Ireland (Lonely Planet, 9th Edition) - Fionn Davenport [12]
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The Course of Irish History by TW Moody and FX Martin is a hefty volume by two Trinity College professors who trace much of Ireland’s history back to its land and its proximity to England.
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THE ENGLISH ARE COMING!
The ‘800 years’ of English rule in Ireland nominally began in 1169, when an army of English barons (actually Cambro-Norman, being a mix of Welsh and Norman nobles) landed in Wexford and quickly captured the two Hiberno-Viking ports of Wexford and Waterford. But their presence was less of an invasion and more of an invitation, which was the result of a tactical alliance between the barons – led by Richard Fitz Gilbert de Clare, Earl of Pembroke (1130–76; aka Strongbow) – and Dermot MacMurrough (d 1171; Diarmait mac Murchada), the king of Leinster (yes, only this one was, ironically, a direct descendant of Brian Ború), who had been ousted from his throne by an alliance of Irish chieftains spurred on by the high king himself, Turlough O’Connor (1088–1156; Tairrdelbach mac Ruaidri Ua Conchobair). In return for help in defeating his enemies (and capturing the crown of the high king for himself) MacMurrough promised Strongbow the hand in marriage of his daughter Aoife as well as the kingdom of Leinster, and Strongbow duly obliged by capturing Dublin in 1171 and then marrying Aoife the very next day. MacMurrough’s plans went awry, though, and he was hardly to guess on his deathbed later that year that he’d determined the course of the next 800 years and cemented his place at the top of the list of great Irish traitors.
In truth, while MacMurrough may have provided the catalyst for the Norman invasion, Henry II had been plotting to get his hands on Ireland since 1155, when the English Pope Adrian IV issued him the Bull Laudabiliter, granting him the right to bring rebel Christian missionaries in Ireland to heel. Armed with the blessing of the pope and uneasy about Strongbow’s growing power and independence of mind, Henry sent a huge naval force in 1171, landed at Waterford and declared it a royal city. He assumed a semblance of control, but the Norman lords continued to do pretty much as they pleased. Barons such as de Courcy and de Lacy set up independent power bases.
Over the next 300 years, the Anglo-Norman nobles and their hirelings were successfully assimilated into Irish society, provoking the oft-quoted phrase Hiberniores Hibernis ipsis (more Irish than the Irish themselves) to describe them, and they built magnificent cities like Kilkenny, which still retains much of its medieval character. And it was in Kilkenny in 1366 that the English sought to halt the absorption of the Anglo-Normans into Irish ways by enacting the infamous statutes that outlawed intermarriage and the Irish language and other customs. It was too late: the Anglo-Normans’ power bases were too entrenched and, by the turn of the 16th century, the Crown’s direct rule didn’t extend any further than a cordon surrounding Dublin known as the Pale.
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The expression ‘beyond the Pale’ came into use when the Pale was the English-controlled part of Ireland. To the British elite, the rest of Ireland was considered uncivilised.
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DIVORCE, DISSOLUTION & DESTRUCTION
It all began with Henry VIII’s inability to get the pope’s blessing for his divorce. By going it alone and breaking with the Catholic Church, he pitted all of Catholic Europe against him, including the Anglo-Irish, who were a little iffy about Henry’s course of action.
In 1534 the 10th Earl of Kildare, ‘Silken’ Thomas Fitzgerald, led an attack on the English garrison in Dublin on the false pretext that his father had been executed by Henry in England. Worried that an Irish rebellion could be of help to Spain and France, Henry retaliated with even greater aggression.