Were there enough troops to enable the new lieutenant to do what was expected of him? Clearly Stafford did not think so because he immediately set about hiring from the O’Kennedy chief mounted warriors, known as ‘hobelars’, at 4d a day and foot-soldiers at 1½d each a day. This led to dissension when Lionel issued a proclamation stipulating that no person born in Ireland should come near his camp—an order which was followed by the murder of about a hundred of his men.
Lionel settled himself in Dublin Castle, where he set up a splendid court, improved the garden to please his wife, and held tournaments. Meanwhile the Earl of Stafford campaigned vigorously round the country. Art MacMurrough, King of Leinster, was taken prisoner; the O’Connors were punished for making a raid on Meath; much of Co. Cork was recovered; and the O’Mores of Leix were attacked. Several leading Gaelic lords made their submission, including O’Neill of Tír Eóghain and O’Brien of Thomond. By 1364 the clerk of the wages had paid out the immense sum of £22,000, but more was needed. Lionel returned briefly to England to raise another great force, only to be told by his father that, according to his information, Ireland was ‘sunk in the greatest wretchedness’.
Against all advice, Clarence moved the king’s exchequer to the royal castle of Carlow, the treasurer complaining that ‘Carlow is on the frontier of the Irish rebels; there is no safe access to it by the king’s lieges.’
Then in 1366, rather suddenly, Lionel summoned a parliament at Kilkenny. In this parliament was enacted the notorious statute which would be forever linked with the name of Clarence. Its main purpose was to bring a halt to ‘degeneracy’, that is, to the adoption by the English of Irish ways:
It is ordained and established that no alliance by marriage, fostering of children, concubinage or sexual liaison or in any other manner be made henceforth between English and Irish on one side or the other....
Also, it is ordained and established that every Englishman use the English language, and be called by an English name, abandoning completely the Irish method of naming, and that every Englishman use English style in appearance, riding and dress....
No Englishman worth one hundred shillings a year in land, holdings or rent shall ride otherwise than on the saddle in the English style....
Also it is agreed and established that no house of religion which is situated among the English shall in the future receive any Irishman to their profession....
The English in Ireland were forbidden to play hurling, but were to practise archery instead. In all, there were thirty-six articles in the Statute of Kilkenny, all of them laying down severe penalties if the ordinances were flouted or broken.
It is one thing to legislate, quite another to enforce. The statute proved to be a dead letter, as a Catalan pilgrim was to discover some years later.
Episode 42
‘INTO THE LAND OF THE SAVAGE IRISH WHERE KING O’NEILL REIGNED SUPREME’
In 1386 Prince John of Aragon wrote to his friend, Ramon, Viscount of Perellós and of Roda in Catalonia:
We beg you to send us, in writing, the whole story of that knight who you said went into St Patrick’s Purgatory, and what he saw and what happened to him in that Purgatory; for we earnestly wish to know of it.
In the course of time the prince became King John I of Aragon and chose Ramon as his chamberlain, sending him on several foreign missions. Then, on 19 May 1396, disaster struck. The king died suddenly, frightened to death, it was said, by the sight of an enormous she-wolf when he was out hunting alone. The grief-stricken Ramon immediately feared that his royal master’s soul would be in torment in Hell, for King John had died without confession or the rites of the church. The viscount declared his intention of journeying to Lough Derg in the remote fastness of the north-west of Ireland, concerning which the late king had earlier expressed such a keen interest. Here, he had read, a soul would be spared the pains of Hell if the pilgrim could survive the dangers of St Patrick’s Purgatory, located on a small island in the lake. An audience in Avignon with Pope Benedict XIII was not encouraging:
He strongly advised me against it and he frightened me greatly, warning me that I should not do it for any reason whatsoever. Besides what he himself said to me, he had some of the cardinals closest to him speak to me.... They restrained me with such force that I was barely able to get away from them.
Ramon received a papal blessing, nevertheless, and on his way called in at Paris to get letters of recommendation from King Charles VI of France. King Richard II of England received him well, and after spending ten days with him, the viscount chartered a ship at Chester and crossed the Irish Sea:
Then I reached Ireland and a few days later I landed in Dublin which is quite a big city. There I met the Earl of March, who received me very well because of the letters of recommendation from the king, for the government of that island was in his charge. I told him of the journey I intended to make. This lord advised me strongly against it.... I would have to travel a great distance and go through lands of savage, ungoverned people whom no man should trust. The other reason was that the Purgatory was a very dangerous thing and many a good knight had been lost there, never to return. When he saw that I was still that way inclined, he gave me horses and jewels and also two squires.
The earl’s men would take the Catalan visitor no further than Dundalk, where they handed him over to John Colton, the Archbishop of Armagh. The archbishop said earnestly:
Unless I deliberately wished to lose my life, I should on no account attempt to go there. He then had me go into the sacristy of the church where he admonished me very strongly. He begged me not to enter the Purgatory and he told me of the many perils and horrible things which had befallen several other men who were lost there.... When he saw he could not change my mind, he heard my confession and in great secrecy I received Our Lord from his hand.... He sent a message to King O’Neill, who was in the city of Armagh.
John Colton was the only English-born Archbishop of Armagh to be brave enough to visit the Gaelic parts of his ecclesiastical province for almost two centuries. He certainly had met Niall Mór O’Neill, the ruler of Tír Eóghain, but he took no chances: he gave Ramon an escort of a hundred men:
I went into the land of the savage Irish where King O’Neill reigned supreme. When I had ridden some five leagues, the hundred armed men did not dare to proceed any further. So they remained on a hill and I took my leave of them and continued on myself.
O’Neill gave him a warm welcome and his first taste of Ulster oatcakes. Then Ramon went on to Termon Magrath, the ecclesiastical lands which included Lough Derg. The ground was so soft that he had to go on foot by Lower Lough Erne and on to Lough Derg:
There is so much water everywhere that a man can barely cross over even the highest mountains without sinking to his waist.... I went across the lake in a boat made of hollowed-out wood, for there were no other boats.... Then they urged me strongly not to go into the Purgatory.... When they saw how very determined I was, the prior and all the clerks sang Requiem Mass early in the morning.... They all did this for me because they did not wish to leave anything undone.
There in the pit Ramon entered the Purgatory in search of the soul of his dead master King John.
Episode 43
A CATALAN PILGRIM AMONG THE UNCONQUERED IRISH
In 1397, as we have seen, Ramon, Viscount of Perellós, travelled from Catalonia almost to the edge of the known world, to Lough Derg in the north-west of Ireland. There, after many adventures, he visited St Patrick’s Purgatory to save the soul of his dead king by his pilgrimage. There, he tells us,
I was sweating and overcome.... There were many grave and pitiful types of torture and countless numbers of people ... and there I saw the king, Don John of Aragon, who by God’s grace, was on the road to salvation.
Ramon’s description of the Purgatory can be read with a sceptical eye, but what makes him different from other foreign pilgrims to Lough Derg—and some came in these years from as far away as Hungary, Switzerland and Italy�
�is that he alone left us descriptions of the Gaelic Irish.
After leaving Lough Derg, Ramon was received by the ruler of Tír Eóghain, Niall Mór O’Neill:
We were very well received, with great joy and delight, and I spent the feast of Christmas with him. He held a great court in their fashion which to us seems very strange for someone of his status.... His table was of rushes spread out on the ground, while nearby they placed delicate grass for him to wipe his mouth. They used to carry the meat to him on poles.
Ramon tells us that when he first arrived in O’Neill’s territory,
The king sent me an ox and his cook to prepare it. In all his court there was no milk to drink, nor bread, nor wine, but as a great gift he sent me two cakes as thin as wafers and as pliable as raw dough. They were made of oats and of earth and they were as black as coal, but very tasty.
They are among the most beautiful men and women that I have seen anywhere in the world. They do not sow corn, nor have they any wine. Their only meat is ox-meat. The great lords drink milk and others meat-broth, and the common people drink water. But they have plenty of butter, for oxen and cows provide all their meat.
Ramon was mistaken in his belief that the Gaelic people here did not grow corn—at this time of the year the stubble fields would have been turned over to cattle. Concerning their living conditions and semi-nomadic lifestyle, he commented:
Their dwellings are communal and most of them are set up near the oxen, and they move on through the pastures, like the swarms of Barbary in the land of the Sultan.
He described the dress of the Irish he met as follows:
The great lords wear tunics without a lining, reaching to the knee, cut very low at the neck, almost in the style of women, and they wear great hoods which hang down to the waist, the point of which is narrow as a finger. They wear neither hose nor shoes, nor do they wear breeches, and they wear their spurs on their bare heels. The king was dressed like that on Christmas Day, and so were all the clerks and knights and even the bishops and abbots and the great lords.
The poor wear cloaks, good or bad. The queen was barefoot, and her handmaidens, twenty in number, were dressed with their shameful parts showing. And you should know that all those people were no more ashamed of this than showing their faces.
The Catalan nobleman was told to expect ‘savage, ungoverned people’, but he was pleasantly surprised to find that he could discuss international affairs with O’Neill and his courtiers in Latin:
The king spoke to me at length, asking me about the Christian kings, especially the kings of France, Aragon and Castile, and about the customs and the way they lived.... They consider their own customs to be more advantageous than any others in the whole world.
Ramon was impressed by the numbers of fine horses and by the warriors who formed O’Neill’s retinue:
They ride without a saddle on a cushion, and each one wears a cloak according to his rank. They are armed with coats of mail and round iron helmets like the Moors and Saracens. They have swords and very long knives and long lances, two fathoms in length. Their swords are like those of the Saracens.... The knives are long, narrow and thin as one’s little finger, and they are very sharp.... Some use bows which are not very long—only half the size of English bows, but their range is just as good. Their way of fighting is like that of the Saracens, who shout in the same manner. They are very courageous. They are still at war with the English and have been for a long time.
The prize of bringing that war to an end was one that was to elude the English king, Richard II.
Episode 44
RICHARD II’S GREAT EXPEDITION TO IRELAND
In 1385 the Irish great council sent a report to the king concerning
the mischiefs and very great evils in the land of Ireland, the seignory of the king.... At this next season, as is likely, there will be made a conquest of the greater part of the land of Ireland ... Because of the weakness and poverty of the English lieges, they are not able or know how to find or think of other remedy except the coming of our king, our lord, in his own person.
The greatest single threat was the rise of Art MacMurrough Kavanagh, who had won recognition from his people as King of Leinster. From the forests of the Blackstairs Mountains he overran the neighbouring fertile lowlands, forcing the authorities to pay him an annual fee to keep the road clear from Carlow to Kilkenny. And on his behalf the O’Byrnes and the O’Tooles came down from the mountains overlooking Dublin to exact a ‘black rent’ from the citizens as a price for ending their destructive raids.
It became obvious to Richard II that the entire lordship of Ireland would be lost if he did not take decisive action. In 1394 the king announced that he was going to Ireland in person. All those holders of land in Ireland who had removed themselves to England were ordered to join the king on pain of forfeiture—a threat strictly enforced. John Orewell, the king’s serjeant, was ordered to
search and inform himself from Thames mouth and thence as far as Exeter ... how many and what sort of ships with their equipment may be had there for the passage of the king and his army to Ireland; to enjoin on the owners and masters that they have them prepared and arrayed with all speed under penalty of forfeiture.
Nearly two hundred ships were seized. They had to be fitted with castles fore and aft for archers and provided with special gangways, stalls and enclosures for war-horses. The army gathering at Milford Haven was by far the largest yet prepared for Ireland. Altogether King Richard had nearly 10,000 men at his disposal.
Landing at Waterford on 2 October, Richard wrote in French to Thomas, Archbishop of York, Chancellor of England:
We were only a day and a night at sea in our crossing; and so we arrived at our city of Waterford, in Ireland, where we were by our citizens there received with great joy, and where from one day to another our loyal lieges come to offer us their services against every design of the others who have been rebels in our absence.
Richard ringed the Wicklow and Blackstairs Mountains with heavily armed positions, ravaged the foothills to deny MacMurrough supplies, and completed his ring of steel by closely patrolling the coastline with his castellated ships. Then, when the trees shed their leaves, making refuge in the woods difficult, he sent in raiding parties of mounted longbow archers. The king sent a stream of letters to Archbishop Thomas to report one success after another:
The Marshal had several fine engagements, in one of which he slew many people of the said MacMurrough, and burned nine villages and preyed of his cattle up to the number of 8,000.... If he had not been foreseen, he would have found the said MacMurrough and his wife in their beds.
The French chronicler Froissart recorded the successful outcome:
The great power that the king had over with him abashed the Irish; also the sea was closed from them on all parts ... when the Irishmen saw the great number of men at war that King Richard had in Ireland, the Irishmen advised themselves and came to obeisance.
On 7 January 1395 King Art MacMurrough and his vassals submitted at Tullow in Carlow and swore to be faithful subjects on the Bacall Íosa, the relic of the staff of Christ seized at Downpatrick by John de Courcy in 1177. Art agreed to quit Leinster with all his people and serve the king with his men as paid warriors. King Richard wrote to his chancellor:
In all ways let the Author of all be praised. It seems to us that all of the Land of Leinster is conquered, and apparently truly at peace—by reason of the Divine providence and the good government which we intend to apply thereto.
From all over Ireland warlords came to submit in person to Richard. Each man removed his hat, girdle and weapons and, on his knees, put his hands, palms joined, between those of the king. The oath was then taken in Irish and then translated for the benefit of the royal entourage into English. Among the eighty chieftains who made submission was Niall Mór O’Neill of Tír Eóghain.
After nine months in Ireland Richard II returned triumphantly to England, convinced that he had saved the Irish lordship fro
m destruction.
Episode 45
THE PALE
In June 1398 Roger Mortimer, Earl of March, Lord of Trim, Earl of Ulster and Lord of Connacht, was killed in a skirmish against the Gaelic Irish near Carlow. For Richard II this was a disaster that set him on the road to ruin and death. Mortimer had been the king’s appointed lieutenant and chief governor of Ireland and, by English law, owner of almost half the land of Ireland. In practice, Mortimer had real possession of only a fraction of this inheritance. And since the king’s departure from Ireland in 1395 one by one the Irish lords had thrown aside the oaths of loyalty they had made to Richard in person.
The great expedition the king had led to Ireland at such immense cost had been for nothing. Once the garrisons ringing the mountains had been withdrawn, Art MacMurrough once again assumed the title ‘King of Leinster’. Not only Gaelic chieftains but also Anglo-Irish lords went into rebellion.
In despair, Richard decided to come to Ireland again in 1399. After landing in Ireland, he wrote to his uncle, Edmund, Duke of York:
A History of Ireland in 250 Episodes – Everything You’ve Ever Wanted to Know About Irish History: Fascinating Snippets of Irish History from the Ice Age to the Peace Process Page 13