henry the second 19

henry the second 19

His aunt, Nesta, had been the mistress of Henry I. of England; and

had afterwards married first Gerald of Windsor, and then a certain

Stephen; her sons and grandsons, whether Fitz-Henrys, Fitz-Geralds, or

Fitz-Stephens, were famous men of war; nor were the children of her

daughter, who had married William de Barri, behind them in valour. No less

than eighteen knights of this extraordinary family took part in the

conquest, where in feats of war they renewed the glories of their

ancestors both Norse and Welsh; a son of Nesta's, David, the Bishop of

St. David's, gave his sympathy and help; while her grandson, Gerald

de Barri, became the famous historian of the conquest.

 

In 1167 Diarmait returned to Ireland with a little band of allies, the

pioneers of the English conquest. Others followed the next year, among

them Strongbow's uncle, Hervey of Mount Moriss, a famous soldier in the

French army, distinguished for his beautifully proportioned figure, his

delicate long hands, his winning face, and graceful speech. With him

went Nesta's son Robert Fitz-Stephen, a powerful man of the Norman

type, handsome, freehanded, sumptuous in his way of living, liberal and

jovial, given to wine and dissipation. His nephew, Meiler Fitz-Henry,

showed stronger traces of Welsh blood in his swarthy complexion, fierce

black eyes, and passionate face. The knights carried on the war with the

virtues and vices of a feudal chivalry, with a frank loyalty to their

allies, a good comradeship which recognized no head but left each knight

supreme over his own forces, a magnificent daring in the face of

overwhelming forces, and a joyful acceptance of the savage privileges of

slaughter and rapine which fell to their lot. "By their aid Diarmait began

first to take breath, then to gain strength, and at last to triumph over

his enemies." The Irish, however, rallied under the king of Connaught

against the traitor who had brought the English into their land; and

Diarmait was forced to conclude a peace and promise to receive no more

English soldiers.

 

Meanwhile other knights were preparing for the Irish expedition. Maurice

Fitz-Gerald encamped on a rock near Wexford. Another Fitz-Gerald,

Raymond the Fat, fortified his camp near Waterford. In August 1170 came

Earl Richard himself, who had crossed to France in search of Henry, and

with persistent importunity implored for leave to join the Irish war.

Henry, at that moment busy in his last negotiations with Thomas, gave a

doubtful half-consent, and Richard sailed with an army of nearly fifteen

hundred men. We see in the pages of Gerald of Wales, the hero with whose

name the conquest of Ireland was to be for ever associated, red-haired,

gray-eyed, freckled, with delicate features like a woman's, and thin,

feeble voice; wearing a plain citizen's dress without arms, "that he

might seem more ready to obey than to command;" suave, gracious, politic,

patient, deferential, with his fine aristocratic air, and an undaunted

courage that blazed out in battle, when "he never moved from his post, but

remained a beacon of refuge to his followers." At his coming Waterford was

taken, as Wexford and Ossory had been before. Before the prudent Norman

went farther the marriage contract was carried out, and the beginning of a

strife which lasted for seven hundred years was celebrated in this first

alliance of a Norman baron and an Irish chief. Richard and Diarmait

marched against Dublin, and its Danishin habitants were driven over sea.

In a few months their king, Hasculf, returned with a great fleet gathered

from Norway, the Hebrides, the Orkneys, Man,--the last fleet of Northmen

which descended on the British Isles,--but again the Normans won the day.

 

Henry meanwhile was watching nervously the progress of affairs. The war

was, no doubt, useful in withdrawing from Wales a restless and dangerous

baronage, and in the rebellion of 1174 the hostility of the border

barons would have been far more serious if the best warriors of Wales

had not been proving their courage on the plains of Ireland. But Henry

had no mind to break through his general policy by allowing a feudal

baronage to plant themselves by force of arms in Ireland, as they had in

earlier days settled themselves in northern England and on the Welsh

border. The death of Diarmait in 1171 brought matters to a crisis. By

Celtic law the land belonged to the tribe, and the people had the right

of electing their king. But the tribal system had long been forgotten by

the Normans, whose ancestors had ages before passed out of it into the

later stage of the feudal system; and by Norman law the kingdom of

Leinster would pass to Aeifi's husband and her children. Rights of

inheritance and rights of conquest were judiciously blended together,

and Richard assumed rule, not under the dangerous title of king, but as

"Earl of Leinster." The title was strange and unwelcome to Irish ears.

Among envious Norman rivals it did not hide the suspicion that Richard

was "nearly a king," and rumours reached Henry's ears that he was

conquering not only Leinster but other districts to which neither he nor

his wife had any right. Henry immediately confiscated all the earl's

lands in England, and ordered that all knights who had gone to Ireland

should return, on pain of forfeiture of their lands and exile. In vain

Strongbow's messengers hastened to him in France, and promised that the

earl would yield up all his conquests, "since from the munificence of

your kindness all proceeds." While they still anxiously followed the

Court from place to place came the sudden tidings of the archbishop's

murder, and before many months were over Henry was on his way to Ireland

to take its affairs into his own hands. Strongbow was summoned to meet

him, forced to full submission, and sent back to prepare the way before

the king.

 

In Ireland Henry had little to do save to enter into the labours of its

first conquerors. The Danes had been driven from the ports. The Irish

were broken and divided, and looked to him as their only possible ally

and deliverer from the tyranny, the martial law, the arbitrary executions,

which had marked the rough rule of the invaders. The terrified barons were

ready to buy their existence at any price. The leaders of the Church

welcomed him as the supporter of Roman discipline. Henry used all his

advantages. He consistently carried through the farce of arbitration.

The Wexford men brought to him Fitz-Stephen, whom they had captured, as

the greatest enemy to the royal majesty and the Irish people. Henry threw

him into prison, but as soon as he had won the smaller kings of the south

separately to make submission to him, and given the chief castles into the

hands of his own officers, he conciliated the knights by releasing

Fitz-Stephen. He spent the winter in Dublin, in a palace built of wattles

after the fashion of the country. There he received the homage of all the

kings of Leinster and Meath. Order, law, justice, took the place of

confusion. Dublin, threatened with ruin now the Danish traders were driven

off, was given to the men of Bristol to found a new prosperity. Its trade

with Chester was confirmed, and from all parts of England new settlers

came in numbers during the next few years to share in the privileges and

wealth which its commerce promised. A stately cathedral of decorated

Norman work rose on the site of an earlier church founded by the Ostmen.

It seemed as though the mere military rule of the feudal lords was to be

superseded under the king's influence by a wiser and more statesmanlike

occupation of the country. A great council was held at Cashel, where a

settlement was made of Church and State, and where Henry for the first

time published the Papal Bull issued by Hadrian fifteen years before. He

had won a position of advantage from whence to open a new bargain with

the Pope. In the moment of his deepest disgrace and peril he defiantly

showed himself before the world in all the glory of the first foreign

Conqueror and Lord of Ireland.

 

Henry's work, however, was scarcely begun when in March there came a

lull in the long winter storms, and a vessel made its way across the

waters of the Irish Sea. It brought grave tidings. Legates from the Pope

had reached Normandy, with powers only after full submission to absolve

the king; unless Henry quickly met them, all his lands would be laid

under interdict. Other heavy tidings came. Evil counsellors were

exciting the young king to rebellion. It was absurd, they said, to be

king, and to exercise no authority in the kingdom, and the boy was

willing enough to believe that since his coronation "the reign of his

father had expired." All Henry's plans in Ireland were at once thrown

aside. At the first break in the adverse winds he hastily set sail, and

for two hundred years no English king again set foot in Ireland. The

short winter's work was to end in utter confusion. The king's policy had

been to set up the royal justice and power, and to break the strength of

the barons by dividing and curtailing their interests. He had left them

without a leader. The growing power of Strongbow had been broken; Dublin

had been taken from him; the castles had all been committed to knights

appointed by the king. Quarrels and rivalries soon broke out. Raymond

the Fat became the recognized head of Nesta's descendants. In his

enormous frame, his yellow curly hair, his high-coloured cheery face,

his large gray eyes, we seethe type of the old Norse conquerors who had

once harried England; we recognize it too in his carelessness as to food

or clothing, his indifference to hardship, his prodigious energy, the

sleepless nights spent in wandering through his camp where his resounding

shouts awoke the sleeping sentinels, the enduring wrath which never forgot

an enemy. Richard's uncle, Hervey of Mount Moriss, led a rival faction in

the interests of Strongbow. The English garrison in Ireland was weakened

by the loss of troops which Henry was compelled to carry away with him.

The forces that remained, divided, thinned, discouraged, were left to

confront an Irish party united in a revived hope. No sooner did rebellion

break over England in the next year than the Irish with one accord rose in

revolt. The treasury was exhausted, and there was no payment for the

troops. A doubtful campaign went on in which the English, attacked now by

the Ostmen of the towns, now by the Irish, fought with very varying

success, but with prodigies of valour. They were reckless of danger,

heedless of the common safeguards of military precaution. When Henry heard

of Raymond's daring capture of Limerick in 1176, and then of his retreat,

he made one of his pithy "Great was the courage in attacking it, and yet

greater in the subduing of it, but the only wisdom that was shown was in

its desertion."

 

The rivalry of Raymond and Strongbow was at its height when, in 1176,

Earl Richard died; and to this day his burial-place in the Norman

Cathedral in Dublin, and that of his wife Aeifi, are marked by the only

sculptured tombs that exist of these first Norman conquerors of Ireland.

Others besides the king heard with joy the news that the great warrior

was dead. Richard's sister, who had been married to Raymond, had cast in

her lot with her lord. She sent a cautious despatch to her husband, who

was unable himself to read, and had to depend on the good offices of a

clerk. "Know, my dearest lord," wrote the prudent wife, "that that great

tooth which pained me so long has now fallen out, wherefore see that you

delay not your return." The watchful Henry, however, at once recalled

Raymond to England, and sent a new governor, Fitz-Aldhelm, to hold the

restless barons in check, till his son John, to whom he now proposed to

give the realm of Ireland, should be of age to undertake its government.

When Fitz-Aldhelm saw the magnificent troop of Raymond's cousins and

nephews, who had thrown aside all armour save shields, and, mounted on

splendid horses, dashed across the plain to display their feats of

agility and horsemanship, he muttered to his followers, "This pride I

will shortly abate, and these shields I will scatter." He was true to

his word. The fortunes of the knights of both parties indeed rapidly

declined; "those who had been first had to learn to be last;" their

lands were taken from them on every excuse, and they were followed by

the enmity and persecution of the king. For the next ten years the

history of the English in Ireland is a miserable record of ineffective

and separate wars undertaken by leaders each acting on his own account,

and of watchful jealousy on the part of Henry. A new governor was sent

in 1177 to replace Fitz-Aldhelm. Hugh de Lacy was no Norman. His black

hair, his deep-set black eyes, his snub nose, the scar across his face,

his thin ill-shapen figure, marked him out from the big fair Fitz-Geralds,

as much as did his "Gallican sobriety" and his training in affairs, for

in war he had no great renown. Perhaps it was some quick French quality

in him that won the love of the Irish. But Henry was suspicious and

uneasy. He was recalled in 1181 on the news that without the king's leave

he had married the daughter of the King of Connaught, and rumour added

that he had even made ready a diadem for himself. But his services were

so valuable that that same winter he was sent back, only to be again

recalled in 1184 and again sent back. At last in 1186, "as though fortune had been zealous for the king of England," he was treacherously slain by an Irishman, to Henry's "exceeding joy."