The Story of Ireland

by Neil Hegarty

  Till they reach past the wood northwards,

  And Áth-cliath the fair shall be burned,

  After the ravaging the Leinster plain.5

  The armies of Leinster and Dublin retreated in disarray from the hills and into the city, harried by Brian’s forces as they went. Nor would Dublin’s walls avail the defenders: Brian plundered the city and burned the fortress, taking Maelmordha hostage until sufficient tribute had been paid to secure his release. As for Sitric, it was said that he managed to escape the city and flee north to Ulster to seek refuge with the Ulaid – but they denied him assistance, and he was forced to return south and submit in humiliation to Brian. With an eye to the future, however, he was permitted to remain ruler of the city as Brian’s vassal.

  With the southern half of Ireland now pacified, Brian turned his attention north. Suspending his temporary peace treaty with the Uí Néill, he mustered the forces of Munster, Leinster and Dublin and in 1000 led them north into the rich farmland of Meath and towards the Uí Néill seat of power. The records are unhelpful at this point: they do not say how or why, but what is known is that by 1002 Máel Sechnaill had surrendered; the southern branch of the Uí Néill had fallen; and the symbolic seat of power at Tara belonged to Brian. Nearly all of Ireland, however unwillingly, had been subdued, and only Ulster still refused to bow to his authority. It would take a further ten years of campaigning, the combined military forces of the southern half of the country and a large degree of canny politicking to subdue the province: it is recorded in the Book of Armagh, for example, that in 1005, Brian donated twenty-two ounces of gold to the monastery and recognized Armagh’s claim to primacy over Ireland. Once more, Church and State were formulating a mutually beneficial arrangement: Armagh’s ambitious clerics were now entitled to tithes from all of Ireland’s other monasteries, and they in turn named Brian Boru ‘Emperor of the Irish’.

  In the opening years of the eleventh century, then, a semblance of political cohesion existed in Ireland for the first time. The high kingship at Tara had attained a degree of actual meaning; the Vikings of Dublin and Limerick had been subdued; and hosts of petty kingdoms had been forced to recognize Brian’s authority. But this achievement had taken a campaign lasting several decades, and had left bitterness and resentment in its wake. The political unity of Ireland, in other words, was no more than the thinnest of membranes stretched across a scene of seething discontent. Rebellion inevitably erupted once again and, with all the principal actors remaining in place, opposition to Brian’s overlordship was led by Sitric of Dublin and Maelmordha of Leinster. Brian’s army ravaged Leinster, and Dublin was besieged yet again – but this time, the onset of winter forced his armies back into Munster. This bought the rebels the time they desperately needed. Maelmordha dispatched Sitric to seek Viking aid from abroad, and in the meantime Brian’s kingdom, so recently stitched together, was beginning to unravel. The leaders of recently conquered Ulster agreed not to take sides but, sensing weakness, they also refused to provide men and arms in support. As a result, Brian too was obliged to seek the help of Viking mercenaries.

  In the spring of 1014, Brian’s army gathered outside the walls of Dublin. On Palm Sunday, a fleet sailed into Dublin Bay: it was a formidable force, with representatives from Viking Europe among them. At a stroke, Brian had lost his numerical advantage; and five days later, on Good Friday, 23 April, battle was joined. Brian, now over seventy years old, is said to have prayed in his tent while his son Murchad led the army – comprising the Irish of Munster and Connacht, the Hiberno–Norse of Limerick and Waterford, and a force of Manx mercenaries – out into the wide, flat fields on the northern bank of the Liffey. Facing them were the forces of Leinster and Dublin, together with their own Manx and other Viking allies – and these took their stand at Clontarf, with their backs to the longship fleet moored in the bay. Sitric, meanwhile, stayed in the city to organize its defence.

  The battle was ferocious, but late in the afternoon the balance began to shift in favour of Brian. His Leinster and Viking opponents were forced to retreat towards the sea, with Brian’s men in pursuit; and there on the edge of the water they were defeated. By nightfall, bodies were drifting on Dublin Bay, and the field at Clontarf was strewn with the corpses of men and horses, commoners and nobles; among them were both Maelmordha and Murchad. Nor did Brian escape: it is said that the Manx leader Brodar extricated himself from the massacre and hacked his way through the lines to reach Brian’s tent; and there, with one blow of his battle-axe, he swept the old king’s head from his shoulders. This was a powerful climax to a battle that has been mythologized as the triumph of the Irish over the foreigners; and this version of the story is topped off by the removal of Brian’s remains for burial not in his Dalcassian homeland, but at the cathedral at Armagh. Even in death, it seems, Brian was playing a potent game, underscoring his claims of kingship and national unity by being laid to rest in sacred ground in the ecclesiastical capital of the country.

  The Norse sagas remember events at Clontarf thus:

  The men of Ireland will suffer a grief

  That will never grow old in the minds of men.

  The web is now woven and the battlefield reddened;

  The news of disaster will spread through lands.6

  In truth, however, Clontarf did not mark the defeat of Norse power within Ireland: rather, it was the climax of a specifically Irish civil war in which foreigners had participated only as minor players or paid mercenaries; and in its aftermath, a power vacuum opened up. Brian had demonstrated that the kingship of the country was no mere symbolic office: on the contrary, the will and the military muscle could be found to make it tangible. As a consequence, the provincial kings of Ireland now fought each other to follow in Brian’s footsteps and become the next ruler of the whole island.

  Subsequent leaders began, insofar as they were able, to concentrate yet more power into their hands and to channel as many resources as possible into military campaigns against their rivals. A caste of administrators grew up as these changes took hold: in the long absences of their kings in the field, they became increasingly vital both in maintaining a stable sense of authority and government and in guarding against the treachery of potential usurpers. Newly acquired lands were used as bargaining chips or gifted to sons and allies and to the Church; taxes were imposed to pay for the wars; and the common people of the country suffered accordingly. By the beginning of the twelfth century the map of Ireland had changed substantially, with power being hoarded in fewer and larger kingdoms. The province of Connacht was now in the ascendant, and was building a hefty power base across the west and south of the country.

  At the same time, the Irish Church was setting about its own changes: in a move to bring about greater concord between it and the wider European Church, representatives of the papacy devised a new, countrywide system of dioceses. St Malachy, appointed Archbishop of Armagh in 1132, was instrumental in imposing the changes – together with a new code of clerical celibacy and morality – across the country, thereby cementing the primacy of Armagh. Simultaneously the monasteries were stripped of their lands, possessions and much of their role in Irish society. The autonomy and power of their abbots passed now to the Irish bishops, who began to wield the temporal power that their continental equivalents had long enjoyed. Gradually, monastic industry ceased; the scriptoria and schools began to close; and ownership passed into the hands of European orders such as the Augustinians and Cistercians, who established themselves in Ireland for the first time. The effect of this ecclesiastical reform was to end much of the educational and cultural activity that had taken place for centuries: the monks might not always have been busy with their prayers and their bottles of ink, but they had undoubtedly filled a space in Irish life that would now increasingly be left empty.

  As for the place of the Vikings in this rapidly changing domestic scene: the power games being played across Ireland did much, ironically, to ensure that the Norse presence would remain intact. Their t
rade with Europe continued to prosper and their Irish seaports to grow. Sitric himself continued as King of Dublin in the aftermath of the battle, and his influence and power were amply demonstrated by the foundation, at his behest, of Christ Church Cathedral in the city some twenty years after Clontarf. The Scandinavian presence in Irish affairs, which had never in any case been dominant or universal, continued its process of slow evolution into a distinctive Hiberno–Norse civilization founded on borrowings from both cultures and from further afield; and this process continued throughout the eleventh century and into the twelfth. An end would indeed come to Norse influence in terms of thriving seaports and trading routes – but this end would come courtesy of yet another cultural and military shock administered by newcomers to the Irish scene.

  Part Two

  The Long Conquest

  Chapter Three

  The Lordship of Ireland

  By the middle of the twelfth century, the rulers of Ireland were looking out into a rapidly changing Europe. The political structure of the continent was altering, with a political mosaic of minor duchies and fiefdoms now giving way to larger and more centralized realms. In the southern half of the neighbouring island, a patchwork of minor Saxon and Danish territories had by the tenth century begun to coalesce into a unitary kingdom of England: and with the invasion of William of Normandy in 1066, this new land was stitched into an even larger and more potent political entity. Brian Boru’s adventures in eleventh-century Ireland could, with hindsight, be seen as just one element in a much wider European political shift.

  The Irish elite was well acquainted with events elsewhere in Europe. It is true that some aspects of life in Ireland appeared ostensibly unchanging: those on the lowest rung of the social ladder, in particular, would have continued to live out their lives without travelling very far from the place of their birth. But a great many merchants, soldiers and politicians were well acquainted with the wider world. The sea remained a communications highway: indeed, in a country cut with forest, highland and bog it was sometimes easier to travel abroad than within the island itself. And now the Church – which had linked its flock to the European mainstream since the dawn of the Christian age – was increasingly falling into line with Rome, and the European monastic orders that were establishing themselves across the country were bringing goods and ideas with them. The coming of the Vikings and their swift fleets of nimble, shallow-draughted ships made the potential of the sea as a means of communication and of exchange even more vividly realized. As a result, cultural and economic connections between Ireland and neighbouring lands were becoming ever more tangible.

  Within Ireland, the struggle for political supremacy was ongoing. Rory O’Connor of Connacht (?1116–98) had been inaugurated high king at Dublin in 1166. In carving out his notional supremacy, O’Connor recognized that his triumph was inevitably fragile, to be sustained only by endless political, diplomatic and (as the need arose) military effort. Dermot MacMurrough (1110–72), the other crucial character in this great game, did not hold a position of military dominance, but his kingdom of Leinster was of great strategic importance. The canny and farsighted MacMurrough had long understood the importance of investing time and energy into his political relationships beyond Ireland: he could not hope for domestic political ascendancy without foreign aid. For a time he had been successful, gambling and backing the right horse in the race for the English succession. For, while one political game was underway in Ireland, a bitter struggle had been fought out for the English throne between Matilda, granddaughter of William of Normandy, and her cousin Étienne de Blois – better known in English history as Stephen. Between 1135 and 1153 the throne had been disputed between their two factions and English society was riven by civil war. Eventually, Matilda’s son would secure the throne: in 1154, Henry Plantagenet (1133–89) was crowned Henry II at Westminster Abbey.

  MacMurrough had declared for Henry early in this bitter internecine struggle, and in the process had earned the young monarch’s favour. In the opening years of Henry’s reign, the alliances he had forged in Ireland and Scotland helped to influence Irish politics, and MacMurrough’s political fortunes waxed accordingly: to his territories in Leinster he added more in the fertile lands of Meath; in 1162, the Norse of Dublin had acknowledged his lordship; and his brother-in-law had been consecrated as the new archbishop of the city. All this, in the finely balanced world of Irish politics, had to come at the expense of someone else: in this case, both Rory O’Connor and his ally Tiernan O’Rourke, the one-eyed King of Breifne, had been weakened, losing both territory and prestige.

  As Henry’s reign continued, the pendulum would swing back: in 1166 MacMurrough’s enemies launched a joint attack, taking him by surprise; he was driven from Meath, repudiated by the Norse of Dublin and forced to seek refuge in his own fastness of Leinster. Yet even here he would not be secure: his allies rejected him and he fled Ireland barely in time to save his life, taking ship for Bristol. He had been humiliated – and, already desperate to regain his lands, he turned now towards Europe for succour.

  Much of the story of these times has come down to us courtesy of Giraldus Cambrensis (Gerald of Wales, 1146–23) – clergyman, writer, traveller and observer of this complicated contemporary cultural scene. Giraldus is an ambivalent figure in Irish history: his portraits of the country are among the earliest comprehensive accounts that have survived, but they are far from objective and as a result make for bracing reading. He was himself partly of Norman stock, partly of Welsh; he was a fervent supporter of the Anglo-Norman newcomers to the Irish political scene; and he makes no bones of his opinions. ‘I have been at pains,’ he declares, ‘to unfold clearly the story of the subjugation of the Irish people, and of the taming of the ferocity of a very barbarous nation in these our own times.’1 He writes scathingly of the barbarity and uncouthness of the Irish: their refusal to mine or till the soil correctly or to trade as they ought to trade, their cunning and violent ways, their lack of honesty. He does remark on their fine stature and their way with music – but in general, compliments are thin on the ground. These harsh portrayals may, however, be seen as carrying a little less weight when one remembers that he was equally scornful in his attitudes towards the Welsh, the English and even, on occasion, the Normans themselves. Endlessly curious and probing, fascinated with every detail of language and culture, partial, political, ‘self-admiring, highly critical of others and therefore quarrelsome and a mean enemy’, Giraldus is a gripping but dangerous guide through this early period in the story of Ireland.2

  In his account written seventeen years after Dermot MacMurrough’s death, Giraldus describes him as one who ‘preferred to be feared by all rather than loved…. He was inimical towards his own people and hated by others. All men’s hands were against him and he was hostile to all men.’3 Giraldus was certainly no admirer of MacMurrough: such descriptions have, as a result, done much to establish the Leinsterman’s poor reputation in Irish history. Not even Giraldus, however, could fully encapsulate the complexities of MacMurrough’s personality. Here was a foster-child of common birth, who rose to power in his own right; a man who curried favour with a foreign king, but who was very far from standing in awe of the noblemen of his native Ireland: ‘from his earliest youth and his first taking of the kingship,’ Giraldus notes disapprovingly, ‘he oppressed his nobles, and raged against the chief men of his kingdom with a tyranny grievous and impossible to bear’, on one occasion blinding and killing seventeen noblemen of Leinster. He ‘loved the generous, he hated the mean’, and yet was as bloodthirsty and violent as they make them.4

  Giraldus was quite correct: those who stood in MacMurrough’s way tended to pay a heavy price, with massacre joining ritual blinding as his favourite means of laying down the law. And, while he had lavished financial favours upon the Church in Leinster, not even its representatives were immune from his violence. Take, for example, the scene in 1132 at Kildare – at this time, the effective capital of Leinster. A rival dyn
asty had appointed their candidate, Mór, as abbess of the influential monastery, in the process thoroughly upsetting MacMurrough’s political machinations. Rather than agonize unduly on his next move, however, he moved swiftly, ordering the abbess to be abducted by his men and raped: Mór, divested brutally of her virginity, was in the process disqualified from her position. MacMurrough now completed the job to his satisfaction: the abbess’s house was burned, many of her followers were killed – and a MacMurrough appointee was installed in the post in her stead. In another episode, he had seized Tiernan O’Rourke’s wife Dervorgilla – although the records imply that she was a willing refugee from an ugly and loveless marriage – and kept her at his headquarters at Ferns for a year before sending her home. It was an act calculated to humiliate and weaken his adversary. Such was MacMurrough’s style, rooted in a political climate that was positively Sicilian in its intensity and nastiness. His special hatred of Dublin, for example, can be explained by the fact that its people had murdered his father and buried him in the court of their assembly hall in the company of a dead dog – a potent and humiliating mark of disrespect. As MacMurrough did, so had he been done by.

  In the traditional telling of the tale, MacMurrough is uniquely wicked and treacherous: the forerunner of every back-stabbing sucker-up to the English that has ever roamed the pages of Irish history. But in seeking the help of the powerful, he was merely doing what ambitious or desperate chieftains have always done. The crucial difference in this case was that he was asking for assistance from what was – in spite of recent disputes over the English succession and in spite of occasional reverses in policy and arms – the most organized and brutal expansionist power in western Europe. It was not a connection to be exploited carelessly.