England and Its Rulers, 1066--1307 by Clanchy M. T

Author:Clanchy, M. T.
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
Published: 2014-01-20T05:00:00+00:00

Civilization in Ireland

Henry II's treaty of Windsor in 1175 with the high king of Ireland, Ruaidrí Ua Conchobair, is comparable in form with the treaty of Falaise of the preceding year; but its terms are strikingly different, as it partitions Ireland. Henry and his barons were confirmed in their titles to the lordships they had taken in Dublin, Meath, Wexford, Leinster, Waterford and Munster; this amounted to the richest parts of Ireland to the east and south. Ruaidrí, who was king of Connacht in the west, may have mistakenly thought that he could save his own kingdom by making this compromise. Henry knew he could exact such harsh terms because he had the support of Pope Alexander III, who had already condemned the Irish in 1172 as barbarians and abjurers of the Christian faith. He congratulated Henry on ‘assembling a mighty force by land and sea to subject this people to your rule in order to extirpate the foulness of their abominations’.40 Henry himself was described as ‘a devoted son of the Church … this Catholic and most Christian king’. This was an extraordinary volte-face by the pope, as Henry had been accused of the murder of Becket in Canterbury cathedral only eighteen months earlier. One Irish source blamed the invasion on raiders in Munster who had robbed a cardinal legate of his horses and mules: ‘this is why the successor of St Peter sold the tax and tribute of Ireland to the Saxons’.41 Certainly Alexander III expressed concern to Henry II about the payment of tithes from Ireland.

At the time the pope wrote these letters, he was being threatened by the Emperor Frederick Barbarossa in Lombardy and he could not afford to alienate Henry II as well. In the political map of Christendom Ireland could only be of secondary importance. The missions of Columba and Columbanus were long past and they had never been liked in Rome anyway. Suspicions were rekindled in the 1140s by St Bernard, who was the chief propagandist for the reformed papacy and the Cistercian order, which had experienced difficulties getting established in Ireland. As in his preaching of the Second Crusade in 1146, Bernard justified the invasion of Ireland by describing the natives as filthy barbarians: Christians in name but pagans in reality. Papal rhetoric repeated these slanders. In 1155 the English pope, Adrian IV, took the radical step of authorizing Henry II to rule Ireland. John of Salisbury brought back from Rome a gold ring set with an emerald as evidence of this. Certainly there was talk of invading Ireland in 1155; a charter from Winchester attests this, as does the chronicler Robert of Torigny. But Henry II, still at the start of his reign, was more concerned in 1155 with defending his possessions in France. Furthermore, he was not yet in a logistical position to attack Ireland, as this required safe passage through Wales to an embarkation point on the west coast.

These circumstances had changed to Henry II's advantage when he returned to this unfinished business in 1171.

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