Princes of Ireland

by Edward Rutherfurd

  And now at last Gilpatrick saw the cunning of the Plantagenet king. He had tricked the Irish churchmen into issuing that damning report, then run to Rome with it as proof of the state of things in Ireland. He’d suppressed all word of the council. The officials in Rome, who only knew a little of Ireland anyway, had found Pope Adrian’s earlier letter. And the trick was completed. The English king’s foray into Ireland to sort out Strongbow was now a papal crusade. “And we gave him the pretext. We condemned ourselves by our own hand,” Gilpatrick murmured.

  It was devious. It was a betrayal. It was a brilliant lesson in politics from a master at the game.

  IV

  1192

  On Saint Patrick’s Day in the year of Our Lord 1192, an important ceremony took place at Dublin. Led by the city’s archbishop, a procession of ecclesiastical dignitaries emerged from Christ Church Cathedral and made its way out through the city’s southern gate. Among them was Father Gilpatrick. Two hundred yards away down the road was the Well of Saint Patrick beside which, for a long time, there had been a tiny church. But today, on its site, there now stood a large though still uncompleted structure. Indeed, its size and its handsome proportions suggested that it might almost be intended to rival the great cathedral of Christ Church itself. Nor was it to be only a church; for the foundations of the accompanying school could already be seen. One thing might have struck the onlookers as incongruous about the procession to this fine new foundation dedicated to Ireland’s patron saint. The Archbishop of Dublin who led it was named John Cumin: and he was resolutely English.

  Indeed, everything about the new Saint Patrick’s was to be English. It was being built in the new Gothic style, now in fashion in England and France. Unlike the important Irish foundations, which were monastic, the new college of Saint Patrick was to be a collegiate church for priests, not monks—in the latest English fashion. Most of the priests were English, not Irish. And it could hardly have escaped anyone’s notice that this new English headquarters of the English bishop was situated outside the city wall and several hundred yards distant from the old Christ Church, where the monks still remembered the saintly Archbishop O’Toole with reverence and affection.

  The wet March breeze caught Father Gilpatrick in the face. He should, he supposed, have felt grateful. It was, after all, a compliment that the English archbishop should have chosen him, an Irishman, to be one of the new canons. “You are held in high regard by everyone,” Cumin had told him frankly. “I know you will use your influence wisely.” Given the circumstances as they were nowadays, Gilpatrick had no doubt that it was his duty to accept. But as he glanced across at the site of his family’s old monastery on the rise to his left, and as he thought of the man he had asked, most reluctantly, to meet him as soon as the consecration was over, he could only think: thank God at least that my poor father is no longer alive to see this.

  His father’s last years had not been happy. After the visit of King Henry, the old man had seen his world gradually being butchered, like a body losing limbs, one at a time. The final blow for him had been when a new Church council had declared that all the hereditary priests like himself should be thrown out of their positions and dispossessed. Archbishop O’Toole had utterly refused to let such a thing happen to him, but the heart had gone out of the old man after that. The end had come only half a year after the death of Lawrence O’Toole himself. His father had gone for a walk down to the old Thingmount. And there, by the tomb of his ancestor Fergus, he had suffered a single, massive seizure and fallen dead on the spot. It was a fitting end, Gilpatrick thought, for the last of the Ui Fergusa.

  For his father had turned out to be the last chief. He himself, as a celibate priest, had no heirs. And his brother Lorcan, whether by chance or as divine punishment for marrying his brother’s widow, had been granted daughters but no son. In the male line, therefore, the family of the chiefs who had guarded Ath Cliath since before Saint Patrick came was about to die out.

  There was one final indignity, however, which had been reserved for this day. It was a mercy, indeed, that his father was not there to see what he must do after the consecration.

  The service was well done, you couldn’t deny it. And afterwards they were all very friendly to him, complimentary indeed. But it gave him no pleasure. He had no illusions. The Church was still predominantly Irish, so they needed a man like him as a go-between. For the time being. Until the English were in the majority. The present archbishop was not a bad man, in his way. He’d encountered other churchmen like him during his time in England. An administrator, a servant of the king: intelligent, but cold. How he longed, sometimes, for the less worldly spirit of O’Toole. When the business was over, he went outside and looked around. After a moment or two, he saw the lordly figure approaching, and inwardly he cringed. It was all his brother’s fault.

  For a brief time, after King Henry had completed his visit to the island, it had seemed that the two parties occupying the land might live in an uneasy peace. The Plantagenet monarch and the O’Connor High King had even made a new treaty dividing the island between them, rather as it had been divided into the two halves of Leth Cuinn and Leth Moga, north and south, in times before. All over the English-occupied territory, the Norman motte and bailey castles started to appear. Big wooden palisades enclosed a high earthwork mound crowned with a timber keep. These stout little working forts certainly dominated the estates, the new manors that Strongbow and his followers had set up. But had it stopped at that? Of course not. The Irish were unhappy; the settlers were greedy for still more land. Before long the truce had broken down and the lords of the borderland manors were raiding into the High King’s domain, stealing territory. Ironically, during this process, Strongbow, who had been the cause of it all, had died. But that had made no difference. The land grabbing had developed a momentum of its own. One aristocratic adventurer named de Courcy had even raced into Ulster and seized a little kingdom for himself up there.

  These events in the borderlands had not much affected Gilpatrick’s family in the relative quiet of Dublin; but a new development was to have profound consequences for his brother. For in the year 1185, Ireland had received a second royal visit; not from Henry, this time, but from his youngest son.

  Prince John had none of the glamour of his elder brother, Richard the Lionheart. All his life he seemed to make enemies. He was clever but tactless; he did everything by fits and starts. Arriving in Ireland and meeting Irish chiefs whose dress and flowing beards he thought funny, the young man mocked them to their faces and cheerfully insulted them. But behind this arrogance and vulgarity lay another, darker calculation. Prince John cared nothing for the feelings of the Irish: he had come to impose order, and with him he brought ruthless henchmen with names like de Burgh, and the family of administrators known as the Butlers, who were very good at imposing order indeed.

  For occupied Ireland was to be administered on English lines: ancient tribal territories were to be administered as baronies; townlands, like the English hundreds, were to be set up. The seats of modest chieftains would become the fortified manors of English armed knights. English courts, English taxes, English customs, even English counties were planned. There were also the further contingents of knights, many of them friends of the prince, who must be given Irish estates. And if that meant kicking a few more of the Irish off their land, Prince John couldn’t have cared less.

  Amongst those who had suffered had been Ailred the Palmer. One day he had suddenly been informed that his holdings to the west of the city, which supported the hospital, had been given to two Englishmen of Prince John’s acquaintance; and although both his son, Harold, and the grandson of Doyle were by now important men in Dublin, not even their influence had been able to prevent it. But within months, the kindly Palmer and his wife, instead of giving way to anger, had persuaded both the men who had obtained his land to grant most of it back to the hospital, which received a formal blessing from the Pope himself soon afterwards. “So you see,” his
wife sweetly declared, “in the end everything turned out for the best.”

  If only his brother could have been as wise, thought Gilpatrick. But was it, he asked himself, partly his fault? Had he been too busy with Church affairs to realise the danger his brother was in?

  When King Henry had taken the ancient lands of the Ui Fergusa, he had split them into two great manors, north and south. The northern manor was still held by Baggot; the southern had remained in his brother’s hands. To his brother’s way of thinking, therefore, he was still the chief. And the fact that he had never fully understood his new status, Gilpatrick considered, was partly because of wishful thinking, but also because, as an Irishman, he could not comprehend one important feature of European feudal life: the absentee landlord.

  It was a commonplace in England or France. The king gave his great lords scattered territories to hold; they in turn had tenants. The lord of the manor might be resident there; or he might be away; or he might hold several manors and be represented by a steward to whom the various people on the estate, from the tenants of the larger farms to the humblest serf, would answer.

  In the case of the Ui Fergusa lands, the lord of the manor was the king himself, represented by the Justiciar. A steward handled the daily business. For convenience, so far, Gilpatrick’s brother had been left as the sole tenant farmer of the place; during the first few years, the rents demanded by the steward had been modest and Gilpatrick’s brother had rationalised these as the customary tribute due from an Irish chief to his king. With the arrival of Prince John’s new administrators, however, the situation had changed, and the trouble had begun. When the steward had demanded payments for the knight service due from the estate, Gilpatrick’s brother had failed to pay. Summoned to the lord of the manor’s court, he had failed to turn up. When the steward, a patient man, had come to see him, he had treated the royal servant with contempt.

  “We have been chiefs here since before your king’s family was ever heard of,” he told the steward with perfect truth. “A chief does not answer to a servant. When the king is in Ireland again,” he had conceded, “I will come into his house.” The steward had said no more, but had gone away.

  Yet was it, perhaps, his own fault, Gilpatrick now asked himself, that his brother had behaved so stupidly? If he hadn’t been busy with Church affairs, could he not have made sure that his own family’s position was secure and in proper order? It had been three weeks ago that his brother had arrived at his house. And the moment he had asked his question, Gilpatrick’s heart had sunk.

  “Explain to me, Gilpatrick,” he had demanded, “what is a tenant-at-will?”

  There were various kinds of men on any manorial estate. The lowest were the serfs, tied to the land, and little better than slaves. Above these came various classes, some of them specialist workers with clearly defined rights and duties. At the top of the hierarchy were the free tenants, holding a farm or two on formally contracted rents. These might be free farmers of substance, or even another feudal lord or a religious foundation with a cross-holding or part share in a manor. But below the free tenant lay a precarious class. The tenant-at-will was normally a freeman, able to come and go as he pleased, but he held his land in the manor on no fixed contract. The lord had the right to terminate his tenancy at any time.

  When King Henry had taken the Ui Fergusa land, no one had ever bothered to obtain a proper charter. Because they had been left in place, Gilpatrick’s family had assumed they had security of tenure. After all, they’d been there a thousand years. Didn’t that make their position plain enough? Of course it didn’t, Gilpatrick thought, and he of all people should have known it.

  The steward had struck a double blow. He had reminded the Justiciar that the next time the king needed to reward one of his men, the southern Ui Fergusa manor was still available. And now that the manor had just been granted, the steward had informed the new lord that he had a troublesome tenant. “However,” he had explained, “as there has never been any formal agreement, we can consider him as a tenant-at-will.” Last week the steward had gone down to see Gilpatrick’s brother and calmly informed him, “The new lord will be coming here shortly. He wants you out before he arrives. So pack up and leave.”

  “And where am I to go?” Gilpatrick’s brother had furiously demanded. “Up into the Wicklow Mountains?”

  “As far as I’m concerned,” the steward coolly answered, “you are free to go to hell.”

  So now it was up to Father Gilpatrick to try to save the situation.

  The realisation that the ancestral lands would probably be lost to the family, even in the female line, for the rest of time was a bitter one. Mercifully, most of his brother’s daughters were safely married by now; but there were two still to be provided for. At least, Gilpatrick thought, I may be able to buy him a few more years. For, as his brother had quite rightly pointed out, if anyone had a hope of persuading the new lord of the manor to relent, it must be himself. After all, he knew him.

  So he did his best to smile as the once familiar figure reached him and gazed down at him from his horse.

  “It has been a long time,” Gilpatrick said, “since last we met, Peter FitzDavid.”

  It had been a long time. Peter FitzDavid would not have denied it. A quarter century since he had first set out; twenty years and more that he had been hoping for his reward. Some of those years had been spent outside Ireland; but he had found himself back there often enough. He had fought in the west, in Limerick; he had organised garrisons, commanded under the Justiciar. He had become well known and well respected amongst the armed men on the island. Peter the Welshman, the Irish called him; and the English-speaking troops and lesser settlers similarly referred to him as Peter Welsh or, as it often sounded to the ear, Walsh.

  Peter FitzDavid, better known as Walsh, had been kept hard at work down the years because he was trusted. He had learned to be patient and watchful. But at the right time, he had let it be known that a reward should be forthcoming; and now, when it had finally come, it was better than he had dared to hope. A fine estate, not on the borderlands where the angry Irish were always likely to raid in revenge for what had been stolen from them, but here in the rich, safe, coastal farmland of Leinster, close by the garrison of Dublin itself.

  It was time to settle down. Time, late though it was, to marry and produce an heir. Years of service followed by a late marriage—it was not an uncommon career for a knight. He had already found a bride—a younger daughter of Baggot, the knight whose estate marched with his. He had every intention of enjoying the good fortune he had earned.

  He had thought of Gilpatrick, of course, when he learned he was to be given the Ui Fergusa estate; but he wasn’t embarrassed to meet him. He had reached the point of middle age where he had no more time or emotion to waste. The land was his now. That was that. The fortunes of war. The business about Gilpatrick’s younger brother, however, was another matter. He knew perfectly well that this must be the reason the priest had asked to see him and he knew that, out of courtesy, he must listen to what Gilpatrick had to say. But perhaps there was an element of calculation in the fact that, on reaching his former friend, he did not dismount. Nor when Gilpatrick suggested they should walk a little did he do so, but allowed the priest to walk beside him.

  Their route took them a short way eastwards, to the open common from which the stream ran down towards the old Viking stone at the estuary’s edge. Recently a second hospital, a small one for lepers, had been set up there and dedicated to Saint Stephen. It was past this little foundation beside the marshland that the two figures went, one still mounted, the other on foot; and Peter listened to the woes of poor Gilpatrick’s brother. And as he listened, he felt …

  Nothing. He listened to the family story, the extenuating circumstances, the fact—the priest felt sure, he said, that Peter would understand—that his brother had not fully appreciated the new situation. Gilpatrick recalled to him his old father, and their friendship in the past. And still, a
lmost to his own surprise, Peter still felt nothing. Or rather, after a while, he did begin to feel something. But that was contempt.

  He despised Gilpatrick’s brother. He despised him because he had not fought, and yet had lost. He despised him for being as arrogant as he was weak. He despised him for being wilfully ill informed, for being unbusinesslike, and for being stupid. Hadn’t he himself had to fight, and to endure hardship, and to learn wisdom and patience? Success despises failure. Peter stayed on his horse. And at last, as they gazed down towards the Thingmount and the Viking stone he said: “Gilpatrick, I can do nothing.” And he continued to gaze straight ahead.

  “You have grown hard with the years, I see,” the priest said sorrowfully.

  Peter turned his horse’s head and slowly wheeled round. The interview was over. He’d had enough. He wanted to kick his horse into a trot and leave his former friend standing. And rude though this would have been, he might have done it if, just then, he hadn’t seen a woman coming across the green towards them. For now, instead of moving off, he stared.

  Fionnuala. There was no mistaking her. It was nearly twenty years since they had parted, but even in the distance he’d have known her at a glance. As she came up, she gave Gilpatrick a brief nod.

  “They told me you’d be here.”

  “I did not know you were in Dublin,” the priest began. He seemed a little put out. “Do you remember my sister, Fionnuala?” He turned to Peter.

  “He remembers,” she cut in quietly.

  “I was explaining to Peter that our brother …”

  “Has been a fool.” She looked straight at Peter. “Nearly as great a fool as his sister once was.” She said it simply, without any malice. “They told me you were meeting him,” she said to Gilpatrick. “So I thought I’d come up to Dublin, too.”

  “Unfortunately—” Gilpatrick began again.