O’Connor as their overlord in return for O’Connor’s recognition of him as his overlord and a payment of tribute measured in cattle hides. But this agreement – the Treaty of Windsor – soon lapsed. Nothing stopped Henry II and his successors from granting as yet unconquered Irish kingdoms to English favourites. As a result, Ireland remained, as it had always been, a land of war, no longer just between Irish and Irish, but often now between Irish and English.
For a hundred years or so Ireland remained a land of opportunity, and while Britain’s population continued to grow, thousands were willing to emigrate. By founding towns and villages, building mills and bridges, these colonists almost turned south and east Ireland into another England overseas. In King John’s reign, the ‘Anglicization’ of Ireland was made official government policy. But when the movement of settlers ran out of steam, in around 1300, a Gaelic resurgence drove the English back behind the Pale (the fortified area around Dublin). Not for many centuries would it be possible to say that the conquest of Ireland started by Henry II had been completed. Irish tradition identified 1169 as ‘the year of destiny’, but it was by going there in 1171 and leaving again in 1172 that Henry II set a pattern for that catastrophic mixture of force and neglect that was to characterize the English government’s treatment of the Irish for centuries to come.
* * *
It had been the rebranding of Ireland as the ‘island of barbarians’ that gave Henry his opportunity to strike: Henry II was certainly not the first king of England to turn his eyes towards Ireland.
The first two Norman kings, William the Conqueror and William II, William Rufus, were rumoured to have contemplated taking it over, the latter allegedly toying with the idea of building a bridge of boats from Wales. Henry II himself thought about it as early as 1155, perhaps at the request of the Church. The archbishops of Canterbury had been claiming to be primates of the whole of Britain and Ireland since the 1070s, but this claim took a severe blow in 1152 when a papal legate restructured the Irish Church with no reference to Canterbury whatsoever. It may have been as a result of lobbying from Canterbury that Adrian IV, still the only Englishman to have ever become pope, sent Henry II a letter giving him Ireland. But in 1155 other matters intervened and Henry dropped the idea – supposedly on his mother’s advice.
Although Adrian’s readiness to grant Ireland to the king of England has often been regarded as just the kind of thing an English pope would do, it probably reflected his zeal for church reform much more than his Englishness. He shared the view of the French Cistercian abbot, Bernard of Clairvaux, the most influential European churchman of his generation, who described the Irish as: ‘shameless in their customs, uncivilised in their ways, godless in religion, barbarous in their law, obstinate as regards instruction, foul in their lives, Christians in name, pagans in fact’.
By the time Henry II came to the throne, profound economic and social changes in much of Europe, including England, had led to those regions in which little had as yet changed being seen in a new and highly critical light. The Scots and the Welsh found themselves tarred by the same brush, but it was the Irish who suffered most. According to William of Malmesbury, ‘whereas the English and French live in market-oriented towns and enjoy a cultivated style of life, the Irish live in rural squalor.’ The acceptance of new laws of marriage in most of Europe – when in Ireland divorce and remarriage continued to be lawful – led to Anselm of Canterbury accusing the Irish of swapping wives ‘in the same way that other men exchange horses’. Ireland, formerly thought of as ‘the island of saints’, was being rebranded as the ‘island of barbarians’. It was the pope’s duty, as he saw it, to bring the
For a hundred years or so Ireland remained a land of opportunity, and while Britain’s population continued to grow, thousands were willing to emigrate. By founding towns and villages, building mills and bridges, these colonists almost turned south and east Ireland into another England overseas. In King John’s reign, the ‘Anglicization’ of Ireland was made official government policy. But when the movement of settlers ran out of steam, in around 1300, a Gaelic resurgence drove the English back behind the Pale (the fortified area around Dublin). Not for many centuries would it be possible to say that the conquest of Ireland started by Henry II had been completed. Irish tradition identified 1169 as ‘the year of destiny’, but it was by going there in 1171 and leaving again in 1172 that Henry II set a pattern for that catastrophic mixture of force and neglect that was to characterize the English government’s treatment of the Irish for centuries to come.
* * *
It had been the rebranding of Ireland as the ‘island of barbarians’ that gave Henry his opportunity to strike: Henry II was certainly not the first king of England to turn his eyes towards Ireland.
The first two Norman kings, William the Conqueror and William II, William Rufus, were rumoured to have contemplated taking it over, the latter allegedly toying with the idea of building a bridge of boats from Wales. Henry II himself thought about it as early as 1155, perhaps at the request of the Church. The archbishops of Canterbury had been claiming to be primates of the whole of Britain and Ireland since the 1070s, but this claim took a severe blow in 1152 when a papal legate restructured the Irish Church with no reference to Canterbury whatsoever. It may have been as a result of lobbying from Canterbury that Adrian IV, still the only Englishman to have ever become pope, sent Henry II a letter giving him Ireland. But in 1155 other matters intervened and Henry dropped the idea – supposedly on his mother’s advice.
Although Adrian’s readiness to grant Ireland to the king of England has often been regarded as just the kind of thing an English pope would do, it probably reflected his zeal for church reform much more than his Englishness. He shared the view of the French Cistercian abbot, Bernard of Clairvaux, the most influential European churchman of his generation, who described the Irish as: ‘shameless in their customs, uncivilised in their ways, godless in religion, barbarous in their law, obstinate as regards instruction, foul in their lives, Christians in name, pagans in fact’.
By the time Henry II came to the throne, profound economic and social changes in much of Europe, including England, had led to those regions in which little had as yet changed being seen in a new and highly critical light. The Scots and the Welsh found themselves tarred by the same brush, but it was the Irish who suffered most. According to William of Malmesbury, ‘whereas the English and French live in market-oriented towns and enjoy a cultivated style of life, the Irish live in rural squalor.’ The acceptance of new laws of marriage in most of Europe – when in Ireland divorce and remarriage continued to be lawful – led to Anselm of Canterbury accusing the Irish of swapping wives ‘in the same way that other men exchange horses’. Ireland, formerly thought of as ‘the island of saints’, was being rebranded as the ‘island of barbarians’. It was the pope’s duty, as he saw it, to bring the
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