were disposed to engross all influence. Fitz-Adelm did little or nothing to increase the Norman power in Ireland, and he was recalled in 1177.
Treaty between Henry II. and Roderic O’Connor.
In October 1175, not long before the death of Earl Richard, Henry II. made a treaty with Roderic O’Connor, which must be understood as a kind of declaration of policy. The commissaries who attended at Windsor on Roderic’s part were Catholicus, or Keyly O’Duffy, Archbishop of Tuam, the Abbot of Ardfert, and the King of Connaught’s Brehon, whom Giraldus calls his Chancellor. The Archbishop of Dublin, St. Lawrence O’Toole, was among the witnesses to the instrument by which Henry granted ‘to his liege man Roderic, King of Connaught, as long as he should serve faithfully, to be King under him, ready to serve him as his man, and to hold his land well and peacefully, as he held it before the King of England’s entry into Ireland, paying him tribute.’ Should he be unable to maintain his authority, the King’s forces were to help him. The tribute was to be one in every ten marketable hides. Roderic was not to meddle with those lands which the King held in his own hands, or in those of his barons: that is to say, Dublin with its appurtenances; Meath with its appurtenances, in as ample a manner as Murchat O’Melaghlin had held it; Wexford with its appurtenances, and all Leinster; Waterford and Dungarvan with its appurtenances, and all the lands between the two places. Irish fugitives willing to return into the King’s land were to have peace on paying the aforesaid tribute, ‘or by performing the ancient accustomed services for their lands.’ Those who would not return were to be coerced by the King of Connaught, who was to take hostages from all whom the King granted to him, and to give hostages on his own part wherever the King required him. No refugees from the King’s lands were to be entertained by Irishmen under any pretence. At the same time, as if to mark the fact that Irishmen were his own subjects as well as Normans, Henry appointed Augustine O’Sealbhaigh to the bishopric of Waterford, and sent him, in charge of the Archbishop of Dublin, to be consecrated by the Archbishop of Cashel. This was a confirmation of the Eugenian constitution, and put an end to the succession of the Danish bishops through Canterbury. Henry had no wish to have future Beckets interfering in Ireland. Canterbury was near and Rome was far.
Henry’s original policy frustrated by De Courcy.
The treaty with Roderic, if we accept it as Hoveden and Benedict have handed it down, shows that a full conquest of Ireland was not intended by Henry II. The possession of the port-towns gave him the command of St. George’s Channel, and a control over the trade of the island. He had seen enough to know that a permanent conquest was beyond the power of a feudal army, and his policy was to balance the adventurers, his own creation De Lacy, and the native princes against each other. Fitz-Adelm, a subtle intriguer with an eye for money, probably seemed a fitter instrument for his purpose than any enterprising soldier. But Fitz-Adelm brought with him to Ireland one of those restless and unscrupulous men of action, who sometimes disconcert the best laid plans of statesmen. John De Courcy is represented by Giraldus as a tall, fair man, of immense strength and extraordinary audacity, an experienced warrior, though often more of a partisan than a general; but religious in his way, and ever ready to ascribe to God the glory of any successful exploit. He was the patron of the monk Jocelin, who wove such a tangled web about St. Patrick, and he carried with him everywhere a tract of St. Columba, which was supposed to point him out as the destined conqueror of Ulster. Seeing that neither gain nor glory could be had under the Viceroy, De Courcy, in January 1177, boldly marched into Ulster with twenty-two knights and 300 chosen men. Among the knights were Almaric St. Lawrence, ancestor of the Howth family, and Roger le Poer, apparently a collateral ancestor of the Powers and Eustaces. In the course of a year or two, though by no means always successful in battle, De Courcy made himself supreme in eastern Ulster. Where they had the advantage of the ground, the natives were too much for the adventurers; but in a fair field a hundred Normans, at least under such a leader as De Courcy, were more than a match for 1,000 Irish. Discipline and steadiness soon gave them the coast, and the castles which they built everywhere enabled them to make war or peace as they pleased. Downpatrick was John de Courcy’s capital.
De Courcy and De Lacy. Castle-building.
O’Donlevy, chief king of Uladh, or that part of Ulster now comprised in Antrim and Down, had done homage to Henry II., and imagined that he would be thus secured from invasion. But the King evidently understood the matter differently, for De Courcy had a grant from him of such northern lands as he could conquer. Fitz-Adelm having failed as a Viceroy, Henry now fell back upon Hugo de Lacy, who perhaps dreamed of making himself independent. He distinguished himself by good government from 1177 to 1181, and by showing favour to the Irish; and he married a daughter of Roderic O’Connor without the King’s consent. Henry accordingly sent for De Lacy to England, and gave the viceregal authority to John, Constable of Chester. The Lord of Meath succeeded in making his peace, and was soon restored to the government; Robert of Salisbury, a priest, being sent as a spy upon him. De Lacy covered his own district with castles, Trim being his capital. Delvin he granted to William Nugent, his sister Rose’s husband, who became the ancestor of the Earls of Westmeath. Other estates he gave to his friends and followers, who founded many of the families of the Pale. The Flemings, Lords of Slane, became the most important of these. Other barons followed the example of De Lacy; and Giraldus mentions that by the year 1182 castles were built at or near Newtown Barry, Castle Dermot, Leighlin, Timahoe, Athy, Narragh, and other places. The Meath castles, says the chronicler, were too many to mention by name.
John designated as King of Ireland.
As early as 1177 Henry had nominated his son John King of Ireland. For this he had the leave of Alexander III., and in 1186 Urban III. actually sent a crown of peacock’s feathers set in gold for the King to crown one of his sons, the choice being left to him. The intervening Pope, Lucius III., had opposed the plan, and this may have been the reason why it was never carried out. Or the King may have hesitated to repeat even in John’s favour an experiment which had succeeded so ill in the case of his eldest son. The Oxford nomination of 1177 was allowed to take effect only so as to constitute John Lord of Ireland, and this title was afterwards assumed by the Kings of England. In the sixteenth century it was by some taken as evidence that the crown in Ireland was subject to the popes. But the idea of a separate, though subordinate, kingdom was very nearly realised. The acts of the colony were from the date of the Oxford Council executed in the name of ‘John, Lord of Ireland, son of the King of England,’ and the first Anglo-Norman coinage bore his face.
John sent to Ireland as Viceroy.
On March 31, 1185, the King knighted John at Windsor, and on April 24 the latter, who was in his nineteenth year, sailed from Milford Haven, with 300 knights and a large body of troops. The expedition reached Waterford in safety next day, and the neighbouring chiefs flocked to do honour to the King’s son, and to give him the kiss of peace. The Anglo-Norman courtiers—young men mostly—pulled their long beards, and they at once departed to the hostile chiefs, Roderic O’Connor, Donnell O’Brien, and Dermod MacCarthy. All chance of conciliating the more powerful and distant potentates was thus taken away. Giraldus Cambrensis was present at Waterford, and he likens John to Rehoboam. The Irish, who had adhered to the invaders since Fitz-Stephen’s first landing, were deprived of their lands; the castles were given up to favourites, who did nothing but eat, drink, and plunder; the worst officers were put in the best places, and the men, as a natural consequence, were as bad as their masters, devoted to Venus and Bacchus, but neglectful of Mars. Hoveden adds that John put all the profits of government into his own pocket, and that his soldiers being unpaid were useless in war. The three castles projected by his father were built; but he lost many to the Irish, and De Lacy was suspected of intriguing against him. It is clear that there could be no confidence in a prince whose chief care was to rob and displace the men who had won his principality for him. The disastrous experiment lasted only eight months, when John returned to England, leaving the government to John de Courcy, who retained power until the death of Henry II. The Lough Cé annalists, who wrote beyond the Shannon, give the following account of John’s expedition:—‘The son of the King of the Saxons came to assume the sovereignty of Erin ... afterwards
