Part 1: The Land of War

Part 2: The Land of War

Lords of Ireland

As they approached the midpoint of the 14th Century, the colonists might reasonably have hoped that things would not get any worse, but in fact they were about to experience the greatest catastrophe of that ill-fated hundred years - the Black Death. The plague had first appeared on the Continent in the latter half of 1347, and arrived in Ireland during August 1348, sweeping over the entire island in the course of the following winter. Although there are no reliable records of plague deaths in Ireland, it seems that over a third of the population died, with the largely town-dwelling Anglo-Irish suffering more severely than the pastoral Gaelic Irish. Otway-Ruthven suggests that, as in England, subsequent outbreaks in 1361, 1370, 1384 and 1398 reduced the Anglo-Irish population by about half by century’s end. Mortality on such a vast scale caused terror and despair. “The plague and its effects caused panic in the colony and created havoc among the settlers. Many fled from outlying districts to the towns, and from there they fled back to England. Manors and villages were left deserted and fields untilled. The forest crept back into land which had been cleared.”

This exodus was not an entirely new phenomenon; it had been underway at least since the Bruce Invasion, driven by war, famine, and the rising tide of anarchy. However, the Black Death intensified the outflow, and thus accelerated the rate at which formerly productive lands fell into waste. Many among the Anglo-Irish nobility joined in the exodus, administering what remained of their increasingly unprofitable Irish estates through proxies, or abandoning them outright. This practice steepened the downward spiral in revenue and further weakened the colony’s military resources, since many of the absentees owed knight service to the Crown. In 1359, the Irish government tried to rein in absenteeism by temporarily forbidding the departure of men liable for military service.

The Gaelic Irish, of course, exploited the colony’s growing weakness at every opportunity, occupying abandoned estates and continually raiding the remaining ‘English’ lands. The aggressive MacMurroughs, self-styled Kings of Leinster, and their allies the O’Byrnes and O’Tooles, were a particular threat, since their fastness in the Wicklow Mountains loomed just a few miles south of Dublin and practically divided the colony in two. The shrinkage of the ‘land of peace’ became so severe that by the end of the 1350s, only Dublin and the immediately adjoining counties of Kildare, Meath and Louth could be considered reliable sources of revenue; they accounted for nearly three-quarters of all receipts collected in 1360-61. Meanwhile, in the expanding ‘land of war,’ the great Anglo-Irish magnates increasingly chose to face reality by accepting Gaelic lords’ claims to reconquered lands in return for recognition of their own nominal overlordship.

The Treaty of Bretigny, signed with France in 1360, marked the beginning of a nine-year hiatus in the Hundred Years War that allowed Edward III to turn his attention to the sad state of his Irish domains. The following year, he appointed his second son, Lionel, Duke of Clarence, as Lieutenant of Ireland (the governors of Ireland would often be titled ‘Lieutenant’ from the late 14th Century onward). This choice signified the importance that Edward attached to Ireland, and Lionel was a natural candidate since he was himself an absentee Irish lord, having married the daughter and heiress of the murdered William de Burgo, Earl of Ulster. Lionel was given a retinue of 197 men-at-arms and 670 mounted archers which was to be financed mainly by the English exchequer. This represented a major departure from the traditional practice of financing Justiciars’ retinues exclusively from the Irish exchequer, but that was now clearly incapable of maintaining what was by Irish standards a very large force. In return for this unprecedented commitment of troops and money, Edward hoped to pacify Ireland sufficiently that it would once more become a source of revenue for his foreign wars.

Lionel served as Lieutenant from 1361 to 1366, except for an eight months sojourn in England during 1364. Although his arrival in Ireland coincided with the second outbreak of the Black Death, Lionel enjoyed some success in restoring royal authority, particularly in Munster, relying as much on defensive garrisons placed around the fringes of the ‘land of peace’ as on offensive campaigns beyond it. This brought a modest recovery in Irish revenue, so that the proportion collected outside of Dublin and the immediately adjacent counties rose from just over a quarter in 1360-61 to a full half in 1365-66. He also oversaw the relocation of the seat of the Irish government to Carlow, though the choice was an odd one, since the town was largely in ruins after having been burnt several times by Gaelic raiders, and remained a risky destination for travelers.

Lionel also presided at an Irish parliament that produced the famous Statutes of Kilkenny in 1366. The statutes were intended to reverse the increasing ‘Gaelicization’ and unruliness of the Anglo-Irish nobility, which had become major sources of concern for the government. Their preamble read in part:

[A]t the conquest of the land of Ireland and long after the English of the said land used the English language, dress, and manner of riding, and they and their subjects called betaghs were governed by English law … and now many English of the said land, forsaking the English language, fashion, manner of riding, laws and usages, live and govern themselves by the manners, fashion, and language of the Irish enemies, and have made divers marriages and alliances between themselves and the Irish enemies, by which the said land and its liege people, the English language, the allegiance due to our lord the king, and the English laws are put in subjection and decayed, and the Irish enemies raised up and relieved contrary to reason.

The statutes accordingly proscribed intermarriage, the fostering of children among the Irish (a staple of medieval Gaelic culture), and the use of march or brehon law. Furthermore, the ‘English’ were prohibited from the ‘degenerate’ habits of speaking the Gaelic tongue and adopting Irish customs, entertainments, or styles of dress and riding. In the political-military sphere, the statutes aimed to assert a royal monopoly on making war and peace. Thus, they forbid wars among the ‘English,’ the negotiation of private truces with the Irish, the breaking of truces and treaties negotiated by royal officials, and the billeting of private troops on the population within the terra pacis. As we have seen, this last clause had been enacted by the Irish parliament of 1297, and nearly all the other prohibitions had likewise been decreed years before (sometimes on several different occasions). Needless to say, since the Crown generally had no means of enforcing the Statutes of Kilkenny, they proved no more successful than the earlier legislation.

Degeneracy

The clearest example of Anglo-Irish ‘degeneracy’ were the Burkes (De Burgos) of Connacht. Even at the colony’s peak, Connacht had been very thinly settled by the ‘English,’ and during the 14th Century, the king’s writ effectively ceased to run in the province. Living in an overwhelmingly Gaelic cultural setting almost untouched by English law, the Burkes grew ever more indistinguishable from their Irish neighbors, and became archetypal ‘English rebels,’ constantly disturbing the colony’s peace and often openly flouting royal authority. For example, after Lionel left Ireland in November 1366, his estates in Connacht were seized by his de Burgo relatives, and no royal official could dare try to reclaim them. This flagrantly illicit act was but one of many in a wave of disorder that swept over Ireland in 1367 and 1368, and government influence and revenues suffered accordingly. In early 1367, the Crown bowed to the inevitable and pardoned all outstanding debts owed to the king by his Irish subjects that dated from before October 1362. An attempt was made to reverse the tide of absenteeism in 1368 by ordering 16 named émigré lords either to return to Ireland or forfeit their estates, but this policy backfired when many of them instead hastily sold their all but worthless Irish lands.

Thus, little more than a year after Lionel’s departure, the limited recovery that he had achieved had become unraveled. However, Edward III was determined to persevere in pacifying Ireland even despite the resumption of the war with France, and continued to devote considerable resources to the effort almost until the end of his reign. In practical terms, this meant that Edward stuck with the policy of granting his Lieutenants unusually large retinues of English troops that were heavily financed by the English exchequer.

Yet, neither William of Windsor (1369-1373 and 1374-76) nor Robert Ashton (1373-74) was able to emulate even the limited degree of success enjoyed by Lionel of Clarence. Financial difficulties were a major factor in their failure, since the rising costs of the French war prevented Edward III from supplying all the funds promised. Windsor tried to close the gap by placing an unprecedented burden of taxation upon the colony, but still came up short due to resistance by the settlers and the chronic state of disorder in the countryside - which was compounded by yet another outbreak of plague in 1371. Moreover, a royal edict of 1372 directed the Irish exchequer not to levy scutage (a tax paid in lieu of knight service) on the many estates “now by the Irish rebels wasted and occupied.” Thus, when their retinues’ pay went into arrears, both Windsor and Ashton had to reach into their own pockets in order to maintain at least some troops in service.

This atypical period of activism in English policy toward Ireland ended in 1376 due to the sorry condition of the English exchequer, the colonists’ concerted resistance to further taxation, and Edward III’s frustration at the lack of any lasting progress in Ireland. After all, the Crown had spent over ?71,000 on military expeditions to Ireland since 1361, and had absolutely nothing to show for it. Indeed, far from improving, the situation in Ireland was getting steadily worse. In 1376, Art MacMurrough Kavanagh began a 42-year reign as ‘King of Leinster,’ and soon proved to be one of the most formidable foes that the English colony in Ireland ever faced. Under his leadership, the Gaelic Irish of Leinster would be at war with the colonists for almost the entire last quarter of the 14th Century. The Irish government was so powerless before MacMurrough and his allies that it could not prevent Carlow from being burned in both 1377 and 1378.

Yet, a period of retrenchment was probably inevitable in any event, since Richard II was still a minor when Edward III died in 1377 - and the council that ruled in his stead until 1382 had little interest in Ireland. Left to their own devices, the colonists increasingly resorted to the desperate - and counterproductive - expedient of paying bribes (or ‘Black Rents’) to halt Gaelic attacks. Things deteriorated steadily over the next seventeen years as the ‘land of peace’ and revenues shrank, absenteeism grew, and the ranks of the ‘Irish rebels’ were swollen by the O’Neills of Ulster, O’Connors of Connacht, and O’Briens of Munster - so that all four provinces were almost constantly in turmoil. As always, a bad situation was made worse by strife among the Anglo-Irish, most notably a feud between the great Earls of Ormond and Desmond in the early 1380s. Due to their limited resources, the Lieutenants rarely succeeded in quelling disorder for even so much as a year. The job of governing Ireland became so thankless that when the Lieutenant, Edmund Mortimer*, died in 1381, a council of Irish lords found it difficult to find anyone willing to take his place. The Earls of Ormond and Desmond both refused appointment to the office.

The misfortunes of the English colony intensified in 1392, when MacMurrough and his allies put Carlow to the torch yet again, prompting the long-overdue decision to shift the seat of government back to Dublin. The situation had grown so bad that Richard II concluded a supreme effort was necessary if the colony was to survive. The time seemed propitious, since England was temporarily at peace with both France and Scotland, and Richard’s domestic position was finally secure after a period of political strife in the latter half of the 1380s. Accordingly, in the fall of 1394, Richard II became the first English king to visit Ireland in over 180 years, bringing with him at least 5,000 English troops - and probably a few thousand more. Adding contingents raised in Ireland brought Richard’s total strength to an estimated 8,000-10,000 men. ‘English’ armies in Ireland had been long been hamstrung by inadequate manpower and insufficient funds to keep troops in service for more than a few weeks at a time, but for once these constraints did not apply.

The army which came with Richard was by far the largest ever to land in Ireland during the middle ages, and was intended to stay here until the work of reform had been brought to a satisfactory conclusion. This was a complete break away from the idea of small armies, led by a chief governor or member of the royal family, fighting for a short season against a particular enemy or group of enemies and achieving no lasting success.

Richard II used his huge army to surround the mountains of Leinster with a chain of garrisons that, together with a naval blockade, cut off all external sources of supply. Small, fast-moving parties of mounted archers then raided and devastated the area within the encirclement, further reducing food supplies and ensuring that MacMurrough and his allies had no rest. This treatment soon convinced MacMurrough to submit and swear fealty to Richard; he even surrendered his brother as a hostage and swore to march against the Crown’s remaining enemies in Ireland. This last promise proved unnecessary, since the other ‘Irish rebels’ were so overawed by the size of Richard’s army, and impressed by his success against MacMurrough, that practically all of them hastened to submit without putting up even token resistance. In return, they were granted pardons, confirmed in ownership of lands held since the Norman Conquest, and several were awarded annual pensions. Since all of the ‘English rebels’ had also made their peace with him, Richard concluded that he had fully pacified Ireland, and sailed for home in May 1395.

This success proved short-lived, since Irish and English ‘rebels’ alike reverted to their former habits as soon as Richard II and his vast army left Ireland. MacMurrough allied with the Earl of Desmond to attack the Earl of Ormond, and the O’Briens and O’Neills also resumed their raids. Within three years, nearly all of the major Gaelic lords had renounced their submissions and were again in open rebellion. In 1398, the presumptive royal heir, Roger Mortimer, was killed in battle near Carlow, prompting Richard to return Ireland the next year. However, on this occasion, fiscal difficulties prevented him from fielding an army large enough to repeat his strategy of 1394-95. Instead, he marched into the heart of the Wicklow Mountains, but MacMurrough avoided battle and harassed Richard’s army with ambushes, night raids, and attacks on stragglers.

Worse yet, while Richard was campaigning fruitlessly in Ireland, his cousin, Henry Bolingbroke (afterwards King Henry IV), returned from exile and rose in rebellion. Richard hastened back to England in July 1399, but was almost immediately taken prisoner and deposed. Mortimer’s death and Richard II’s distraction in Ireland thereby contributed directly to the rise of the Lancastrian monarchy - and thus, to the Wars of the Roses that would wrack England between 1452 and 1487. This ensured that Ireland would be left undisturbed for most of the 15th Century, while the area under effective English governance continued to shrink until it embraced an area only about fifty miles square around Dublin – the so-called Dublin ‘Pale.’

The failure of Richard II’s expeditions thus effectively marked the end of England’s efforts to restore the vitality of its waning Irish colony for the rest of the Middle Ages. It would be well over a century before another attempt was made (by Henry VIII), and in the interim, English policy toward Ireland sought merely to preserve a foothold for royal authority in the country at the smallest possible cost. As historian Edmund Curtis wrote:

We may say that after Richard the English lordship in Ireland in any real sense ceased to exist. Never again till Tudor times was such an attempt possible. Henceforward a Gaelic and Norman aristocracy divided the land, and only a few towns and eastern shires stood for that ‘land of peace’ which a century before had embraced the greater part of Ireland.

CONCLUSION

The decline of the English colony in Ireland has traditionally been linked to the ‘Gaelicization’ of the Anglo-Irish nobility, who grew increasingly independent-minded and disdainful of royal authority as they famously became “more Irish than the Irish.” However, as we have seen, the Anglo-Irish nobility was never attentive to the wishes of the Crown from the earliest days of the ‘Norman Conquest.’ Indeed, there would not have been a colony in Ireland in the first place had Strongbow and his fellow Norman adventurers not made war, conquered lands, and negotiated truces, alliances and peace treaties with the natives on no authority but their own. Henry II and John I undertook major military expeditions to Ireland for the precise purpose of reining in their unruly vassals and preventing the rise of a rival kingdom. These remained the principal objectives of the Crown’s Irish policies well into the 13th Century, because traitorous Anglo-Irish magnates were a far more immediate and consequential threat than rebellious Gaelic Irish lords.

Yet, since the colonial government generally lacked the means to impose its rule in the ‘Land of War,’ it was forced to depend upon the Anglo-Irish nobility to project and maintain English influence beyond the terra pacis. The Crown thus found itself in the equivocal position of supporting and relying upon the support of autonomous Anglo-Irish lordships that undermined its own authority and increasingly sowed disunity within the ranks of the colonists. The problem worsened over time as the government’s power and the ‘Land of Peace’ shrank, encouraging the Anglo-Irish magnates to become more self-reliant – and disobedient. Indeed, it became a self-reinforcing cycle, since the magnates’ unruliness both contributed to and was motivated by the erosion of royal authority.

Due to the de facto division of sovereignty between the Dublin government and an assortment of fractious Anglo-Irish magnates the colony was always “less a lordship than a patchwork of lordships.” This disunity played at least as large a role as any other factor in causing the colony’s decline, since ‘internal’ strife was frequently more disruptive and destructive than the depredations of hostile Gaelic Irish. Feuding and internecine warfare among the Anglo-Irish began within a few decades of the colony’s founding, and became an endemic problem during the first quarter of the 14th Century. Significantly, the process of ‘Gaelicization’ was still far from complete in the early 1300s, and arguably would not be until perhaps the mid-15th Century – long after the English lordship had effectively ceased to exist in most of Ireland.

The Anglo-Irish magnates generally did not share in the colony’s decline. For despite a few dramatic setbacks like the overthrow of the De Burgos in Ulster and the De Clares in Thomond, the magnates as a rule survived. Many even managed to expand their power and influence by moving into the vacuum left by the retreat of the Dublin administration. While shrinking revenue and a waning population emasculated the royal government, the great Anglo-Irish lords remained as powerful a force as ever. The colony’s decline accordingly should not be viewed from a ‘nationalistic’ perspective that equates it simply with the natives driving back the foreign invaders. Rather, the decline should be seen principally in terms of an erosion of royal authority that had never become firmly rooted in most of Ireland in the first place. English government had retreated, but a ‘foreign’ presence remained in the form of the Anglo-Irish magnates – although in time the process of Gaelicization would make them virtually indistinguishable from their Gaelic neighbors.