Ireland and the Monarchy

Introduction

Ireland and the Monarchy

John Gibney

In the twenty-first century there are two jurisdictions on the island of Ireland, and two very different heads of state represent the populations of Ireland and Northern Ireland respectively: the elected presidency of the republic, and the hereditary monarchy of the United Kingdom. But the idea of monarchy, and the related notion of aristocracy, has a long heritage in Ireland. There was a native aristocracy long before the British conquest, and British monarchs were not the only monarchs to matter to Irish people (British monarchs, and their English and Scottish predecessors, are the main focus of the chapters that follow but Irish and continental monarchs make their appearance as well). If the ideology of separatist republicanism can be dated back to the United Irishmen of the 1790s, then even a cursory glance at previous centuries reveals that monarchy has been a part and parcel of Irish life for a much longer span of time.

The question is, however: whose type of monarchy? We naturally would assume that the British monarchs are the ones that matter, and as the English (and later British) monarchy claimed jurisdiction over Ireland as far back as the twelfth century, this focus is understandable. But the concept of monarchy went hand in hand with that of aristocracy; and pre-conquest Ireland was a profoundly aristocratic society, where status was defined by lineage. Commentators over the centuries have often described the Irish Gaelic nobility of the early medieval period as ‘kings’ with varying degrees of power and status. The notion of kingship is an ancient one in Ireland, even if there was never any one king who held a supreme power and authority (the so-called ‘high-king’). Such an idea was more aspiration than reality, though a figure like Brian Boru (discussed here by Seán Duffy) went some way to bridging the gap between the two.

A key point to make is that kingship was so familiar in Ireland that when a new form of monarchy and aristocracy arrived on the island after 1169, the Irish could accommodate themselves to the new monarchy to some degree, even if there were very fundamental differences between the elective, corporate aristocracy of the Irish and the strict lineages of the Normans. The real impact of the arrival of the English monarchy lay not in the fact of its existence, but in terms of the how the new political and social order that it headed reshaped Ireland and its peoples in the centuries that followed.

By its nature, monarchy implied power. But power could be, and was, contested. Witness the struggles for supremacy in the aftermath of the death of Brian Boru and his regnal ambitions, or the fact that English monarchs could be accepted by Irish aristocrats as the lesser of two evils, in that they could put a brake upon the more aggressive ambitions of those of their followers who sought to make their fortunes in Ireland. Yet this is not to say that the English monarchy was unreservedly accepted in medieval Ireland: witness the sentiments and beliefs articulated in the 1317 remonstrance, examined here by Diarmaid Scully, and the links between the Gaelic worlds of Ireland and Scotland explored in Simon Egan’s chapter show that Scotland’s monarchy prior to 1603 also had a relevance to Ireland.

English and British monarchs were infrequent visitors to Ireland over the centuries. In the medieval period senior aristocrats and courtiers acted as the royal representatives in Ireland, and in some ways as almost monarchs in their own right. In this sense, monarchy was shorthand for military and economic power as exercised on the ground, as much as an ideology. This is not to dismiss the ideological importance of monarchy, as explored here by Christopher Maginn. Ireland prior to 1541 was a possession, a ‘lordship’, of the English monarchy; after 1541 it was officially one of two kingdoms under that monarchy (after 1603 it became one of three). This change took place at the start of an era marked by often-brutal conquest and colonisation, and in the same era a rival ideology of kingship developed amongst the Irish political and intellectual elites, one that posited the existence of a distinct Irish monarchy in opposition to that of the Tudors and Stuarts. In 1690 William of Orange became the first monarch in centuries to visit Ireland in person; the symbolism of his military campaign (as opposed to the realities explored by Padraig Lenihan) in a struggle that broke down along sectarian lines has given his relatively brief sojourn a resonance that remains potent in the twenty-first century.

The other side of the defeat that William’s army inflicted on the forces of James II was that it did not defeat the allegiance of Irish Catholics to the Jacobite cause. Irish Jacobitism, which naturally involved loyalty to another monarch, remained vibrant at home and abroad for much of the eighteenth century. Even the advent of secular republicanism in Ireland, in the wake of the French Revolution, did not automatically break the subsequent appeal of nineteenth century leaders such as Daniel O’Connell, whose messianic attractiveness to the vast throngs of his followers could plausibly be argued to resemble loyalty to a monarch as well as a democratic movement. Such loyalty was a habit of long-standing. While Irish loyalism to the British monarchy crystallised from the eighteenth century onward, an attachment and affinity with leaders who were seen to have the potential to deliver a brighter future to their own followers ensured that the rhetoric of monarchy could attach itself to nationalist leaders such as Charles Stewart Parnell, the so-called ‘uncrowned king of Ireland’. Yet displays of loyalism and royal visits to Ireland remained contentious in the late Victorian and Edwardian eras, as Síghle Bhreathnach-Lynch and Cóilín Owens explore below.

An independent Irish state came into being in 1922, and until 1949 remained within the Commonwealth. In that sense, the political significance of the British monarchy is negligible for the population of the republic, though a very substantial portion of the population of the island of Ireland view the British monarch as the head of the state to which they give allegiance. Yet south of the post-1920 border, as Brian Lynch observes, the glitz and glamour of the monarchy became a part of post-independence cultural life, prompting the spread of TV in Ireland even before there was an Irish TV service. And in the twenty-first century, the political symbolism of the British monarch in official life has, as argued here by Edward Madigan, become a powerful tool of reconciliation, and of the harmonisation of Anglo-Irish relations in the context of the Northern Ireland peace process. Monarchy in general, and British monarchies in particular, along with the aristocratic ordering of society that they represent, have been a part of Irish life for centuries: as the source of power and prestige, as something to support, or as a symbol to oppose, or even just as part of a wider culture fascinated by the glamour they are seen to encapsulate or the symbolic power they are assumed to exemplify. The chapters that follow explore some of the ways in which monarchy and aristocracy have played a role in Irish life over the centuries.

Chapter One

Brian Boru: Imperator Scotorum

Seán Duffy

Brian Boru is the most famous Irishman before the modern era. From fairly modest beginnings he rose to be king of Ireland, dying a fabled death at the Battle of Clontarf on 23 April 1014. He was born about 941, one of the twelve sons of Cennétig (d. 951), king of Dál Cais. A hitherto little-known dynasty, Dál Cais underwent a rapid ascent in importance in the early tenth century.

Brian got his nickname ‘Boru’ from the Old Irish bórama, ‘cattle tribute’, or more likely from Bél Bóraime, a ringfort near Killaloe where he had a residence. Nowhere in Ireland is more closely associated with Brian than this part of east Clare, and no extant building provides a more tangible link to him than the church of Tuamgraney near the western shore of Lough Derg. Tuamgraney was one of the most significant ecclesiastical sites in Dál Cais—indeed, the first known king of Dál Cais (d. 934) was also abbot of Tuamgraney.

Dál Cais’s growing importance was evident by 967, when Brian’s brother Mathgamain was described as king of Cashel (i.e. Munster), the first to win the title, and perhaps the first king of the province in five centuries not to be part of the great dynasty of the Eóganachta. This achievement points to the change under way in Irish society, accelerated by the Viking presence. Norse trade, particularly slavery, brought great wealth; when Irish kings gained access to this, it allowed for the increasing militarisation of society, and kingdoms became larger and fewer in number.

It was Mathgamain who first gained control over the Norse settlement at Limerick, when he defeated them in the battle of Solloghod in 967, the battle in which Brian, now in his mid-twenties, distinguished himself, according to the slightly later Cogadh Gáedhel re Gallaibh (‘The war of the Irish against the Foreigners’). The Norse of Limerick were instrumental, however, in Mathgamain’s downfall and murder in 976. Only at this point, at perhaps 35 years of age, does Brian emerge fully into the light of history.

In the course of a military career spanning five decades, Brian fought few major battles, his first vital encounter being the battle of Belach Lechta (in the Ballyhoura Hills) in 978, a contest for the kingship of Munster between Dál Cais and Eóganachta, from which he emerged victorious. By 982 Brian was beginning to flex his muscles outside Munster, which led to years of warfare between him and the king of Tara, Máel Sechnaill mac Domnaill of the Southern Uí Néill. But by 996 Brian had taken the hostages of Leinster, i.e. won its submission, and now controlled Leth Moga (the southern half of Ireland), and had therefore achieved for Dál Cais a new position of eminence.

It was a status that Máel Sechnaill had to acknowledge, and so in 997 Brian sailed to Bleanphuttoge, on the shores of Lough Ree, Co. Westmeath, and there agreed with Máel Sechnaill to divide Ireland between them: the latter abandoned the centuries-old Uí Néill claim to overlordship of the entire country and became master of Leth Cuinn (the Northern Half) alone. This was the high point of Brian’s career to date. Late in 999, Brian went to Glenn Máma (near Newcastle Lyons, Co. Dublin), where the Hiberno-Norse of Dublin and the Leinstermen forced him to commit to a pitched battle, something he generally avoided. But his enemies’ forces were slaughtered and Glenn Máma stands out as one of his greatest victories. Afterwards, he stormed Dublin, departing laden with gold, silver and captives. He banished King Sitric Silkenbeard, who was eventually forced to hand over hostages to Brian in a sign of submission. The very streets that Brian ransacked in AD 1000 were exposed in the Wood Quay excavations of the 1970s. Their proposed destruction by Dublin Corporation sparked one of the great causes célèbres of recent times in Ireland because of the public outcry it evoked.

Politics then, as now, was a dirty business and it was also in 1000 that a buoyant Brian repudiated his treaty with Máel Sechnaill. In 1002 he took the hostages of Connacht and Mide (Meath), an event of momentous importance. Brian had obtained the submission of the Uí Néill high-king, overturned a convention that was several centuries old, and was now entitled—if he could enforce his claim throughout the Northern Half—to assume the title of high-king of Ireland.

Brian set about making a reality of his claim by marching north year after year to force the northern kings into submission. His 1005 expedition was his most elaborate yet, going to Armagh, where the hallowed Book of Armagh, with its collection of early texts about St Patrick, was apparently produced for inspection by Brian, an inscription recording that it was written ‘in the presence of Brian, emperor of the Irish (Imperator Scotorum)’. This title is unique in Irish history, and is an insight into Brian’s ambition and sense of his own status.

The awesome energy of this man, now in his mid-60s, was demonstrated in 1006, when Brian again mustered an army of all the southern kings and journeyed through the north, but it was another four years before the most powerful king of the north, Ua Néill of Cenél nEógain, submitted, Brian bringing his hostages back to Cenn Corad (Kincora), a hill overlooking the Shannon at Killaloe where Brian had his principal residence. Finally, in 1011 Brian’s army forced the one remaining independent power in the land, the king of Cenél Conaill in Donegal, to become his vassal, reaching the apogee of his power.

A stylised depiction by Robert Ballagh of Brian Boru, an Irish king who ended the domination