once Strongbow and his men are there, it is incredibly naïve of Diarmait to imagine they will be happy as his followers and not push for more control themselves even if he and his son survive. Diarmait obviously needs them more then they need him. Similarly, Henry II is never going to accept an independent Norman kingdom that will become a competitor to him when he has papal justification for taking that kingdom. And well, the Treaty of Windsor is very similar to every other treaty signed between colonisers and native peoples that is ignored in practice because the settlers on the ground want more land and not peace with those savages who are stealing their cows. I think once the Normans are there, the line to the Lordship of Ireland is a straight one.
Gary Oswald is the editor of the Grapeshot and Guillotines, Emerald Isles, and If We'd Just Got That Penalty anthologies.
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