Princes of Ireland - Edward Rutherfurd [230]
On the seventeenth day of October in that year of 1171, King Henry II of England arrived in Ireland, the first English monarch ever to do so. He landed at the southern port of Waterford with a large army. His intention in coming was not at all to conquer Ireland, in which he had little interest, but to take away the power of his vassal Strongbow and reduce him to obedience. To an extent, he had achieved his object before he arrived, because a worried Strongbow had already managed to intercept him in England and had offered him all his Irish gains. Now, however, Henry meant to inspect the place and see to it that Strongbow’s submission to him was made good.
The army that King Henry brought with him was truly formidable: five hundred knights and nearly four thousand archers. With this, let alone with the addition of Strongbow’s already large forces, the English king could, if he chose, have swept across the entire island and devastated any and all opposition in open battle. Henry knew this very well. But as his subsequent actions were to show, the ruthless Plantagenet opportunist intended to proceed cautiously, and with limited objectives. Try to subdue an island whose native population are against you? He was far too clever. Would he watch, though, for signs and situations that might be of advantage to him? Of course he would.
Gilpatrick stood with his father and gazed at the extraordinary scene before him. He didn’t know what to think. There, on the edge of the ancient Hoggen Green, between the city’s eastern gate and the Thingmount where their ancestor was buried, a huge wicker-walled hall had been erected. It was the sort of great hall that would have been put up for the High King in days of old, but it was bigger. “It makes the Thingmount look like a pimple,” he had heard a workman remark. And in that huge hall was the King of England.
He hadn’t wasted any time. Twenty-five days after he had landed at Waterford, he had settled all the affairs in southern Leinster and arrived at Dublin. Now he was holding court there in perfect safety, surrounded by an army of thousands. Even Gilpatrick’s father was awestruck.
“I didn’t know,” he quietly confessed, “there were so many soldiers in the world.”
And the kings and chiefs of Ireland had all been coming to submit to him, ever since he arrived on the island. The High King and the great men of Connacht and the west held aloof, but from every other province, willingly or unwillingly, the chiefs of the great Irish clans were seeking him out.
Gilpatrick’s father was contemptuous, but fatalistic.
“They’ll come into his house now, even quicker than they did to Brian Boru, because he has an army to compel them. But once he’s gone, they’ll forget their pledges quick enough.”
Gilpatrick, however, had noticed a subtler process at work. Henry, he realised, was a canny statesman. As soon as he arrived in Ireland, he had announced that he personally would take over Dublin and all its territories, Wexford, and Waterford. Strongbow was allowed to hold the rest of Leinster as his feudal tenant; but another great English magnate, the lord de Lacy, whom Henry had brought with him, was to remain in charge of Dublin as Henry’s personal representative or viceroy. So on the face of it, any Irish chief looking to the eastern part of the island would see a traditional Irish arrangement: a king of Leinster, a king of Dublin, and some partly foreign ports. Behind them, however, would be a rival High King—far more powerful even than Brian Boru—a High King across the water. And if they wanted protection against the O’Connor High King in Connacht, as they might, or if Strongbow, or even de Lacy, started to behave as they themselves had always done and tried to encroach upon their territory, then wouldn’t it be wise to come into the house of King Henry and have him as a protector against their neighbours, Irish or English? That was how things had always been done on the island. You paid