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Ireland and the English crown, 1171–1541

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 July 2016

James Lydon
James Lydon*
Affiliation:
Trinity College, Dublin
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Extract

When the earl of Pembroke met Henry II at Newnham in Gloucestershire in 1171, in the words of Gerald of Wales he surrendered Dublin (significantly called regni caput), the adjacent cantreds, the maritime towns and castles to the king. ‘As for the rest of the land he had conquered, he and his heirs were to acknowledge that it was held of the king and his heirs.’ Already Mac Murchada had given King Henry ‘the bond of submission and oath of fealty’. Later Mac Carthaig did homage as well as fealty, gave hostages and an annual tribute and ‘voluntarily submitted to the authority of the king of England’, while other Irish submitted and swore fealty. Most significantly, according to Gerald, Ó Conchobair of Connacht Obtained the king’s peace, became dependent for the tenure of his kingdom on the king as overlord, and bound himself in alliance with the king by the strongest ties of fealty and submission’. All in Ireland became the king’s subjects, and Henry’s lordship was accepted by all. It was later confirmed by the pope and publicly proclaimed by his legate, Cardinal Vivian, at a synod in Dublin. From 1171, then, until 1541, when an Irish parliament declared Henry VIII to be king of Ireland, Anglo-Irish relations were governed by one simple fact: the king of England was ipso facto lord of Ireland. Throughout that period the royal style never changed. In all charters and formal letters issuing from his chancery he was Rex Anglie, Dominus Hibernie etc.

It was Gerald of Wales too who first voiced the new reality which faced Ireland after 1171. When he composed a dedication to King John of a new edition of his Expugnatio Hibernica, sometime around 1209, he reminded him that he should not neglect Ireland and wrote that ‘the Irish kingdom was made subject to the English crown, as if through a perpetual indenture and an indissoluble chain’.

Type
Research Article
Information
Irish Historical Studies , Volume 29 , Issue 115 , May 1995 , pp. 281 - 294
Copyright
Copyright © Irish Historical Studies Publications Ltd 1995

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References

1 Cambrensis, Giraldus, Expugnatio Hibernica, ed. and trans. Scott, A. B. and Martin, F.X. (Dublin, 1978), pp 88-9Google Scholar.

2 Ibid., p.27.

3 Ibid., pp 92–5.

4 Ibid., p. 183. Alexander III wrote letters to the bishops of Ireland, to the king, and to the ‘kings and princes of Ireland’ in which he accepted the fact of the conquest and referred to the oaths of fealty sworn by the Irish (Sheehy, Pontificia Hib., i, 19–23).

5 There was, of course, one very significant change which had nothing to do with Ireland: from being rex Anglorum he became rex Anglie.

6 Giraldus, Expugnatio, p. 264.

7 When King John surrendered Ireland to the pope in 1213, it was as the totum regnum Hibernie (Rot. chart, p. 195). In 1200 and again in 1205 Ireland was called a regnum (ibid., p. 71; Rot. litt, claus., 1204–24, p. 40).

8 As late as 1329 a memorandum of business to be discussed by the king’s council in England contained an item that because ‘our lord the king is named lord of Ireland and not king (seigneur Dirlaunde et nient roy) the prerogative ought to be held there just as in England’ ( Sayles, G. O. (ed.), Documents on the affairs of Ireland before the king’s council (Dublin, 1979), no. 164Google Scholar).

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13 Stat. Ire., John-Hen. V, p. 245.

14 Ibid., p. 412. In 1359, when he was about to set out for France, the king wrote to Ireland making provision for ‘the government of Ireland ... that it may remain safe during the king’s absence from England’ and explaining that he could not ‘send men or money to Ireland at present, although it is said that they are needed there’ (Cal. close rolls, 1354–60, pp 599–600). Good government was to be provided for the common good. In 1335 the Irish chancery issued a writ of liberate for the payment of £40 to Robert Poer for his expenses in keeping the peace pro utilitate reipublice (Rot. pat. Hib., p. 41, no. 28). Interestingly, the Kilkenny chronicler Clyn used the same term when he described the earl of Ulster in 1333 as reipublice et pacis amator (see Clyn, John, The annals of Ireland, ed. Butler, Richard (Irish Archaeological Society, Dublin, 1849), p. 25 Google Scholar).

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23 Connolly, Philomen, ‘The financing of English expeditions to Ireland, 1361–1376’ in Lydon, James (ed.), England and Ireland in the later middle ages (Dublin, 1981), p. 117 Google Scholar. Of this, over £16,000 came from Irish resources.

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31 Stat. Ire., John-Hen. V, p. 324.

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33 Richardson & Sayles, Pari. & councils med. Ire. i, no. 16.

34 James Lydon, ‘The middle nation’ in idem (ed.), The English in medieval Ireland: proceedings of the first joint meeting of the Royal Irish Academy and the British Academy (Dublin, 1984), pp 18–22. A petition of 1317–19 from the ‘mean people of Ireland’, asking the king to remedy the state of Ireland, refers to les sauvages et les udives gents who kill the loyal people (Sayles (ed.), Docs on affairs of Ire., p. 101).

35 Henry VIII laid great stress on civility: see Ellis, Steven G., Tudor Ireland: crown, community and the conflict of cultures, 1470–1603 (London, 1985), p. 112 Google Scholar.

36 Bradshaw, Brendan, The Irish constitutional revolution of the sixteenth century (Cambridge, 1979), p. 234 CrossRefGoogle Scholar. As a result of this 1541 act making Henry king of Ireland, the term ‘Irish enemy’ ceased to be used subsequently in statutes (ibid., pp 265–6).

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44 Frame, English lordship, p. 331.

45 Ormond deeds, 1430–1509, no. 272: ‘Edwardus dei gratia Rex Anglie et Francie et Hibernie’. Kildare is also called locum nostrum tenente in the same letter.

46 Stat. Ire., Hen. VI, p. 645.

47 Ibid., p. 647. This was the famous ‘pretenseci prescription’ which was subsequently annulled by Poynings’ parliament (Conway, Henry VIII, p. 120). One of the ‘articles’ sworn to by Kildare in 1496 before the king and council in England was a promise to see to it that writs from England would be obeyed ‘notwithstanding any Acte statute or custume had or made within the said land of Ireland’ (ibid., p. 231 ). A great council which met at Naas in 1441 told the king that the custom was that no one was summoned out of Ireland by English writs save in cases of treason against the person of the king, or a writ of error in parliament ( Otway-Ruthven, A. J., A history of medieval Ireland (London, 1968), p. 370 Google Scholar).

48 See McDowell, J. Moore, ‘The devaluation of 1460 and the origins of the Irish pound’ in I.H.S., xxv, no. 97 (May 1986), pp 19–28 Google Scholar.

49 Stat. Ire., Hen. VI, pp 663–5.

50 Ibid., pp 665–7.

51 Gilbert, J.T., History of the viceroys of Ireland (Dublin, 1865), pp 592–9 Google Scholar for ‘King Edward’s directions concerning two parliaments held in Ireland’. It should be noted that Kildare subsequently caused to be enacted only those parts of the king’s instructions which suited him: in particular he ignored the command that the 1460 act ‘restreyning that noo man within that land shuld be called out of the said land by any precept or commaundment made under the Kyng’s grete seall, prive seall, or signett in England be utterly revoked and adnulled’: see his legislation in Stat. Ire., 12–22 Edw.lV, pp 683–831.

52 In Tiptoft’s parliament of 1467–8 it was acknowledged that ‘the learned people of this land are of different opinions whether the said statute [of rapes] should be of force in this land without a confirmation had upon the said statute in this land’, and the parliament agreed that it ‘be ratified and confirmed and adjudged, by authority of this said parliament’ (Stat. Ire., 1–12 Edw. IV, p. 619).

53 See Lydon,’Middle nation’.

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55 Bryan, Great Earl, pp 268–70.

56 Wright, Thomas (ed.), A contemporary narrative of the proceedings against Alice Kyteler (Camden Society, 1st ser., vol. 24, London, 1843), p. 17 Google Scholar. An early fourteenth-century petition from Ireland seeking remedies of problems reminded the king that when St Patrick came he ‘found that there were no heretics in the land’ (Sayles (ed.), Docs on affairs of Ire., p. 99).

57 Lennon, Colm, Richard Stanihurst the Dubliner, 1547–1618 (Dublin, 1981)Google Scholar; Bradshaw, Irish constitutional revolution, pp 282–4.

58 Art Cosgrove,’England and Ireland, 1399–1447’ in idem (ed.), A new history of Ireland, ii: Medieval Ireland, 1169–1534 (Oxford, 1987), p. 530.

59 Griffiths, Ralph, The reign of Henry VI (London, 1981)Google Scholar, ch. 8: ‘Frontiers and foreigners’.

60 Furnivall, F.J. (ed.), The English conquest of Ireland, A.D. 1166–1185 (Early English Texts Society, London, 1896)Google Scholar. Even in a formal legal agreement of 1410 such pride could be reflected in a reference to when ‘Sir William Rosselle was a conqueror of Ireland’ (Gormanston reg., p. 17).

61 Bradshaw, Irish constitutional revolution, p. 276.

62 S.P. Hen. VIII, ii, 167, cited in Bradshaw, Irish constitutional revolution, p. 276; Salisbury MSS (24 vols, H.M.C., London, 1883-1976), i, no. 498, cited ibid., p. 281 Google Scholar.

63 Presidential lecture read to the Irish Historical Society in December 1993.