CHAPTER XI
Superior Armament of the Normans—Arrival of Henry II
ALTHOUGH two of the chief Irish cities had fallen to the invaders, the struggle was not entirely abandoned by the Irish nation. Ulster and most of Connaught remained intact, and even in Munster and Leinster there was, from time to time, considerable, although desultory, resistance to the Anglo-Normans. The latter, clad in steel armor from head to foot, and possessing formidable weapons, had a great advantage over the cloth-clad Irish, although, of course, the latter greatly outnumbered them. The weapons of the Irish were the skian, or short-sword—resembling the Cuban machete—the javelin, and the battle-axe—the latter a terrible arm at close quarters; but even the axe could not cope with the ponderous Norman sword and the death-dealing long bow, with its cloth-yard shaft. In discipline and tactics, also, the Irish were overmatched. In short, they were inferior to their enemies in everything but numbers and courage. But all would have been redeemed had they but united against the common foe.
Why they did not may be justly, as we think, attributed to the tribal system which taught the clans and tribes to be loyal to their particular chiefs rather than to their country as a whole; the absence of a fully recognized federal head, and the vacillations of an honest and patriotic Ard-Righ, who, noble and amiable of character, as he undoubtedly was, proved himself to be a bungling diplomat and an indifferent general. Had his able and determined father, Turlough Mor, been on the Irish throne, and in the vigor of his life, when Strongbow landed, he would have made short work of the Norman filibusters. The king seemed ever behind time in his efforts to stem the tide of invasion. He had rallied still another army, and gained some advantages, when he was confronted by a new enemy in the person of Henry II. This king, determined not to be outdone by his vassals, had ordered Strongbow, who, because of his marriage with Eva MacMurrough, had assumed the lordship of Leinster, to return with all his chief captains to England, the penalty of refusal being fixed at outlawry. Strongbow attempted to placate the wrathful king and sent to him agents to explain his position, but the fierce and crafty Plantagenet was not a man to be hoodwinked. He collected a powerful fleet and army, set sail from England, in October, 1171, and, toward the end of that month, landed in state at Waterford, where Strongbow received him with all honor and did homage as a vassal. This was the beginning of Ireland’s actual subjugation, for had the original Norman invaders refused to acknowledge Henry’s sovereignty, and, uniting with the natives, kept Ireland for themselves, they would eventually, as in England, have become a component and formidable part of the nation, and proved a boon, instead of a curse, to the distracted country. The landing of Henry put an end to such a hope, and with his advent began that dependency on the English crown which has been so fatal to the liberty, the happiness, and the prosperity of “the most unfortunate of nations.”
Henry having “graciously” received the submission of Strongbow and his confederates, proceeded, at once—for he was a monarch of great energy—to make a “royal progress” through the partially subdued portions of Munster and Leinster. He took care, in doing this, to show Pope Adrian’s mischievous “bull” to the Irish prelates and princes, some of whom, to their discredit be it confessed, bowed slavishly to the ill-considered mandate of the Pontiff. Many of the princes were even base enough to give Henry “the kiss of peace,” when, instead, they should have rushed to arms to defend the honor and independence of their country. The prelates, trained to ecclesiastical docility, disgusted with the everlasting civil contentions of the country, and fearful of further unavailing bloodshed, had some feeble excuse for their ill-timed acquiescence, but what are we to say of those wretched Irish princes who so weakly and wickedly betrayed their nation to the foreign usurper? They were by no means ignorant men, as times went, but they were ambitious, vain, and jealous of the half-acknowledged authority of High King Roderick, who, poor man, seems to have been the Henry VI of Ireland. Those treasonable princes deserve enduring infamy, and foremost among them were Dermid McCarthy, King of Desmond, and Donald O’Brien, King of Thomond. Both lived to regret most bitterly their cowardice and treason.
Henry II was a politic monarch. He flattered the pliable Irish bishops and spoke to them gently about Church reforms, while he palavered the despicable Irish princes, and, at the same time, pretended to favor the common people and affected to check the rapacity of his Norman subjects. Hostilities ceased for a time, except on the borders of Leinster and Connaught, where King Roderick, deserted by many of his allies, and deeply depressed at the absence of national union against the invaders, kept up an unavailing resistance. In this he was encouraged and aided by the patriotic Archbishop of Dublin, St. Lorcan O’Tuhill, who appears to have been the only man among the entire Irish hierarchy who comprehended the iron grip the Normans had on the throat of Ireland. Had all the prelates been like St. Lorcan, and preached a war of extermination against the invaders at the outset, Ireland could, undoubtedly, have thrown off the yoke, because the princes would have been forced by their people, over whom the bishops had great moral sway, to heal their feuds and make common cause for their country. King Roderick, despite his errors, deserves honor for his patriotic spirit. The Ulster princes, too, with few exceptions, stood out manfully against the foreigner, and a long period elapsed before the Anglo-Norman power found a secure footing amid the rugged glens and dense forests of the western and northern portions of the invaded island.
Geraldus Cambrensis, or Gerald Barry, a Norman priest of Welsh birth, accompanied, A.D. 1185, King Henry’s son, John, as chronicler, to Ireland. Like nearly every man of his race, he hated the native Irish, but, occasionally, as if by accident, spoke well of some of them. In general, however, his book is a gross libel on the Irish Church and the Irish people. He purports to give Roderick O’Conor’s address to his army on the eve of battle with the Anglo-Normans, and the concluding words of the speech are alleged to have been as follows: “Let us then,” said the Irish king, “following the example of the Franks, and fighting bravely for our country, rush against our enemies, and as these foreigners have come over few in numbers, let us crush them by a general attack. Fire, while it only sparkles, may be speedily quenched, but when it has burst into a flame, being fed with fresh materials, its power increases with the bulk, and it can not be easily extinguished. It is always best to meet difficulties half way, and check the first approaches of disease, for (the Latin quotation of the king is here translated)
“Too late is medicine, after long delay,
To stop the lingering course of slow decay.
Wherefore, defending our country and liberty, and acquiring for ourselves eternal renown, let us, by a resolute attack, and the extermination of our enemies, though they are but few in number, strike terror into the many, and, by their defeat, evermore deter foreign nations from such nefarious attempts.”
Henry’s astute policy disarmed, for a time, even Roderick himself. The Anglo-Norman monarch, who would have made an admirable modern politician, does not seem to have desired the absolute ruin of the Irish nation, but his greedy Norman captains were of a different mind, and when Henry, after having wined and dined the Irish princes to their hearts’ content, in Dublin and other cities, at last returned to England, in the fall of 1173, the Norman leaders showed their teeth to the Irish people, and forced most of those who had submitted into fierce revolt. As a result, the Norman forces were crushed in the field. Strongbow, himself, was shut up in Waterford, and his comrades were similarly placed in Dublin, Drogheda, and Wexford. Henry, incensed at this unlooked-for sequel to his Irish pilgrimage, sent over a commission to inquire into the facts. The result was that an Irish delegation went to London to explain, and, at Windsor, where Henry held his court, a treaty was entered into, finally, between King Roderick and himself, by which the former acknowledged Henry as “suzerain,” and Roderick was recognized as High King of Ireland, except the portions thereof held by the Normans under Henry. This was a sad ending of Roderick’s heroic beginning. As usual with English monarchs, when dealing with the Irish people, Henry, urged by his greedy dependants in Ireland, soon found means to grossly violate the Treaty of Windsor, as the compact between the representatives of Roderick and himself was called, thus vitiating it forever and absolving the Irish nation from observing any of its provisions. Another fierce rebellion followed, in which the southern and western Irish—the Anglo-Normans having now grown more numerous and powerful—were remorselessly crushed. Roderick’s rascally son, Prince Murrough O’Conor, who thought his father should be satisfied with the titular High Kingship, and that he himself should be King of Connaught, rose in revolt and attempted to seize the provincial crown. The Connacians, indignant at his baseness, stood by the old king. Murrough was defeated and received condign punishment. This bad prince must have been familiar with the unseemly course pursued by the sons of Henry II in Normandy, for he allied himself with his country’s, and his father’s, enemies, the Anglo-Normans, under the treacherous De Cogan, and this act, more even than his filial impiety, inflamed the minds of his countrymen against the unnatural miscreant. King Roderick, unhappy man, whose pride was mortally wounded, and whose paternal heart, tender and manly, was wrung with sorrow at the crime of his son and its punishment—decreed by the Clans and not by himself—disgusted, besides, with the hopeless condition of Irish affairs, made up his mind to retire from the world, its pomps and vexations. He repaired to the ancient monastery of Cong, in Galway, and there, after twelve years of pious devotion, on the 29th day of November, 1198, in the 82d year of his age, this good and noble but irresolute monarch surrendered his soul to God. He was not buried at Cong, as some annalists have asserted, but in the chancel of the Temple Mor, or Great Church, of Clonmacnois, in the present King’s County, where he was educated. Tradition has failed to preserve the location of the exact place of sepulture within the ruined shrine. And so ended the last Ard-Righ, or High King, that had swayed the sceptre of an independent Ireland.
King Henry’s claim that the Irish Church needed great reformation is disproved by the enactments of his own reign in that connection, viz.: 1. That the prohibition of marriage within the canonical degrees of consanguinity be enforced. 2. That children should be regularly catechized before the church door in each parish. 3. That children should be baptized in the public fonts of the parish churches. 4. That regular tithes should be paid to the clergy, rather than irregular donations from time to time. 5. That church lands should be exempt from the exaction of livery and other burdens. 6. That the clergy should not be liable to any share of the eric, or blood fine, levied off the kindred of a man guilty of homicide. 7. A decree regulating the making of wills.
Surely, this was small ground on which to justify the invasion of an independent country and the destruction of its liberty!