by Neil Hegarty
Henry II had inherited an English kingdom that had already been in Norman hands for over a century. Its ruling class was cultured: its members may have been descended from Vikings who once ravaged western Europe, but they were now part of a sophisticated French-speaking community. This was a paradoxical society: a world of sword and blood and shocking brutality, but one too of legal and architectural advances, of chivalry and courtly love. England, moreover, was but one component in a wider civilization: that loose entity that historians have named in retrospect the Angevin (Plantagenet) Empire. This was not a state in any modern sense of the word, but rather a jigsaw of kingdoms and duchies that stretched from southern Scotland to the south coast of England and from Normandy itself along the Atlantic seaboard of France to the Pyrenees. These lands were bound together not by a cohesive government or administration or civil service but rather by force of arms and by the fealty of a host of local rulers to Henry Plantagenet himself, the French-speaking and French-based ruler of a conglomeration that dominated northwestern Europe.
Norman civilization was defined by a hunger for land – just as their Viking ancestors had exploded out of Scandinavia to wreak havoc across Europe, so too the Normans began fanning out across the continent centuries later, establishing kingdoms in Sicily and southern Italy and the eastern Mediterranean, as well as in France and Britain. This movement was part of a wider trend, brought about in part by the climatic event called the Medieval Warm Period that spans several centuries at the end of the first millennium. Temperatures rose during this era, agriculture flourished and populations exploded; from Russia, Poland and the Balkans through Germany to France, people were on the move searching for new homes and new sources of food. It was inevitable that, as they pressed from their own territories into those of their neighbours, tensions would be inflamed and blood spilled. And it is against such large tapestries – spanning cultural development, climatic conditions and politics – that the first Anglo-Norman incursion into Ireland must be viewed. It was not a unique or even especially remarkable event, simply one that ties Ireland directly into the experience of the European mainstream.
MacMurrough, his wife, his daughter Aoife and a handful of supporters landed at Bristol in the summer of 1166. The party then made its way across the Channel to Normandy and from there travelled southwest to the court of Henry II in Aquitaine; and here MacMurrough offered Henry homage and fealty.* The Norman verse poem entitled The Song of Dermot and the Earl describes the explicitly feudal nature of the contract between the two. Dermot addresses Henry:
Henceforth all the days of my life
On condition that you be my helper
So that I do not lose everything
You I shall acknowledge as sire and lord.5
In exchange for an army, in other words, MacMurrough would give land. Henry had by now been on the throne for twelve years, and he was a match in cunning and ruthlessness for the Irish chieftain who came seeking his help. Though doubtless pleased to accept MacMurrough’s fealty, Henry was still cautious about becoming directly involved in what might prove to be a risky Irish adventure. So he prepared to enter the debate by proxy, providing MacMurrough with a letter authorizing his subjects to enter the fray. This in itself was more than enough to raise an army, and a well-pleased MacMurrough left France for England, intent on mustering a force as soon as possible.
Henry had engineered a situation that suited him well. He was a leader with restless and acquisitive knights to satisfy – and one, moreover, whose authority rested on fragile foundations. The Angevin Empire was certainly a power to be reckoned with in Europe, but it was also subject to continual pressure on its borders. In the north, Scotland could be handled by treaty and diplomacy, but Wales had proved impossible to pacify completely, its colonists increasingly pinned down in the chains of castles and fortresses that pockmarked the mountainous terrain. In the east, the ascendant French monarchy had designs on Normandy and Anjou; and in the south, the papacy represented another, highly potent, focus of political power. Henry would attempt to deal with this last problem by bringing the English Church to heel: the Archbishop of Canterbury, Thomas Becket – that turbulent priest who refused to bend his will to that of the king – would be murdered in his own cathedral in 1170. In this wide geopolitical context, then, the presence of a still-autonomous Ireland on the empire’s northwestern wing was a threat and an irritant: Henry wanted to secure the unruly flanks of his own realm; and he wanted to achieve this by bringing these flanks once and for all within his own sphere of influence.
Once again, the interests of the political and the ecclesiastical coincided. Henry had, in fact, entertained the idea of pulling Ireland into his empire well before the arrival of MacMurrough at his gates. As early as 1155, in fact, at a council at Winchester, the young king had discussed this very possibility. There was a strong clerical body of opinion in favour of such a move: the English Church at Canterbury had been riled by the papal decision three years before that rejected its claims to ecclesiastical control over Ireland; Pope Eugenius III had ruled that Armagh could perfectly well take care of its own affairs. The meeting at Winchester, therefore, had been an opportunity for Canterbury to grasp what it had previously lost. In the event, Henry had set aside the idea of entering the Irish political scene – but only for the moment, and the groundwork for such an intervention had already been laid.
The Plantagenet claim to Ireland was further underscored in the form of Laudabiliter, an edict ostensibly issued to Henry II by Pope Adrian IV, who reigned from 1154 to 1159. In twelfth-century Europe, with its united universal Church, the papacy stood at the apex of the feudal power structure: it was, therefore, always a good idea to have the pope on side; and Laudabiliter certainly appeared to demonstrate a cordial understanding between the papacy and the Plantagenets. The edict assented to the occupation of Ireland, both for the good of the Irish themselves and in order to reform the Irish Church further and bind it more closely to Rome; as a result, the edict and its contents have always played a fraught role in Irish history. It is accepted nowadays that a papal bull entitled Laudabiliter certainly existed and that it was indeed issued on behalf of Adrian. The original contents of the document, however, are much less clear: it is unlikely that they will ever be known for certain, and the text that exists today is probably a concoction of some kind. For one thing, it does not conform to the style of papal records from that period; nor is there any record of such a text in the papal archives. Furthermore, the original text known as Laudabiliter comes down to us from Giraldus, who claimed to have copied out the original faithfully: he may well have done so, of course, but as an Anglo-Norman historian and propagandist of note, he had obvious motives for fabrication. Yet the crucial fact is that people at the time believed in Laudabiliter: as a text, it generated its own mythology within the medieval period.* Nobody – not even the Irish themselves – contested the pope’s right to grant possession of Ireland to Henry. In a tradition dating from the time of the fourth-century Emperor Constantine, it was popularly believed that the western islands of Europe were the property of the pope, to bestow on whomsoever he chose. Contemporary opinion was clear: Henry had a papal licence to invade.
The motives and actions of the papacy in this case stemmed from its opinions over the state of the Church in Ireland. Adrian’s predecessors may have been of the opinion that the Irish clergy could be trusted to run their own affairs; but Adrian and his advisers had become convinced that their flock in Ireland had strayed too far from the Roman straight and narrow and required a degree of realignment – and he was prepared to ally himself with the Anglo-Normans in order to bring this realignment about. Adrian would have been influenced, perhaps, by the fact that the system of tithe – ‘Peter’s Pence’, by which taxes went to the Church – was not adhered to in Ireland. His opinions would also have been coloured by scandalous tales that had begun doing the rounds: it was claimed that Ireland, far from being a land of saints and scholars, was in a state of scan
dalous moral disarray. ‘Never before had he known the like, in whatever depth of barbarism; never had he found men so shameless in regard of morals, so dead in regard to rites, so stubborn in regard of discipline, so unclean in regard of life. They were Christians in name, in fact pagans.’6 Such comments had the effect of spreading throughout Europe the idea that the Irish were little more than barbarians: it was all a far cry from the message disseminated by Colum Cille and Columbanus, and it helped to establish a school of anti-Irish literature that was as influential as it was persistent.
Reform, of course, was already being implemented in Ireland, rippling out from St Malachy’s seat of power at Armagh and demonstrating in the process that powerful elements in the Irish Church in these years were by no means averse to further changes. Resistance to tithe had still to be overcome, however, and some elements of a modern ecclesiastical administrative system remained absent: while Ireland now had a network of dioceses, for example, it did not possess a system of parishes, as in England and across western Christendom. In any case, if Laudabiliter is to be believed, Pope Adrian knew exactly what he wanted: ‘for the purpose of enlarging the borders of the Church, setting bounds to the progress of wickedness, reforming evil manners, planting virtue, and increasing the Christian religion,’ Henry II was ordered to enter Ireland, ‘and take possession of that island…’. This, then, was the state of affairs when Dermot MacMurrough arrived in Aquitaine.
MacMurrough, understanding the mindset of his putative new allies as he did, imagined that he could tempt them easily with what must be a tantalizing prospect: acres of lush land in Ireland for the taking. He and his entourage, therefore, made their way to west Wales in order to recruit assistance from the colonial barons of Pembrokeshire, who were hard pressed in the face of persistent native Welsh unrest and revolt. This was a promising prospect: surely the colonists would happily trade their unprofitable situation in Wales for a brighter future in Ireland. Yet MacMurrough’s blandishments did not at first fall upon eager ears. While his quest appeared reasonable enough – it was not unusual for such emissaries to seek the help of mercenaries in this way – the colonial barons were obliged to weigh up their prospects carefully: their present situation may have been vexing, but the prospect of future riches in Ireland was doubtful, prey as it was to a host of incalculable factors. In the end, though, MacMurrough found his man.
Richard de Clare (1130–76), the second Earl of Pembroke and a man of restless ambition, was a French-speaking aristocrat of substantial wealth, dynamism and clout, with great landholdings and local roots in Wales but a power base in England. He was not French but neither was he explicitly English; and he was certainly not Welsh. He and his fellow colonists were referred to as Anglo-Normans, and were the product of a long and complicated mingling of cultures and histories. In the middle of the twelfth century Pembrokeshire was already ‘Little England beyond Wales’, its population a multilingual and heady mix of English and Norman landowners, Flemish workers and artisans, and the remnants of a native population dispossessed of their lands. The region was blessed with fertile farmland and superb natural anchorages; and it was a natural jumping-off point for any voyage to Ireland.
De Clare – better known in Irish history as Strongbow – decided to take MacMurrough up on his offer of land in exchange for men. The latter was doubtless pleased to have at last established an alliance of sorts; Strongbow no doubt hoped the arrangement would deal with certain difficulties of his own. In the bitter English struggle for the throne between Stephen and Matilda he had backed the former and, although he had subsequently come to terms with the victorious Henry and pledged loyalty to him, bad blood remained. The king had consistently withheld the royal patronage required at that time to guarantee prosperity. Yet despite his position Strongbow drove a hard bargain, for he insisted on the hand of MacMurrough’s daughter Aoife in marriage – and thus the kingship of Leinster itself on MacMurrough’s death. This was problematic, for such a deal assumed the existence of primogeniture in matters of inheritance. This was a principle then beginning to gain acceptance across western Europe, but it remained quite alien in Irish law. Nevertheless the deal was duly agreed: MacMurrough was signing over lands that were not legally his to bestow.
In August 1167, MacMurrough sailed from Milford Haven in the company of a small band of Norman-Welsh soldiers – in effect, the first Anglo-Norman military landings on the Irish coast. He re-established himself easily enough at Ferns. Rory O’Connor and Tiernan O’Rourke came down from the north and assaulted his position; perceiving his present military weakness, however, they merely extracted a tribute of gold in recompense for the taking of Dervorgilla years before; and set about more conflicts of their own in other parts of Ireland. They even agreed, before departing, that MacMurrough could once more take the title of King of Leinster. In the aftermath of this attack, MacMurrough settled down at Ferns to await the coming of his new allies from across the sea. He would, as it turned out, have to endure a fretful two-year delay before his saviours arrived.
Three ships sailed from Pembrokeshire in the spring of 1169, landing on 1 May between Wexford and Waterford, at what was then Bannow Island; the channel dividing the island from the mainland has since silted up. MacMurrough quickly came down from Ferns to join them and this combined force attacked Wexford, forcing the town to surrender on 5 May. The civic leaders acknowledged MacMurrough’s overlordship; and MacMurrough in his turn showed his bona fides by giving control of the town and its harbour to the newcomers. MacMurrough was clawing back the prestige he had lost; and the Anglo-Normans were secure in their new Wexford base.
In the months that followed, Anglo-Norman ships ploughing the waters from Pembrokeshire and anchoring in the now friendly port of Wexford would become a common sight – and yet the next wave of landings was momentous. In May 1170, an advance force landed on the rocky and easily defensible headland at Baginbun, east of Waterford. It was a modest contingent – a ship or two, containing one hundred-odd men – yet adequate for the job in hand. Additional forces came out from Wexford to meet them; a fort was established on the headland; and cattle – not the invaders’ cattle and thus a potent provocation – were rounded up and driven on to the headland too, thus guaranteeing a food supply. The intention of the supremely organized Anglo-Norman force at Baginbun could not have been clearer: Wexford had been secured and Waterford would be next. So the Norse of Waterford, in alliance with local Irish rulers, put together a force with the aim of overwhelming the newcomers and driving them back into the sea.
The Irish and Norse substantially outnumbered the small Anglo-Norman force. But this did not avail them, for the newcomers boasted superior weaponry and strategic skills: their archers, for example, rained death upon the Norse and Irish from above. They were able even to deploy the stolen cattle to deadly advantage: as the disorderly mass of Norse and Irish soldiers advanced towards the Anglo-Norman stockade, the panicked beasts were driven through its gates into their midst, trampling and killing many and causing chaos; and at this point, the Anglo-Normans advanced with deadly efficiency and routed their enemies. Within a short time, it is estimated that, of the Norse-Irish force of a thousand men, half were dead – and a mass of executions followed, in contravention of the usual contemporary European rules of war. The captives had their legs broken and were beheaded, and one source describes a certain Alice of Abergavenny, a camp follower who carried out many of the decapitations (though probably not the seventy of lore) in retaliation for the death of her lover in the battle. The bodies were then thrown over the cliffs into the sea.
This was a suitably arresting curtain-raiser for the sack of Waterford that summer. Strongbow himself now decided to join the action and made his way to Milford Haven, raising a substantial expeditionary force as he went. As he was about to set sail, however, word came through from Henry: the king – perturbed, maybe, at the notion of a potentially autonomous kingdom being established in Ireland – had forbidden the force to depart. But Stron
gbow could not now back down without fatally losing face. He sailed from Milford Haven on 23 August 1170, established himself at the river crossing at Passage, below Waterford, and arrived at the walls of the city on 25 August. Waterford’s Norse rulers were not prepared to surrender; and their resolve to hold out could only have been strengthened by the news of the bloody violence at Baginbun a few months previously. However, the city walls were breached rapidly and, after a period of intense street fighting, Waterford fell that same day. ‘A great slaughter of the foreigners at Port Láirge by the overseas fleet’ was how the Annals of Innisfallen records the siege and battle, implying that the conflict had nothing to do with the Irish themselves.7 The truth, of course, was very different.
That the sack of Waterford still resonates in the annals of Irish history is in part due to the work of the nineteenth-century Irish painter Daniel Maclise, whose vast canvas of The Marriage of Strongbow and Aoife (1854) hangs today in the National Gallery of Ireland. This painting portrays the couple in front of a throng of pseudo-Graeco-Roman divinities; stacks of corpses lie piled all about and the streets of the city run red with blood. Aoife and her female companions are lit sharply and glaringly, while Strong-bow and his knights stand in deep shadow. The painting exemplifies the extent to which a representation of a historical event can be interpreted in fundamentally different ways. In the nationalist tradition, the painting is a moving evocation of complete subjugation – the forced marriage of England and Ireland. This interpretation, however, ignores the fact that Maclise himself was a Unionist and that his painting was designed to celebrate the vigour of the British Empire in all its Victorian might.
Yet the material point is how Strongbow and his men regarded both the events at Waterford and the marriage itself. They saw their expedition as the beginning of a land grab: this, after all, was the reason they had come to Ireland in the first place. The taking of Waterford was instrumental to these plans, for it enabled them to upgrade their status in Irish affairs: no longer a peripheral force, they were now a significant power and one that would be able – up to a point – to control its own destiny. Similarly, the marriage of Strongbow to Aoife raised the possibility of a new bloodline, a new dynastic order in the land – a shocking change in such a conservative and tightly regulated society: ‘and Dermot gave [Strongbow] his own daughter,’ noted the Annals of Loch Cé with shrill outrage, ‘and a part of his patrimony; and Saxon Foreigners have been in Erinn since then’.8 This was a situation pregnant with the potential for yet greater Anglo-Norman influence in Ireland – though it did not as yet signify a done deed. The next move must be the capture of Dublin.