Phases of Irish History

by Eoin Mac Neill

A.D. 1214. The castle of Coleraine is built by Thomas son of Uhtred and by the Foreigners of East Ulster, and for that purpose were pulled to pieces the cemeteries and pavements and buildings of the whole town, save the church alone. (Coleraine until this time was a Columban monastery.)

From this we may see the full force of the extraordinary general permit extorted from the Pope's legate. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, already quoted, shows how earlier experience in Britain had prepared the fate of the Irish monasteries and schools.

A long list could be drawn up of the churches and monasteries occupied by the invaders, some permanently, others until evacuation was compelled.

This method of warfare reached parts of Ireland far remote from effective occupation by the invaders, and one of its results was the complete reversal of all the efforts towards reconstruction and progress which, as I have shown in the foregoing lecture, the Irish themselves had undertaken in the grounds of religion and education. The unconquered parts of Ireland were thrown back into the condition of the Norse war period. In the conquered parts, the Irish were excluded from education and ecclesiastical preferment. There was much building and much writing of official documents, but no progress in learning or the arts, not one school of note, and in an age when universities were springing up all over Christendom, there arose in Ireland only one University, which was stillborn.

On the other hand, the feudal invasion reached Ireland on a wave of developing town life, and its regime was able to monopolise this development in Ireland.

That the particular pledges, on the faith of which Henry obtained from Adrian the grant of the feudal lordship of Ireland, were not at all fulfilled by Henry, we know from general evidence and from the particular testimony of Giraldus, who implores John to fulfil them for the sake of his father's soul. John had other things to think about, and these pledges were not fulfilled by John or by any of his successors. A memorial on this subject was addressed, at the time of Edward Bruce's invasion, to the contemporary Pope by Domhnall O'Neill, king of Tyrone, and the document still exists, charging the Plantagenet rule in Ireland with general injury to religion and civilisation.

Among the barbarities of Ireland in the twelfth century, we are told by Mr. Orpen that the Irish had no legislature and no proper judicature. One wonders what sort of legislature Mr. Orpen imagines to have existed in England at that time, and whether he is aware that the English judicature was then only beginning to exist.

There is one feature of the Feudal settlement—if we may so call it—which is hard to place in its proper category—that is, to say whether it comes from systematic bad faith or merely from incapacity to act according to ordered notions of law. The Irish kings in general outside of Ulster made formal submission to Henry as their liege lord, and were received, as Giraldus says, into the protection of the most merciful king. This submission and reception constituted a solemn contract—the submitting kings became Henry's vassals and he became bound to defend and maintain them in their rights. In not a single instance was this contract observed for a moment longer than the opportunity to violate it was delayed. The rights and possessions of the Irish vassal kings were straightway granted afresh to one or another of the new adventurers—and the new grants were not preceded or accompanied by the pretence of any escheatment or invalidation of the existing contract—so little importance was attached by Henry and John and their filibustering captains even to the outward appearances of law and order.

Let me give here an illustration of Mr. Orpen's historical temper. He admits his difficulty in ascertaining the name of the king of the Ulaidh at the time of de Courci's seizure of Downpatrick. What does it matter? he suggests. The surname, at all events, was MacDunlevy, and—these are his actual words—"the kings of this family were always killing one another." It seems a strange manner of existence, but then, you understand, they were Irish and could manage it. There is just one instance of it in the annals, where one of the MacDunlevy kings, a man of evil life, was deposed and put to death by his kinsman. Possibly Mr. Orpen has confused the MacDunlevys with the Plantagenets.