A Unique Civilisation

also known as Old English the lordships were a unique civilisation seperate to the crown in the Pale

 The Hiberno-Normans are those Norman lords who settled in Ireland who admitted little if any real fealty to the Anglo-Norman settlers in England,^[1] and who soon began to interact and intermarry with the Gaelic nobility of Ireland. The term embraces both their origins as a distinct community with their own dialect of Norman-French

The Lordship thrived in the 13th century during the Medieval Warm Period, a time of warm climate and better harvests. The feudal system was introduced, and the Parliament of Ireland first sat in 1297

 ireland was artitioned throughtout the middle ages but not a racial divide so much as a clash of law resulting in rival claims as to where authority was derived from

therefore the divide was constitutional and 

the systems on both sides of the divide were uniquely interesting

gaelic decentralised dynastic

norman centralised in theor, however the actual development of the Norman lordships left them as individual isolated territories each one of which carved out its own survival in variousways

the distant central government existed somewhere in the Pale but was extremely weak

they, like  the Gaelic world began to hire professional soldiers companies of kern and gallloglas and the maintenance system that kept them known as coyne and livery, it is in facyt hospitality rights and circuit ofkingdoms to allow them to be fed and moved

 the poets were an important part of this mix of culture as they worked for both

to uphold the legitamcy of both they berated the "paper charters of the English and re-iterated the legitamacy of of swordland as the only proper source of authority

the sword, this is your charter"

 Also adopted the Irish practice in law of allowing clients of a chief or lord (norman) to appeal over his direct superiors head to a higher authority and be protected from maltreatment

known as ceannaiocht buyings used in the Norman lordships at least from the mid 15th century

 as the two systems developed together they acheived a certain balanced nature and borrowed many innovations from each other

thiswas happening independent of any authority of Dublin

 adopted the keeping of Bards the filead who wrote praise poems for these lords as well

to the irish we say the english will be banished, to theenglish we say the irish will be vanquished

 origin of town country divide in ireland

 oppression? what oppression?

 this was no titanic struggle against oppression of the iiriush but is much more interesting than that the culture that developed in the lordships developing as a hybrid of the french irishjust as england developed uniquely of norman saxon.

sean from jean, no particular racial issue or ethnic struggle by the fifteenth century

 all of this meant the colony in ireland was a threat to the hegemony of the crown even in England as ideas were free to develop differently

colony tries to reform from 1530;s but eventually the tudor government ignored the local colony as dictation and harsh repression began from london.

the pale

 the four shires

 the colony around dublin,meath kildare and luth the Pale was the onlyplace similar to england in physical towns villages merchants an urban culture with money economy believed in the crown and had always been exposed to crown centralised government gentlemen from the pale became lawyers by going to Kings Inn going to

 1500 the palesmen became entirely panicked thinking that the dominant culture of the country would be the Hiberno-Norman culture of the rest of the country

 from 1520's a movement of reform developed in the Pale area of Ireland and in the Royal towns Waterford Cork Galway in which the Patrician class also worried at their imminent absorption

fear of the powerful warrior magnates of the country

paying the black rent to theGaelic lords the pale came under pressure of being reorganised as the magnates who dominated high offices were attempting to reform the Pale along the lines of their own lordships

by this time the use of Irish was widespread within the Pale as well of clothes etc a high degree of intercourse between the Pale and the ress of the country they were all bilingual

 they developed these attitudes 1 thtat English mismanagement had destroyed the colony

2 that the evil of gaelicisation 3  butagain it must be ritrerated that this was not based on modern "racism" or elizabethan "savages" concepts but was a fear of thee dynastic political system as opposed to centralised government therefore they tageted those thing that were a threat to centralisation particularly the galloglas, ther way of maintenance and the

 one of the re formers darcy regarded the gaelic as very respectful of law , and therewrere no better labourers than the Irish commons. the reform was intended to be non disruptive and involved a securing of gaelic as well as norman  title, t in other words the extension of the pale

the ruling septs werre to be changed from a warrior oligarchy to a landed gentry

  Henry II of England, who reigned over England and ruled over parts of France, invaded Ireland to control Strongbow, who he feared was becoming a threat to the stability of his own kingdom

  The middle of the fourteenth century found the Irish language and Brehon law, native Irish manners, habits and customs, almost universally prevalent among the Anglo-Normans in Ireland; while marriage and "fosterage"--that most sacred domestic tie in Gaelic estimation--were becoming quite frequent between the noble families of each race. In fact the great lords and nobles of the Colony became chieftains, and their families and following, Septs. Like the Irish chiefs, whom they imitated in most things, they fought against each other or against some native chief, or sided with either of them, if choice so determined. Each earl or baron among them kept his bard and his brehon, like any native prince; and, in several instances, they began to drop their Anglo-Norman names and take Irish ones instead.

 In 1366 the Statute of Kilkenny tried to keep aspects of Gaelic culture out of the Norman-controlled areas, but in vain.

 Successive kings of England delegated their constitutional authority over the lordship to the powerful Fitzgerald earls of Kildare, who held the balance of power by means of military force and widespread alliances with lords and clans. This, in effect, made the English Crown even more remote to the realities of Irish politics. At the same time, local Gaelic and Gaelicised lords expanded their powers at the expense of the central government in Dublin,

 Among the first of these was a royal ordinance issued in 1341, declaring that whereas it had appeared to the King (Edward the Third) and his council that they would be better and more usefully served in Ireland by Englishmen whose revenues were derived from England than by Irish or English who possessed estates only in Ireland, or were married there, the king's justiciary should therefore, after diligent inquiries, remove all such officers as were married or held estates in Ireland, and replace them by fit Englishmen, having no personal interest whatever in Ireland. This ordinance set the Anglo-Irish colony in a flame

 called a parliament of their own, which, accordingly, met at Kilkenny in November, 1342, whereat they adopted a strong remonstrance, and forwarded it to the king, complaining of the royal ordinance, and recriminating by alleging, that to the ignorance and incapacity of the English officials sent over from time to time to conduct the government of the colony, was owing the fact that the native Irish had possessed themselves of nearly all the land that had ever hitherto been wrested from them by the "gallant services of themselves (the remonstrancers) or their ancestors."

 -Lionel, son of King Edward, was sent over as lord-lieutenant. He brought with him a considerable army, and was to inaugurate the new system with great eclat. He had personal claims to assert as well as a state policy to carry out. By his wife, Elizabeth de Burgh, he succeeded to the empty titles of Earl of Ulster and Lord of Connaught, and the possessions supposed to follow them; but these were just then held by their rightful Irish owners, and one of Lionel's objects was to obtain them by force of arms for himself. Soon after landing he marched against "the Irish enemy," and, confident in the strength of newly-landed legions, he issued a proclamation "forbidding any of Irish birth to come near his army." This arrogance was soon humbled. His vaunted English army was a failure. The Irish cut it to pieces; and Prince Lionel was obliged to abandon the campaign, and retreated to Dublin a prey to mortification and humiliation.

Lionel of Antwerp

 Appointed governor of that country, he landed at Dublin in 1361, and in November of the following year was created Duke of Clarence, the second Dukedom created in England, while his father made an abortive attempt to secure for him the crown of Scotland. His efforts to secure an effective authority over his Irish lands were only moderately successful; and after holding a parliament at Kilkenny, which passed the celebrated Statute of Kilkenny in 1366, he dropped the task in disgust and returned to England.

  "The Statute of Kilkenny"--the first formal enactment in that "penal code of race" which was so elaborately developed by all subsequent English legislation for hundreds of years.

  Its immediate result, however, wellnigh completed the ruin of the power it was meant to restore and strengthen. It roused the native Irish to a full conception of the English policy, and simultaneously, though without the least concert, they fell upon the colony on all sides, drove in the outposts, destroyed the castles, hunted the barons, and reoccupied the country very nearly up to the walls of Dublin. "O'Connor of Connaught and O'Brien of Thomond," says Hardiman, "laid aside for the moment their private feuds, and united against the common foe.

 The English of the Pale were seized with consternation and dismay, and terror and confusion reigned in their councils, while the natives continued to gain ground upon them in every direction.

 the disunion of the Irish saved the colony."

 Between 1500 and 1541 a mixed situation arose. Most clans remained loyal to the Lord most of the time, using a Gaelic-style system of alliances centred around the Lord Deputy who was usually the current Earl of Kildare. However a rebellion by the 9th Earl's heir Silken Thomas in 1535 led on to a less sympathetic system of rule by mainly English-born administrators. The rebellion and Henry VIII's seizure of the Irish monasteries around 1540 led on to his plan to create a new kingdom based on the existing parliament.

 Cunning policy did not risk permanent defeat by pressing it at such a moment. It was allowed to remain "a dead letter" for a while; not dead, however, but only slumbering.

 crown retained option of policy of conquest throughout middle ages and in this way prevented a secure state from emerging

 the pale the colony and the lordship

Tribes of Galway