These were mercenaries of mixed Norse-Gaelic descent from the Scottish isles and western highlands who fought as close order foot armed with battleaxes, iron helmets, and chainmail or padded body armor. The galloglass were renowned for their steadfastness and bravery. One English witness wrote “The Galloglass ar pycked and selected men of great and mightie bodies, crewell without compassion. The greatest force of the batell consisteth in them, chosinge rather to dye then to yeelde, so that when yt cometh to handy blowes they are quickly slayne or win the feilde.” [5]

Here at last were troops who had the arms, armor and discipline necessary to face the Anglo-Irish in open battle. Aedh O’Connor, King of Connacht and victor at Athankip, had received 160 galloglass as a dowry when he married the daughter of the King of the Hebrides in 1259 (their first recorded appearance in Ireland). However, the principal influx of galloglass did not come until the early 14th century, when Islemen clans that had fought on the losing side in the Scottish War of Independence fled to Ireland. [6]

National Movement

An effort was made to convert the Gaelic Resurgence into a ‘national movement by restoring the high kingship. In 1258, Tadhg O’Brien and Felim O’Connor recognized Brian O’Neill as ard ri - a truly remarkable event considering their clans’ long and bloody competition for the title. However, when the O’Connors and O’Neills made a combined attack upon the Anglo-Irish of Ulster two years later, they were totally defeated at the Battle of Downpatrick, and Brian was killed. Then, in 1263, King Haakon of Norway was invited to become high king and lead an uprising, but he died before reaching Ireland. With the exception of the Bruce Invasion of 1315-18 (see below), these were the last efforts to unify Gaelic Ireland attempted during the Middle Ages. [7]

From then on, the Gaelic revival failed to find a national leader. Its impulse remained local down to the end of the Middle Ages; its success was measured in the innumerable battles fought by local chieftains or confederations of chieftains. … [T]here was never any serious attempt made to unite Gaelic Ireland or to bring about the downfall of the English government in Ireland and the end of the colony. [8] The Gaelic Resurgence owed a great deal to strife among the Anglo-Irish, whose feuding was becoming increasingly disruptive. Moreover, the ‘Barons’ War’ that was waged in England during 1264-65 between King Henry III and a baronial party headed by Simon de Montfort spilled over into Ireland. Maurice fitz Maurice, Baron of Offaly, sparked civil war by imprisoning the Justiciar and several other loyal Anglo-Irish lords. The 1st Earl of Ulster, Walter de Burgo, joined forces with the Deputy Justiciar in attacking fitz Maurice’s estates, and both sides raided each other’s lands until a settlement was imposed by an assembly of nobles meeting at Dublin in April 1265. [9]

However, that was hardly the end the feud, which flared into open conflict between John fitz Thomas (Not to be confused with the John fitz Thomas (a cousin) killed at the Battle of Callan in 1261) (Maurice’s nephew) and Richard de Burgo (2nd Earl of Ulster) in 1294-95, and this was only one of many such quarrels that plagued the colony. [10]

Although few of fitz Maurice’s peers would have been so bold as to assail the King’s Justiciar, his disregard for royal authority was hardly unique. Due to the continual feuding and lawbreaking of unruly Anglo-Irish magnates, and the survival of many hostile independent Gaelic lordships, an Irish parliament held in 1297 recognized a distinction between the ‘land of peace’ (terra pacis) and the ‘land of war’ (terra guerre). [11]

In the former, which was limited to parts of Munster and Leinster, English was the principal language, and the Justiciar upheld the King’s peace according to English law. In the latter, the native tongue predominated, and Gaelic and Anglo-Irish lords raided and battled one another in an endless series of petty wars and succession struggles characterized by a bewilderingly complex and constantly-shifting tangle of alliances. Since English law did not operate in the ‘land of war,’ disputes were resolved according to ‘march law’ and Gaelic brehon law - or by feuds waged to avenge assaults upon rights, property or honor. [12]

It would be misleading, however, to depict the terra pacis and terra guerre as totally discrete entities separated by a distinct border; for one thing, most of the great Anglo-Norman lordships held territory in both. More importantly, even within the ‘land of peace’ the well-colonized regions did not form a solid block, but were instead a patchwork of fertile lowlands separated by less desirable areas of bog and mountain still inhabited by the Gaelic Irish. [13]

Thus, the terra pacis was fully immune neither to Gaelic raids nor to the disruptive actions of Anglo-Irish lords, who were wont to pursue their private feuds and wars (and billet their private troops) within its boundaries. The magnates proved to be such a problem that the 1297 parliament ruled they could not bring their troops into the ‘land of peace’ except when a formal state of war existed, and were to maintain soldiers at their own expense rather than billeting them on the colonists. [14]

This was merely the first of many similar - and all equally futile - efforts to legislate these practices out of existence.

Crucial for Defense

Disruptive though the magnates could be, they were also crucial for the defense of the colony. Protecting the terra pacis required that some measure of ‘English’ authority be projected beyond it, and only the great Anglo-Irish lords had the wherewithal to routinely wield power within the ‘land of war.’ They had begun to be subsumed into the predominantly Gaelic culture that survived beyond the ‘land of peace,’ adopting its customs and intermarrying with the Irish nobility. With a foot in each of the two different cultural milieus, the magnates were able to influence their Gaelic neighbors in ways that the Dublin government could not. Many were even able to muster large numbers of Gaelic troops for service in the Crown’s and their own wars. [15]

Likewise, since their influence was equally great within the ‘land of peace,’ the magnates were often able to secure appointments as justices of the peace (custos pacis) for themselves and their followers - and thereby lend an air of legitimacy to their private wars and truces. The proliferation of such offices during the 14th Century has accordingly been interpreted as a sign of the disintegration of centralized governance in Ireland. [16] The colony was not spared by the wave of disaster that swept over Europe during what Barbara Tuchman has dubbed “the calamitous 14th Century.” [17]

The first in a long chain of misfortunes to afflict the colony arose from England’s fruitless efforts to conquer Scotland. Starting in 1296, Kings Edward I and II relied heavily upon the Irish colony to fund and provision their campaigns, and repeatedly summoned their vassals in Ireland to lead troops to Scotland. However, as the terms of Irish feudal military obligations did not require service overseas, those who answered these summonses had to be paid. And, since the endless French and Scottish wars had drained the English treasury, the kings often resorted to pardoning debts owed to the Irish treasury in return for service in Scotland. [18]

Richard de Burgo, Earl of Ulster, tried to erase debts totaling over ?11,000 - a staggering sum considering that annual revenue collected in Ireland between 1302 and 1305 averaged less than ?5,000! [19]

When one adds to these lost revenues the costs of military wages, provisions shipped across the Irish Sea, and cash paid directly into the English exchequer, it becomes clear that a huge financial burden was imposed on the colony. The Irish government had to borrow to cover these expenses, “putting future revenues in pawn in order to meet the costs of its involvement in the Scottish war.” [20]

By the early years of Edward II’s reign (1307-1327), the value of the Irish revenue had shrunk by nearly half. Edward I also lured Anglo-Irish vassals to serve in his Scottish wars by granting pardons for crimes committed in Ireland. James Lydon writes that, “At a time when lawlessness was on the increase in Ireland the issuing of such pardons was a dangerous expedient and was subsequently roundly condemned by Edward II.” [21]

Furthermore, the upsurge in lawlessness was magnified by the absence of men campaigning in Scotland, which eased the way for aggression by Gaelic rebels and Anglo-Irish miscreants. The ravaging of lands by these lawbreakers further depleted the tax base, driving a downward spiral in revenue that proved nearly impossible to reverse. Lacking the funds needed to mount an adequate defense, the colony could not prevent more and more territory being laid waste, so that over time it had less and less money with which to defend itself. [22] Yet, neither rising lawlessness nor declining revenue was the bitterest fruit that the Scottish Wars bore in Ireland. For, the year after King Robert I of Scotland (Robert the Bruce) won a decisive victory over Edward II at the Battle of Bannockburn in 1314, his brother, Edward Bruce, invaded Ireland at the head of an army of 6,000 men. Edward aimed to make himself King of Ireland, and in order to legitimize this ambition, he called upon the Gaelic aristocracy to unite behind him as the leader of a Celtic alliance against the English. He won the immediate support of the O’Neills and several other influential Gaelic families (mostly in Ulster), but many native Irish lords saw him as just another foreign interloper, and some even took up arms against him alongside the Anglo-Irish. [23]

Yet, despite his failure to win broad support among the Gaelic Irish, Edward Bruce’s fortunes initially prospered thanks to a string of victorious battles. Indeed, so dramatic was Edward’s success that he won the allegiance of the De Lacys and a number of other opportunistic Anglo-Irish magnates. [24]

In 1316 he was crowned King of Ireland by an assembly of Gaelic and Anglo-Irish nobles meeting at Dundalk. The Bruce Invasion coincided with the Great European Famine of 1315-1318, which was the product of torrential summer rains that caused massive crop failures in three consecutive years. [25]

The famine was at least partly to blame for Edward Bruce’s indifferent success in winning Gaelic adherents, since food was so scarce that he had to plunder the lands of native and Anglo-Irish lords alike in order to keep his troops fed. The Scots accordingly left a devastated landscape and mass starvation wherever they marched, and Edward’s failure to translate his battlefield triumphs into strategic victory (due to his inability either to cement his political authority or capture fortified cities) meant that Ireland was wasted by his army year after year. Not surprisingly, few Irishmen of any extraction mourned when Edward was finally defeated and killed at the Battle of Faughart in September 1318. [26] The Anglo-Irish colony in Ireland had survived, but just barely, and efforts to restore its vitality were hamstrung by the decline in population and revenue, and the growing strength of the Gaelic Irish. The Gaelic Resurgence that had started in the late 1200s accelerated in the early 14th Century as Gaelic lordships extended their power through conquest and by seizing lands left untenanted by war and famine. However, the process was not without its setbacks.

In 1316, for example, Felim O’Connor’s effort to expel the Anglo-Irish from West Connacht failed when his massive Gaelic army was massacred at the Battle of Athenry. But just two years later, the O’Briens won a decisive victory at the Battle of Dysert O’Dea, killing both Sir Richard de Clare and his son. De Clare’s widow promptly set fire to Bunratty Castle and led a precipitate flight of virtually the entire ‘English’ population from Thomond (modern County Clare). [27]

A Gaelic annalist writing decades later exulted that “From which time to this, never a one of their breed has come back to look after it” [28] - and none would until the late 16th Century. But this defeat in the furthest corner of the ‘land of war’ was of less immediate concern than the gradual erosion of the ‘land of peace’ itself under incessant raids by hostile Gaelic Irish.

The situation was worsened by feuding among the Anglo-Irish, which became endemic from the early 14th Century onward. The reasons for these conflicts are not altogether clear. Otway-Ruthven notes, “It has been generally assumed that much of it can be explained as due to the unwillingness of the junior branches of a family to see the lands of their ancestors pass through heiresses to strangers who were often absentees, but though there was certainly a strong feeling that the lands of a family should be kept within it, the cases usually cited to prove the generally contention that this was the primary cause of rebellion and lawlessness are far from convincing.” [29]

She proposes instead that the Irish government’s growing weakness was the principal cause. Since the government was unable to punish lawbreakers in outlying regions, Anglo-Irish magnates necessarily took the law into their own hands, touching off cycles of reprisal and counter-reprisal.

Open Warfare

In 1327, a feud between Maurice fitz Thomas, 1st Earl of Desmond, and Arnald le Poer flared up into open warfare that drew in other Anglo-Irish lords, including William de Burgo, Earl of Ulster. As before, this conflict was linked to civil strife in England, where Queen Isabella and her Anglo-Irish lover, Roger Mortimer, had deposed King Edward II in early 1327 (and would murder him later that year). It seems that le Poer and de Burgo supported Mortimer, while Desmond and his allies ostensibly upheld Edward II’s cause. It would later be claimed that Desmond aimed to establish a separate Kingdom of Ireland with himself on the throne, but there is no doubt that he incited members of the Gaelic O’Brien and MacCarthy clans to attack the lands of his Anglo-Irish enemies. The Justiciar negotiated peace between the two earls in 1329, but Desmond was arrested the following year for abetting attacks by the O’Briens that killed the Sheriff of Limerick and wasted the de Burgo lands in Tipperary. He quickly escaped, but the situation in Ireland was revolutionised by Mortimer’s overthrow and execution in November 1330.

Sir Anthony Lucy, the new Justiciar appointed by King Edward III, moved decisively to restore order, re-imprisoning Desmond in 1331 and defeating his allies the following year. [30]

Desmond’s treason surprisingly was not rewarded by execution. Instead, after just two years imprisonment, he was released and restored to his title and lands in 1333. This turn of events is incomprehensible unless one recalls that the great Anglo-Irish magnates had the unique ability to project English influence into the ‘land of war’ due to their long-standing and intimate relationships with the Gaelic Irish. These men were thus almost irreplaceable, since no outsider appointed in their stead could possibly wield the same influence. Accordingly, “It must have been felt that it would be unsafe to proceed to extremes against Desmond: apart from any other consideration, his execution would have left a vacuum of power in the southwest from which only the MacCarthys, O’Briens and MacNamaras would have profited.” [31]

If this was the motive for the government’s leniency, then its wisdom was immediately demonstrated by events in the north. For, just the day before Desmond’s release, his old nemesis, William de Burgo, Earl of Ulster, was murdered by three of his own retainers. Within six months, all of the earldom’s lands west of the River Bann had been lost to the Gaelic Irish, and would not be retaken as long as the Middle Ages lasted. Moreover, in all that time the rump of the earldom would never again be ruled by a resident lord as its ownership passed into the hands of absentees living in England. [32]

Incredibly, the whole sequence of Desmond’s treason, defeat, imprisonment and pardon would be repeated in the 1340s! This time, he began to cause trouble by reasserting a two decade-old claim to the Barony of Inchiquin, following the death of its lord. This placed Desmond on a collision course with the Crown, which by law had wardship of any estate whose lord had died until the heir came of age – and counted upon this as a major source of revenue. In 1343, King Edward III instructed the Escheator of Ireland (a royal official who administered estates in escheat due to treason or the minority of an heir) to seize the lands back from Desmond. However, the truculent earl responded by having his own retainers eject the royal officials just a week later. [33] Furthermore, rumor had it that Desmond was once again plotting to make himself King of Ireland. [34]

These provocations came at a time when Edward III had already grown concerned about the state of affairs in Ireland, and particularly its inability to help pay for his wars in France. Two years earlier he had tried to reverse the declining trend in revenue (which had dwindled to less than ?1,500 year) by ordering immediate payment of all debts owed to the Crown - an act that naturally proved extremely unpopular in Ireland. He also enacted a series of administrative reforms that further antagonised the colonists, including one which stipulated that henceforth only men who held lands or church offices in England could be employed in the Irish government.

The Anglo-Irish responded by banding together in opposition to the Crown. Meeting at Kilkenny in late 1341, they sent a long list of grievances to the king accusing his Justiciars of failing to preserve law and order, while engaging in extortion, embezzlement, false arrest, and other abuses of power. Since at that time Edward had no means of imposing his will upon his defiant Irish subjects, the financial and administrative reforms were dropped in 1342. [35]

The disturbing events of 1341-43 convinced Edward III that Ireland had to be brought to heel. Accordingly, in 1344, he appointed a trusted servant, Sir Ralph Ufford, as Justiciar, and provided him with an unusually large personal retinue of English troops comprising 40 men-at-arms and 200 archers. Ufford quickly suppressed rebellions among the Leinster Irish, and then strengthened royal authority in Ulster. However, he also aroused great resentment by granting Irish offices and estates to Englishmen in his retinue, and making heavy use of the royal right of purveyance (i.e., purchasing goods at below-market prices set by the government). Desmond tried to exploit this resentment by summoning another seditious assembly of Anglo-Irish lords in early 1345, but Ufford’s successes had made the magnates cautious and none would attend. Evidently undismayed, Desmond then resorted to open rebellion, attacking towns and royal estates in Munster and Leinster. [36]

Ufford responded by mustering a large army of both Gaelic and Anglo-Irish troops, and marching south into the Earldom of Desmond. Within four months, Desmond’s castles had been taken, his chief supporters executed, and the earl himself driven into exile. [37]

Yet, in 1347 Desmond was allowed to surrender on generous terms and just two years later he was pardoned, and his title and lands restored for a second time. [38]

Here again, the explanation for the decidedly mild punishment meted out for Desmond’s treason lay in the Crown’s recognition of his irreplaceability. For, after Ufford’s untimely death in 1346, there had been another major outbreak of disorder. [In response] … dozens of royal keepers of the peace were appointed in the southern counties. Nevertheless, before long the king was being urged, in the interests of order, to come to some decision about Desmond, and it was revealed that the government could not control or raise any profit from his lands: the Desmond inheritance was threatening to go the way of those of the de Burghs and de Clares. [39]

Desmond’s pardon and restoration were not the last chapter in his amazing story. For, in a final irony, King Edward III inexplicably appointed him Justiciar of Ireland in July 1355, and the aged earl died peacefully in office the following January. [40]

We have digressed somewhat by relating the strange career of the 1st Earl of Desmond in such detail, but the tale is of interest not only on it its dramatic merits, but also because it is emblematic of the chronic civil disorder that wracked the colony during the 14th Century. Desmond differed from his fellow Anglo-Irish magnates only in the extent of his disobedience, since most of them likewise contributed to the rising tide of disorder and the erosion of royal authority.

To some extent, their lawless behavior was excusable on grounds of necessity. In an environment of endemic conflict where the royal government was generally incapable of preserving law and order, the magnates had to enforce their own justice and fight private wars in order to defend their own interests and those of their Gaelic and Anglo-Irish allies. “In its calmer moments, the Dublin government was well aware of this. In 1351, the Irish council stressed that the lordship was in continua guerra; even the well-disposed among the lords constantly broke the law because of the conditions; if pardons were denied them they would have little option but to join the king’s enemies.” [41]

Part 3: The Lords of Ireland

Footnotes