Irish History Midterm

• In 3 notable ways the 11th and 12th centuries were an age of renaissance and progress in Ireland. Cultural activity and the arts cams into their own again. Religious reform carried through to the point where the church in Ireland had, in full communion with the pope, basic diocesan organization which could look to the pastoral care of its flock. In the political sphere the accession of Brian Boruma (Boru) to the high kingship marked a break with the past. It paved way for a strong central monarch and Ireland seemed to be moving in that direction when the Anglo-Norman invasion occurred and changed the course of history.
• The Norman conquest of the remainder of Ireland was never undertaken in a systematic fashion. The kings of England were too busily engaged in Continental wars to give any series attention to Ireland, and it was left to the barons of Ireland to pursue it in a haphazard fashion.
• By 1250 - within 80 years of the invasion - 3/4 of the country had been overrun by the Normans. Nobody has ever accused the Gaelic Irish of lack of courage, yet how can one account for the success of the Norman forces in Ireland? They were far less in numbers than the Irish, they were fighting far from their homes in England and Wales and they had little or no support from the king of England. It was each Norman for himself.
• Norman success did not end with victory on the field. Their fortresses ensured that they would hold the territory they conquered.
• It is too often assumed that the Normans brought only war and division to the country, but this is to look at the later centuries, when the Norman-Irish colony was in decline.
• The Normans were the first to give Ireland a centralized administration.
• It would be a mistake to think of Norman Ireland as engaged in continuous deadly warfare with the Gael. Once an area had been occupied by the Normans it gained peace and order, where previously there had been raids and counter-raids between warring factions of the great Gaelic families. War continued but no fiercer than before.
• This peace and order was not brought at the price of exterminating or expelling the ordinary Irishman from his land. In fact, the Normans strove hard to ensure that the Gaelic Irish would remain to herd cattle and till the soil, as they had been doing. Now for the first time Ireland knew systematic agriculture and estate management. The only people to be displaced were the Gaelic nobility and this was not because of any anti-Gaelic policy but rather represented a struggle for power between 2 groups of aristocrats, the Normans & the Gaelic. The Normans undoubtedly came to conquer and transform, but also to adopt themselves to the country. They were willing to consider the Gaelic Chiefs as their social equals. Several of the great leaders were married to daughters of the native princes (i.e. Aoife and Strongbow).
• The towns were one of the lasting Norman gifts to the country. (Dublin, Wexford, Waterford, Cork, and Limerick).
• The growth of towns meant the growth of trade, both in land and foreign. One clear proof of this is that the Normans were the first to make general use of coins in Ireland.
• The Norman invasion also produced a new wave of religious activity in the wake of Norman arms. The religious orders in particular benefited from Norman advance. The Normans, who were always quick to seize on what was new, practical and progressive, also welcomed the friars to Ireland in the 13th century.
• For a variety of reasons, the impetus of the Norman drive in Ireland had begun to slow down by the middle of the 13th century. Lack of male heirs for their principal ruling families, no direct supervisor of Irish affairs by the kings of England, the absence of any organized plan to subjugate the country as a whole - all these took their toll. Besides, there was the drainage of men and supplies from Ireland to the wars in Scotland and Wales. Equally important was a toughening of native Irish opposition to the Norman power.
• King of Thomond and son of king of Connacht acknowledged Brian O'Neill as king of Ireland. The agreement was short-lived but it was a revolutionary step for the Irish kings to reach unity by free choice. Equally significant was the invitation in 1292-3 from a number of Irish chiefs to King Haakon of Norway asking him to become their leader against the Normans. The invitation came to nothing, but Ireland was for the first time turning for help to other powers in Europe.
• The tragedy of the Norman Invasion was not the conquest of Ireland - for that never took place - but its half - conquest. The Normans never came in sufficient numbers to complete the conquest, and the kings of England, on whom rested the responsibility for the peace and progress of Ireland, were either unwilling to assist their barons in Ireland or too distracted by dangers in England and wars on the Continent to turn their minds seriously to the Irish problem. If the conquest had been completed, as it had in Normandy, England and Sicily, a new nation would have emerged, combining the qualities of both people.
• Instead, by 1300 here was a drawn battle, with the Normans controlling most of the country, but the tide was already beginning to turn against them.

• SEE DERMOT MACMURROUGH
• Dermot shrewdly sought an interview with one of the great Norman leaders in Wales, Richard FitzGilbert de Clare, the earl of Strigoil, better known as 'Strongbow'. Here was an experienced war-leader, descendant of a powerful Norman family, but now a discontented man, without wife, out of favor with Henry II, and therefore likely to seek fame and fortune in some new field such as Ireland. Strongbow was a hard bargainer. Eventually he agreed to lead an armed force to Ireland and restore Dermot to power, but on condition that Dermot give him his eldest daughter, Aoife (Eva), in marriage, and the right of succession to the kingdom of Leinster.
• On August 23 Strongbow and his army landed at Passage and attacked Waterford. When night fell Waterford was in the hands of the Normans.
• Strongbow summoned MacMurrough, who came gladly, bringing his daughter, Aoife, to fulfill in part the bargain made in Wales 2 years previously. Popular tradition, and a well-known fresco in the precincts of the British House of Commons, depict the marriage taking place at the close of the battle, with the dead, the dying and flaming houses in the background. This is not historically accurate since MacMurrough did not arrive for at least some days after the battle. But it is symbolically true as the marriage was part of the Norman victory.

• King of Leinster, allied himself with the Dublin Norse again, and these in turn gathered in Viking allies from overseas for a final trial of strength at Clontarf in 1014.
• Clontarf is conventionally taken as marking the end of the Viking wars. There were occasional Viking expeditions afterwards, but they were irrelevant to the dynastic wars which followed the death of Brian.
• For most of us the name of Brian Boruma calls to mind the Battle of Clontarf, which has always caught the imagination of the Irish people. The events which led to this battle were many, but fundamentally the issue involved was Brian's claim to rule all Ireland, including the Norse towns. So when the former high king Mael Sechnaill (otherwise Malachy) appealed to him for help against the Leinstermen and the Dublin Norse, Brian marched on Dublin. The result was the pitched battle on April 23, 1014 which we call 'the Battle of Clontarf' but which in Irish tradition is sometimes called 'Brian's battle'. It was, indeed, Brian's battle, for the support that he had from the other provinces on that Good Friday was relatively meager, and, as we know, the men of North Leinster fought against him along with the Norsemen. The decisive victory lay with the Irish, and the final blow was given to Viking hopes of establishing their domination over Ireland.
• The triumph at Clontarf was a sad one, for the losses on the Irish side included Brian himself, his eldest son and many other royal persons and nobles. Neither of Brian's older sons was powerful enough to take his father's place as king of Ireland, so it fell to the erstwhile king, Mael Sechnaill, to resume the rule of the whole country; he was now truly high king until his death in 1022.

The 2 kings met at the Boyne, where James had drawn up his Irish and French troops on the southern bank. William had the largest army - about 36,000, as compared with James's 25,000. William's troops included Dutch, Danes, Germans and Huguenots, as well as British. He was not a great general, but showed himself a brave and reckless soldier. The day before the battle he was wounded by an Irish shot, and reports of his death got as far as Paris. It was only a flesh wound, and with the phlegmatic remark 'it's well it came no nearer' he resumed his reconnoitering. The battle rook place on July 1 by the old calendar (July 12 new style), and its center was the ford at Oldbridge. There was sharp fighting at eh rover crossing, and William at the head of the Inniskillingers had a difficult passage. The Irish cavalry fought well, but at the end of the day James had fled, his army was in full retreat, and William was clearly the winner. In a military sense it was not a decisive victory; the Irish losses were small and their army lived to fight another day. But it was reported all over Europe, and it and a great psychological effect. Dublin and eastern Ireland fell to William, and the Jacobites made a disordered retreat to the Shannon. William thought that all resistance was over, and demanded unconditional surrender. Tyrconnell and the French took much the same view of the situation.

• Yet for all the foreign influence it received and adopted, Christian art continued to show its Celtic origins. Most people would agree that the Book of Kells, with its skilled execution and infinite variety, is one of the most perfect examples of such art.
• The Book of Kells, the extraordinary masterpiece which marks the culmination of early Irish art. This book is unfinished - perhaps because of the disasters which befell many of the Irish monasteries at the end of the 8th century.
• Some scholars believe that the Book of Kells was written and painted at the Irish foundation of St Colum Cille on the island of Iona off the Scottish coast. Iona is open to the sea on all sides and it was from the sea that, suddenly, disaster came. In 795, long, low ships, with patterned sails, appeared from the ocean and ran their prows up on the beach. From them came helmeted warriors, armed with heavy swords and iron spears, who ransacked the monastic village for valuables and slaves, taking as trinkets the jeweled shrine and ornaments of the altars. Raiders were back again in 802, and yet again in 806, when they murdered no fewer than 68 of the monks. After this visitation the abbot, Cellach, moved to Ireland with the survivors, carrying with him the precious relics of Colum Cille. He was given land at Kells in the territory of the southern Ui Neill, where he founded a new monastery. One can imagine the Book of Kells, its ornamentation cruelly interrupted by the murderous raids, being carried back to the home country and housed with other valuables and relics in the building constructed at that time which is now known as Colum Cille's House at Kells.

• Mathgamain himself was killed in 976 but his brother Brian within a few years brought first Limerick, then all of Munster, under his control. From Cashel he set about systematically building up power for himself.
• The Norse from now on were reduced to playing subordinate roles in the renewed struggle for power between the rulers of the northern half and the southern half of Ireland. Mael Sechnaill, representing the ancient northern dynasty of the Ui Neill, showed considerable energy in this struggle, but Brian, representing the usurping southern dynasty of Dal Cais, showed the greater ability. He thought in terms which extended beyond the limited traditional Irish concept of kinship. The decisive event in the struggle was the battle of Glen Mama in 999. When Brian defeated the king of Leinster and the Dublin Norse, after which he plundered the city. 3 years later Mael Sechnaill yielded to him at Tara, without a battle, and Brian became, in effect, king of Ireland, or, as he styled himself, 'emperor of the Irish'.
• He still had, in the next 12 years, to suppress various dissident northern kings, but the most dogged resistance came from the kingdom of Leinster. Mael Morda, king of Leinster, allied himself with the Dublin Norse again, and these in turn gathered in Viking allies from overseas for a final trial of strength of Clontarf in 1014 (died). SEE BATTLE OF CLONTARF
• Following the expansionist designs of his father, Cennetig, and of his brother, Mathgamain, Brian first established himself as king of Munster in the place of traditional Eoganacht king of Cashel. Then he extended his power, until finally in 1002 his supremacy was acknowledged in the northern half of Ireland by Mael Sechnaill, king of Tara, who had been high king since 980.
• Not satisfied that the submission to him of the reigning high king demonstrated his own supreme authority, Brian made expeditions to the north in 1002 and 1005 in order to take hostages from the northern states. In the following years he made further expeditions to the north, took more hostages and thus showed himself to be undisputed king of Ireland.
• With Brian, the Irish high-kinship became a reality. He was about 60 years of age when he attained it, and in the 12 years of his reign he consolidated his position in the political and military spheres, while at the same time initiating a rehabilitation of religious and learned institutions, as well as restoring communications by building bridges and roads.

Not only do we know how these early farmers lived, we can tell something of their religious beliefs from the massive monuments they raised for their dead. Some of these are in the form of long galleries of huge stones in which the burials were placed, with a forecourt or central open court where ceremonies could be held. These court cairns, as they are called, are found mainly in the northern half of the country.

Another and more distinctive type of dwelling seems to have been coming into general use about this time (Bronze Age). This is the crannog or lake-dwelling, an artificial island laboriously constructed in the waters of a lake. The idea goes right back to Neolithic times, and the type of dwelling was to remain in use until the medieval period. Whatever their type of dwelling, wealthy people lived in style, and cooked meat for special feasts in large bronze cauldrons hung over the fire.

• No organized attempt was made to establish protestant communities, except in the towns. What was changed was the people who owned the land, not the people who lived and worked upon it. The Cromwellian Settlement was not so much a plantation as a transference of the sources of wealth and power from Catholics and Protestants. What it created was not a Protestant community but a Protestant upper class.
• The Act of Settlement was passed by an all-Protestant parliament to give effect to the king's declaration. Innocents - the term was strictly defined - and a number of specially named royalists were to get their lands, and the Cromwellians were to be compensated with other lands of equal value. But such lands were not to be found, and it was necessary to pass a second act to explain the first one. This laid down that most Cromwellians should give up 1/3 of their lands so that some Catholics could be restored. Cromwellians resented having to give up even part of their estates.
• When stock was taken of the Restoration settlement, Catholic landowners were better off than they had been under Cromwell, but they had recovered only a fraction of their original estates.

• The story of why the Normans came to Ireland begins as a personal drama, with 2 warrior kings, Dermot of Leinster and Tiernan O'Rourke of Breifne, pitted one against the other; it is a tale of raids and counter-raids, of bravery and brutality, of the abduction of O'Rourke's wife of the undying resentment of O'Rourke, of the overthrow and exile of Dermot. And so the drama continued, but now as a one-man show, with Dermot pleading his case successively in England, France, and Wales. And even when the Normans came - almost reluctantly, as we shall see - they rarely acted on an organized plan. Nevertheless, they came to stay.
• Between 1156 and 1166 the struggle for political supremacy in Ireland lay between Murtough MacLochlainn of Ailechin the north (Dermot supported), the most powerful king in Ireland, and Rory O'Connor (O'Rourke cast his lot with), king of Connacht. O'Connor was content, once he defeated Dermot, to take hostages from him and reduce his power to a small kingdom centered around the Ferns in Wexford. But O'Rourke was implacable in his resolve to destroy Dermot. His burning resentment went back 14 years, to his humiliation before all the men of Ireland in 1152 when his wife had been abducted by Dermot. According to both the Irish and Norman accounts it was she who arranged the abduction. O'Rourke recovered her the following year but he was determined to get even with Dermot, and now in 1166 he had his opportunity: Dermot's supporters and followers were melting away; his great ally, MacLochlainn of Ailech in the north, was dead. When Ferns was captured and his stone palace destroyed, he decided there was nothing for it but flight. He sailed away secretly with a few followers from Ireland in August 1166. He went to France in search of Henry II, king of England. Dermot was determined to recover his inheritance in Ireland and was seeking allies.
• Henry was already interested to recover his inheritance in Ireland. Dermot stated his case and made his offer.
• Henry, a man of boundless energy, high intelligence and rapid decision quickly summed up the situation: he himself was too busily engaged in his any territories to lead an expedition to Ireland but he had nothing to lose by encouraging this exiled king. He accepted Dermot's offer of fealty, promised to help him as soon as possible and loaded him with presents. More welcome to Dermot, however, was an open letter in which Henry invited his subjects, English, Norman, Welsh, and Scots, to rally to Dermot's assistance. Dermot found no rush of recruits for an expedition to Ireland. He decided that the most likely place to find volunteers was across the Severn, along the Welsh border, where Normans were continually engaged in warfare with the native Welsh.
• Dermot shrewdly sought an interview with one of the great Norman leaders in Wales, Richard FitzGilbert de Clare, the earl of Strigoil, better known as 'Strongbow'. Here was an experienced war-leader, descendant of a powerful Norman family, but now a discontented man, without wife, out of favor with Henry II, and therefore likely to seek fame and fortune in some new field such as Ireland. Strongbow was a hard bargainer. Eventually he agreed to lead an armed force to Ireland and restore Dermot to power, but on condition that Dermot give him his eldest daughter, Aoife (Eva), in marriage, and the right of succession to the kingdom of Leinster.
• SEE AOIFE MACMURROUGH
• Strongbow was not impetuous, but he was daring. He and Dermot now proposed to march on Dublin, which was a semi-independent kingdom under the control of the Norsemen, with its Norse-Irish king Askolv. Dublin fell to the Normans on September 21, 1170.
• The Normans were only some months settled in the city when disaster threatened from all sides. Dermot died about May 1, 1171, leaving Strongbow successor to a turbulent kingdom.

Stone tripods with a capstone - are common throughout the country. All that now remains are the huge stones which formed the burial chamber, but originally they may have been covered by a cairn of stones or mound of earth.

• The absence of political unity makes the cultural unity of the country all the more remarkable. From the time of the earliest documents, we find a sophisticated and uniform language in use throughout Ireland. The aesdona or 'men of art' constituted the most important element of early Irish society. They were all originally Druids. Greek authors tell us of the importance of the Druids and poets among the Continental Celts, and Caesar says that the pupils of the Gaulish Druids had to learn by heart an immense number of verses. His account tallies closely with what we know of the Irish bardic schools as late as the 17th century. With the triumph of Christianity, the Druids as such disappeared. The poets gave up their more pagan and magical functions, but otherwise they and other members of the learned caste continued to enjoy their full privileges.
• And just as the Romans extirpated the Druids from Gaul and Britain, so too in the 16th century, when Gaelic society was on the verge of extinction, the Elizabethan pamphleteers reserved their most bitter venom for the 'lewd rhymers' - the poets who were the true bearers of the ancient Celtic tradition.

• SEE DERMOT MACMURROUGH
• The next threat came not from the Irish or Norse but from Strongbow's own royal master. Henry II had been quite willing to allow his subjects in Wales, the Normans and the Flemings, to gamble their lives and fortunes in a risky adventure to Ireland, but now that they had succeeded he had no intention of seeing a strong kingdom under Strongbow arising on England's flank.
• SEE RORY O'CONNOR

One of the most spectacular aspects of this Gaelic revival was the attempt to revive the old high-kingship. At a famous meeting at Caeluisce on the River Erne in 1258, the sons of the kings of Thomond and Connacht and the leading nobility met together and there, as the annalist puts it, 'gave supreme authority to Brian O'Neill'. Brian O'Neill's closest neighbor in Ulster, O'Donnell of Donegal, refused to acknowledge the authority of O'Neill. In any event, the whole thing came to a sorry end afterwards, when Brian O'Neill was defeated and killed at the Battle of Downpatrick (1260). 3 years later, in 1262-3, another abortive attempt to restore the high kinship resulted in an offer to king Haakon of Norway, but he died before he could land in Ireland. The most successful attempt at revival followed when I n1315, Edward, brother of King Robert of Scotland, was invited to Ireland and in 1316 was crowned high king. For 3 years, before he was killed at the Battle of Faughart in 1318, Edward created havoc in the colony and rocked the settlement to its foundations. But not withstanding this, he failed in the end, and with him the attempt to create a kingdom of Ireland and drive out the settlers ceased. From then on the Gaelic revival failed to find a national leader.

• Queen Elizabeth, the last of the Tudors, sought to establish a uniformity of Protestantism within her dominions. The resistance which Elizabeth encountered in Ireland was far greater than that which her father had met.
• Henry's successors, Edward, Mary and Elizabeth, continued their father's civil policy. Although the English determination to control Ireland increased at the century progressed, not even Elizabeth, who was the strongest of the Tudors, abandoned until the very end the hope of achieving her purpose by negotiation.
• Queen Elizabeth was dead by the time of O'Neill's surrender at Mellifont (March 30, 1603), but the policy of her house had succeeded. Ireland, despite the resistance of so many of her lords, was conquered.

• The Colonization of Ulster
• The Tudor conquest of Ireland had arisen from the need to make a Protestant England safe in a Europe divided by religion, but that conquest was not complete. It was a measure of the great O'Neill's achievement that the Nine Years' War ended, not in the punishment of the defeated rebels, but in a negotiated settlement. O'Neill and O'Donnell - earls of Tyrone and Tyrconnell - were allowed to return to their lands and live among their people.
• Circumstances quickly changed, however, and the opportunity to make a much more profitable use of victory soon presented itself. For O'Neill and many his followers were unwilling to accept the new order of things - unable to settle down as ordinary landlords where they had lately been independent princes. After 4 resentful years of subjection to the English crown, O'Neill took ship, September 3, 1607, and went into voluntary exile on the continent. With him went O'Donnell and more than 90 of the leading men of Ulster.
• The 'Flight of the Earls' left Ulster leaderless, and the government jubilant. There was no longer any need for caution or conciliation in Ulster. The exiles had left their people defenseless, and presented the government with an ideal opportunity to solve the problem of Ireland's chief trouble spot. The ideal solution had been known for generations. It was, in one word, plantation. The idea of plantation was straightforward. Land was the source of wealth and the basis of power. To take it from the Catholic Irish and give it to Protestant immigrants would at once weaken resistance to English rule and bring into being a Protestant community sufficiently numerous and sufficiently powerful to keep the peace in Ireland. If the Irish would not become Protestant, then Protestants must be brought to Ireland.

• The gallowglasses, those magnificent fighters of Norse-Scottish stock, protected by mail and carrying their long axes, had come to join the forces of the O'Connors some years previously, and the Irish now had an effective answer to the Norman military superiority in battle. (The Normans: Arrival and Settlement)
• Scots-Irish mercenaries

SEE EDWARD BRUCE

• Some of the Ulster lords had been fighting to uphold their sovereignty and to keep the English out of Ulster since 1593. In 1595 Hugh, earl of Tyrone, who had been assisting his more warlike neighbors for some time, openly joined them. From that moment until 1603, when Queen Elizabeth died, everything resolved round the issue of the Ulster war. It was the final contest which would decide the future of the Gaelic institutions and would complete - or make it impossible to complete - the Tudor conquest.
• The leading spirit, the man who was largely responsible for the long series of Irish successes in the struggle, was Hugh. This man, who had plotted successfully to overcome his rivals in Tyrone and who claimed that he was overlord of the greater part of Ulster, was a courageous and cautious leader. Occasionally emotion overcame him, but ordinarily he was crafty, calculating and ambitious. He loved power, and the realization that the queen would not tolerate his continued exercise of it was undoubtedly his chief motive in taking up arms. Hugh knew that there could be no separate solution for Ulster, and consequently he tried to involve the whole country in the war. The English said that the Irish hope 'to recover their ancient land and territories out of the Englishmen's hands', to bring all Ireland under Gaelic rule and to make Hugh the lieutenant of the pope and the king of Spain - England's ecclesiastical and civil enemies. Hugh would probably have settle for less, perhaps for non-interference with the Gaelic lords, the employment of Irish men in offices of state and freedom for Catholicism. But both sides were driven to extremes. The aid of England's national enemy, Spain, became essential for Hugh, and his acceptance of it increased what was, from the English viewpoint, his guilt. The old Tudor fear became a reality: Queen Elizabeth's enemies were using Ireland to injure England.
• Hugh fought in the traditional Irish way. He attacked moving columns of the English and laid ambushes, some of which developed into battles. His soldiers were musketeers, cavalrymen and pikemen, and he did not lack firearms.
• Until the end of 1601, when the Spaniards came, the Ulstermen remained on the defensive. Their hope was to avoid any defeat - which would have broken up their confederacy - and to prolong the war.
• Until 1597, the English merely marched into the Irish territories and left garrisons in castles or roughly constructed forts. Hugh's great victory at the Yellow Ford in 1598 made them more cautious. After that they tried simultaneous attacks on south-west and south-east Ulster, the entries to O'Donnell's country and to Hugh's. When Lord Deputy Mountjoy, the best of their soldiers, came in 1600 they multiplied their garrisons and introduced a policy of frightfulness. They destroyed their enemy's corn in the fields, burnt houses and carried on the war through the winter. They used their sea power to make a landing behind Hugh's back at Derry (1600).
• Still, the Ulstermen remained unsubdued, and when the Spaniards arrived in Kinsale Hugh and O'Donnell marched south to join them. But this involved their assumption of the offensive, which was a new departure for them, and when they tried to cooperate with the besieged Spaniards at Kinsale their efforts met with disaster. Despite their years of military success, the Irish were unable to fight the kind of formal battle which their opponents were quick to force upon them. When Mountjoy showed that he was going to attack them outside Kinsale, the Irish infantry tried to array themselves in the massive formations which had for so long brought victory to their Spanish allies in the great Continental battles of the age, but they had never fought in that way before. They were slow and inexpert in their movements, and, to increase their difficulties, their horsemen deserted them. Mountjoy's men came on. They overran the Irish piecemeal, one unwidely division after another, and very soon all was over. Hugh and his Ulster, Connacht and Munster allies were completely defeated. The Spaniards soon surrendered the town of Kinsale and, in due course, the hither to unsubdued Ulster was overrun. The war ended with Hugh's submission in 1603.
• The Battle of Kinsale had decided everything. Mountjoy's victory meant the repulse of the Spanish invasion and the ultimate overthrow of Hugh, O'Donnell and their companions. It meant also the downfall of the last of the Gaelic lordships and the end of the old Irish world. Queen Elizabeth was dead by the time of Hugh's surrender at Mellifront (March 30, 1603), but the policy of her house had succeeded. Ireland, despite the resistance of so many of her lords, was conquered.
• SEE FLIGHT OF THE EARLS

• SEE BOOK OF KELLS
• From Adamnan's Life of Colum Cille, written in Iona in the 17th century, when some of those who had entered the monastery under the founder were still alive, we can reconstruct the authentic picture in great detail. Instead of communal residence, the monks lived in individual cells constructed of wood or wattle, the abbot's cell slightly apart from the rest. In the west of Ireland, where wood was even then scarce, the cells were more usually constructed of stone; in any case, those are the only ones which have stood the test of time. Besides the cells of the monks, the monastic enclosure included within it the church, usually built of oak, with a stone altar, sacred vessels, relics and hand bells for summoning the congregation; the refectory, with its long table, and adjoining it the kitchen, containing an open fire, cooking utensils, and a large cauldron of drinking water; the library and scriptorium, with manuscripts suspended in satchels by leather straps from the walls and an ample supply of writing materials - waxed tablets, parchment, quills and stylos, inkhorns and the rest. A workshop and forge were situated nearby, while outside the rampart came the cultivated lands and pastures belonging to the monastery, furnished with farm buildings and in addition on a mill and limekiln.
• The monastic life became around the divine worship, mortification, study and manual labor.
• Copying of manuscripts formed an important part of the monastic occupations. The monastic scholar par excellence was the scribe, and Colum Cille and Baithin, the first 2 abbots of Iona, laid the foundations of a scribary art which, with its later illuminative elements, formed one of the greatest glories of Irish monasticism.

There is gold in the gravels of the Wicklow Rivers, and distinctive gold ornaments were made in Ireland in this period, which we call the early Bronze Age. One type of necklet was named a lunula because its outline resembled the crescent moon, and the lunulae were also exported to Britain and the Continent.

• Another clue to their religious belief is the elaborate decoration of the stones in some of these tombs, such as Newgrange, County Meath, where the finest passage grave in the country is to be seen. The spirals, lozenges and zigzag patterns which ornament the stones must have had a religious significance...
• SEE COURT TOMBS (CAIRNS)
• Such great cairns were constructed by a tribal group, and an immense amount of social organization was required in their building. Many people were buried in the one passage grave - their bodies were burnt, and then the cremated bones were placed in the burial chambers, sometimes with pottery, beads of stone and bone, and tools for use in the next life. Great quantities of burnt bone have been found in some excavated tombs, showing that they were used over quite a long period of time. We do not know exactly what beliefs the builders held, but some of them may have worshipped the sun, since some tombs are placed with their entrances towards the rising sun. But their religion was a compelling one, and similar types of burial structures are known over large areas of Europe.

• SEE CROMWELLIAN SETTLEMENT
• When that parliament had disposed of Charles and abolished the monarchy in its own favor, it turned its attention to Ireland. Its ingrained distrust of Catholicism was inflamed by exaggerated reports of the brutality with which the Ulster planters had been treated in 1641. And when Cromwell landed in Dublin with a Puritan army in 1649, his mission was not only conquest but also revenge. The indiscriminate inhumanity with which that revenge was exacted upon the royalist garrison and many of the townspeople of Drogheda, and upon the defenders of Wexford, became indelibly impressed upon the folk memory of the Irish. So too did the severity of the settlement which followed the overcoming of Irish resistance. But that severity was not indiscriminate. Not many were executed for their part in the rebellion. Men in arms were treated leniently enough. They were allowed to emigrate to the continent, and more than 30,000 took advantage of the opportunity. The poor were left undisturbed: a general pardon was issued, and they were able to resume their ordinary lives without fear of punishment. It was the wealth of the land of Ireland that the government of England was interested in. And it reserved its special fury for those who owned that land. It divided Catholic landowners in Ireland into 2 groups: those who had been guilty of involvement in the rebellion, and those who had not. The first were to lose all their estates, and all their property rights. The second were to be allowed to own a proportion of the amount of land which they had held. But it was not to be the same land.

• SEE DERMOT MACMURROUGH
• Worked with O'Rourke to defeat and subdue Dermot
• Strongbow returned to Dublin to meet a greater danger from the Gaelic Irish. Rory arrived near Dublin with a large army, as did O'Carroll from Ulster, Murtough MacMurrough from southern Leinster, and the inevitable O'Rourke from Breifne. The sea approach was cut off by a fleet of 30 ships manned by Norsemen...
• The Gaelic Irish had no knowledge of siege warfare and therefore had to try to starve out the Normans. After 2 months thus beleaguered, the Normans grew desperate for want of food, and secretly decided to attack. 3 companies, each of 200, men, under Strongbow, Raymond le Gros and Milo de Cogan, slipped out of the city, made a detour and then a sudden attack on Rory's camp at Cattlenock. The attack was unexpected. Rory was bathing in the River Liffey with many of his men; over a hundred of them were killed, while Rory barely managed to escape. Many more of the Irish in the camp were slain and all their supplies were captured. This lightning victory ended the siege and established the Norman supremacy in arms over both Norse and Gaelic Irish.
• At his point it seemed as if a peaceful solution might be found for the Norman domination of Ireland. By the Treaty of Windsor in October 1175, Rory pledged himself to recognize Henry II as his overlord and to collect annual tribute for him from all parts of Ireland, while Henry agreed to accept Rory as ard-ri ('high king') of the unconquered areas. The scheme broke down for 2 reasons. Rory was ard-ri in name only; he found it hard to enforce authority even in his own territory in Connacht. Secondly, Henry himself made several grants of large areas without consulting Rory or the Irish Kings.

It is impossible to be precise about dates here, but it was in the time of the Viking wars that stone churches built with mortar began to replace wooden buildings in Ireland. Not many have survived the centuries, but we can in outline trace the development from timber prototypes to stone-roofed churches. And in the same period of warfare and destruction, the building of the elegant bell-houses also began. The models for these were almost certainly early belfries in Italy, but a very distinctive Irish type was soon evolved which still adds grace to our landscapes. They were soon adapted to serve a secondary purpose as places of refuge, which is why in most of the round towers the doorway is raised some distance above the ground. From the top windows a small handbell rang out to tell the hours or to warn of sudden danger. All too often, however, those who took refuge in a monastic belfry perished by fire together with the books and valuables they had with them, since the tower by its design served as an excellent chimney.

• Monasteries established by the founder tended to retain close ties with one another - such as Durrow, Derry, Iona, and the others founded by Colum Cille and his disciples.
• Cille's journey to Iona in 563 did not differ essentially, therefore, from Enda's journey to Aran a generation before. But once in Scotland, he found unlimited scope for his missionary zeal in the conversion of the picts. Thus he became the prototype to later generations of the patriotic exile, thinking longingly in a foreign land of the little places at home he knew so well...
• Cille's mission inspired his namesake, Columbanus, to go further afield a generation later, and England, France, Belgium, Germany, Switzerland, Austria and Italy would soon re-echo to the tramp of Irish monks.

• Since the historian depends mainly on written documents for his knowledge of the past, Irish history properly speaking must begin with St. Patrick, the author of the earliest documents known to have been written in Ireland.
• There were certainly Christians in Ireland before Patrick's arrival. Trade relations with Roman Britain and Gaul saw to that.
• What does Patrick tell us about himself in his writings? A little about his family background and captivity. He was a native, he says, of Roman Britain, the son of Calpurnius of the village of Bannaverm Taberniae; at the age of 16 he was captured by Irish raiders along with thousands of others and spent 6 years in captivity in Ireland tending sheep in the woods and on the mountain. During this period he turned to God and to matters of religion. Which he had neglected in his youth, and finally succeeded in making his escape. Back in Britain he was welcomed by his relatives as a long - lost son and they implored him to remain with them. He might have done so were it not for a vision which he recounts in his Confession with remarkable vividness half a century later: Saw a man named Victoicus from Ireland with countless letter. He gave him one saying 'the voice of the Irish' cried out 'we ask thee, boy, come and walk among us once more'.
• Without going beyond the saint's own words, we can learn many details of his missionary work in Ireland. He 'baptized thousands', 'ordained clerks everywhere', 'gave presents to the kings', 'was put in irons', 'lived in daily expectation of murder, treachery or captivity', 'journeyed everywhere in many dangers, even to the furthest regions beyond which there lived nobody, and rejoiced to see 'the flock of the Lord in Ireland growing splendidly with the greatest care and the sons and daughters of kings becoming monks and virgins of Christ'.
• The system of Church government which Patrick introduced to Ireland would naturally have been the episcopal one which he saw all around him in Britain and Gaul. The laws of a synod held before his death assume the existence of bishops with fixed secs, each exercising jurisdiction within his own diocese. But Patrick also introduced the monastic life in to Ireland and wrote with gratitude of the great numbers of his new converts who embraced it - something then unusual in most parts of Western Europe.
• But even while some clerks, preached the true morality of Christ, others, writing the lives of the saints, were influenced by the generally accepted idea of what a hero should be like - brave, successful, hospitable, quick-witted. So although Patrick, on his own confession, was many times robbed, bound and in danger of death, hi 7th century biography shows him in triumph, worsting his pagan opponents, killing the king's Druid, cursing the king's host.

• Tara, the focus of an ancient road system and the most famous of the early centers from which Irishmen have sought political unification.
• On Tara a small mound - the Mound of the Hostages. Here the megalithic people had built a tomb and covered it first with a cairn of small stones and then with a layer of clay. In this clay covering, the latter arrivals placed many cremated burials in urns and with food vessels.
• Ui Neill of Tara
• The earlier tradition was that the king of Tara was the chief king in Ireland, and the Ui Neill of Meath and Ailech, from whom the Tara rulers were drawn, could look back upon a period of over 500 years during which their rule had rarely been seriously challenged.
• The Ui Neill over-king styled himself king of Tara. We know that Tara was an important site even in prehistoric times, but we do not know precisely at what date the ancestors of Niall gained control of it. Both the Ulaid and the Laign seem to have had ancient claims to the title, and possibly it had a religious rather than a political significance. The Feis Temro or 'Feast of Tara' originally symbolized the marriage of the priest-king to Medb, who was really a goddess and not a human queen.

When documentary evidence becomes fuller in the 7th and 8th centuries, we see that Ireland has settled down to become an agricultural country, divided into mainly small kingdoms. Those were at least 150 such Tuaths, although the population of Ireland may have been less than 1/2 a million.

• Niall of the Nine Hostages, a prince of the Connachta, seems to have won fame and power by successful raids on Britain. From his brothers, Brion and Fiachra, descended the great ruling families of Connacht. Niall's own descendants took the dynastic name of Ui Neill. 3 of his sons founded kingdoms in north-west Ulster. Others ruled in the midlands, in Mide and Brega, and waged successful war against the Laig in of Ulster.
• The over-kings of the Ui Neill continued to call themselves 'kings of Tara', but they themselves lived more modestly in ring-forts or lake-dwellings.
• SEE THE HILL OF TARA
• But the Ui Neill certainly presented a new phenomenon on the political scene. In particular, they demanded from Leinster the payment of a large cattle tribute, the boruma. As the king of Leinster was technically a ri coicid, he should not have had to pay tribute to anyone. The boruma was never paid willingly, and many of the Ui Neill 'high kings' fell in battle in the attempt to levy it.
• [The age of the Viking wars] It must be remembered that in the 9th century Ireland there was no one responsible for the defense of the island as a whole. There were many small kingdoms, and a traditional division of the island into 2 halves: Leth Cuinn, dominated by the Ui Neill of Tara, and Leth Moga, dominated by the Eoganachta of Cashel.
• SEE BATTLE OF CLONTARF AND BRIAN BORU
• As a result of Brian's successful intervention, the Ui Neill no longer shared solely among themselves the right of succession to the high kingship, which had now become a prize to be fought for by rival provincial kings. A new term appears in our records - rico fresbra ('king with opposition'): this term was applied to a provincial king who aspired to the high kinship but did not gain the submission of all the provinces - and few of the claimants can be rated higher than that.

• SEE BOOK OF KELLS
• The flight of Cellach and his monks was to be but one of the many such flights in the coming years. In the very year of the first attack on Iona, raiders - probably indeed the same ships' crews - attacked Lambay off the Dublin coast, and for the next 40 years or so the pagans from the sea struck again and again at the monasteries all around the shore of Ireland. Most of those who so fiercely attacked our shores came from the fjords of western Norway.
• What sort of people were the Vikings - to use the name by which the Scandinavian raiders are commonly called? They have received what is nowadays called a 'bad press', for most of the contemporary records of them come from the monasteries, which had good reason to fear and dislike them. In a violent time, their heathenism and their indifference to sanctuary struck horror into the monks.
• At home, these men were farmers and seamen, skilled in many crafts. Their way of life was not very different form that of the Irish of the period, except that they were still pagans, worshipping the old gods. Before the raids began, they had colonized the islands of Shetland and Orkney, where their settlements have been excavated. Here they lived a simple rural existence in farm villages. Their technology was advanced and they had a keen eye for business and trade.
• The Vikings were equipped for the venturing out in to the dangerous and unknown Atlantic.
• Some went looking for new lands to colonize, for the Scandinavian populations were growing too big for the amount of farmland available at home. Others went to trade or to make what profit they could from piracy.
• About the time of the earliest raids, the Vikings for the first time began to build towns at strategic points on the shipping routes. The towns were defended with earthen palisaded ramparts and wooden towers. Inside the ramparts were houses of timber or wattle and duab construction, the size of the population no doubt fluctuated considerably, swelling for the winter and summer markets. The voyages, whether for trade or loot, or both, began to be organized on a larger scale, and fleets rather than single ships or small groups of ships plied the seaways. Such fleets appeared in Irish waters in 837, and with them the Norse attack changed its character.
• The Norse were now trying to set up permanent bases in Ireland. The first was set up at the mouth of the Liffey, and form here large-scale expeditions were mounted deep into the interior of the country. Monasteries throughout the island were raided, but the chief Viking effort was probably directed at the seizure of lands for settlement, following the pattern of 9th century Viking activity elsewhere.
• The Norse apparently built their first fortified settlements in 841. The name 'longphort' which the Irish gave these defend bases indicates that they began with the building of a stockade around the ships.
• SEE BATTLE OF CLONTARF

• In 914 a great fleet of Vikings sailed into Waterford harbor and established a base there. From the new settlement of Waterford, the Scandinavians mounted expedition deep in to Munster.
• [The Normans: arrival and settlement] A herd of cattle collected by the Normans behind the ramparts was suddenly driven forth against the oncoming troops. This wild rush of horned beasts bore down on the foremost Norse and Irish, and while confusion reigned the Normans charged and overthrew their opponents. 70 of the leading townsmen of Waterford were taken prisoner on the battlefield. No mercy was shown to them; their limbs were broken and their bodies thrown over the cliffs.
• Before Waterford could recover from this disaster, worse befell it. On August 23 Strongbow and his army landed at Passage. He was joined by le Gros, and 2 days later the Normans swept on the assault of Waterford. The Norse and the Irish within the walls now knew how merciless were the attackers and twice the Normans were beaten off, but the indomitable Raymond le Gros breached the walls at one weak point and led a fierce attack through the gap. Reginald's Tower, which still stands, witnessed some of the bloodiest fighting. When night fell the city was in the hands of the Normans.