England and Ireland, medieval

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During the Middle Ages, the English crown tried but failed to extend their control over Ireland, a country that had been divided into a number of kingdoms, with the most powerful king being recognized as the high king. The Anglo-Norman invasion of Ireland had begun haphazardly in the late 1160s by Anglo-Norman adventurers, but full-scale invasion took place under Henry II in 1171. However, although colonization began over large areas of land, particularly on the eastern seaboard in the area around Dublin known as the English Pale, Irish resistance, rivalries among the Anglo-Norman colonists, and their absorption into Irish life and society, led to the conquest losing its impetus. By the end of the 15th century the attempted conquest of Ireland by the English crown remained incomplete.

Norman invasion
Anglo-Norman mercenaries began to appear in Ireland from 1167, in the service of the exiled king of Leinster, Dermot MacMurrough. In 1169 MacMurrough was aided by a large Anglo-Norman force, led by a number of barons who intended to reinstate MacMurrough and acquire land for themselves. Their figurehead, Richard de Clare, Earl of Pembroke (known as ‘Strongbow’), arrived in 1170, married MacMurrough's daughter, and succeeded him as ruler of Leinster in 1171. At this point King Henry II of England, who had already been given permission by the pope to invade Ireland and reform the Irish church in 1151, hurried to Ireland to assume control of his barons – he feared the development of an independent Norman state on his western shore. Between 1171 and 1172 he received the submission of his barons, the Irish bishops, and most Irish kings.

The Treaty of Windsor (1175) made the English crown the overlord of Ireland, with the high king of Ireland ruling as its vassal (feudal tenant) outside Leinster, Meath, and the region around Waterford.

Colonization
The Irish were allowed to keep their own laws, but the English barons were given lands in Ireland, and immigrants were brought in from England, Wales, France, and Flanders. An English lord deputy (governor) was appointed to rule Ireland from Dublin, and Irish kings were refused security of succession. Although native Irish rulers were technically tenants of either an Anglo-Norman baron or the English crown under the feudal system, in reality they were practically free to do as they wished. Meanwhile, the Anglo-Norman barons (later known as the Anglo-Irish) gradually became politically and culturally more Irish than the Gaelic Irish.

Decline of Anglo-Norman and crown control
King John (I) Lackland extended English law to Ireland, and fought a campaign in 1210 to bring Ireland more under English control, but his attempt failed when the Anglo-Norman barons rebelled in 1215.

In 1315 the Irish rebelled under the leadership of the Scottish earl Edward Bruce (brother of the Robert (I) the Bruce, king of Scotland) but were defeated in 1317. Edward III (reigned 1327–77) tried to reassert English control over Ireland, but failed. By 1327 nearly half the colonized Anglo-Norman lands were held by absentee landlords who preferred not to live in Ireland, adding to the difficulties of securing control. The Black Death in Ireland caused even more colonists, of all classes, to migrate back to England and the remaining Anglo-Norman landlords became increasingly dependant on their Irish tenants.

Under the Statutes of Kilkenny (1367) the crown restricted royal control of Ireland to the English Pale. The English settlers were prohibited from adopting the Irish language or marrying the Irish. The Irish, called ‘enemies’ by the Statutes, were to be left to their own devices and their own laws, and were banned from ‘English’ towns.

Richard II (reigned 1377–99) defeated the Leinster Irish in his expedition of 1394–95, and nearly all Irish leaders and rebels submitted to his authority, but he was unable to achieve control.

15th-century assimilation and rebellion
The English Pale shrank even more in the 15th century, to the eastern counties of Louth, Meath, Dublin, and Kildare. By now Anglo-Irish leaders were paying Irish bards (minstrels, poets, and storytellers) and historians to stress their Irish roots. The struggle for succession to the English crown in the Wars of the Roses (1455–85) made it even harder to keep royal control, and the Anglo-Irish supported two pretenders to the English throne: Lambert Simnel, crowned in Dublin in 1487, and Perkin Warbeck, who was made welcome in Ireland in 1491. King Henry VII retaliated by appointing a new lord deputy to govern Ireland, who made all English parliamentary legislation applicable to Ireland under Poynings's Law (1494), but within two years the Anglo-Irish had their preferred candidate reinstalled as lord deputy. By the end of the Middle Ages English control over Ireland had still not been established.

For further details see Ireland: history 1154–1485, and Ireland: history 1485–1603.

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