Princes of Ireland - Edward Rutherfurd [184]
King Diarmait’s request was simple. He’d been driven out of his kingdom and he wanted to get it back. He needed to raise an army. He couldn’t pay them much, but there would be property and land to be distributed if he was successful. It was the usual deal, upon which the present aristocracy of many parts of Europe, including England, had been founded. He also knew, however, that he couldn’t raise men in any of the Plantagenet dominions without getting Henry’s permission.
King Henry II was a very ambitious man. He had already built up an empire and his main occupation now was in taking territory away from the rather ineffectual king of France, whom it amused him to bully. As it happened, a dozen years earlier, he had briefly considered the possibility of annexing Ireland as well, though he had dropped the idea and had little interest in the island now. But he was also an opportunist.
“Are you offering to become my vassal?” he gently enquired.
His vassal. When an Irish king recognised the supremacy of a greater monarch and submitted to him, he “came into his house,” as the expression was. He gave hostages for his good behaviour and promised to pay tribute. When a French or English feudal lord became the vassal of another, however, the obligations were more comprehensive. Not only did he owe military service, or payment in lieu, but when he died, his heirs had to make payment to inherit their land, and if the inheritance was in dispute, the overlord decided it. In conquered England, moreover, the Normans had been able to take an even stronger line. For if any vassal there gave trouble, the English king could take his lands away and give them to another. A feudal vassal could not, theoretically, fight or travel without his overlord’s permission. Beyond even this, Henry Plantagenet was constantly extending the royal power. In England, he wanted to give ordinary freemen the right to go past their own lords and appeal directly to his royal courts for justice. It was the start of a centralised administration undreamed of in the informal world of the Celtic Irish kings.
But King Diarmait needed men. Besides, he knew very well that whatever King Henry’s views about feudal vassals might be, Ireland lay far beyond the Plantagenet monarch’s reach.
“That would be no trouble at all,” he said.
And so the deal was struck. King Henry of England gained for the first time a provincial Irish king who recognised him, however cynically, as his overlord. It might be of no practical value at present. “But,” he could point out, “it has cost me nothing.” And King Diarmait got a letter in which the ruler of the sprawling Plantagenet empire gave permission to any of his vassals to fight for Diarmait if they wished.
There hadn’t been a mad rush. The prospect of helping a dispossessed provincial chieftain from an island out in the western seas was not a great attraction. But one of King Henry’s magnates—the mighty lord de Clare, best known to fighting men as Strongbow—met the Irish exile and took an interest. Strongbow had land holdings in several parts of the Plantagenet domains, but the ones in south-west Wales had been under pressure. It was clear that King Diarmait was ready to let him name his own price.
“You could marry my daughter and inherit my entire kingdom,” he wildly suggested. As Diarmait had sons, and at present controlled not a yard of his former kingdom, this offer was worth just about as much as his oath of fealty to the Plantagenet monarch. But Strongbow decided to take a calculated gamble. He told the Irish king to recruit in the territories of which he was overlord in south Wales. Perhaps a contingent could be raised which would serve as an advance party. After all, he concluded privately, if they all get killed, it really doesn’t matter.