The Geraldines and Medieval Ireland: The Making of a Myth (1) (Trinity Medieval Ireland Series) 9781846825712, 9781846826276, 9781846828843, 1846825717

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t h e g e r a l d i n e s a n d m e d i e va l i r e l a n d

00 Geraldines 27/09/2016 12:13 Page 2

For Sadhbh, Emily and Olivia

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the geraldines and medieval ireland The making of a myth

Peter Crooks & seán duffy EDITORS

trinity medieval ireland series:1

FOUR COURTS PRESS

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A catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library. ISBN 978-1-84682-571-2 (hardback) ISBN 9781-84682-627-6 (paperback) ISBN 978-1-84682-884-3 (ebook)

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SPECIAL ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Printed in England by TJ International, Padstow, Cornwall.

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Contents

1 2 3 4 5 6 7

8 9

list of aBBreviations

7

list of ContriButors

15

PrefaCe

16

gerald of Windsor and the origins of the geraldines Seán Duffy

21

giraldus and the geraldines Huw Pryce

53

the geraldines and the conquest of ireland Colin Veach

69

the early geraldine castles of ireland: some case studies Linzi Simpson

93

geraldine lordship in thirteenth-century ireland Brendan Smith

157

the dynastic ramifications of the geraldines Paul MacCotter

170

rebellion and rehabilitation: the first earl of desmond and the english scene Robin Frame

194

the ascent and descent of desmond under lancaster and York Peter Crooks

223

the geraldines and gaelic culture Katharine Simms

264

10 the geraldines and the culture of the wider world Aisling Byrne

278

11 the geraldines and the irish: intermarriage, ecclesiastical patronage and status Sparky Booker

292

5

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Contents 12 the great earl of kildare (1456–1513) and the creation of the english Pale Steven G. Ellis

325

13 geraldine endgame: reassessing the origins of the desmond rebellion, 1573–9 David Edwards

341

14 the myth of ‘silken thomas’ Ciaran Brady

379

15 the battle for the geraldines: a contested legacy in nineteenth-century ireland Ruairí Cullen

399

index

415 maPs , taBles and aPPendiCes

Maps 4.1 locations of geraldine castles featured in the case studies 8.1 southern ireland, c.1450 12.1 County kildare in the era of the great earl

94 231 333

Tables 1.1 the kinsmen of gerald of Windsor 1.2 descendants of nest in ireland 7.1 desmond and the Berkeleys 7.2 irish earldom families and the kin and household of edward iii 7.3 desmond’s debts at his death, 1356 8.1 earls of desmond, kildare and ormond in the late middle ages 11.1 some marriage alliances among the geraldine earls of desmond

23 45 203 207 217 227 297

Appendices 3.1 giraldus Cambrensis’s dedication of Expugnatio Hibernica to king John, c.1210 8.1 illustrative documents concerning the earldom of desmond in the fifteenth century 9.1 irish poems to geraldine patrons, fourteenth to seventeenth centuries 11.1–4 irish jurors in the extents of irish monastic possessions, 1540–1

84 252 274 316

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abbreviations ABM

A bardic miscellany: five hundred bardic poems from manuscripts in Irish and British libraries, ed. damian mcmanus and eoghan Ó raghallaigh, léann na trionóide/trinity irish studies, 2 (dublin, 2010) AC Annála Connacht: the annals of Connacht (A.D. 1224–1544), ed. a.m. freeman (dias, dublin, 1944) Account roll Account roll of the priory of the Holy Trinity, Dublin, 1337–1346; with the Middle Holy Trinity English moral play ‘The pride of life’, ed. James mills (dublin, 1891) AClon The annals of Clonmacnoise, being the annals of Ireland from the earliest period to A.D. 1408 translated into English A.D. 1627 by Conell Mageoghagan, ed. d. murphy (dublin, 1896) AClyn The annals of Ireland by Friar John Clyn, ed. Bernadette Williams (dublin, 2007) Admin. Ire. The administration of Ireland, 1172–1377, ed. h.g. richardson and g.o. sayles (imC, dublin, 1963) ADowling thady dowling, ‘annales Breves hiberniae’, in The annals of Ireland by Friar John Clyn, ed. richard Butler (ias, dublin, 1849) Affairs Ire. Documents on the affairs of Ireland before the king’s council, ed. g.o. sayles (imC, dublin, 1979) AFM Annala rioghachta Eireann: annals of the kingdom of Ireland by the Four Masters, from the earliest period to the year 1616, ed. J. o’donovan, 7 vols (dublin, 1851) AH Analecta Hibernica, including the report of the Irish Manuscripts Commission (imC, 1930–) AI The annals of Inisfallen (MS Rawlinson B. 503), ed. seán mac airt (dias, dublin, 1951) AL Ancient laws of Ireland 1–6, ed. r. atkinson, W.n. hancock, W.m. hennessy, t. o’mahony and a.g. richey, 6 vols (dublin, 1865–1901) ALC The annals of Loch Cé: a chronicle of Irish affairs from A.D. 1014 to A.D. 1590, ed. W.m. hennessy, 2 vols (rs, london, 1871; repr. imC, dublin, 1939) AMacFirbis ‘the annals of ireland, from the year 1443 to 1468, translated from the irish by dudley firbisse, or, as he is more usually called duald mac firbis, for sir James Ware, in the year 1666’, ed. John o’donovan in Miscellany of the Irish Archaeological Society (ias, dublin, 1846), pp 198–302 AMF The ‘Annals of Multyfarnham’: Roscommon and Connacht Provenance, ed. Bernadette Williams (dublin, 2012) AMisc Miscellaneous Irish annals, AD 1114–1437, ed. séamus Ó hinnse (dias, dublin, 1947) ANS Anglo-Norman Studies (before 1982, Proceedings of the Battle Conference on AngloNorman Studies, various editors, ipswich and Woodbridge, 1979–) AR ‘the annals of roscrea’, ed. dermot gleeson and seán mac airt, PRIA, 59 C (1957–9), 137–80 Archiv. Hib. Archivium Hibernicum (1912–) Aspects of Irish Patrick Cosgrove, terence dooley and karol mullaney-dignam (eds), Aspects of aristocratic life Irish aristocratic life: essays on the FitzGeralds and Carton House (dublin, 2014) AT ‘annals of tigernach’, ed. Whitley stokes, in Revue Celtique, 16 (1895), 374–419; 17 (1896), 6–33, 119–263, 337–420; 18 (1897), 9–59, 150–97, 267–303; reprinted in two vols (felinfach, 1993) AU Annala Uladh (‘Annals of Ulster’), otherwise Annala Senait (‘Annals of Senat’): a chronicle of Irish Affairs A.D. 431 to A.D. 1540, ed. W.m. hennessy and B. macCarthy, 4 vols (dublin, 1887–1901); The annals of Ulster (to AD 1131), ed. seán mac airt and gearóid mac niocaill (dublin, 1983)

7

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8 bar. BBCS Bergin, Irish bardic poetry Bl –, add. ms –, harl. ms –, lansd. ms Black bk Limerick Bodl. Brooks, Knights’ fees Brut, Peniarth 20 Brut, Red Book

Abbreviations barony Bulletin of the Board of Celtic Studies osborn Bergin (ed.), Irish bardic poetry, ed. david greene and fergus kelly (dublin, 1970) British library [formerly British museum], london additional ms harleian ms lansdowne ms The black book of Limerick, ed. J. macCaffrey (dublin, 1907)

Bodleian library, oxford eric st John Brooks (ed.), Knights’ fees in counties Wexford, Carlow and Kilkenny, 13th–15th century (imC, dublin, 1950) Brut y tywysogyon, or, the chronicle of the princes, Peniarth MS. 20 version, trans. thomas Jones (Cardiff, 1952) Brut y tywysogyon, or, the chronicle of the princes, Red Book of Hergest version, ed. and trans. thomas Jones (2nd ed., Cardiff, 1973) Bryan, Great donough Bryan, Gerald Fitzgerald, the Great Earl of Kildare, 1456–1513 Earl (dublin, 1933) Cal. Carew Calendar of the Carew manuscripts preserved in the archiepiscopal library at Lambeth, MSS 6 vols (london, 1867–73) Cal. inq. co. Calendar of inquisitions formerly in the office of the chief remembrancer of the Dublin exchequer, ed. m.C. griffith (dublin, 1991) Cal. SP Ire. Calendar of the State Papers, Ireland CARD Calendar of the Ancient Records of Dublin, ed. sir John gilbert Carey, Surviving vincent Carey, Surviving the Tudors: the ‘Wizard’ earl of Kildare and English rule the Tudors in Ireland, 1537–1586 (dublin, 2002) CChR Calendar of the charter rolls […], 1226–1516, 6 vols (Pro, london, 1903–27) CCR Calendar of the close rolls […], 1272–[1509], 47 vols (Pro, london, 1892–1963) CDI Calendar of documents relating to Ireland, 1171–1307, ed. h.s. sweetman and g.f. handcock, 5 vols (Pro, london, 1875–86) CDS Calendar of documents relating to Scotland […], ed. J. Bain, 4 vols (edinburgh, 1881–8) CFR Calendar of the fine rolls […], 1272–[1509], 22 vols (Pro, london, 1911–62) CGH Corpus genealogiarum Hiberniae, i, ed. m.a. o’Brien (dublin, 1962) CGSH Corpus genealogiarum sanctorum Hiberniae, ed. Pádraig Ó riain (dublin, 1985) Chart. privil. Chartae, privilegia et immunitates, being transcripts of charters and privileges to immun. cities, towns, and other bodies corporate, […] 1171–1395 (pr. for rCi, dublin, 1829–30; published, 1889) CIH Corpus iuris Hibernici, ed. d.a. Binchy, 6 vols (dublin, 1978) CIPM Calendar of inquisitions post mortem and other analogous documents, 16 vols (Pro, london, 1904–74) CirCle CIRCLE: A calendar of Irish chancery letters, c.1244–1509, ed. Peter Crooks (www.chancery.tcd.ie) CJRI Calendar of the justiciary rolls of Ireland, ed. James mills et al., 3 vols (dublin, 1905–56) CMCS Cambridge Medieval Celtic Studies (from number 26 onwards Cambrian Medieval Celtic Studies) co. county COD Calendar of Ormond deeds, 1172–1603, ed. edmund Curtis, 6 vols (imC, dublin, 1932–43) Colony & frontier Colony and frontier in medieval Ireland: essays presented to J.F. Lydon, ed. t.B. Barry, robin frame and katharine simms (london and rio grande, 1995)

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Abbreviations Cork history and society CP

9

Patrick o’flanagan and Cornelius g. Buttimer (eds), Cork history and society (dublin, 1993) g.e. Cokayne, The complete peerage of England, Scotland, Ireland, Great Britain and the United Kingdom, ed. vicary gibbs et al., 12 vols (london, 1910–59) CPL Calendar of entries in the papal registers relating to Great Britain and Ireland: papal letters (london, 1893–) CPR Calendar of the patent rolls […], 1232–[1509], 53 vols (Pro, london, 1911) CPR Ire., Hen. Calendar of the patent and close rolls of chancery in Ireland, Henry VIII to 18th VIII–Eliz. Elizabeth, ed. James morrin (dublin, 1862) CR Close rolls of the reign of Henry III, 14 vols (london, 1902–38) Crede mihi Crede mihi: the most ancient register book of the archbishops of Dublin before the reformation, ed. J.t. gilbert (ias, dublin, 1897) Crooks, Peter Crooks (ed.), Government, war and society in medieval Ireland: essays by Government Edmund Curtis, A.J. Otway-Ruthven and James Lydon (dublin, 2008) Crown surveys Crown surveys of lands, 1540–41, with the Kildare Rental Begun in 1518, ed. gearóid mac niocaill (dublin, 1992) CS Chronicum Scotorum, ed. W.m. hennessy (rs, london, 1866). CStM Chartularies of Saint Mary’s abbey, Dublin, ed. J.t. gilbert, 2 vols (rs, london, 1884–6) CT Caithréim Thoirdhealbhaigh, ed. and tr. s.h. o’grady, 2 vols (its, dublin, 1929) Curtis, Med. Ire. edmund Curtis, A history of mediaeval Ireland from 1110 to 1513 (1st ed., dublin and Cork, 1923); 2nd ed. published as A history of medieval Ireland from 1086 to 1513 (dublin and Cork, 1938) Curtis, Richard II edmund Curtis (ed.), Richard II in Ireland 1394–5 and the submissions of the Irish in Ire. chiefs (oxford, 1927) d dorse d. died dias dublin institute for advanced studies DIB Dictionary of Irish biography, ed. James mcguire and James Quinn, 9 vols (Cambridge, 2009) DIL Dictionary of the Irish language and Contributions to a dictionary of the Irish language (dublin, 1913–76; compact ed. 1983) Dowdall deeds Dowdall deeds, ed. Charles mcneill and a.J. otway-ruthven (imC, dublin, 1960) duffy, Princes, seán duffy (ed.), Princes, prelates and poets in the medieval Ireland: essays in prelates & honour of Katharine Simms (dublin, 2013) poets dugdale, William dugdale, Monasticon Anglicanum, ed. James Caley et al., 6 vols in 8 Monasticon (london, 1817–30) edw. edward edwards, Ormond david edwards, The Ormond lordship in county Kilkenny, 1515–1642: the rise and lordship fall of Butler feudal power (dublin, 2003) EHR English Historical Review (1886–) eliz. elizabeth ellis, Ire. in the age ellis, Ireland in the age of the Tudors, 1447–1603: English expansion and the end of of the Tudors Gaelic rule (london, 1998) ellis, Original h. ellis (ed.), Original letters illustrative of English history, 2nd ser., 4 vols letters (london, 1827) ellis, Tudor s.g. ellis, Tudor frontiers and noble power: the making of the British state (oxford, frontiers 1995) Extents Ir. mon. Extents of Irish monastic possessions, 1540–1541 […], ed. n.B. White (imC, possessions dublin, 1943) fitzgerald, Earls C.W. fitzgerald, The earls of Kildare and their ancestors: from 1057 to 1773 of Kildare (dublin, 1857; 2nd ed., 1858)

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10 fitzgerald, Geraldines fitzgibbon, ‘gherardini’ flanagan, Irish royal charters Foedera frame, Colonial Ire. frame, Eng. lordship frame, Ire. & Brit. gilbert, Facsimiles gilbert, Hist. & mun. docs gilbert, Viceroys

Abbreviations Brian fitzgerald, The Geraldines: an experiment in Irish government, 1169–1601 (1951) abraham fitzgibbon, ‘appendix to the unpublished geraldine documents – the gherardini of tuscany’, The Journal of the Royal Historical and Archaeological Association of Ireland, 4 (1877), 246–64. marie therese flanagan, Irish royal charters: texts and contexts (oxford, 2005) thomas rymer, Foedera […], ed. a. Clarke and f. holbrooke, 4 vols in 7 (rC, london, 1816–69) robin frame, Colonial Ireland, 1170–1370 (dublin, 1981; 2nd ed., dublin, 2011) robin frame, English lordship in Ireland, 1318–61 (oxford, 1982) robin frame, Ireland and Britain, 1170–1450 (london, 1998)

J.t. gilbert (ed.), Facsimiles of national manuscripts of Ireland […], 4 pts in 5 vols (dublin, 1874–84) J.t. gilbert (ed.), Historic and municipal documents of Ireland, A.D. 1172–1320, from the archives of the city of Dublin (rs, london, 1870) J.t. gilbert, History of the viceroys of Ireland with notices of the castle of Dublin and its chief occupants in former times (dublin, 1865) Giraldi Cambrensis Giraldi Cambrensis opera, ed. J.s. Brewer, J.f. dimock and g.f. Warner, 8 vols opera (rs, london, 1861–91) giraldus, Expug. giraldus Cambrensis, Expugnatio Hibernica: the conquest of Ireland, ed. and tr. Hib. a.B. scott and f.x. martin (ria, dublin, 1978) giraldus, Topog. giraldus Cambrensis, The topography of Ireland, tr. J.J. o’meara (dundalk, Hib. 1951) gwynn & aubrey gwynn and r.n. hadcock, Medieval religious houses: Ireland (dublin, hadcock, 1970; repr. dublin, 1988) MRHI hand, Eng. law g.J. hand, English law in Ireland, 1290–1324 (Cambridge, 1967) Handbook & Handbook and select calendar of Irish material in the National Archives of the calendar United Kingdom, ed. Paul dryburgh and Brendan smith (dublin, 2005) harris, Hibernica Walter harris (ed.), Hibernica, or some antient pieces relating to Ireland, 2 vols (dublin, 1747, 1750) HBC Handbook of British chronology (rhs handbook) hen. henry hmC historical manuscripts Commission (royal Commission on historical manuscripts) HR Historical Research [formerly BIHR] (1987–) ias irish archaeological society IER Irish Ecclesiastical Record (1864–) IExP Irish exchequer payments, 1270–1446, ed. Philomena Connolly (dublin, 1998) IHS Irish Historical Studies: The Joint Journal of the Irish Historical Society and the Ulster Society for Irish Historical Studies (1938–) ihta irish historic towns atlas imC Coimisiún Láimhscríbhinní na hÉireann (the irish manuscripts Commission) Inquisitions & Inquisitions and extents of medieval Ireland, ed. P. dryburgh and B. smith, list extents and index society (london, 2007) ir. irish Irish fiants Irish fiants of the Tudor sovereigns during the reigns of Henry VIII, Edward VI, Philip & Mary, and Elizabeth I, with a new introduction by kenneth nicholls and preface by tomás g. Ó Canann (4 vols, dublin, 1994)

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Abbreviations Ir. Geneal.

11

The Irish Genealogist: Official Organ of the Irish Genealogical Research Society (1937–) Ir. Jurist The Irish Jurist, new ser. (1966–) Ir. mon. deeds, Irish monastic and episcopal deeds, A.D. 1200–1600 […], ed. n.B. White (imC, 1200–1600 dublin, 1936) Ir. parl. h.g. richardson and g.o. sayles, The Irish parliament in the Middle Ages (Philadelphia, 1952) Ir. Sword The Irish Sword: The Journal of the Military History Society of Ireland (1949–) its irish texts society (vol. 1–, london, 1899–) JCHAS Journal of the Cork Historical and Archaeological Society (1892–) JCKAS Journal of the Kildare Archaeological Society (1891–) JCS Journal of Celtic Studies JGAHS Journal of the Galway Archaeological and Historical Society (1900–) JKAHS Journal of the Kerry Archaeological and Historical Society (1968–) JLAHS Journal of the County Louth Archaeological and Historical Society (1904–) JRSAI Journal of the Royal Society of Antiquaries of Ireland l. latin L&P Hen. VIII Letters and papers, foreign and domestic, Henry VIII (21 vols, london, 1862– 1932) Liber The great parchment book of Waterford: liber antiquissimus civitatis Waterfordiae, antiquissimus ed. n.J. Byrne (imC, dublin, 2007) Liber primus Liber primus Kilkenniensis, ed. Charles mcneill (imC, dublin, 1931) Kilkenniensis LL The Book of Leinster, ed. r.i. Best, o. Bergin, m.a. o’Brien and a. o’sullivan, 6 vols (dublin, 1954–83). Llanthony The Irish cartularies of Llanthony prima and secunda, e. st John Brooks (imC, cartularies dublin, 1953) LMG Leabhar Mór na nGenealach: The Great Book of Irish genealogies compiled (1645–66) by Dubhaltach Mac Fhirbhisigh, ed. nollaig Ó muraíle, 5 vols (dublin, 2003–4) lydon, Eng. James lydon (ed.), England and Ireland in the later Middle Ages: essays in honour & Ire. of Jocelyn Otway-Ruthven (dublin, 1981) lydon, Eng. James lydon (ed.), The English in medieval Ireland: proceedings of the first joint in med. Ire. meeting of the Royal Irish Academy and the British Academy, Dublin, 1982 (ria, dublin, 1984) lydon, Law James lydon (ed.), Law and disorder in thirteenth-century Ireland: the Dublin & disorder parliament of 1297 (dublin, 1997) lydon, Lordship James lydon, The lordship of Ireland in the Middle Ages (dublin, 1972; 2nd ed., dublin, 2003) m. [plural mm] membrane(s) mac niocaill, gearóid mac niocaill (ed.), ‘duanaire ghearóid iarla’, Studia Hibernica, 3 ‘duanaire’ (1963), 7–59 mac niocaill, gearóid mac niocaill (ed.), Na buirgéisí, XII–XV aois (2 vols, dublin, 1964) Na buirgéisí marlborough, ‘henry marleburrough’s chronicle of ireland [1285–1421]’, ed. James Ware in Chronicle Ancient Irish histories, 2 vols (dublin, 1809), ii, 1–32 mcCormack, anthony m. mcCormack, The earldom of Desmond, 1462–1583 (dublin, 2005) Desmond mcCorristine, laurence mcCorristine, The revolt of Silken Thomas: a challenge to Henry VIII Revolt (dublin, 1987) nai national archives of ireland [formerly Proi], dublin NHI, i A new history of Ireland, i: prehistoric and early Ireland, ed. dáibhí Ó Cróinín (oxford, 2005)

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12 NHI, ii NHI, ix nicholls, Gaelic Ire. nli ODNB orpen, Normans otway-ruthven, Med. Ire. par. Parl. writs Parls & councils PBA Pender, ‘o Clery genealogies’ Peritia Pipe roll 14 John PKCI Poems on the Butlers P&P PPC

Abbreviations A new history of Ireland, ii: medieval Ireland, 1169–1534, ed. art Cosgrove (oxford, 1987; repr. with bibliographical supp., 1993) A new history of Ireland, ix: maps, genealogies, lists. A companion to Irish history, part II, ed. t.W. moody, f.x. martin and f.J. Byrne (oxford, 1984) k.W. nicholls, Gaelic and gaelicized Ireland in the Middle Ages (2nd ed., dublin, 2003) national library of ireland, dublin Oxford dictionary of national biography: from the earliest times to the year 2000, ed. h.C.g. matthew and B.h. harrison, 61 vols (oxford, 2004) g.h. orpen, Ireland under the Normans, 4 vols (oxford, 1911–20; new ed., 4 vols in 1, dublin, 2005) a.J. otway-ruthven, A history of medieval Ireland, with an introduction by Kathleen Hughes (london, 1968; rev. ed., 1980) parish Parliamentary writs and writs of military summons, ed. francis Palgrave, 2 vols in 4 (rC, london, 1827–34) Parliaments and councils of mediaeval Ireland, ed. h.g. richardson and g.o. sayles (imC, dublin, 1947) Proceedings of the British Academy séamus Pender (ed.), ‘the o Clery book of genealogies: 23 d 17 (ria)’, AH, 18 (1951), 1–198 Peritia: Journal of the Medieval Academy of Ireland (1982–) ‘the irish pipe roll of 14 John’, ed. oliver davies and d.B. Quinn in Ulster Journal of Archaeology, 3rd ser., 4, supp. (July 1941) A roll of the proceedings of the king’s council in Ireland […], 1392–93, ed. James graves (rs, london, 1877) Poems on the Butlers, ed. James Carney (dublin, 1945)

Past and Present (1952–) Proceedings and ordinances of the privy council of England, ed. n.h. nicolas, 7 vols (london, 1834–7) PR Pipe roll (as published by the Pipe roll society) PRIA Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy Pro Public record office, london [now included within tna] Proi Public record office of ireland, dublin [now nai] PROME The parliament rolls of medieval England, ed. and trans. P. Brand, a. Curry, C. given-Wilson, r.e. horrox, g. martin, W.m. ormrod and J.r.s. Phillips, 16 vols (Woodbridge, 2005) Proni Public record office of northern ireland, Belfast Quinn, ‘Bills d.B. Quinn, ‘the bills and statutes of the irish parliaments of henry vii and and statutes’ henry viii’, AH, 10 (1941), 71–169 r recto r. ruled RC Revue Celtique RCH Rotulorum patentium et clausorum cancellariae Hiberniae calendarium, Hen. II– Hen. VII, ed. e. tresham (rCi, dublin, 1828) rCi record Commission of ireland Red bk exchequer Red book of the exchequer, ed. hubert hall, 3 vols, (rs, london, 1896) Red bk Kildare The red book of the earls of Kildare, ed. gearóid mac niocaill (imC, dublin, 1964) Red bk Ormond The red book of Ormond […], ed. n.B. White (imC, dublin, 1932) Reg. Alen A calendar of Archbishop Alen’s register, c.1172–1534, ed. Charles mcneill (rsai, dublin, 1950)

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Abbreviations

13

Reg. All Hallows Registrum prioratus Omnium Sanctorum juxta Dublin, ed. Richard Butler (IAS, Dublin, 1845) Reg. Fleming The register of Nicholas Fleming, archbishop of Armagh, 1404–1416, ed. Brendan Smith (IMC, Dublin, 2003) Reg. Gormanston Calendar of the Gormanston register, ed. J. Mills and M.J. McEnery (RSAI, Dublin, 1916) Reg. Kilmainham Registrum de Kilmainham: register of the chapter acts of the hospital of Saint John of Jerusalem in Ireland, 1326–1339 […], ed. C. McNeill (IMC, Dublin, 1943) Reg. Mey Registrum Iohannis Mey: The register of John Mey, archbishop of Armagh, 1443– 1456, ed. W.G.H. Quigley and E.F.D. Roberts (Belfast, 1972) Reg. Octaviani Registrum Octaviani de Palatio alias Liber Niger: The register of Octavian de Palatio, archbishop of Armagh, 1478–1513, ed. Mario Sughi (IMC, Dublin, 1999) Reg. St John the Register of the hospital of S. John the Baptist without the Newgate, Dublin, ed. Eric Baptist St John Brooks (IMC, Dublin, 1936) Reg. St Saviour’s The register of St Saviour’s chantry of Waterford, ed. N.J. Byrne with M. Byrne (IMC, Dublin, 2013) Reg. St Thomas Register of the abbey of St Thomas the Martyr, Dublin, ed. J.T. Gilbert (RS, London, 1889) Reg. Swayne The register of John Swayne, archbishop of Armagh and primate of Ireland, 1418– 39, ed. D.A. Chart (Belfast, 1935) Reg. Sweteman The register of Milo Sweteman, archbishop of Armagh, 1361–1380, ed. Brendan Smith (IMC, Dublin, 1996) Reg. Tristernagh Register of the priory of the blessed Virgin Mary at Tristernagh: Registrum cartarum monasterii B.V. Mariae de Tristernagh, ed. M.V. Clarke (IMC, Dublin, 1941) Regesta Regesta Regum Anglo-Normannorum: The acta of William I (1066–1087), ed. David Bates (Oxford, 1998) ‘Rental book’, ‘The rental book of Gerald Fitzgerald, ninth earl of Kildare, begun in the year ed. Hore 1518’, ed. H.F. Hore, JRSAI, 5 (1858–9), 266–80, 301–10; 7 (1862–3), 110–37; 8 (1864–6), 501–18, 525–46 [see also, Crown surveys, above] ‘Rental of ‘Rental of Gerald, earl of Kildare, A.D. 1518’, ed. J.T. Gilbert, HMC, 9th report, Gerald’, ed. appendix, part 2 (1884), 274–89 [see also, Crown surveys, above] Gilbert Rep. DKPRI Reports of the deputy keeper of the public records in Ireland (Dublin, 1869–) Rep. HMC Reports of the Royal Commission on Historical Manuscripts (London, 1870–) RHS Royal Historical Society RIA Royal Irish Academy, Dublin Ric. Richard RO Record Office Rot. chart. Rotuli chartarum in turri Londinensi asservati, 1199–1216, ed. T.D. Hardy (RC, London, 1837) Rot. lib. Rotuli de liberate ac de misis et praestitis, ed. T.D. Hardy (RC, London, 1844) Rot. litt. claus., Rotuli litterarum clausarum in turri Londinensi asservati, 1204–24, ed. T.D. Hardy, 1204–24 2 vols (RC, London, 1833–44) Rot. litt. pat. Rotuli litterarum patentium in turri Londinensi asservati, ed. T.D. Hardy (London, RC, 1835) Rot. Norm. Rotuli Normanniae, ed. T.D. Hardy (RC, London, 1835) Round, J.H. Round, ‘The origin of the FitzGeralds I’, The Ancestor, 1:1 (1902), 119–26 ‘Origin I’ Round, J.H. Round, ‘The origin of the FitzGeralds II’, The Ancestor, 1:2 (1902), 91–8. ‘Origin II’ RRAN Regesta Regum Anglo-Normannorum, 1066–1154, 4 vols, vo. 1, ed. H.W.C. Davis; vol. 2, ed. C. Johnson and H.A. Cronne; vols 3 and 4, ed. H.A. Cronne and R.H.C. Davis (Oxford, 1913–69).

00 Geraldines 28/09/2016 13:02 Page 14

14

Abbreviations

RS

The chronicles and memorials of Great Britain and Ireland during the Middle Ages, published under the direction of the Master of the Rolls (‘Rolls Series’), 99 vols (London, 1858–96) Royal Society of Antiquaries of Ireland G.O. Sayles, ‘Legal proceedings against the first earl of Desmond’, AH, 23 (1966), 3–47 G.O. Sayles, ‘The rebellious first earl of Desmond’, in J.A. Watt, J.B. Morrall and F.X. Martin (eds), Medieval studies presented to Aubrey Gwynn, S.J. (Dublin, 1961), pp 203–27 series John Bradley (ed.), Settlement and society in medieval Ireland (Kilkenny, 1988)

RSAI Sayles, ‘Legal proceedings’ Sayles, ‘Rebellious first earl’ ser. Settlement & society SHR Simms, Kings

Scottish Historical Review (1903–28; 1947–) Katharine Simms, From kings to warlords: the changing political structure of Gaelic Ireland in the later Middle Ages, Studies in Celtic History, 7 (Woodbridge, 1987) SP Hen. VIII State papers, Henry VIII, 11 vols (London, 1830–52) Stat. at large Statutes at large passed in the parliaments held in Ireland, 1310–1800, 20 vols (Dublin, 1786–1800) Stat. Edw. IV, Statute rolls of the parliament of Ireland, first to the twelfth years of the reign of King pt 1 Edward the fourth, ed. H.F. Berry (Dublin, 1914) Stat. Edw. IV, Statute rolls of the parliament of Ireland, twelfth and thirteenth to the twenty-first pt 2 and twenty-second years of the reign of King Edward the fourth, ed. J.F. Morrissey (Dublin, 1939) Stat. Hen. VI Statute rolls of the parliament of Ireland, reign of King Henry the sixth, ed. H.F. Berry (Dublin, 1910) Stat. John–Hen. V Statutes and ordinances and acts of the parliament of Ireland, King John to Henry V, ed. H.F. Berry (Dublin, 1907) Stat. of the realm Statutes of the realm, ed. A. Luders et al., 11 vols in 12 (RC, London, 1810–28) Stat. Ric. III– Statute rolls of the Irish parliament, Richard III–Henry VIII, ed. Philomena Hen. VIII Connolly (Dublin, 2002) Studies Studies: An Irish Quarterly Review (1912–) TCD Trinity College Dublin TCE Thirteenth Century England (Woodbridge, 1985–) TNA The National Archives of the United Kingdom [including former PRO], Kew TRHS Transactions of the Royal Historical Society (1872–) Unpublished Unpublished Geraldine documents (4 parts, Dublin, 1870–81); first published as Geraldine docs ‘Unpublished Geraldine documents’, ed. Samuel Hayman, James Graves, H. FitzGibbon, JRSAI, 3rd series, 1 (1868) 356–416; 459–559; 4th series, 1 (1870) 591–616; 4 (1876–8) 14–52, 157–66, 246–64 v verso VCH The Victoria county history of the counties of England (London, 1900–) Walsingham The Walsingham letter-book, or Register of Ireland, May 1578 to December 1579, letter-book ed. James Hogan and N. McNeill O’Farrell (IMC, Dublin, 1959) WHR Welsh History Review; Cylchgrawn Hanes Cymru (1960–) ZCP Zeitschrift für celtische Philologie

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Contributors

s Pa r k Y B o o k e r

is a lecturer in medieval history at Queen’s university

Belfast. C i a r a n B r a dY is professor of early modern history and historiography at trinity College dublin. aisling BYrne

is a lecturer in medieval english literature at the university

of reading. P e t e r C ro o k s

is a lecturer in medieval history at trinity College dublin.

rua i r í C u l l e n is a Phd student at the school of history and anthropology, Queen’s university Belfast. seán duffY

is professor in medieval history at trinity College dublin.

dav i d e dWa r d s

is a senior lecturer in early modern history at university

College Cork. s t e v e n g. e l l i s ro B i n f r a m e

is emeritus professor of history at nui galway.

is emeritus professor of history at the university of durham.

Pau l m aC C o t t e r h u W P rYC e

holds a Phd in history from university College Cork.

is professor of Welsh history at Bangor university.

k at h a r i n e s i m m s

is a retired senior lecturer in medieval history at trinity

College dublin. linzi simPson

is an archaeological consultant.

B r e n da n s m i t h C o l i n v e aC h

is professor of medieval history at the university of Bristol.

is a lecturer in medieval history at the university of hull.

15

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Preface

When the gaelic athletic association (gaa) was founded in 1884, hurling and football clubs sprang up in every corner of ireland, taking their names from their parish or a local or national saint, or a symbol or personage or movement from ireland’s past – ‘the gaels’, ‘Clann na ngael’ and so on, ‘the Young irelands’, ‘Éire Óg’, and the like, ‘the shamrocks’, ‘the harps’, ‘the round towers’, ‘the Cúchulainns’, ‘na fianna’, ‘the red hands’, ‘the Brian Borus’, ‘the o’neills’, ‘the sarsfields’, ‘the emmets’, ‘the mitchels’, ‘the kickhams’, and, in quite a few counties, ‘the geraldines’. the names are chosen for their club – their pride and joy – by people seeking a concept that captures the essence of all things gaelic, something that symbolizes the greatness of ireland’s past, and the struggle for freedom from english rule. that so many clubs should opt to name themselves from a family, a veritable dynasty, that spearheaded the english invasion and attempted conquest of ireland in the late twelfth century is a testament to a phenomenon – the myth of the geraldines – whose origins in the middle ages this volume seeks to explore. the geraldines – descended from gerald of Windsor, the anglo-norman constable of Pembroke castle in the early twelfth century, and his wife, the Welsh princess, nest – were perhaps the most important, or at least the most durable, of the conquistadors who established themselves in ireland in the late twelfth century. their involvement in ireland pre-dates even the expedition of king henry ii of england in 1171–2, whose arrival was ultimately to link ireland to the english crown for centuries to come. once established, the family thrived and gave ireland two of its most famous noble houses, the earls of desmond and kildare (later dukes of leinster), as well as a host of later historical personalities, one of the most beloved of whom in recent times was desmond fitzgerald, the twenty-ninth knight of glin, who died as recently as september 2011: with him expired his title, which had linked his family to the history of county limerick for the previous seven centuries – a remarkable record of historical continuity and an indication of the importance of the middle ages in shaping the character and personality of modern ireland.1 the chapters in this volume explore, roughly, the first six centuries of geraldine history from the origins of the family in the generation after the norman Conquest of england in 1066 to the destruction of the earls of desmond in the reign of elizabeth i. the only previous attempt to survey within the covers of a single book the history and significance of the family as a whole across this chronological span was published some sixty-five years ago: Brian 1 tom donovan (ed.), The knights of Glin: seven centuries of change (limerick, 2009); Irish Times, 16 sept. 2011.

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17

fitzgerald’s The Geraldines: an experiment in Irish government, 1169–1601 (1951). fitzgerald’s volume is itself a sort of experiment, offering a lively synthesis of an abundance of antiquarian material and scattered geraldine lore; but ultimately it served as much to entrench the ‘myth of the geraldines’ as to subject them to critical historical analysis.3 the present volume is revisionist in, we hope, the best sense of the word: challenging established interpretations, uncovering fresh evidence, and asking new questions of familiar sources. it cannot pretend to be comprehensive in its treatment, but it does show the extraordinary range and richness of the surviving medieval evidence for this family. from the earliest moment of their involvement in ireland, the geraldines became shrouded in myths, often of their own creation, and these were consciously cultivated by the family in the later middle ages to enhance its prestige and power. this fund of mythology was later appropriated for political and polemical uses by writers across the post-medieval centuries from the elizabethan age to the early decades of the irish free state, most famously in the nationalist verse of thomas davis (d. 1845), first published in The Nation newspaper in 1844: Ye geraldines! Ye geraldines! – how royally ye reigned o’er desmond broad and rich kildare, and english arts disdained.3 the chapters below probe the geraldine ‘myth’ in two senses: first the literary and historical evidence from the middle ages and its reception from the sixteenth century onwards; and second the myths and misconceptions that have encrusted around aspects of the family’s history in the professional historical scholarship up to the present day. from all the rich detail supplied by the chapters, two running themes in the family’s history emerge: identity and adaptability. these may appear to be contradictory, but they are, in fact, crucially interrelated. from a remarkably early date, the geraldines developed an acute sense of their own identity: its most distinctive element was its hybrid nature. as their greatest exponent, giraldus Cambrensis (‘gerald of Wales’) – arguably the most famous geraldine of them all – puts it: What a breed, what a noble stock, its nature twofold [gemina natura], deriving its valour from the trojans and its skill in arms from the french …What a breed, what a noble stock, a stock which unaided would have been equal to the conquest of any kingdom had not envy, begrudging them their great valour, descended from on high into the depths.4 2 Brian fitzgerald, The Geraldines: an experiment in Irish government, 1169–1601 (london, 1951). an important examination of kildare/leinster geraldines was published in 2014 (Aspects of Irish aristocratic life). 3 see The spirit of the nation: ballads and songs by the writers of ‘The Nation’ with original and ancient music (dublin, 1845), pp 91–5. 4 giraldus, Expug.

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it was their hybrid origins that provided the geraldine conquerors of ireland with such a pronounced sense of their own distinctiveness; but theirs was also in consequence a malleable identity. the family’s irish myth-makers were capable of grafting the geraldines onto a native historical tradition that traced their lineage back to the greeks, while, at other times and for different audiences, the family could make plausible its claim to an italian and ultimately trojan lineage, and justify its title to vast lordships in ireland by dint of conquest in the service of the english crown. there is, then, no single geraldine identity to be discovered, but rather a series of overlapping traditions that worked together to establish the family’s natural pre-eminence among the ‘foreign’ lords of ireland. the old adage that the geraldines became ‘more irish than the irish themselves’ fails to capture the geraldine experience in medieval ireland in all its richness and variety. variety of experience emerges too from the social and political history of the family. members of all the various branches of the extensive and ever-growing family tree revelled in the collective family descriptor, in its different forms in latin, in anglo-norman french, in middle hiberno-english, and, of course, in irish. this was a mark of their collective identity, and, at times, the geraldines acted collaboratively by forming political and marriage alliances, and by engaging in acts of religious patronage. But the different branches of the family each had their own distinctive regional histories, and the nature of their individual interactions with native society and the wider english scene – the twin poles between which the geraldines were pulled through the centuries – varied markedly. survival and success depended on balancing these concerns, and ultimately the kildare earls, despite the disaster that befell the family in 1534 in the rebellion of silken thomas, were the most successful survivors.5 Both endurance and catastrophe provided writers from the later sixteenth century onwards with a fund of stories from which to turn geraldine history to contemporary purposes. it is this form of politically directed mythification that is explored in the final chapters of the volume, which take the story of the ‘battle for the geraldines’ up to the early years of the irish free state. the chapters collected here arise from the inaugural trinity medieval ireland symposium (tmis), the first in a biennial series that was launched on 13 september 2013 by the Provost of trinity College dublin, dr Patrick Prendergast – whose own ancestor, maurice de Prendergast, had been among those Cambro-normans who put ashore at Bannow Bay in may 1169 along with the sons of gerald and of nest, thus changing the course of irish history. the symposium serves a double purpose. first, it responds to the enormous appetite in ireland for information on all aspects of the island’s medieval past by bringing together leading historians from irish and international universities for a Hib., p. 157 (ii.10). 5 Carey, Surviving the Tudors.

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weekend of lectures and discussions. these distinguished speakers are invited to address a specific aspect of a wider theme, chosen for its significance to the history of medieval ireland at large – a theme that no lone scholar could hope to encompass within the span of a single lecture or even a monograph. the inaugural symposium marked the five hundredth anniversary of the death of gearóid mór, the great earl of kildare, and the speakers enjoyed audiences in excess of two hundred across the two days of the symposium – an indication of the popular enthusiasm for the subject that makes working as an irish medievalist in ireland such a tremendous privilege. We are grateful to all those who attended the symposium, including maurice fitzgerald, the duke of leinster, whose namesake and ancestor maurice fitz gerald had overseen those first landings in 1169. the second and related aim of the initiative is to take the cutting-edge historical scholarship presented in the context of a public symposium and make it accessible through publication to all persons interested in researching, teaching or learning about the history of ireland in the middle ages. We are immensely grateful to all our distinguished contributors for sharing their stimulating research, for working to address the symposium’s over-arching theme, and for showing such efficiency and patience throughout the publication process. all those who spoke at the symposium of september 2013 were able to contribute chapters to the present volume and we are especially grateful to aisling Byrne and ruairí Cullen, who did not attend the dublin symposium but kindly agreed to contribute chapters to the book. the value of a wider awareness of ireland’s medieval heritage emerges from the saga of the ‘rent table’ of gearóid Óg, son of the great earl of kildare.6 the ‘rent table’ dates from 1533, the year before the rebellion of silken thomas. around its stone edges ran the following inscription, including the famous battle-cry of the kildare geraldines: geraldus Comes kildarie filius geraldi a(nn)o do(min)i m CCCCCxxxiiio si dieu Plet CromaBo

(gerald earl of kildare, son of gerald, ad 1533, if it please god, Cromabo). this magnificent stone table stood in kilkea castle – not too far from where, in 1513, the great earl was shot – until 1987, when the table top was rescued and transferred first to Carlow garda station and then, in 2001, to the national museum at Collins Barracks for safekeeping.7 While disputes over its ownership remain the subject of legal proceedings, the base of the table remains at kilkea separated from the rest of this important vestige of our heritage. let us hope that 6 Pers. comm. Colette Jordan. 7 Written answer of minister síle de valera, minister for arts, heritage, gaeltacht and the islands, tuesday, 23 may 2000, no. 265.

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the heroic efforts of local people, kildare County Council, and the historic monuments advisory Committee secure the reassembly of this invaluable artefact of geraldine history and its conservation for future generations. tmis itself has been the recipient of heroic support, particularly that of the arts and social sciences Benefactions fund, trinity College dublin. it was this award that enabled us to invite our panel of speakers to dublin, which was a crucial stage in the overall project. We are also extremely grateful to a number of other bodies – tCd’s school of histories and humanities; the trinity association and trust; the grace lawless lee fund at trinity; and the national monuments service, department of arts, heritage, regional, rural and gaeltacht affairs – which made generous grants in aid of the publication of this volume. these subventions have made it possible for our wonderful publishers, four Courts Press – to whom we extend our very great thanks – to produce a substantial volume at a price that is within reach of the general public to whom this history really belongs. Peter Crooks seán duffY

Trinity College Dublin, the University of Dublin

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Gerald of Windsor and the origins of the Geraldines

SEÁN DUFFY

From Tuscan cam my ladies worthi race; Faire Florence was sometime her auncient seate. The westorne ile, whose pleasaunt showre doth face Wylde Chambares cliffes, did geve her lyvely heate. Fostred she was with mylke of Irishe brest; Her syer an erle, hir dame of princes bloud. From tender yeres in Britaine she doth rest, With kinges child, where she tastes gostly foode. Honsdon did furst present her to myn eyen: Bryght ys her hew, and Geraldine she hight; Hampton me tawght to wishe her furst for myne, And Windsor, alas, doth chase me from her sight. Bewty of kind, her vertues from above; Happy ys he that may obtaine her love.1 Henry Howard, the poet earl of Surrey (c.1517–47) – sometimes described, with Thomas Wyatt, as the father of the English sonnet – was inspired to write this, one of his best-known of the genre, by a woman who thereby became immortalized as ‘Fair Geraldine’. She was otherwise called Lady Elizabeth Browne (from her first husband, Sir Anthony Browne, master of the horse under Henry VIII) and Elizabeth Fiennes de Clinton, countess of Lincoln and baroness of Clinton and Saye (from her subsequent marriage to Edward Fiennes de Clinton, lord high admiral of England under Mary and Elizabeth).2 On her death in 1590, our Elizabeth, the subject of Surrey’s sonnet, was buried alongside her second husband in Lincoln chapel within St George’s chapel at Windsor castle where her elaborate alabaster effigy features, at her feet, a splendidly carved ape standing on all fours.3 This is the only visible clue to the origins of this noblewoman – who had for much of her life been a member of Elizabeth I’s privy chamber – for the ape or monkey is part of the heraldic crest 1 Emrys Jones (ed.), Henry Howard, earl of Surrey: poems (Oxford, 1964), no. 9, p. 5. 2 For her, see James Graves, A brief memoir of Lady Elizabeth Fitzgerald, known as the Fair Geraldine (Dublin, 1874); Susan Brigden, ‘Clinton, Elizabeth Fiennes de, countess of Lincoln [other married name Elizabeth Fiennes Browne, Lady Browne; called Fair Geraldine] (1528?–1589)’, ODNB. The best discussion of the poem and its context is W.A. Sessions, Henry Howard, the poet earl of Surrey: a life (Oxford, 1999), pp 187–99. 3 H.W. Blackburne, The romance of St George’s chapel, Windsor castle (London, 1933), pp 24–5.

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Seán Duffy

of the Kildare Geraldines and the lady in question was none other than the daughter of Gearóid Óg, ninth earl of Kildare, half-sister of Silken Thomas.4 One wonders how many of Elizabeth FitzGerald’s contemporaries knew – and indeed if she herself was aware – that her burial in the chapel at Windsor was appropriate not only in light of her marriage to the earl of Lincoln but because, a full half-millennium earlier, Windsor castle had helped nurture her family’s extraordinary rise to distinction. For, as we shall see, it is as William the Conqueror’s first known custodian of that newly constructed fortress that the earliest identifiable ancestor of the Geraldines appears on the pages of history – a man called Walter fitz Oter, father of the Gerald of Windsor from whom the family takes its collective name. As far as the romantic earl of Surrey was concerned, however, the Geraldines had a noble lineage that stretched back further still, Lady Elizabeth’s ‘worthy race’ having originated in Tuscany, glorying in their ‘ancient seat’ at Florence. The tradition, discussed elsewhere in this volume,5 that the Geraldines of Ireland were related to the famous Gherardini of Florence, however groundless, is of long standing, the weight Surrey attaches to it merely reflecting contemporary – and much later – belief in its historicity. Oddly, there appear to be two variants to this dynastic myth. One is that three brothers of the Florentine Gherardini – namely Gherardo, Maurizio and Tommaso – forced from their homeland in Italy, found their way to England where they were enlisted to take part in the English conquest of Ireland, gaining their fortune there, and founding the dynasty we know of as the Geraldines. The origins of this absurd story seem to lie in the contacts between the Geraldine earls of Desmond and the Gherardini in the early fifteenth century.6 Presumably the names Gherardo, Maurizio and Tommaso were supplied from Ireland, and represent the Gerald, Maurice and Thomas – probably sons of Maurice fitz Gerald, the first of the Geraldines in Ireland – whom their source believed, possibly incorrectly, to have been founders of the main Geraldine lines of Kildare, Desmond and FitzMaurice of Kerry. The other tradition is that the Irish Geraldines stem from a Lord Otho or Ot(h)er, a descendant of the dukes of Tuscany, who moved from Florence to Normandy and was already a baron of England by the reign of Edward the Confessor. The brilliant if ever-critical Horace Round had a few choice words to say about this latter theory in his landmark 1902 examination of the subject.7 Round noted that the claim appears in the well-known family history, The earls of Kildare and their ancestors, first published by the marquess of Kildare (afterwards fourth duke of Leinster) in 1857.8 There it is stated that Lord 4 For whose career and subsequent myth, see Brady, below, pp 379–98. 5 See below MacCotter, p. 173; Byrne, pp 278–82; Crooks, pp 236–9. 6 The ‘evidence’ is discussed, and roundly dismissed, in Gustavo Uzielli, La leggenda dei tre Valdelsani, conquistatori dell’Irlanda, 2nd ed. (Florence, 1908). See also Crooks, below, pp 236–7. 7 Round, ‘Origin I’, 120. 8 Fitzgerald, Earls of Kildare.

Edith = Maurice of Windsor

Ralph I de Hastings

Robert

Walter the Deacon (fl. 1086)

William

Windsor of Stanwell

Hodengs

William of Eton

William of Windsor

Walter

dau.

Carew of Carew, Idrone, Offa, Cork

Geraldines of Kildare, Desmond, & FitzMaurice of Kerry

Maurice fitz Gerald (d. 1176)

Table 1.1: The kinsmen of Gerald of Windsor. Fitz Milo of Overk

Milo fitz David

Bishop David (d. 1177)

Hugh of Horsley

Barry of Manorbier & Ireland

Philip de Barri

Walter

Giraldus Cambrensis (‘Gerald of Wales’)

Angharad = William de Barri

Reinald (fl. 1114)

Ranulf fitz Oter (fl. 1066–83) Rhys ap Tewdwyr (d. 1093), king of = Gwladys Deheubarth

GERALD of WINDSOR = Nest ferch Rhys (fl. 1093–1116), eponym (d. a.1136) of the Geraldines

William de Carew (d. 1173)

X = Walter fitz Oter = Beatrice (d. after 1107)

Óttárr [alias Ot(h)er] (fl. Normandy, pre-1066)

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Seán Duffy

Kildare’s source was Sir William Dugdale; but Round reported that he had searched the latter’s Baronage of England (1675) and found no such reference. He appears to imply that it was Kildare himself who invented the notion of an ancestor of the Geraldines in pre-Conquest England; but, while I too have failed to locate the statement in any of Dugdale’s writings, I have come across many references earlier than that of Lord Kildare: the earliest I have thus far located is in the 1720 edition of Arthur Collins’s The baronettage of England, in his account of the family of Gerard of Bryn, Lancashire,9 while an almost identical statement appears in the 1741 edition of Thomas Wotton’s English baronetage, to the effect that ‘Dominus Otherus is said to have held in the time of Edward, the confessor’.10 Lord Kildare was, however, more specific: ‘The Fitz Geralds, or Geraldines, are descended from “Dominus Otho,” or Other, who in 1057 (16th Edward the Confessor) was an honorary Baron of England.’11 At some point, therefore, between Collins (1720) and Kildare (1857), the tradition of Otho/Ot(h)er’s presence in England specifically in 1057 had emerged, but Round was wrong to imply that Kildare was responsible for this either as it occurs in volume one of John Lodge’s Peerage of Ireland, published in London in 1754.12 It is he who gives Dugdale as the authority, although it is only in Mervyn Archdall’s reworking of Lodge, published in Dublin in 1789, that actual volume and page references are cited, which turn out to be red herrings.13

Ó T TÁ R R , P RO G E N I T O R O F T H E G E R A L D I N E S

In any event, the traditions are, needless to say, spurious. Otho/Ot(h)er certainly existed but does not feature in his own right in any source and would be lost to posterity were it not for the patronymic of his better-attested son, Walter fitz Oter (filius Oteri),14 father of Gerald of Windsor, the eponymous ancestor of the 9 Arthur Collins, The baronettage of England: being an historical and genealogical account of baronets, from their first institution in the reign of King James I … (London, 1720), p. 96; he does not appear to mention it in any of the editions of his Peerage of England, which he published regularly from 1709. 10 Thomas Wotton, The English baronetage: containing a genealogical and historical account of all the English baronets, now existing: their descents, marriages, and issues…, 4 vols (London, 1741), i, p. 51; it does not occur in his earlier work, The English baronets. Being a genealogical and historical account of their families…, 3 vols (London, 1727), i, p. 23. 11 Fitzgerald, Earls of Kildare, p. 1. 12 John Lodge, The peerage of Ireland, or, a genealogical history of the present nobility of that kingdom, 4 vols (London, 1754), i, p. 1. 13 Mervyn Archdall, The peerage of Ireland: or, a genealogical history of the present nobility of that kingdom, by John Lodge, Esq. revised, enlarged, and continued to the present time, 7 vols (Dublin, 1789), i, p. 55. The statement also occurs in Revd William Betham, The baronetage of England: or, The history of the English baronets, and such Baronets of Scotland as are of English Families, 5 vols (Ipswich and London, 1801–5), i, p. 58. Such pre-Conquest arrivals from the Continent to England were not, of course, unheard of: see, for example, C.P. Lewis, ‘The French in England before the Norman Conquest’, ANS, 18 (1995), 123–44. 14 Chronicon monasterii de Abingdon, ed. Joseph Stevenson, 2 vols (RS, London, 1858), ii, p. 132; Historia

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Geraldines. We know nothing else whatever about Ot(h)er whose name is evidently a version of Old Norse Óttárr.15 This Scandinavian vestige seems at first sight curiously late: bearing in mind that Walter fitz Oter lived into the twelfth century, his father Óttárr was well-and-truly an eleventh-century individual. But perhaps this lingering Scandinavian legacy is not unimportant, given that the particular son of Walter fitz Oter who interests us most, Gerald a quo the Geraldines, was an early associate (as we shall see) of Arnulf, son of Roger de Montgomery earl of Shrewsbury: and, as late as 1080 or so, this Earl Roger was proudly describing himself as ‘a Norseman, of Norsemen (ex Northmannis Northmannus)’.16 It has also been shown that when Earl Roger – one of the Conqueror’s most trusted followers – began the settlement of Shropshire, the hundreds on its Welsh frontier were bestowed on men who had been closely associated with the Montgomerys in Normandy, the same being true of those who exercised administrative functions there on the family’s behalf.17 Conceivably, therefore, the connection of our Gerald to the Montgomery family is a pointer to the particular place of origin in Normandy of his grandfather Óttárr, ancestor of all the Geraldines:18 specifically, the Montgomerys gave their name to the south Calvados communes of Saint-Germain-de-Montgommery and Sainte-Foy-de-Montgommery (dép. Calvados, cant. Livarot), and had substantial holdings also about fifteen miles to the northwest, in the valley of the river Dives near Troarn (dép. Calvados, cant. Troarn),19 just east of Caen in a region replete with place-names that speak of concentrated Scandinavian settlement.20 ecclesie Abbendonensis: the history of the church of Abingdon, ed. and trans. John Hudson, 2 vols (Oxford, 2002–7), ii, pp 8–11, 40–1, 192–3. 15 For Norman personal names of Norse origin, see Jean Adigard des Gautries, Les noms de personnes scandinaves en Normandie de 911 à 1066, Nomina Germanica XI (Lund, 1954). 16 J.H. Round (ed.), Calendar of documents preserved in France, illustrative of the history of Great Britain and Ireland (London, 1899), no. 465. For the Montgomerys, see J.F.A. Mason, ‘Roger de Montgomery and his sons (1067–1102)’, TRHS, 5th ser., 13 (1963), 1–28; Kathleen Thompson, ‘The Norman aristocracy before 1066: the example of the Montgomerys’, HR, 60:143 (1987), 251–63; C.P. Lewis, ‘The king and eye: a study in Anglo-Norman politics’, EHR, 104:412 (1989), 569–89; C.P. Lewis, ‘The early earls of Norman England’, ANS, 13 (1990), 207–23. 17 J.F.A. Mason, ‘The officers and clerks of the Norman earls of Shropshire’, Transactions of the Shropshire Archaeological Society, 56 (1957–60), 244–57; Frederick Suppe, Military institutions on the Welsh Marches: Shropshire, A.D. 1066–1300, Studies in Celtic History (Woodbridge, 1994), pp 38–9, 71; Max Lieberman, The medieval March of Wales: the creation and perception of a frontier, 1066–1283 (Cambridge, 2010), pp 58–66. 18 It may just be relevant too that one of the few other well-known individuals called Óttárr in post-Conquest England was Othuer fitz Earl (d. 1120), whose father Hugh d’Avranches (d. 1101) was set up, like Roger de Montgomery in Shrewsbury, with the strategic Marcher earldom of Chester, having also come from a family of notable Viking descent, in this case from the Cotentin: Lewis, ‘The early earls’, 207–23; idem, ‘The formation of the honor of Chester, 1066–1100’, Journal of the Chester Archaeological Society, 71 (1991), 37–68. 19 Thompson, ‘Norman aristocracy before 1066’. 20 The most detailed studies have been the series of essays by Jean Adigard des Gautries: ‘Les noms de lieux de l’Orne attestés entre 911 et 1066 (moins la partie percheronne du département)’, Bulletin de

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In this regard, it may just be possible to find a trace of our family in the area. When Duke William of Normandy (the future Conqueror) and his wife, Matilda of Flanders, established the abbeys of St Stephen and Holy Trinity at Caen, it was necessary for their heads to set about the purchase of building-land in the vicinity. A now-lost charter of William and Matilda (1080x83) notes one such purchase made by Lanfranc when he was St Stephen’s first abbot (1066–70) which is witnessed by a certain ‘Rannulfus filius Oceri’ and another purchase made by the second abbot, William Bona Anima (1070–9), witnessed by the same individual but in which he is styled ‘Rannulfus filius Oteri qui hoc mercatum fecit’,21 from which it seems that Ranulf functioned as a steward employed by the abbey in its property-acquisition.22 The same individual turns up in a pancarte of William and Matilda (1081x82) attesting to a sequence of gifts to St Stephen’s, including one by Bernard fitz Ospac, royal chaplain and archdeacon of Rouen, granting the abbey his house near the city wall in Rouen: it is this latter item that Ranulf fitz Oter witnessed.23 But back in June 1066 Ranulf had popped up in another pancarte of the then Duke William, this time for Holy Trinity abbey in Caen, in which is found a record of Matilda’s purchase of a parcel of land for the abbey, this particular purchase being witnessed by Ranulf fitz Oter and, interestingly, Duke William’s steward, Gerald. The reason this might be relevant is because it has been speculated (as we shall see) that the latter might be an antecedent of Gerald a quo the Geraldines, who, when he first appears on record thirty years later, is also a steward (an occupation he shared with others of his kinsmen). It is possible therefore that in Ranulf fitz Oter we have found a second son of our Óttárr, which would enable us for the first time to identify a forebear of the Geraldines in his Norman homeland.

la Société historique et archéologique de l’Orne, 65 (1947), 95–119; ‘Les noms de lieux de la Manche attestés entre 911 et 1066’, Annales de Normandie, 1 (1951), 9–44; ‘Les noms de lieux des îles anglo-normandes attestés entre 911 et 1066’, ibid., 2 (1952), 27–33; ‘Les noms de lieux du Calvados attestés entre 911 et 1066’, ibid., 2 (1952), 209–28; 3 (1953), 22–36, 135–48; ‘Les noms de lieux de l’Eure attestés entre 911 et 1066’, ibid., 4 (1954), 39–60, 237–56; 5 (1955), 15–34; ‘Les noms de lieux de la Seine-Maritime attestés entre 911 et 1066’, ibid., 6 (1956), 119–35, 223–44; 7 (1957), 135–58; 8 (1958), 299–322; 9 (1959), 151–60. See also Lauren Wood Breese, ‘The persistence of Scandinavian connections in Normandy in the tenth and early eleventh centuries’, Viator, 8 (1977), 47–61; Gillian Fellows-Jensen, ‘Les noms de lieux d’origine scandinave et la colonisation viking en Normandie: examen critique de la question’, Proxima Thulé, 1 (1994), 63–103. 21 Lucien Musset (ed.), Les actes de Guillaume le Conquérant et de la reine Mathilde pour les abbayes caennaises, Mémoires de la Société des antiquaires de Normandie 37 (Caen, 1967), pp 107–8, no. 14; Regesta, no. 53 (I am grateful to Professor Nicholas Vincent for verifying these references for me from his own copy of a volume not in the Dublin libraries). See also K.S.B. Keats-Rohan, Domesday people: a prosopography of persons occurring in English documents, 1066–1166, i: Domesday Book (Woodbridge, 1999), p. 455. 22 For the property purchases, see David S. Spear, ‘William Bona Anima, Abbot of St. Stephen’s, Caen (1070–79)’, Haskins Society Journal, 1 (1989), 51–60. 23 Musset (ed.), Les actes de Guillaume le Conquérant, p. 76, no. 7; Regesta, no. 49.

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WA LT E R F I T z O T E R , FAT H E R O F G E R A L D T H E E P O N Y M

It is doubtful if Óttárr himself lived long enough to cross the Channel with the Conqueror in or after 1066 and it is his son Walter (d. after 1100) who is the first to leave a documentary trace in England. At the time of the Domesday survey in 1086, Walter fitz Oter held lands the spine of which ran along the Thames Valley hugging both banks of the river, from Kingston-upon-Thames in Surrey to Eton in Buckinghamshire. His most valuable holdings were Eton, Burnham, and Horton in southern Buckinghamshire; Stanwell and East and West Bedfont a few miles away in southern Middlesex, and the three adjoining manors of Hurtmore, Compton and Peper Harow which lie about fifteen miles to the south in Surrey, and he also held West Horsley in the same county. Valuable outlier lands included Hagbourne in west Berkshire, but Walter had further Berkshire holdings at Wokefield, Bucklebury and Ortone; his Buckinghamshire lands also included Hardmead in the far north of the county; he held Hatton in Middlesex; had also acquired Malshanger and Will Hall in Hampshire, in which county he was a tenant of the abbey of Chertsey for a small holding at Winchfield.24 Walter fitz Oter was also keeper of the great forest of Windsor, and of parks within the forest, the Domesday survey recording that he held, on the manor of Kintbury in Berkshire, half a hide ‘which King Edward [the Confessor] had given to his predecessor’ out of the royal demesne for the custody of the forest, and that, on the royal manor of Woking in Surrey, Walter held another three-quarters of a hide, which King Edward had similarly given ‘out of the manor to a certain forester’, his lands including also some woodland on the royal manor at Windsor.25 This was no mean estate.26 Walter fitz Oter may not have been one of the great men of the Conquest, but he was doing well for himself and tiptoeing his way into the ranks of the men of middling station in Anglo-Norman England.27 The occasional tendency, therefore, to view his Geraldine descendants as men raised utterly from the dust in Ireland rather overstates things. But, as earlier noted, Walter fitz Oter is best known as keeper of Windsor castle. He is generally assumed to have held it on behalf of the crown at Domesday, if not since its construction presumably soon after the Conquest,28 24 Keats-Rohan, Domesday people, p. 455; http://domesday.pase.ac.uk/. 25 Round, ‘Origin I’, 122–3; Robin Fleming, Domesday Book and the law: society and legal custom in early medieval England (Cambridge, 1998), pp 213, 241, 246. 26 For the extent of Walter’s estate a century later, see the account of its partition into two moieties between his great-grandsons in 1198: Feet of fines of the ninth year of the reign of King Richard the first, AD 1197–AD 1198, Pipe Roll Society (London, 1898), pp 110–11. 27 For the classic taxonomy of Domesday tenants, see W.J. Corbett, ‘The development of the duchy of Normandy and the Norman Conquest of England’, The Cambridge medieval history, v, ed. J.R. Tanner et al. (Cambridge, 1926), pp 481– 520, at pp 505–20; see also, C. Warren Hollister, ‘The Greater Domesday tenants-in-chief ’, in J.C. Holt (ed.), Domesday studies (Woodbridge, 1987), pp 219–48; J.J.N. Palmer, ‘The wealth of the secular aristocracy in 1086’, ANS, 22 (2000), 279–91. 28 For a hint as to the date of construction sometime between 1066 and 1070, see Regesta, nos 290, 299; RRAN, i, nos 45,

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but there is no hard proof of this. That said, the keeper of the forest of Windsor was ordinarily custodian of the castle and we have seen that Walter held the former office at the time of the survey. Also, it is worth noting that Walter’s contemporary, Robert d’Oilly (d. c.1092), who was until his death castellan of that other great Thames-side stone keep less than forty miles away at Oxford, was in fact the man who had built it for the Conqueror more than twenty years earlier.29 It is possible, therefore, that the young Walter fitz Oter erected the famous fortress with which the family was to be associated for some generations. But the earliest specific mention of his connection to Windsor castle comes in a document in the Historia ecclesie Abbendonensis, the chronicle and cartulary of Abingdon abbey near Oxford (about thirty-five miles distant from Windsor), referring to events as late as the incumbency of Abbot Faricius, who was only installed on 1 November 1100.30 Here, Walter is specifically styled castellanus de Uuildesore,31 though the document sheds no light on when his tenure began. What we do know is that he did not simply enjoy the custodianship of Windsor castle as one of a number of sinecures with which he might or might not have been intimately connected: rather, it was his home. The Abingdon text states that Walter restored to Abbot Faricius certain woods, including what is now Bagshot Park on the Surrey–Berkshire border, which he had held by consent of the earlier abbots Adelelm (1071–83) and Rainald (1084–97):32 if he held the woods as keeper of Windsor forest, the latter was an office he occupied since at least 1083 and if he had custody of the castle as long as he had custody of the forest this would bring his association with it too back to this date. The restoration of the woodland took place initially at Windsor castle (Hanc redditionem primo apud castellum Uuildesores abbati eidem reddidit) but was followed up by Walter fitz Oter sending his wife and son to Abingdon to confirm what he had agreed to ‘at home’ (et diende ad nativitatem Sancte Marie [8 Sept.] uxorem suam Beatricem, cum filio suo Willelmo, Abbendoniam transmisit, ut quod ipse domi fecerat, ipsi Abbendonie confirmarent). Because Walter fitz Oter, like later members of his family who were castellans of Windsor in the twelfth century, held royal manors in the locality to farm,33 he occupied a dual position as a keeper of the castle and manager of estates, and it was a career-path that several of his descendants were to follow, including those who would end up in Ireland. It undoubtedly tells us something about the early 87, 163. 29 John Blair, Anglo-Saxon Oxfordshire (1994), 173–7. 30 Peregrine Horden, ‘Faricius (d. 1117)’, ODNB; Martin Brett, The English church under Henry I (Oxford, 1975), p. 73. 31 Chronicon monasterii de Abingdon, ed. Stevenson, ii, p. 132; Historia ecclesie Abbendonensis, ed. Hudson, ii, pp 192–3; see also pp 8–11, 40–1. 32 RRAN, i, no. 391; Emma Cownie, Religious patronage in Anglo-Norman England, 1066–1135 (Woodbridge, 1998), p. 40. David Bates has suggested that a writ ostensibly from William II to Walter, obviously in his capacity as keeper of the forest since he is ordered to allow the abbot of Abingdon to ‘hold his land and wood freely’, may in fact be William I’s (Regesta, no. 7). 33 Shelagh Bond, ‘The medieval constables of Windsor castle’, EHR, 82:323 (1967), 225–49, at 228; Charles R. Young,

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Geraldines: they had sprung from castle men, men who knew how to build, maintain and run a castle and how to administer the estates attached to it, and that probably gave them an edge when it came to frontier life – initially safeguarding the line of the Thames in newly conquered England, shortly afterwards exercising a similar function in south Wales, and latterly too in Ireland. Those functions were primarily – in origin at least – military. A castellan like Walter fitz Oter had the safekeeping of a fortress entrusted to him, whose garrison he commanded, whose armoury he supervised, and of whose prison and prisoners he was the keeper. Beyond the military function was the requirement to maintain the fabric of the castle and its buildings and, certainly at Windsor, its use as an intermittent royal residence would have imposed additional responsibilities (not to say opportunities for social networking). He was also bound to be a glorified rent collector on the royal demesne that attached to the castle and no doubt something of a jack-of-all-trades as royal agent in the locality.34 As a tenant-in-chief of the crown, Walter fitz Oter owed fifteen knights in the form of ‘castle-guard’ to Windsor,35 that is to say that the military service he owed his lord the king was specifically to provide fifteen knights to guard Windsor castle, service which, it seems, lasted forty days (later, as with other forms of service of course, it was commuted to a money payment).36 Two other lay barons and one clerical (the largest, the abbot of Abingdon, owing thirty knights) owed a similar duty and in total service of seventy-three knights was provided for Windsor’s guard.37 Being also the castellan, it was the task of Walter The royal forests of medieval England (Philadelphia, 1979), pp 51–3. 34 Gaillard Lapsley, ‘Some castle officers in the twelfth century’, EHR, 32:131 (1918), 348–59; Helen Cam, The hundred and the hundred rolls: an outline of local government in medieval England (London, 1930), p. 132; Matthew Strickland, War and chivalry: the conduct and perception of war in England and Normandy, 1066–1217 (Cambridge, 1996), pp 204–8; Stephen Morillo, Warfare under the AngloNorman kings, 1066–1135 (Woodbridge, 1994), pp 94–7; N.J.G. Pounds, The medieval castle in England and Wales: a social and political history (Cambridge, 1990), pp 75–81; Richard R. Heiser, ‘Castles, constables, and politics in late twelfth-century English governance’, Albion, 32 (2000), 19–36. 35 J.H. Round, ‘Castle guard’, Archaeological Journal, 59 (1902), 144–59, at 151; F.M. Stenton, The first century of English feudalism, 1066–1166, 2nd ed. (Oxford, 1947), pp 212–13; I.J. Sanders, English baronies: a study of their origin and descent, 1086–1327 (Oxford, 1960), p. 116; K.S.B. Keats-Rohan, Domesday descendants: a prosopography of persons occurring in English documents, 1066–1166, ii: pipe rolls to Cartae Baronum (Woodbridge, 2002), p. 969. For discussion of castle-guard, see, for example, Sidney Painter, ‘Castle-guard’, American Historical Review, 40:3 (1935), 450–9; C. Warren Hollister, The military organization of Norman England (Oxford, 1965), ch. 5; Frederick Suppe, ‘Castle guard and the castlery of Clun’, Haskins Society Journal, 1 (1989), 123–34, reprinted in Robert Liddiard (ed.), Anglo-Norman castles (Woodbridge, 2003), pp 211–21; Frederick Suppe, ‘The persistence of castle guard in the Welsh Marches and Wales: suggestions for a research agenda and methodology’, in Richard Abels and Bernard Bachrach (eds), The Normans and their adversaries at war (Woodbridge, 2001), pp 201–21. 36 Red bk exchequer, ii, pp 716–17; Sanders, English baronies, pp 94, 116– 17, 130; Thomas K. Keefe, Feudal assessments and the political community under Henry II and his sons (Los Angeles and London, 1983), pp 77–8. 37 Stenton, First century, pp 212–13; Round,

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fitz Oter to oversee the organization of this system. In addition, the castle had a paid garrison under Walter’s command, but this does not seem to have been large: in the thirteenth century, typically, Windsor was guarded by a mere three watchmen and a permanent garrison of up to five serjeants, although perhaps the more volatile conditions of previous times had required more.38 Castellans – certainly those who commanded royal castles – were important people: when Orderic Vitalis was summing up the nouveau riche Geoffrey de Clinton he described him as being, as a result of royal favour, ‘stationed above earls and famous castellans’.39 And one can see how Windsor’s special royal connections might elevate the standing of its particular castellan above more run-of-the-mill such functionaries. William the Conqueror certainly frequented it:40 it was at the Council of Windsor in May 1070 that he named Thomas of Bayeux as archbishop of York,41 and the perennial controversy about York’s subordination to Canterbury was again the subject of deliberations at Pentecost in 1072 at a location called the villa regia at Windsor.42 William’s queen Matilda would sometimes reside at Windsor when he was in Normandy,43 and Walter fitz Oter must have been busily engaged on these occasions, assuming his association with Windsor had begun that early. Frank Barlow said of the Conqueror’s successor, William Rufus, that Windsor was ‘perhaps his favourite residence’, and Walter fitz Oter must have been the man in charge when Rufus stayed at the castle in the summer of 1091 preparatory to his military response to the Scots raid of Northumbria under Máel Coluim Cennmór (Malcolm III, king of Scots).44 William Rufus kept Pentecost at Windsor in 1095,45 and the refusal to appear there of Robert de Mowbray, earl of Northumbria, led Rufus to gather an army and march against him; Mowbray’s eventual capture was followed by his imprisonment in Windsor castle.46 The king was there again at Christmas 1095, having ordered that all who held lands of him and wished to retain his protection

‘Castle guard’, 152; Keefe, Feudal assessments, p. 77; Chronicon monasterii de Abingdon, ed. Stevenson, ii, p. 3. 38 J.H. Round, ‘The staff of a castle in the thirteenth century’, EHR, 35:137 (1920), 90–7; for garrisons, see John S. Moore, ‘Anglo-Norman garrisons’, ANS, 22 (2000), 205–60; Michael Prestwich, ‘The garrisoning of English medieval castles’, in Abels and Bachrach (eds), The Normans and their adversaries at war, pp 185–200; Frederick Suppe, ‘The garrisoning of Oswestry: a baronial castle on the Welsh Marches’, in Kathryn Reyerson and Faye Powe (eds), The medieval castle: romance and reality (Dubuque, IA, 1984), pp 63–78. 39 The ecclesiastical history of Orderic Vitalis, ed. Marjorie Chibnall, 6 vols (Oxford, 1968–80), vi, p. 16. 40 He issued a writ from there in 1070x83 (Regesta, no. 87; see also RRAN, i, no. 61). 41 Dorothy Whitelock et al. (eds), Councils and synods with other documents relating to the English church, 871–1204, 2 vols (Oxford, 1981), ii, no. 87, pp 577–81; Regesta, no. 81; RRAN, i, nos 35, 64, 65. 42 Regesta, no. 68. 43 Chronicon monasterii de Abingdon, ed. Stevenson, ii, pp 10–11; Frank Barlow, William Rufus (Berkeley and Los Angeles 1983), p. 39, n. 166. 44 Barlow, William Rufus, pp 288–95, 355. 45 The Anglo-Saxon chronicle: a collaborative edition, vii: MS E, ed. Susan Irvine (Cambridge, 2004), s.a. 1095 (p. 105); RRAN, i, no. 362; Barlow, William Rufus, pp 432–8. 46 Anglo-Saxon chronicle, vii: MS E, ed. Irvine, s.a. 1095 (p. 106); Barlow, William Rufus, p. 355.

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should attend him there;47 and he spent Easter 1097 at Windsor, where the nobility of England and Normandy attended him ‘with great reverence and fear’, and held a crown-wearing at the castle that Pentecost.48 ‘Thereafter’, we are told, ‘with a great army he went into Wales and quickly penetrated that land with his forces (… his hired æt Windlesoran heold. ┐ Þæræfter mid mycclum here into Waelon ferde ┐Þet land swiðe mid his fyrde)’, and presumably Walter fitz Oter was among the men who went with him: it has been argued that knights like Walter who owed castle-guard at Windsor also owed host duty.49 Perhaps it is no coincidence that it was in these years, as we shall see, that the Geraldines made their initial appearance in Wales.

GERALD’S MOTHER

From her brief mention (cited above) in the Abingdon chronicle we know that Walter fitz Oter’s wife was a lady called Beatrice, who is, therefore, the probable mother of Gerald, founder of the Geraldines. There is, however, another tradition to the effect that Walter fitz Oter married a Welsh lady called Gwladus, daughter of Rhiwallon ap Cynfyn. What are we to make of this? These are certainly historical figures. Along with his better-known brother Bleddyn (d. 1075), ancestor of the later princes of Powys, Rhiwallon ruled Gwynedd and Powys for a number of years before his death in 1069, while his daughter Gwladus is best remembered as wife, not of Walter fitz Oter, but of the famous Rhys ap Tewdwr, king of Deheubarth (d. 1093).50 The latter was killed by the Normans then rapidly overrunning south Wales and one could imagine the newly widowed Gwladus being married off to one of these Norman newcomers, conceivably Walter fitz Oter. But there are all sorts of problems with the suggestion. For starters, Walter’s wife Beatrice was still living in 1100 and perhaps for many years afterwards and therefore a marriage to Gwladus cannot have happened in the near aftermath of the Norman expansion into Wales in the early to mid-1090s; as for Walter himself, as we shall see there are grounds for thinking that he was dead by 1107, and it hard to envisage circumstances in which, in the early years of the twelfth century, this elderly Home Counties baron and castellan of Windsor would embark on a strategic marriage-alliance in Wales. The other main objection is the most serious: by her marriage to Rhys ap Tewdwr, Gwladus was mother of the famous Nest. Nest, of course, would subsequently marry Walter’s son Gerald. If the suggestion that his father had 47 Anglo-Saxon chronicle, vii: MS E, ed. Irvine, s.a. 1095 (p. 107); Barlow, William Rufus, p. 355. 48 Henry of Huntingdon, Historia Anglorum: The history of the English people, ed. Diana E. Greenway (Oxford, 1996), p. 427; Barlow, William Rufus, pp 369, 373. 49 Hollister, Military organization of Norman England, p. 142. 50 K.L. Maund, Ireland, Wales, and England in the eleventh century (Woodbridge, 1991), pp 36, 68–76.

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married Gwladus were true, this would entail Gerald marrying his own stepsister. The whole story of Walter fitz Oter’s marriage to Gwladus therefore seems preposterous. And at first sight it is difficult to know how it gained currency (although it was trusted unquestionably by more than one modern historian of medieval Ireland and continues to gain currency in this internet age).51 It is likely that modern enthusiasts of genealogy came across it in Burke’s Peerage where it stubbornly persists. But it was not in the first edition of the latter published in 1826,52 or subsequent annual editions before the 1860s.53 No doubt the information was picked up at that point from the marquess of Kildare’s recently published history of the Kildare Geraldines (1857) which, without citing any source, bluntly states that Walter fitz Oter ‘married Gladys, daughter of Rhiwallon ap Cynvyn, Prince of North Wales’.54 In fact, Sir Bernard Burke, Ulster King of Arms, editor of the eponymous Peerage, published a review of Lord Kildare’s volume in the Dublin University Magazine in 1858 in which he recited from it the detail of Walter’s marriage to Gwladus,55 and hence its appearance in subsequent editions of Burke’s Peerage. Lord Kildare owned a copy of Lodge’s Peerage (1754) and/or its elaborated version by Mervyn Archdall (1789) (volume two of which had in fact been dedicated to his grandfather, the second duke of Leinster), and this is probably where he obtained the information, as both Lodge and Archdall’s Lodge tell us that Walter married ‘Gladys, the Daughter of Rywall ap Conyn’.56 But in the same year in which Lodge’s Peerage first appeared, there was also published, and also in London, Arthur Collins’s Historical collections of the noble family of Windsor.57 Collins has the same story and gives a form of spelling (‘Gladys, daughter of Rywallon ap Convyn’) closer to that of Lord Kildare. Perhaps, then, the latter acquired the detail from Collins if, that is, he owned a copy of this work on his de Windsor ancestors. Collins, a generally reliable genealogist, claimed to have got the information from a pedigree of the Geraldine earls of Kerry put together in 1615 by Sir William Segar, Garter king of Arms. I have not located this 51 Edmund Curtis, ‘Murchertach O’Brien, high king of Ireland, and his Norman son-in-law, Arnulf de Montgomery, circa 1100’, JRSAI, 51 (1921), 116–24, at 118; F.X. Martin, ‘The first Normans in Munster’, JCHAS, 76 (1971), 48–71, at 51. 52 See John Burke (ed.), A general and heraldic dictionary of the peerage and baronetage of the United Kingdom, for M.D.CCC.XXVI (London, 1826), s.n. ‘Leinster’. 53 See Bernard Burke (ed.), A genealogical and heraldic dictionary of the peerage and baronetage of the British Empire, 27th ed. (London, 1865), s.v. ‘Leinster’. 54 Fitzgerald, Earls of Kildare, p. 2. 55 Sir Bernard Burke, ‘The earls of Kildare’, Dublin University Magazine, 51 (1858), 28–39, at 29; reprinted as ‘The Geraldines’, in idem, Vicissitudes of families, and other essays (London, 1859), pp 406–37, at p. 410. 56 Lodge, Peerage of Ireland, i, p. 2; ibid., ed. Archdall, i, p. 55. 57 Arthur Collins, Historical collections of the noble family of Windsor; Barons Windsor from the reign of King William the Conqueror, and earls of Plimouth from the reign of King Charles the Second; Viscounts Windsor of the kingdom of Ireland from the reign of King William the third; and Barons Montjoy in England from the reign of Queen Anne […] (London, 1754), p. 4.

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pedigree, though Segar’s production of such a work seems very plausible.58 Even this is not the first occurrence. In the chronicle of Meredith Hanmer, written in the 1590s and published by Sir James Ware in 1633, we are told: Rees ap Tewder Prince of Southwales had a daughter called Nesta, who by King Henry the first had issue, Henry, and he had issue Meiler Fitz Henry and Robart; she was afterwards married to Stephan, and he had issue, Robart Fitz Stephan, and his issue were Radulph and Mereduk; shee had a third husband, Giraldus Steward of Pembroke [i.e., Gerald of Windsor], whose mother was Gladys the daughter of Rywall ap Conyn.59 Perhaps, then, it was Hanmer who was the first to make the error about Gwladus being Gerald’s mother (and his identical spelling of her father’s name suggests Lodge read about her here) and one can see how it happened: what he had intended to say (or what his source had said) was that Gwladus daughter of Rhiwallon ap Cynfyn was the mother of Nest but, by intruding Gerald into the sentence, he ended up saying that Gwladus was the mother of Nest’s husband. She was, of course, not Gerald’s mother but his mother-in-law. G E R A L D ’ S O L D E S T B RO T H E R , W I L L I A M

It seems therefore that the only wife, at least the only certain wife,60 of Walter fitz Oter was the Beatrice who accompanied his son – presumably his eldest son – to Abingdon to confirm the father’s agreement with Abbot Faricius. This son’s name was William, a name that would regularly reappear in the family (though less so among its Irish offshoot as their Windsor connection grew more distant). We do not know either when William succeeded his father or when precisely Walter fitz Oter died, but it was obviously at some point after Faricius became abbot of Abingdon in late 1100; and the fact that Walter had to send his wife and son to Abingdon to complete the formalities he had begun at Windsor might suggest a severe infirmity on his part at that stage. What can be stated with certainty is that William had succeeded his father as keeper of the forest of Windsor (and presumably as castellan of Windsor) by 1116 since a writ to him in that capacity was issued by Henry I at Brill in Buckinghamshire, witnessed by Eudo Dapifer who died in 1120 having spent the previous four years in Normandy with the king.61 Round, therefore, accepts a terminus of 1116 for 58 See Anthony R.J.S. Adolph, ‘Segar, Sir William (b. in or before 1564, d. 1633)’, ODNB. 59 Sir James Ware (ed.), The historie of Ireland, collected by three learned authors viz. Meredith Hanmer Doctor in Divinitie: Edmund Campion sometime fellow of St Iohns Colledge in Oxford: and Edmund Spenser Esq (Dublin, 1633), p. 10 (repr. in Sir James Ware (ed.), Ancient Irish histories, 2 vols (Dublin, 1809), ii, p. 19). 60 It is possible, as we shall see, that his son Maurice and an unnamed daughter were by another mother: see Round, ‘Origin II’, 97. 61 Chronicon monasterii de Abingdon, ed. Stevenson, ii, p. 94; William Farrer, An outline

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Walter fitz Oter’s demise, though there may be grounds for thinking that he was dead for a decade or more by then as another of those addressed in the same writ, Croc the Huntsman, ceases to attest royal acta after 1106.62 More to the point, there exists in the Abingdon cartulary another writ of Henry I notifying the addressee of his grant to Abbot Faricius of a house and land at Windsor. The addressee, written to undoubtedly because he is the king’s officer at Windsor, is one ‘Walter son of Walter of Windsor (Waltero filio Walteri de Windresore)’.63 The writ is attested at London by the Norfolk baron and royal councillor, Roger I Bigod, who died in 1107,64 and as ‘Walter of Windsor’ is certainly Walter fitz Oter – who is presumably deceased if his son has replaced him in office – he must have died by 1107 at the latest. (As to who Walter son of Walter of Windsor is, there is no other record of Walter fitz Oter having a son of this name, and hence he may not have long outlived his father or, more likely perhaps, ‘Walter fitz Walter’ may be an error for the much better substantiated William fitz Walter.)65 William fitz Walter (sometimes known to modern writers as William of Eton), the senior surviving sibling of Gerald the eponym, is certainly a man of stature, and represented at least the second generation of the family to act as a royal castellan. The famous pipe roll of Michaelmas 1130 sees him acting as keeper of the forest of Windsor,66 but we only know for certain that he had custody of Windsor castle during Henry I’s reign from the confirmation issued by Henry’s daughter the Empress Matilda in 1141/2, which states that the keepership is granted to him and his heirs just as he and his ancestors had it from King Henry I and his ancestors (quod Willelmus filius Walteri et heredes sui habeant custodiam castelli de Windesh[ores] et omnia sua tenementa sicut ipse Willelmus et antecessores sui eam habuerunt de Rege H. patre meo et antecessoribus ipsius).67 The remarkable thing about William fitz Walter’s confirmation as keeper of Windsor is that it is framed as a concession by the Empress to the controversial earl of Essex, Geoffrey de Mandeville (Concedo etiam eidem Comiti Gaufredo quod Willelmus filius Walteri et heredes sui habeant custodiam castelli de Windesh[ores]) and appears as but one clause in a lengthy grant of lands and privileges to Earl Geoffrey (including custody of the Tower of London) and to a number of his relatives and associates.68 It therefore places William fitz Walter firmly in de Mandeville’s itinerary of King Henry the First (Oxford, 1920), p. 60; RRAN, ii, no. 696. 62 RRAN, ii, no. 696. 63 Chronicon monasterii de Abingdon, ed. Stevenson, ii, p. 112; RRAN, ii, no. 858. 64 Andrew Wareham, ‘The motives and politics of the Bigod family’, ANS, 17 (1995), 223–42. 65 Round, ‘Origin I’, 126, assumes the latter. 66 Joseph Hunter (ed.), The pipe roll of 31 Henry I, Michaelmas, 1130, reproduced in facsimile from the edition of 1833 (London, 1929), p. 127. 67 RRAN, iii, no. 275; J.H. Round, Geoffrey de Mandeville, a study of the anarchy (London, 1892), pp 169–70; Judith A. Green, The government of England under Henry I (Cambridge, 1986), p. 254. 68 It and three other charters to de Mandeville have been the subject of much debate, primarily as to their sequence: see Round, Geoffrey de Mandeville; R.H.C. Davis, ‘Geoffrey de Mandeville reconsidered’, EHR, 79:311 (1964), 299–307; J.O. Prestwich, ‘The treason of Geoffrey de Mandeville’, ibid., 103:407 (1988), 283–312; R.H.C.

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camp but, within two years, the latter was deprived of his lands and castles (including the Tower) by King Stephen, broke out in rebellion, being mortally wounded in 1144.69 It seems likely that William fitz Walter suffered by association with de Mandeville – or indeed joined him in rebellion – and thereby lost Windsor castle. By 1153, when Stephen accepted Henry fitz Empress as his heir under the terms of the Treaty of Westminster, custody of both the Tower and Windsor castle was given to the long-serving royal administrator Richard de Lucy (presumably to ensure their peaceful transfer to Henry II at his accession).70 Gerald’s brother William did not live long beyond these developments:71 his son, also called William, received a grant – dateable to before 1164 as it is witnessed by Henry II’s brother William (d. 1164) – of all the land of his father William fitz Walter and of his grandfather Walter fitz Oter (Sciatis me deddisse et concessisse Willelmo de Windesoriis totam terram que fuit Willelmi filii Walteri patris sui et Walteri filii Otheri avi sui).72 In 1166, this William fitz William made a Cartae baronum return (in response to King Henry’s instruction to his tenantsin-chief to list the sub-tenancies they had created on their lands and the amount of knight-service due) in which he revealed a servitium debitum (the quota of knights owed for service to the king) of twenty knights.73 When he did not accompany the king on his Irish expedition of 1171–2, a scutage of a pound per knight’s fee was payable and the pipe roll records the receipt of £20 from William of Windsor,74 a servitium debitum which places him in the top forty or so of Henry II’s great lay tenants-in-chief.75 Although this William of Windsor – a nephew of Gerald the eponym – continues to crop up occasionally in the pipe rolls overseeing building works at Windsor castle, for the rest of his life Richard de Lucy (d. 1179) is the one accounting for the farm of Windsor and the census of the forest,76 and it appears that the descendants of Walter fitz Oter lost their Davis, ‘The treason of Geoffrey de Mandeville: a comment’, ibid., 103:407 (1988), 313–17; J.O. Prestwich, ‘Geoffrey de Mandeville: a further comment’, ibid., 103:409 (1988), 960–6; R.H.C. Davis, ‘Geoffrey de Mandeville: a final comment’, ibid., 103:409 (1988), 967–8. 69 C. Warren Hollister, ‘The misfortunes of the Mandevilles’, History, 58 (1973), 18–28, reprinted in idem, Monarchy, magnates and institutions in the Anglo-Norman world (London, 1986), pp 117–27. 70 RRAN, iii, no. 272; R.H.C. Davis, King Stephen (revised ed., London, 1977), pp 117–28; J.W. Leedom, ‘The English settlement of 1153’, History, 65 (1980), 347– 64; Emilie Amt, The accession of Henry II in England: royal government restored, 1149–1159 (Woodbridge, 1993), p. 17; Bond, ‘Medieval constables of Windsor castle’, 244. For de Lucy, see Emilie M. Amt, ‘Richard de Lucy, Henry II’s justiciar’, Medieval Prosopography, 9 (1988), 61–87. 71 Frank Barlow (William Rufus, p. 134) thought that he was the ‘W. filius Odonis’ who was a canon of Llanthony Secunda in Gloucestershire (Historia et cartularium monasterii Sancti Petri Gloucestriae, ed. V.H. Hart, 3 vols (RS, London, 1863–7), ii, p. 112) and that perhaps he had retired there, but I cannot see the connection; see ibid., i, p. 236, for this William fitz Odo as a canon of Llanthony at a date when our William fitz Walter was still active in Windsor. 72 Quoted in Round, ‘Origin I’, 125, n. 4. 73 Red bk exchequer, i, pp 315–16. 74 PR, 18 Hen. II (1171–2), p. 51. 75 D.C. Douglas and G.W. Greenaway (eds), English historical documents, ii: 1042–1189 (Oxford, 1953), p. 905. 76 See, for example, PR, 7 Hen.

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claim to act as hereditary castellans of Windsor.77 They remained, however, figures of consequence in the vicinity for centuries, bearing the surname Windsor of Stanwell.78

G E R A L D ’ S B RO T H E R M AU R I C E

Another probable son of Walter fitz Oter was named Maurice of Windsor,79 an identification all the more likely given that we see here a name that Gerald would give to one of his own sons, and which would long remain a favourite of the family, but which had hitherto been rare: there is only one Maurice among the Domesday tenants in all of England, namely the newly elected bishop of London (1085–1107), who had been the Conqueror’s chancellor between 1078 and 1085.80 Given the royal administrative circles in which Walter fitz Oter mixed, it is possible that his choice of the name Maurice for one of his sons signifies a connection. Maurice of Windsor was doubtless born by about 1090 because, during the incumbency of Abbot Albold (1114–19), he was appointed to the dapiferatus (the stewardship) of the great monastery of Bury St Edmunds and also held five knights’ fees from the abbey, including the manors of Lidgate in Suffolk and Blunham in Bedfordshire.81 Maurice’s predecessor in the office, a certain Ralph, had a wife named Edith,82 and so too had Maurice (and, in 1130, Maurice and Edith granted a chapel at Hoxne in Suffolk to Norwich cathedral II (1160–61), pp 51–2; PR, 8 Hen. II (1161–2), pp 29–30, 43; PR, 9 Hen. II (1162–3), pp 53, 71; PR, 10 Hen. II (1163–4), p. 43; PR, 11 Hen. II (1164–5), p. 77; PR, 12 Hen. II (1165–6), pp 11, 116, 129–30; PR, 13 Hen. II (1166–7), p. 16; PR, 14 Hen. II (1167–8), p. 198; PR, 16 Hen. II (1169–70), p. 74. 77 Bond, ‘Medieval constables of Windsor castle’, 243–9. 78 It might be noted in passing that doubt exists as to whether the Sir William Windsor (d. 1384), who was chief governor of Ireland in the later fourteenth century, was descended from these Windsors of Stanwell: CP, viii, pp 183–4; G.F. Duckett, Duchetiana; or historical and genealogical memoirs of the family of Duket from the Norman Conquest to the present time […] (London, 1874), pp 249–66, 313–6, attempts to prove that he was. 79 Horace Round was the first to spot that he may be a member of the family (Round, ‘Origin II’, 92), but Nicholas Vincent has stated that his ‘kinship to Walter fitz Othuer may have been more remote than Round allowed’: see Vincent, ‘Warin and Henry fitz Gerald, the king’s chamberlains: the origins of the FitzGeralds revisited’, ANS, 21 (1999), 233–60, at 248. 80 For Bishop Maurice, see C.N.L. Brooke, ‘The earliest times to 1485’, in W.R. Matthews and W.M. Atkins (eds), A history of St Paul’s cathedral and the men associated with it (London, 1957), pp 1–99, at pp 18–23; Falko Neininger (ed.), London, 1076–1187, English Episcopal Acta 15 (Oxford, 1999), pp xliii–xlviii. 81 For the charters of appointment, see Chronica Jocelini de Brakelonda, de rebus gestis Samsonis abbatis monasterii Sancti Edmundi, ed. John Gage Rokewode, Camden Society (London, 1840), pp 118–19; D.C. Douglas (ed.), Feudal documents from the abbey of Bury St Edmunds (London, 1932), pp 110–11, nos 108–9; see also, Angela Green, ‘The stewardship of the liberty of the Eight and a Half Hundreds’, Proceedings of the Suffolk Institute of Archaeology and History, 30 (1964–6), 255–62, at 255. 82 Barbara Dodwell, ‘Some charters relating to the honour of Bacton’, in P.M. Barnes and C.F. Slade (eds), A medieval miscellany for Doris Mary Stenton (Pipe Roll Society, new series, 36, 1962), pp 147–65, at pp 149, 160; Douglas, Feudal documents, pp cxxxvii (n. 5), 60.

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to pray for the soul of Ralph who had built it),83 so that it looks as though Maurice married Ralph’s widow and acquired the stewardship in her right. It was a prestigious and lucrative office for a younger son: the abbey, one of the most prosperous in England, which the Conqueror and his queen had patronized more lavishly than any other English house, held eight and a half hundreds comprising all West Suffolk (including the town of Bury itself) and very extensive lands also in Norfolk and to a lesser extent Essex and elsewhere.84 Efforts to improve the administration of the abbey’s vast estates had seen the composition of its ‘Feudal Book’ associated with Abbot Baldwin (d. 1097) but which, it has been suggested, may belong to the abbacy of Albold (d. 1119),85 who appointed Maurice. As its steward, Maurice would have had responsibility for the administration of this formidable domain:86 the abbey having its own liberty jurisdiction, he exercised functions akin to those of a county sheriff, being concerned with the governance of the liberty, maintenance of law and order, and so forth,87 and, as Paul Brand has shown, monastic stewards like Maurice were ‘intended to be a general representative of the house in all its dealings with the outside world and second in importance (in this role at least) only to the abbot of the house’.88 When the abbot in question was, as in the case of Bury, one of the most important churchmen in England, his secular second-in-command was himself therefore a man of some rank. Hence this younger son shortly emerges as an individual mixing in exalted circles. Not long after he succeeded to the dapifership he travelled to Henry I at 83 Dodwell, ‘Charters relating to Bacton’, pp 149 (n. 5), 161–2, 165; Maurice and Edith, his wife, gave to the nuns of Wix, as a part of her inheritance, Northey Island and the tithes of their lordship of Purleigh in Essex (A descriptive catalogue of ancient deeds in the Public Record Office, iv (London, 1902), no. A 8923); see C.N.L. Brooke, ‘Episcopal charters for Wix Priory’, in Barnes and Slade (eds), Stenton miscellany, pp 45–63, at pp 59, 61; L. Landon, ‘The Barony of Little Easton and the family of Hastings’, Transactions of the Essex Archaeological Society, n.s., 19 (1930), 174–9. 84 Cownie, Religious patronage in Anglo-Norman England, p. 71; David Bates, ‘The abbey and the Norman Conquest: an unusual case?’, in Tom Licence (ed.), Bury St Edmunds and the Norman Conquest (Woodbridge, 2014), pp 5–21, at p. 12. 85 Douglas (ed.), Feudal documents from the abbey of Bury St Edmunds, pp xx, xlvi–ii; Rodney M. Thomson, The archives of the abbey of Bury St Edmunds, Suffolk Records Society XXI (Woodbridge, 1980), p. 16; Antonia Gransden, ‘Baldwin, abbot of Bury St Edmunds abbey, 1065–1097’, ANS, 4 (1982), 65–76, at 75; on the date, see R.V. Lennard, Rural England 1086– 1135 (Oxford, 1959), p. 369; John S. Moore, ‘“Quot homines?”: the population of Domesday England’, ANS, 19 (1997), 307–34, at 316–17. 86 For the dapifer in secular lordships, see, for example, Stenton, First century, pp 73–9; Noel Denholm-Young, Seignorial administration in England Oxford, 1937), pp 66–9; Sidney Painter, Studies in the history of the English feudal barony (Baltimore, 1943), s.v. ‘Seneschal’; J.F.A. Mason, ‘Barons and their officials in the later eleventh century’, ANS, 13 (1991), 243–62; for monastic dapifers, see David Knowles, The religious orders in England, 3 vols (Cambridge, 1948–59), i, p. 273; Paul Brand, ‘The rise and fall of the hereditary steward in English ecclesiastical institutions, 1066–1300’, in Timothy Reuter (ed.), Warriors and churchmen in the high Middle Ages (London, 1992), pp 145–62. 87 Green, ‘Stewardship of the liberty of the Eight and a Half Hundreds’, 255. 88 Brand, ‘The rise and fall’, p. 155.

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Rouen and was the sole witness to the latter’s confirmation of the liberties of the monks of Bury throughout their eight and a half hundreds, secured another (undated) such confirmation at Woodstock and a third at Winchester around 1121, always acting as the sole witness, but on the latter occasion remaining at the royal court to attest at least one other royal notification, and when King Henry spent Whitsuntide at Maurice’s birthplace of Windsor in the following year, Maurice took advantage of the opportunity to squeeze one more confirmation for Bury out of him.89 We see something of Maurice’s influence at court from the extraordinary letter issued by Henry, perhaps in 1122 and witnessed solely by Maurice, urging Abbot Anselm of Bury not to travel abroad ‘because the monks and the knights of the abbey [including Maurice, of course] object’.90 He is a companion of bishops, being the sole layman to join the incumbents of Durham and Norwich in witnessing another royal act,91 attested Henry I’s foundation of Dunstable priory in the company of two bishops, the king’s chancellor and a half-dozen noblemen,92 and could spend Christmas with royalty as he did in 1128 with Henry I at Argentan in central Normandy where he witnessed – doubtless having secured – one of his charters in favour of a relative, the heir of Robert son of Walter of Windsor.93 The pipe roll of 1130 records the great landholders whom Henry exempted from paying danegeld. Maurice was one of them – indeed nine separate instances of royal fiscal patronage to him are recorded there – being a substantial individual who held land in no fewer than eight counties: Essex, Suffolk, Norfolk, Middlesex, Berkshire, Bedfordshire, Northamptonshire and Dorset.94 In 1136, Maurice witnessed a charter in favour of Reading abbey in Berkshire, where Henry I had recently been buried, it having been founded by him; it was issued by Henry’s second queen, Adeliza of Louvain (whose wedding and coronation had taken place at Windsor castle in 1121).95 By 1138/9 he was attesting charters of the new Queen Matilda, wife of Stephen.96 Unsurprisingly, therefore, he secured a confirmation from Stephen of his lands and ministerium,97 and his favour outlived the Anarchy, being a witness to early charters of Stephen’s successor Henry fitz Empress. After upwards of forty years as steward of the abbey of Bury St Edmunds Maurice died, without children, and a charter issued by Henry II in 1155 confirms that his lands and office went to his sister’s son Ralph de Hastings.98 It 89 RRAN, ii, nos 1227, 1278, 1283, 1321, 1813. 90 Ibid., ii, no. 1340. 91 Ibid., ii, no. 1435. 92 Ibid., ii, no. 1827. 93 Ibid., ii, no. 1556. 94 Pipe roll 31 Henry I, pp 14, 57, 59, 81, 86, 95, 99, 104, 126, 152; Stephanie L. Mooers, ‘Patronage in the pipe roll of 1130’, Speculum, 59:2 (1984), 282–307, at 307. 95 B.R. Kemp (ed.), Reading Abbey cartularies, 2 vols, Camden Society, 4th ser., 31, 33 (London, 1986–7), no. 370; see Kathleen Thompson, ‘Queen Adeliza and the Lotharingian connection’, Sussex Archaeological Collections, 140 (2002), 57–64; Pauline Stafford, ‘Cherchez la femme. Queens, queens’ lands and nunneries: missing links in the foundation of Reading abbey’, History, 85 (2000), 3–27. 96 RRAN, iii, nos 850–1. 97 Chronica Jocelini de Brakelonda, p. 119; Douglas (ed.), Feudal documents from the abbey of Bury, p. 80, no. 57. 98 Chronica Jocelini de Brakelonda, p. 119; Douglas (ed.), Feudal

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is not certain how the latter can have been Maurice’s heir given the number of brothers and brothers’ sons he had (always assuming he was Gerald’s brother): one possible explanation is that Maurice and his sister were only half-siblings to the rest of Walter fitz Oter’s children.99 However it happened, Ralph de Hastings did indeed succeed to his uncle Maurice’s dapifership of Bury but, remarkably, was already dapifer to Henry II’s queen, Eleanor of Aquitaine,100 a further indication of the intimacy which Gerald the eponym’s extended family had with the halls of power.

G E R A L D ’ S B RO T H E R R E I N A L D

Gerald appears to have had another sibling who did equally well for himself at managing the affairs of the great and the good. Among the witnesses to Abbot Albold’s charter granting the Bury dapifership to Maurice was a Reinald de Wyndelshore.101 The charter of Queen Adeliza in favour of Reading abbey, issued in 1136, which Maurice had witnessed, was also witnessed by Reinald, described as his brother (and the brothers were in Reading a couple of years later to witness King Stephen’s confirmation of the grant by his queen, Matilda, of Cowley near Oxford to the Knights Templar).102 Reinald/Reginald attested further acta of Queen Adeliza,103 as well as a confirmation of one of her grants issued by her second husband William d’Aubigny Pincerna, earl of Arundel.104 Moreover, Adeliza and her husband allowed Reinald to have the lucrative honour of Petworth, which was held of the earldom of Arundel for the service of 22½ knights (it was subsequently held by Adeliza’s brother Jocelin of Louvain).105 From others of Queen Adeliza’s charters we learn that Reinald was in fact her dapifer,106 that is, the steward of the household of the queen consort (or, subsequently, dowager queen). It was a high-status, if not perhaps powerful, documents from the abbey of Bury, pp 97–8, no. 87. 99 For further speculation, see Landon, ‘The barony of Little Easton’; G. Andrews Moriarty, ‘The origin of the Hastings’, New England Historical Genealogical Register, 96 (1942), 36–48; G. Andrews Moriarty, ‘Hastings, barons of Little Eston, co. Essex, England’, New England Historical Genealogical Register, 101 (1947), 291–5; J.A. Clarence Smith, ‘Hastings of Little Easton’, Trans. Essex Arch. Soc., 2 (1966–7), 1–13, 101–22; K.S.B. Keats-Rohan, ‘Additions and corrections to Sanders’s Baronies’, Prosopon Newsletter, 11 (2000), 1–4, at 3. 100 See Henry’s charter granting him the Bury dapifership in which he is styled dapifer to the queen: Chronica Jocelini de Brakelonda, pp 118–19. 101 See Keats-Rohan, Domesday descendants, p. 789. 102 Kemp (ed.), Reading Abbey cartularies, no. 370; RRAN, iii, nos 850–1. 103 See, for example, L.F. Salzman (ed.), The chartulary of the priory of St Pancras of Lewes, 2 vols, Sussex Record Society, 38, 40 (1932–4), ii, p. 117; Kemp (ed.), Reading Abbey cartularies, no. 535, 538. 104 Kemp (ed.), Reading Abbey cartularies, no. 371. 105 Salzman (ed.), Chartulary of the priory of St Pancras of Lewes, ii, pp 116–17; Red bk exchequer, i, p. 201; L.F. Salzman, ‘On the early history of the honor of Petworth’, Sussex Archaeological Collections, 66 (1927), 60–6; Kathleen Thompson, ‘The early descent of the honour of Petworth’, Sussex Archaeological Collections, 124 (1986), 262–3. 106 V.H. Galbraith, ‘Royal charters to Winchester’, EHR,

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position and if he is indeed – as seems very likely – Gerald’s brother, it is interesting to see yet again the way in which these children of Walter fitz Oter, reared no doubt at Windsor castle, came to utilize to the full for careerenhancing ends the connections there made.

POSSIBLE OTHER KINSMEN OF GERALD

Among the Domesday manors that Walter fitz Oter held in chief were West Horsley and Compton in Surrey and he was also a tenant of Chertsey abbey in the same county. Walter made a grant to the latter of the tithes of Horsley and Compton, doing so in the presence of (quam in presentia mea dedit) the bishop of Winchester, William Giffard (1100–29), and a man named Hugh, described as the son of Walter fitz Oter, subsequently augmented this grant.107 If accurate, this is evidently another brother of Gerald. When Gerald’s nephew William fitz William submitted his Cartae baronum return in 1166, he recorded a Hugh de Windsor holding one knight’s fee at Horsley,108 presumably this same Hugh fitz Walter, his first cousin (or perhaps, given the passage of time, a son of the same name). It is commonly said (and Horace Round was insistent) that Gerald of Windsor had another brother called Robert who was baron of Little Easton in Essex.109 This Robert had died by 1128 when Henry I issued a charter in favour of Robert’s son William and, not only was Robert styled in it ‘Robert son of Walter de Wyndesora’, but it was witnessed by our Maurice of Windsor who had perhaps journeyed to Argentan to secure it on William’s behalf.110 Also, like that of Walter fitz Oter, Robert’s Easton barony was held in return for castle-guard at Windsor.111 Strong claims have, however, been made – there has been a veritable miasma of convoluted argumentation on the subject – that Robert was not a son of Walter fitz Oter but rather of another Domesday tenant-in-chief called Walter Diaconus (the Deacon) who held, besides Easton, other lands in Essex, and a considerable estate in Suffolk, Norfolk and elsewhere.112 Proponents of this identification allow nevertheless for a close connection between Robert and our family: it has been asserted that he may have married Walter fitz Oter’s daughter and a case can be made for a double connection, namely, that Edith, the wife of 35:139 (1920), 382–400, nos 41, 42; Round, ‘Origin II’, 94. 107 Chertsey abbey cartularies, 2 vols, Surrey Record Society 12 (1915–63), i, nos 45, 54; M.J. Franklin (ed.), Winchester 1070– 1204, English Episcopal Acta 8 (Oxford, 1993), nos 4, 147; Keats-Rohan, Domesday people, p. 455. 108 Red bk exchequer, i, pp 315–16. 109 Round, ‘Origin II’, 91–2. 110 RRAN, ii, no. 1556; CChR 1257–1300, p. 137; CPR 1334–8, p. 249. 111 Red bk exchequer, ii, pp 716– 17; Sanders, English baronies, pp 94, 116–17, 130; Round, ‘Castle Guard’; Keefe, Feudal assessments, pp 77–8. 112 See, for example, G.T.C. Clark, ‘The rise and race of Hastings’, Archaeological Journal, 26 (1869), 12–19, 121–36, 236–56; Sanders, English baronies, p. 130; Smith, ‘Hastings of Little Easton’; Barlow, William Rufus, pp 171, 470; Keats-Rohan, ‘Additions and corrections to Sanders’s Baronies’, 3; eadem, Domesday people, p. 454; eadem,

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Maurice of Windsor, was Robert’s sister, the suggestion being, therefore, that two of Walter fitz Oter’s children married two of Walter the Deacon’s children.113 Be that as it may, there are other unproven but suggestive connections as to the kindred network of Gerald the eponym. Nicholas Vincent posits a link between our family and the two well-known brothers Warin and Henry fitz Gerald, successively chamberlains of Henry II.114 Apart from their similar profiles as families making their way in life by handling other people’s paperwork, and the fact that they were employed by the same coterie of individuals, held lands from the same people, and feature in the same people’s charters, there are incidental facts that appear to indicate a connection between them. Henry fitz Gerald had earlier been the dapifer to the younger Geoffrey de Mandeville (d. 1166), second earl of Essex, with whose father, as we have seen, our Gerald’s older brother William of Windsor had been associated. Warin fitz Gerald chose to be interred in the abbey of Bury St Edmonds, of which, as we have seen, Maurice of Windsor was the dapifer, and both of the latter appear as witnesses to at least one charter, so they certainly knew each other. And, of course, one thing that particularly links both families is the occurrence of the name Gerald. In the case of Warin fitz Gerald and his brother Henry, the name fitz Gerald was not a genuine patronymic as Gerald was not their father’s name; he may have been their grandfather and they were using it now as a surname, perhaps the first family in England to adopt the practice.115 Professor Vincent has speculated that the link between both groups of individuals may be a man called Gerald who was a dapifer – yet another – of William as duke of Normandy, before the Conquest.116 This Gerald came to England, his sons Robert and Roger fitz Gerald being recorded in Domesday, and he was ancestor of the Roumare family who became earls of Lincoln. I am less certain of Professor Vincent’s other suggestion that Henry and Warin fitz Gerald may have been grandsons of our Gerald, sons of an otherwise unknown Robert son of Gerald,117 perhaps by a woman other than Nest. I say so because Warin and Henry were nearing the end of their careers by the 1160s and were both dead by 1173, whereas Gerald of Windsor still had children alive at that stage and grandchildren who lived into the thirteenth century. Vincent wonders whether the precocious adoption of the surname FitzGerald by Warin and Henry might link them to our Gerald, on the assumption that the latter’s family similarly adopted the surname FitzGerald at an early date,118 but if Domesday descendants, p. 789. 113 See Landon, ‘Barony of Little Easton; Keats-Rohan, ‘Additions and corrections to Sanders’s Baronies’, 3. 114 Vincent, ‘Warin and Henry fitz Gerald’. 115 See J.C. Holt, What’s in a name? Family nomenclature and the Norman Conquest, The Stenton Lecture 1981 (Reading, 1982), reprinted in idem, Colonial England, 1066–1215 (London, 1997), pp 179–96, at p. 191. 116 As long ago as 1754 the antiquarian and genealogist Arthur Collins wondered about such a link, suggesting that Duke William’s dapifer Gerald may have been a brother of Walter’s father Óttarr and, he thought, father of Warin and Henry (Collins, Historical collections of the noble family of Windsor, p. 3). 117 Vincent, ‘Warin and Henry fitz Gerald’, p. 251. 118 Ibid.: ‘[I]t is surely a remarkable

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anything Gerald’s descendants were late to adopt a surname and – at least the Irish branch whom we sometimes, anachronistically, refer to as ‘FitzGeralds’ – do not appear to have used such a family name in the Middle Ages and retained true patronyms for centuries.

GERALD AND THE DE WINDSORS

Are we certain that Gerald the eponym was one of the de Windsors of Stanwell and Eton? And are we certain he was a son of Walter fitz Oter? Although there has in the past been an occasional tendency to mistrust both these suggestions, doubt as to Gerald’s relationship to the Windsor castellans seems unwarranted. First, but perhaps least persuasive, is the evidence of heraldic authorities who have noted that both the main English family, the de Windsors of Stanwell, and the FitzGeralds of Ireland, have on their coat of arms a plain red saltire on a white background, which suggests an ancestral link (though we cannot be certain when either was first adopted).119 Second, Giraldus Cambrensis, the famous author,120 son of Gerald’s daughter Angharad, specifically calls his grandfather Gerald de Windesora.121 Third, as previously mentioned, there is the coincidence of the occurrence of the hitherto comparatively rare name Maurice among the de Windsors and among Gerald’s sons and descendants. Fourth, we have seen that the de Windsors were castellans and professional dapifers or stewards and so it is worth remarking that, not only was Gerald the keeper of Pembroke castle, but the Welsh Latin chronicle Annales Cambriae calls him its dapifer and the vernacular version, Brut y Twywsogyon, repeatedly uses the English borrowing ‘steward (ystiwart)’ as an epithet for Gerald.122 Gerald’s stepson Henry fitz Henry (bastard son of Henry I), followed by Gerald’s own son Maurice (ancestor of the Irish Geraldines), continued the de Windsor family tradition of stewarding: both held the office of dapifer of the church lands of St Davids in Wales,123 and when Maurice died in 1176, his oldest son William secured the coincidence that the surname FitzGerald as used by Henry and Warin should appear at much the same time that the same name, FitzGerald, was adopted by the sons and grandsons of Gerald of Windsor’. 119 ‘Our researches have gone to prove, that the plain undifferenced saltier of the Wyndesores was derived from the earliest descendants of Fitz Other, Castellan of Windsor Castle, and founder of the family. It was transmitted to those different branches, which sprung from him, amongst others to the Fitzgeralds, the earls of Kildare, the earls of Desmond, and (according to Burke), the families of Grace, Carew, and Gerard’ (Duckett, Duchetiana, p. 108). 120 His work on the Geraldines is discussed by Huw Pryce, below, pp 53–68. 121 Giraldi Cambrensis opera, vi, p. 89 (Itinerarium, I.12). 122 See, for example, Annales Cambriae, ed. John Williams ab Ithel (RC, London, 1860), version C., s.a. 1097 (another version has praefectus); Brut, Red Book, s.a. 1097. 123 Julia Barrow believes that the dapifer of St Davids was a different Henry, the heir to the throne of Scotland, Henry earl of Northumberland (d. 1152), son of David I (St Davids episcopal acta, 1085–1280, ed. Julia Barrow, South Wales Record Society, 13 (1998), nos 33, 69). She does so because, in the only surviving copy of the charters, preserved in the fifteenth-century Gormanston Register, the

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position.124 Fifth, the latter’s charter of appointment, dated about 1177, was witnessed by a certain Walter ‘de Winsor’;125 as Gerald’s successors do not normally use this toponymic, this is surely the then head of the English de Windsors, Walter fitz Oter’s great-grandson, Walter fitz William of Stanwell and Eton. And finally, although it might seem surprising that this Berkshire baron should happen to witness a deed of the bishop of St Davids (though the latter, David fitz Gerald was son of Gerald the eponym, and hence Walter fitz William’s first cousin once removed), we have clear evidence of an ongoing relationship between both branches of the family: when Walter fitz William’s father submitted his Cartae baronum return in 1166, listing those tenants holding by knight service on his estate, they included a number of relations, such as Hugh de Windsor, Alexander de Windsor, William de Hastings, and one William filius Geroldi de Penbroc, who held two knights’ fees at ‘Harematog’.126 There is some doubt as to the location of the latter,127 but none as to the tenant himself: he is Gerald’s oldest son and heir, William de Carew (d. 1173). Hence, while Gerald and his family may have moved to Wales, they had not entirely severed links with their English cousins. G E R A L D A N D WA LT E R F I T z O T E R

As to Gerald’s paternity, this too has been doubted. His entry in the Oxford dictionary of national biography, for example, states that Walter fitz Oter ‘may have been Gerald’s father or his older brother’.128 Again, however, hesitancy is unnecessary. In 1212, King John gave a charter to William (d. 1213) de Carew, dapifer is twice styled Henrico filio Regis David/Davius. But on two other occasions in the same late transcript he is styled simply Henrico filio Regis. Perhaps the late copyist of these documents is merely guessing here, and was aware that King David of Scotland had a son Henry but did not know of the bastard son of Henry I with Nest who, at his death in 1157, is called by the Welsh annals Henri uap Henri vrenhin, ‘Henry son of King Henry’ (Brut, Red Book, s.a. 1100). Giraldus calls him Henricus … regis Henrici primi filius (Giraldi Cambrensis opera, vi, p. 130 (Itinerarium, II.7)). He features (in the company of some Cambro-Norman and Welsh clerics and laymen) in the form Henrico dapifero episcopi as a witness to a charter issued at Llanthony by William de Barry, husband of his uterine sister Angharad (daughter of Gerald and Nest) – not company one would expect the intended next king of Scotland to keep. Interestingly, in the Annales Cambriae he is styled ‘Henry fitz Gerald … or, according to some, he was King Henry’s son (Henricus filius Geraldi … velut alii volunt, filius fuit Henrici Regis)’ (Annales Cambriae, s.a. 1157). 124 William was therefore baron of Naas in Ireland but still steward of St Davids, an association with the Welsh diocese that continued, it seems, until this senior line of the descendants of Maurice died out a century later: Reg. Gormanston, pp 165–6; St Davids episcopal acta, ed. Barrow, nos 33, 69. 125 Reg. Gormanston, pp 165–6; St Davids episcopal acta, ed. Barrow, no. 69. 126 Liber niger scaccarii, nec non Wilhelmi Worcestrii annales rerum Anglicarum, cum præfatione et appendice Thomæ Hearnii ad editionem primam Oxoniæ editam, 2 vols (London, 1771), i, pp 192–3, ii, p. 637. For these kinsmen, see Keats-Rohan, Domesday descendants, pp 788–9. 127 The index to Red bk exchequer, iii, p. 1198, s.v. ‘Harematog’, gives Monmouthshire, but I have not found it there; it may possibly be Hermitage in Berkshire. 128 David Walker, ‘Windsor, Gerald of (d. 1116x36)’, ODNB.

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lord of Idrone in Ireland, son of Odo (d. c.1202) son of the William (d. 1173) just mentioned, oldest son of our Gerald: the charter confirmed to William the manor of Moulsford near Wallingford, ‘which King Henry, grandfather of King Henry our father, gave to Gerald fitz Walter, grandfather of Odo, father of the aforesaid William de Carew’, for the service of one knight.129 As far as I am aware, this is the only occasion on which our Gerald is specifically identified by his patronymic – he is certainly therefore Walter’s son – and Moulsford is about 30 miles west of Windsor in Berkshire, so that Gerald’s grant in the reign of Henry I (1100–35), perhaps a unique piece of evidence for his activities outside Wales, places him firmly within his father’s and his siblings’ ambit of activity. (Henry I, it will be remembered, fathered a child by Gerald’s wife Nest, and it is interesting to speculate whether Gerald’s procurement of Moulsford from the king foreshadowed or came in the wake of the latter’s liaison with his wife.) It is odd though that we do not know for certain that Gerald gave the name Walter to one of his own sons. Giraldus Cambrensis tells us that Gerald’s wife Nest had eight sons and we know that at least three were fathered by Gerald: William (de Carew) whom Giraldus confirms as primaevus,130 and who would have been born around the time – and hence, no doubt, the name – that Gerald’s older brother William fitz Walter succeeded their father at Windsor; then there is Maurice already mentioned, born slightly later and no doubt called after another uncle Maurice of Windsor; and finally David bishop of St Davids (who, though, may only have taken the name on entering the church). Three others (Henry, Robert and another William) were fathered respectively by Henry I of England, Stephan of Cardigan, and a certain Hay, who may have been sheriff of Pembroke. That leaves two: the Welsh name of one, Hywel, might suggest Gerald was not his father, but the last known son of Nest was called Walter:131 if he was not Gerald of Windsor’s son, his name is still surely significant and more than a nod towards Gerald’s father Walter fitz Oter.

G E R A L D ’ S M OV E T O WA L E S

All the evidence suggests that Gerald of Windsor was closely associated with Windsor castle in Berkshire throughout his early years and yet when we encounter him in his own right for the first time, in 1097, it is in southwest Wales, a long way from the Home Counties of his childhood. The Norman conquerors of England were, of course, never content with merely defending their frontier with Wales, so that the construction of border castles was 129 Rot. Chart, p. 186b; for William de Carew and his heirs, see J.H. Round, ‘The origin of the Carews’, The Ancestor, 5 (1903), 19–53. 130 Giraldi Cambrensis opera, i, pp 58–9 (De rebus, I.9); The description of Penbrokshire by George Owen of Henllys, Lord of Kemes, iii, ed. Henry Owen (London, 1906), p. 343. 131 Giraldi Cambrensis opera, i, p. 59 (De rebus, I.9).

Table 1.2: Descendants of Nest in Ireland.

William (d. c.1199) baron of Naas

Nest (d. c.1130)

Lords of Offaly/ Earls of Kildare (created 1316)

Gerald (d. 1204) lord of Offaly

Maurice lord of Kiltrany

Maurice (d. 1176) lord in Leinster

Earls of Desmond (created 1329)

Robert ancestor of FitzMaurice of Kerry

Alexander

≈ Stephen constable of Cardigan

Meredith (d. 1179)

Those in bold came to Ireland.

Ralph = Margaret (d. 1182)

Miles de Cogan lord in Munster

Robert fitz Stephen (d. c.1190) lord in Munster

(2)

Nest = Hervey de Montmorency (d. c.1189)

Giraldus Cambrensis ‘Gerald of Wales’ (d. 1224)

Angharad = William de Barri Lord of Manorbier

Philip de Barri lord of Uí Liatháin

Thomas (d. c.1214) lord of Shanid

Robert de Barri

FitzMilo of Overk

Miles fitz David, lord of Overk

David (d. 1176) Bishop of St Davids

GERALD of Windsor (d. p.1116) = (1) steward of Pembroke (eponym of the Geraldines)

Raymond le Gros = Basilia, sis. (d. c.1190) lord of Strongbow in Leinster and Desmond

William (d. 1173) Lord of Carew

Gruffudd baron of Knocktopher

William (d. 1213) lord of Idrone

Odo (d. c.1202) lord of Carew and Idrone

Rhys (d. 1197) Prince of Deheubarth

Gruffudd (d. 1137) king of Dyfed

Rhys ap Tewdwr (d. 1093), king of Deheubarth

≈ Henry I, king of Eng. (r. 1100–1135)

Meiler fitz Henry (d. 1220), lord in Leinster

Henry (d. 1157)

(3)

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accompanied by vigorous offensive raids, and marcher territories like Gwent and what became Ewyas Lacy fell to the conquerors within a few years of 1066. The visit by the Conqueror to St Davids in 1081 seems to have introduced a measure of stability, and a modus vivendi between him and the great Rhys ap Tewdwr of Deheubarth survived so long as either lived.132 But with Rufus’s succession in 1087, pressure on the Welsh intensified. The conquest of Brycheiniog under Bernard de Neufmarché had begun by 1088, but it was the death of Rhys in 1093 – either by treachery of or in combat with the Normans – that caused the floodgates of conquest to burst open.133 In this same year, Roger de Montgomery, earl of Shrewsbury, having previously secured a base in the very middle of Wales in Arwystli, made a sweeping move westwards to seek to conquer the coastal kingdom of Ceredigion, throwing up a motte on the River Teifi (at Aberteifi or Cardigan) on the very frontier with Dyfed. His army had as one of its leaders Earl Roger’s adventurous younger son Arnulf,134 and the latter then made a determined statement of intent by constructing Pembroke castle. Although Giraldus depicts its initial form as nothing more than ‘a slender fortress with stakes and turf (hoc castrum … ex virgis et cespite, tenue satis et exile construxit)’135 – presumably a motte with a timber stockade on top – it was on a superbly defensive site at the landward end of the greatest of the south-westerly inlets of Wales that is Milford Haven, and more than did its job: the Welsh chronicles lament that in 1093 ‘the French came to Dyfed and Ceredigion, which they have held to this day, and they fortified them with castles, and they seized all the land of the Britons’.136 The reason this matters to us here is because Giraldus is emphatic that, having built Pembroke castle, Arnulf de Montgomery returned to England entrusting it to the care of ‘Gerald of Windsor, his constable and primipilus, a worthy and discreet man (vir probus prudensque, Giraldus de Windesora, constabularius suus et primipilus)’.137 Admittedly, Giraldus’s chronology is a bit confused – he tells us that Arnulf erected Pembroke in the reign of Henry I (i.e., in or after 1100), yet proceeds to recount a Welsh siege of the castle that followed soon after the death of Rhys ap Tewdwr (in 1093). It is in fact certain that Pembroke was one of the fortresses begun in the 1093 campaign because, when the Brut y Twywsogyon reports the native revolt that had reached south Wales by the end of 1094, it points out that ‘the Britons destroyed all the castles of Ceredigion and Dyfed, except two, that is, Pembroke and Rhyd-y-gors’.138 132 For Rhys, see Robert S. Badcock, ‘Rhys ap Tewdwr, king of Deheubarth’, ANS, 16 (1994), 21–36. 133 For the events of these years, see J.E. Lloyd, A history of Wales from the earliest times to the Edwardian Conquest, 2 vols (London, 1911), ii, chs 11–12; R.R. Davies, The age of conquest: Wales, 1063–1415 (Oxford, 1987), ch. 2. 134 For Arnulf, see Victoria Chandler, ‘The last of the Montgomerys: Roger the Poitevin and Arnulf ’, HR, 62 (1989), 1–14; Kathleen Thompson, ‘Note de recherche: Arnoul de Montgommery’, Annales de Normandie, 45:1 (1995), 49–53. 135 Giraldi Cambrensis opera, vi, pp 89–91, quotation at p. 91 (Itinerarium, I.12). 136 Brut, Red Book, s.a. 1093. 137 Giraldi Cambrensis opera, vi, pp 89–91, quotation at p. 91 (Itinerarium, I.12); the Roman primipilus was senior centurion of a legion. 138 Brut,

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Furthermore, the Brut confirms a hosting in 1096 by men from as far afield as Powys, who ‘made for the castle of Pembroke and plundered it of all its cattle and ravaged the whole land; and they returned home with vast spoil’.139 And we can be fairly certain that the castellan of Pembroke at this point (and probably since 1093) was Gerald. This Welsh assault of 1096 must form the setting for Giraldus’s solitary gathering of anecdotes on the subject of the ingenuity of the eponymous Gerald, his maternal grandfather whose name he proudly shared. He recounts how, when the Welsh laid Pembroke castle under siege, fifteen of the garrison having deserted by boat, Gerald of Windsor had their armour-bearers don the discarded armour to pretend there were still skilled fighting-men aplenty in their ranks; as food supplies dwindled he ordered that their four remaining hogs be cut into pieces and extravagantly thrown down to feed the besieging Welsh forces; and, in one final stratagem, addressed a letter to Arnulf de Montgomery, sealed with his own signet, and arranged for it to be ‘accidentally’ dropped outside the house of Wilfrid, the Welsh bishop of St Davids, in which Gerald assured his master that his assistance would not be required for another four months. Needless to say, the contents of the letter were conveyed to the blockading Welsh army, who decided it was time to call it a day!140 Whether or not these entertaining yarns are to be believed, we know that Pembroke castle did survive the Welsh uprising in 1096, and the fact is therefore that, in presiding over it, Gerald of Windsor was the person responsible for keeping Norman hopes alive in western Dyfed. Hence it should not surprise us that, when the Brut mentions him by name for the first time in the following year, he is evidently already a figure of note: ‘Gerald the steward, to whom the stewardship of Pembroke castle had been entrusted (yr hwnn y gorchymmynassit idaw ystiwarerdaeth castell Penuro), ravaged the bounds of Menevia [the church lands of St Davids], and then, a second time, William king of England moved innumerable hosts and immense power and strength against the Britons.’141 What this account also shows us is that William’s 1097 campaign in Wales was a direct response to the difficulties these new CambroNormans were having – which is a measure of their influence at court – and hence Henry of Huntingdon’s comment that ‘the indefatigable king [Rufus] led his army into Wales, because the Welsh had slain numbers of the French the year before, and stormed the castles of the nobles’.142 It is interesting to note therefore that, as we saw earlier, Rufus’s campaign began with a council held at Windsor castle,143 and perhaps we can take it that Gerald or members of Gerald’s family were there to advise on a course of action. Red Book, s.a. 1094. 139 Brut, Red Book, s.a. 1096. 140 Giraldi Cambrensis opera, vi, pp 89– 91, quotation at p. 91 (Itinerarium, I.12). 141 Brut, Red Book, s.a. 1097. 142 Henry of Huntingdon, Historia Anglorum, p. 421. 143 See above, and Anglo-Saxon chronicle, vii, MS E, ed. Irvine, s.a. 1095 (p. 107); E.A. Freeman, The reign of William Rufus and the accession of Henry the First, 2 vols (Oxford, 1882) i, p. 572; ii, p. 110.

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It is another five years before we hear anything further of Gerald, this time in the even more volatile circumstances of the rebellion against the new king Henry I by the older brother of Arnulf de Montgomery, Robert de Bellême (the surname was his mother’s). During the course of this rebellion Arnulf – ‘who had’, the Brut tells us, ‘obtained Dyfed as his portion and magnificently built Pembroke castle’144 – famously sought an alliance across the Irish Sea with the most significant of Ireland’s province-kings, Muirchertach Ua Briain of Munster, and therefore ‘he sent messengers to Ireland, that, is Gerald the steward and many others, to ask for the daughter of King Muirchertach for his wife; and that he easily obtained and the messengers came joyfully to their land.’145 This was a truly extraordinary development.146 From our point of view, of course, the most remarkable aspect is that it establishes the presence in Ireland, however short-lived, of a member – the founder – of the Geraldine clan a full sixty-five years before his sons and grandsons were to embark upon its conquest in their own right. One wonders how Gerald went about such an embassy and what made him the right man for it. We do not know when Gerald married the Welsh princess Nest but one suspects that by 1102 he already had and that it was she who provided his opening into Ireland. Her family had strong Irish links: one late source says that her father Rhys ap Tewdwr was an exile in Ireland prior to his acquisition of the kingship of Deheubarth in 1079; Irish allies supported him in battle, such as at Mynydd Carn in 1081; he was driven into Irish exile in 1088 but returned later in the year with more Irish support and won the battle of Llech-y-Crau; and following his defeat and death at Norman hands in 1093 his son Gruffudd ‘with certain of his kinsmen’ took refuge in Ireland, not returning to his homeland for more than twenty years.147 Gruffudd ap Rhys was therefore a princely exile in Ireland – possibly at Muirchertach’s court – at the very point when his brother-in-law or future brother-in-law Gerald of Windsor needed doors opened there. Gerald was to return the favour: when Gruffudd came from Ireland in 1115 intent upon winning back his kingdom, he should not have won support among the very Normans who had slain his father Rhys ap Tewdwr; instead, the Welsh annals tell us, ‘he remained for about two years, sometimes with Gerald, steward of Pembroke castle, his brother-in-law … at last, he was accused before the king [Henry I], and it was alleged that the minds of the Britons were with him, scorning the royal power of King Henry’.148 His central involvement with Arnulf de Montgomery in that family’s rebellion, his marriage into a Welsh dynasty which the Norman colony in south 144 Brut, Red Book, s.a. 1102. 145 Ibid. 146 For discussion, see Curtis, ‘Murchertach O’Brien, high king of Ireland, and his Norman son-in-law’; Seán Duffy, ‘The 1169 invasion as a turning-point in Irish-Welsh relations’, in Brendan Smith (ed.), Britain and Ireland, 900– 1300: insular responses to medieval European change (Cambridge, 1999), pp 98–113, at pp 100–2. 147 J.E. Lloyd, ‘Rhys ap Tewdwr (d. 1093)’, rev. David E. Thornton, ODNB; T.F. Tout, ‘Gruffudd ap Rhys (d. 1137)’, rev. Huw Pryce, ibid. 148 Brut, Red Book, s.a. 1115.

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Wales had sought to put an end to, and the perception that he was sympathetic to the kingly ambitions of his brother-in-law Gruffudd ap Rhys – who, in 1116, launched attacks on several (including Narberth and Llandovery) of the very thing, the Norman castle, with which Gerald is most closely associated – all of this should surely have sealed his fate in the eyes of his lord, the king of England. And yet Gerald survived; and soon he thrived. Following the collapse of de Bellême defiance, Henry I seems to have deprived Gerald of his stewardship of Pembroke and installed an obscure individual whom the Welsh chronicle calls Saer uarchawc (‘the knight’); but by 1105 the king had removed the latter and ‘gave the custody of the castle and all its bounds to Gerald the steward, who was steward under Arnulf (ac y rodes keitwadeith y castell a’e holl teruyneu y Herald ystiwart, yr hwnn a oed dan Ernwlf yn ystiwart)’.149 Henry may have decided to use Gerald’s administrative experience to oversee a remarkable process of Flemish plantation in the cantrefi of Rhos and Deugleddyf directly across Milford Haven from Pembroke, and which seems to have been managed from the castle.150 It began, the Brut reports, in 1108, the only other recorded event of that year being Gerald the steward’s construction of a castle at a place called Cenarth Bychan (which may be Cilgerran on the Teifi, Dyfed’s northern frontier with Ceredigion), ‘and he arranged to have placed there all his possessions and his wife and his offspring and all his nearest kin; and he fortified it with a ditch and a wall, and he made gates fastened with locks and bars’.151 This latter piece of trivia is, no doubt, merely by way of scene-setting for a lengthy and famous story that dominates the chronicle’s account of the following year, one that is for Welsh history what the infamous ‘Rape of Dervorgilla’ is for Irish, and which has Gerald and Nest at its heart. The story tells how when Owain the son of Cadwgan ap Bleddyn of Powys heard that Nest was at Cenarth Bychan castle, he made for the castle by night, evaded watchmen and got over the wall and ditch, so that ‘he came to the chamber where Gerald and Nest, his wife, were sleeping’. Owain and his men set fire to the building and Gerald – made out to be a very hapless individual indeed – was at a loss as to what to do when his quicker-thinking wife ‘led him to the privy which adjoined the chamber and there, as is said, he escaped by way of the privy hole’. This humiliation was made all the greater by the account of Owain’s next deed: ‘And when they did not find him, they seized Nest and her two sons, and the third son whom Gerald had by a concubine, and a daughter. And they utterly pillaged the castle and burned it. And he [Owain] violated Nest and lay with her and then returned home.’152 The object of the story is clearly to demean Gerald, a man at best inept 149 Brut, Red Book, s.a. 1105. 150 Henry Owen, ‘The Flemings in Pembrokeshire’, Archaeologia Cambrensis, ser. 5, 12 (1895), 96–106; Lloyd, History of Wales, ii, p. 424; I.W. Rowlands, ‘The making of the March: aspects of the Norman settlement in Dyfed’, ANS, 3 (1981), 142–57, at 146–8; Lauran Toorians, ‘Wizo Flandrensis and the Flemish settlement in Pembrokeshire’, CMCS, 20 (1990), 99–118; Eljas Oksanen, Flanders and the Anglo-Norman world, 1066–1216 (Cambridge, 2012), pp 213–17. 151 Brut, Red Book, s.a. 1108. 152 Brut,

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and at worst a coward.153 What relationship it bears to reality is debateable, but it has recently been argued that the text underlying the section of the Brutiau covering the period 1100–26 may have been written more or less contemporaneously,154 and perhaps therefore we can have confidence in the small detail of the account. If so, it seems that Gerald and Nest did indeed, in 1109, already have a daughter (Angharad) and two sons (presumably William and either David or Maurice) suggesting a marriage that would take us, as speculated above, back to the days of Gerald’s mission to Ireland in 1102; and that Gerald furthermore had another son by a concubine (mab arall idaw ynteu o garadwreic). The children were certainly Gerald’s as we are told by the same source that Owain shortly afterwards ‘released his two sons and daughter for the steward (y gellygawd y deuuap a’e uerch y’r ystiwart)’.155 This is potentially important as there has been much difference of opinion as to the date of Nest’s liaison with Henry I from which her son Henry fitz Henry was born:156 this evidence would seem to place it later as the only illegitimate child recorded in this report is Gerald’s otherwise unrecorded bastard son.157 The account is important too for its information regarding Gerald’s objectives in south Wales if, as seems likely, we can equate this early fortification at Cenarth Bychan with the site of Cilgerran castle.158 Gerald has progressed from being solely the custodian of a royal castle and steward of the lands attached to it: he is now in the business of annexing Welsh territory in his own right (presumably under royal licence) and his focus has moved from the far southwest of Dyfed to its far north-eastern cantref of Emlyn. Having built a castle there in 1108 to which he moved his family and possessions, Gerald may indeed have met with a setback – after which, perhaps, he confined his attention for a time to the area closer to Pembroke where he built another castle, Carew,159 providing a patrimony (and surname) for his eldest son William and the latter’s descendants Peniarth 20, s.a. 1109. 153 For the abduction, see Kari Maund, Princess Nest of Wales, seductress of the English (Stroud, 2007), pp 136–44; Susan M. Johns, Gender, nation and conquest in the High Middle Ages: Nest of Deheubarth (Manchester, 2013), ch. 1. 154 David Stephenson, ‘The “resurgence” of Powys in the late eleventh and early twelfth centuries’, ANS, 30 (2007), 182–95; cf. Kari Maund, ‘Owain ap Cadwgan: a rebel revisited’, Haskins Society Journal, 13 (2004), 65–74. 155 Brut, Red Book, s.a. 1108. 156 See J.F. Dimock, in Giraldi Cambrensis opera, v, p. ci; T.F. Tout, ‘Fitzstephen, Robert (d. 1183?), one of the original Norman conquerors of Ireland’, Dictionary of national biography (Oxford, 1889), s.n.; Henry Owen, Old Pembroke families in the ancient county palatine of Pembroke (London, 1902), p. 12; A.J. Roderick, ‘Marriage and politics in Wales, 1066–1282’, WHR, 4 (1968–9), 3–20, at 4, 6; David Crouch, ‘Nest (b. before 1092, d. c.1130)’, ODNB; Judith A. Green, Henry I: king of England and duke of Normandy (Cambridge, 2006), p. 132; cf. Maund, Princess Nest of Wales, pp 104–18, 139–40. 157 Moreover, Nest’s son Henry fitz Henry died in 1157 while still a vigorous campaigner and his son Meiler (d. 1220) lived for more than another sixty years: this would suggest that Nest’s relationship with King Henry followed rather than preceded her relationship with Gerald of Windsor. 158 Lloyd, History of Wales, ii, pp 418 (and note), 425 (and note). 159 For which, see D.J. Cathcart King and J. Clifford Perks, ‘Carew castle, Pembrokeshire’, The Archaeological Journal, 119 (1962), 270–307.

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– but his family did nevertheless manage to retain possession of Emlyn until, in 1165, it was overrun by, ironically, his wife’s nephew, Rhys ap Gruffudd ap Rhys: it was a reverse which inclined the family to redirect their territorial ambitions towards Ireland, with momentous implications, although royal favour saw to it that they were also compensated in England: shortly after the death of William fitz Gerald in 1173, the latter’s heir Odo de Carew was granted lands on the royal manor of Braunton in north Devon ‘in exchange for the castle and land of Emlyn which Rhys son of Gruffudd has’.160 In fact, Gerald and his kin rarely seem to have lacked royal shelter. The Brut discloses that the frosty response of Cadwgan ap Bleddyn to the rape and abduction of Nest by his own son was dictated by ‘fear lest King Henry should be enraged at the injury to his steward’. The author puts into the mouth of Richard de Belmeis (Henry I’s dapifer of the escheated Montgomery earldom of Shrewsbury)161 a speech in which he says of Owain ap Cadwgan that ‘he has done wrong and injury against King Henry and immense loss to Gerald the steward, his [the king’s] special friend (y wahanredawl gyfueillt ef)’. As a result, kinsmen of Owain marched against him to Dyfed ‘where Gerald was in power (ynn ueddyanus)’, and ultimately Owain was forced to flee to Ireland along with others ‘who had no reason to stay behind because they had taken part in the burning of the castle’. All in all it is an extraordinary insight into the bond between Gerald and Henry I. Even when Owain’s father was reconciled with the king, the latter insisted ‘that there was [to be] no association between him and Owain his son’, and when Owain returned from Ireland, and tried to sue for peace, ‘no one dared take his message to the king’.162 Indeed, Owain’s uncle Iorwerth reportedly sent word to Owain to the effect that: ‘It is forbidden to each one of us Britons to associate with you in food or drink, with help or aid, but we are to seek you out and hunt you everywhere, and at last to place you in the hands of the king, to imprison you or to kill you … For if we associate with you in aught, or if we go ever so little against the king’s command, we will lose our territory or we will be imprisoned until we die’.163 All of this, apparently, because of royal ire at Owain’s offence against the king’s ‘special friend’, Gerald of Windsor. In time, though, Owain did make his peace with Henry, but not with Gerald who later got his revenge. In 1116, Gerald and a troop of Flemings had travelled to Carmarthen castle when they received news of Owain’s activities in the area; the Flemings had suffered greatly in the past from Owain’s raids and so – acting ‘at the instigation of Gerald the steward’ – they attacked Owain and killed him.164 Sadly, at this precise point, the Welsh chronicle begins to dry up temporarily and has only sporadic bursts of detail for the next two decades or so, so that 160 PR, 20 Hen. II, p. 89. 161 J.F.A. Mason, ‘Belmeis, Richard de (d. 1127)’, ODNB. 162 Brut, Red Book, s.a. 1109. 163 Brut, Red Book, s.a. 1110. 164 Brut, Red Book, s.a. 1116.

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Gerald’s death and Nest’s death pass entirely unnoticed and we may suspect that Gerald did not live for long after engineering his revenge against Owain ap Cadwgan in 1116. When next we hear of anything connected to him – exactly twenty years later – it is in fact an account of the actions of men called filii Geraldi.165 The Geraldines had arrived.

165 Annales Cambriae, s.a. 1136.

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Giraldus and the Geraldines

H U W P RYC E

The idea of the Geraldines as a distinct kin-group, prominent in the conquest and colonization of both southwest Wales and Ireland, was arguably invented by one of their number, the churchman, scholar and prolific writer Giraldus Cambrensis or Gerald of Wales (c.1146–c.1223). Educated initially by his uncle, David fitz Gerald, bishop of St Davids, then at Gloucester abbey and finally in the schools of Paris, Giraldus returned to Wales to follow an ecclesiastical career, being appointed archdeacon of Brecon in 117, and subsequently, like many educated clerics of his day, served the king of England as an administrator and diplomat, a period of service extending from 1184 to 1194 which stimulated the writing of his first and most notable prose works on Ireland and Wales. The last part of Giraldus’s life was dominated by his ultimately unsuccessful attempt, from 1198 to 1203, to be appointed bishop of St Davids and to have the see recognized as an archbishopric for Wales, independent of Canterbury, a struggle that he commemorated extensively in three related works, while also writing on other subjects, both political and theological.1 What follows will proceed in two stages. First, I wish to explore how, and in which contexts, Giraldus depicted his own family. In particular, how far did he articulate the notion of an extended family of Geraldines, and what did he mean by that? For instance, why did it extend beyond direct descendants of his maternal grandfather Gerald of Windsor to include other descendants of Gerald of Windsor’s wife, namely Nest, daughter of Rhys ap Tewdwr, the Welsh king of southwest Wales, killed in 1093, who had children with at least three other partners?2 And how does Giraldus’s depiction of his family compare with that of other sources, in particular the Welsh annals and chronicles? This will lead on, second, to a consideration of what the references to his relatives, together with other evidence, imply about the nature and transmission of memory within Giraldus’s family. Here, I shall extend the scope of the discussion to assess his accounts of events in Wales from the late eleventh century onwards. In particular, how far do family traditions provide the key to historical flashbacks in I am very grateful to David Stephenson for his helpful comments on a draft of this essay. Any remaining errors or misconceptions are, of course, mine alone. 1 The best single study of Giraldus remains Robert Bartlett, Gerald of Wales, 1146–1223 (Oxford, 1982); reissued with supplementary bibliography as Gerald of Wales: a voice of the Middle Ages (Stroud, 2006). 2 For Nest, see David Crouch, ‘Nest (b. before 1092, d. c.1130)’, ODNB; Susan M. Johns, Gender, nation and conquest in the high Middle Ages: Nest of Deheubarth (Manchester, 2013),

3

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the Itinerarium Kambriae (‘Journey through Wales’), whose first version was completed in 1191,3 relating to places through or near which Giraldus travelled on his journey with Archbishop Baldwin of Canterbury to preach the crusade in 1188? In short, then, I will try to assess what Giraldus’s writings reveal about his conceptualization of the Geraldines and what this implies about the nature and uses of family memory in the late twelfth and early thirteenth centuries.

I

Before going any further it is important to emphasize that Giraldus did not write a family history, a genre found elsewhere in twelfth-century Europe, the closest representative of which in a marcher context is the account of the Mortimers in the fourteenth-century Latin History of Wigmore Priory.4 The information he provides about his family is, therefore, disparate and scattered across several works rather than forming a coherent narrative. True, his account of the conquest of Ireland, the Expugnatio Hibernica of 1189, has been described by Robert Bartlett as ‘a family epic’, a characterization well justified by the starring role accorded to Giraldus’s kin and the attempts to show that their contribution had not gained the recognition it deserved. Yet, as its title suggests, the work is about more than that kin. Likewise, Giraldus’s autobiography, De rebus a se gestis (‘Concerning his own deeds’), composed between 1208 and 1216, focused predominantly on his unsuccessful attempt to become archbishop of St Davids.6 Nevertheless, the works just mentioned provide an appropriate starting-point for the first part of this discussion, as they contain two famous passages in which Giraldus sang the praises of the Geraldines. One occurs in the autobiography, and purports to describe a conversation at Hereford in the 1180s in which Rhys ap Gruffudd, the Lord Rhys, ruler of southwest Wales, says of Giraldus as follows: This Archdeacon and those of his family who are called Giraldines [sic] descend from Nest, my aunt, the sister of Gruffydd my father, and are great and good men, but only in a corner of Wales, to wit, in the cantref of Pembroke […]7 esp. chs 1–2. 3 Bartlett, Gerald, p. 216. 4 See, e.g., Jean Dunbabin, ‘Discovering a past for the French aristocracy’, in Paul Magdalino (ed.), The perception of the past in twelfth-century Europe (London, 1992), pp 1–14; Hans-Werner Goetz, Geschichtsschreibung und Geschichtsbewußtsein im hohen Mittelalter (2nd ed., Berlin, 2008), pp 360–71. For the History of Wigmore, see Dugdale, Monasticon, VI.i, pp 348–, and J.C. Dickinson and P.T. Ricketts, ‘The Anglo-Norman chronicle of Wigmore abbey’, Transactions of the Woolhope Field Club, 39 (1969), 413–4 at 413. 5 Bartlett, Gerald, pp 20–; quotation at p. 20. Similar view in F.X. Martin, ‘Giraldus as historian’, in Giraldus, Expug. Hib., p. 272. See also A.J. Roderick, ‘Marriage and politics in Wales, 1066–1282’, WHR, 4 (1968–9), 3–20 at 6–7. 6 Bartlett, Gerald, pp 46–7. The work is translated in The autobiography of Giraldus Cambrensis, ed. and trans. H.E. Butler (London, 1937). 7 Giraldi Cambrensis opera, i, p. 8 (De rebus, I.9):

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Giraldus refuted this by asserting that ‘the sons of Nest held seven cantrefs in Wales’, which he proceeded to list before adding that the descendants of Nest had begun the conquest of Ireland and held ‘thirty cantrefs and more of the Irish realm’.8 However, this was not the first time Giraldus had praised his kinsmen’s conquests in Ireland, for he had already done so in a highly rhetorical passage in the Expugnatio Hibernica, which opens: ‘Who are the men who penetrate the enemy’s innermost strongholds? The Geraldines’, and is followed by three further questions to which the same answer is given.9 The term translated as ‘Geraldines’ in this last passage is Giraldide, modelled on the Greek form for patronymics that had been borrowed into Latin, and may be compared with Giraldus’s use of the singular of the form (Giraldides) with respect to Maurice and William fitz Gerald.10 Likewise Robert fitz Stephen is often called Stephanides and Diarmait Mac Murchada sometimes appears in the guise of Murchadides.11 These Grecisms embellished the style of the text while allowing greater economy of expression than the normal Latin usage of forename followed by patronymic such as Robertus filius Stephani which Giraldus employed on other occasions.12 For our purposes, though, they are important in underlining Giraldus’s conventional emphasis on agnatic descent. Yet the use of the plural Giraldide signifies something more than merely ‘the sons of Gerald’, and is evidently used in a broader sense, perhaps as a kind of nickname, to denote a wider kinship group, for the passage preceding the rhetorical questions names not only the descendants of Gerald of Windsor but also Meiler fitz Henry, Robert fitz Stephen, ‘and the whole connection’ (generique toti).13 The implication, then, is that all these individuals formed a particular genus, a stock or descent group, in which the descendants of Gerald were only one, albeit predominant, element. The same is also true of the term Giraldini in the autobiography, which, as we have seen, explicitly notes their common descent, not from Gerald of Windsor, but from his wife Nest. Nor were these kin consistently identified with Gerald, for elsewhere in the Expugnatio Giraldus refers to them simply as ‘our men’ (nostri) or ‘the men of our connection’ (nostrique generis viris).14 ‘Archidiaconus iste et illi de genere suo qui Giraldini dicuntur, de amita mea Nesta sc. sorore Griffini patris mei descenderunt; et viri magni quidem et probi sunt, sed non nisi in angulo quodam Walliae cantaredo sc. de Penbroc […]’ (translation from Butler, Autobiography, p. 83). 8 Giraldi Cambrensis opera, i, pp 8–9 (De rebus, I.9) (translation from Butler, Autobiography, p. 83). For a corrected transcript of the passage, with commentary, see The Description of Penbrokshire by George Owen of Henllys, Lord of Kemes, iii, ed. Henry Owen (London, 1906), p. 343. 9 Giraldus, Expug. Hib., pp 168–70 (II.1): ‘Qui sunt, qui penetrant hostis penetralia? Giraldide. / Qui sunt, qui patriam conservant? Giraldide. / Qui sunt, quos hostes formidant? Giraldide. / Qui sunt, quos livor detrectat? Giraldide.’ (Translation modified.) Cf. Bartlett, Gerald, p. 22. 10 Giraldus, Expug. Hib., pp 80, 114, 138, 142 (I.22, 41; II.2, 4). 11 For example, ibid., pp 32, 34, 38, 40, 84, 86 (I.3, 4, 6, 2, 26). See also ibid., p. 14 (II.10) for ‘Reimundus Hugonides’. 12 For example, ibid., pp 28, 30, 0 (I.2, 3, 11). 13 Ibid., pp 168–9 (II.1). 14 Giraldus, Expug. Hib., pp 244, 262 (II.37; dedicatory preface of second recension to King John); cf. Bartlett, Gerald, p. 24.

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Two general observations may be made, then, in the light of the passages quoted above from the Expugnatio and the autobiography. First, irrespective of their different emphases, they highlight the importance Giraldus placed on his maternal kin, that is, on his descent through his mother Angharad from her parents, Gerald of Windsor and Nest.1 By contrast, Giraldus says very little about his father William de Barri and his ancestors. The family probably originated in Devon, but if so, Giraldus declined to comment on this English background. He strongly implied, rather, that they were connected to the de Barris of Glamorgan in southeast Wales, claiming that they took their name from Barry Island (which was named in turn after St Barruc, who was buried there).16 The reason why Giraldus preferred to emphasize the mother’s side of his family is pretty clear: by comparison, his father, though lord of Manorbier, was small fry, lacking both the royal pedigree and the power represented by Nest and her extended kin. Particularly telling in this regard is the way Giraldus describes his own birth at the beginning of his autobiography (which was written in the third person): Giraldus originated from Wales […] and derived his lineage from native descent. For he issued from his mother Angharad, daughter of Nest, the noble daughter of Rhys prince of south Wales, that is, the son of Tewdwr, and joined in marriage to the excellent man William de Barri.17 Thus, in contrast to the pedigree given for Angharad, the passage does not identify William’s father, let alone grandfather. In short, the maternal side of his family counted much more for Giraldus than the paternal: snobbery trumped the misogyny to which he was prone to give vent in other contexts, as we shall see. Moreover, according to another passage in the autobiography, the sense of kinship deriving from common descent from Nest, and extending beyond the line of Gerald of Windsor, led to practical cooperation in peace as well as war, for Giraldus claims that his studies in the schools of Paris were financed by the tithes of his kinsmen (consanguinei), named as William fitz Hait (Hay), Odo de Carew (son of William fitz Gerald) and Giraldus’s brother Philip de Barri.18 15 Cf. Johns, Gender, nation and conquest, pp 4–. 16 Giraldi Cambrensis opera, vi, p. 66 (Itinerarium, I.6); cf. Huw Pryce, ‘A cross-border career: Giraldus Cambrensis between Wales and England’, in Reinhard Schneider (ed.), Grenzgänger (Veröffentlichungen der Kommission für Saarländische Landesgeschichte und Volksforschung 33, Saarbrücken, 1998), pp 4–60, at pp 3–4. 17 Giraldi Cambrensis opera, i, p. 21 (De rebus, I.1): ‘Giraldus itaque de Kambria oriundus et australi ejusdem parte, maritimisque Demetiae finibus, non procul ab oppido principali de Penbroc, castello sc. de Mainarpir, ingenuis natalibus prosapiam duxit. Ex matre namque Angarath, filia Nestae, nobilis filiae Resis principis Sudwalliae, sc. filii Theodori, viro egregio Willelmo de Barri matrimonialiter copulata, processit.’ My translation. 18 Giraldi Cambrensis opera, i, p. 28 (De rebus, I.4): ‘Dum enim adolescens in scholis Parisius fuerat, consanguinei ipsius, sc. Willelmus filius Hay, Odo de Kerreu, et Philippus de Barri frater ejusdem decimas suas […] contulerant.’ For a translation, see Butler, Autobiography, p. 44; see

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Yet, second, it is important to recognize that the depiction of his family is coloured by the purpose of the texts in which they appear. To stay with the two works with which I began, it is well known that the Expugnatio Hibernica extolled the role of Giraldus’s marcher kinsmen in the conquest of Ireland and sought to show how their contribution had been inadequately appreciated by the king of England.19 By contrast, Giraldus’s autobiography was an apologia for his failed attempt to become archbishop of St Davids, a failure he attributed to suspicion of his close ties of kinship with the dynasty of the Lord Rhys.20 The latter work thus consistently emphasizes his ties to the Welsh, especially through Nest: the opening sentences about Giraldus’s birth quoted above set the tone for what follows. It should be added, though, that nowhere does Giraldus suggest that his Welsh kin in the royal house of Deheubarth formed part of the network of Nest’s descendants sometimes termed Geraldines. Yes, he acknowledged his blood relationship with these;21 but their function seems mainly to have been to enhance the social status of his family, and legitimize its title to lands in south Wales. The crucial distinguishing characteristic of the Geraldines, on the other hand, was their mixed Cambro-Norman descent. This is clear from the Expugnatio, which attributes the prowess of the Geraldines to their Welsh and Norman (or, more precisely, Trojan and French) ancestry, the former giving them their bravery (animositas), the latter their skill in arms.22 But overall the work makes much less than the autobiography of the family’s Welsh connections. Nest is mentioned only once, as the mother of Robert fitz Stephen.23 Otherwise, Robert, Maurice fitz Gerald and their kinsfolk are identified with reference to their fathers and brothers, and praised by virtue of their own qualities and achievements – notably their leading role in the conquest of Ireland – rather than of their descent from the royal house of Deheubarth.24 In 1191, two years after completing the Expugnatio, Giraldus wrote the first version of the Itinerarium Kambriae, his account of the journey round Wales to preach the third crusade. Here, most references to members of his extended family make no comment on their relationship to each other or to Giraldus.2 However, a few passages anticipate the emphasis on his maternal kin, including descent from Nest, found in the autobiography. Above all, the work merits attention in the context of the present discussion as it contains Giraldus’s only account of his maternal grandfather, Gerald of Windsor, who served as castellan also J.E. Lloyd, A history of Wales from the earliest times to the Edwardian conquest, 2 vols (3rd ed., London, 1939), ii, p. 423, n. 70. 19 Bartlett, Gerald, pp 21–. 20 For example, Giraldi Cambrensis opera, i, pp 42–3, 9 (De rebus, I.9–10; III.4). 21 Ibid. pp 21, 7 (I.1, 8). 22 Giraldus, Expug. Hib., pp 48, 16 (I.9, II.10). 23 Ibid., p. 30 (I.2). 24 For the Geraldines’ leading role, see, for example, ibid., p. 262 (dedicatory preface of second recension to King John): ‘An primis eiusdem aggressoribus, Menevensis scilicet diocesis, nostrique generis viris […]’. Cf. Giraldi Cambrensis opera, vi, p. 220 (Descriptio Kambriae, II.8), referring to those born and bred in the March of Wales: ‘Talibus tam Hybernia quam Kambria viris initium habuit expugnationis […]’. 25 For example, Giraldi Cambrensis opera, vi, pp 14, 34, 111, 122, 130–1 (Itinerarium, I.1, 2; II.2, , 7).

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of Pembroke castle, first for Arnulf de Montgomery, then for Henry I, and who is last mentioned in the Welsh chronicles in 1116.26 We are told how Gerald successfully held Pembroke castle for Arnulf against the Welsh, during an attack datable to 1096, through tricking them into believing that the garrison had sufficient supplies to survive for four months; the siege was immediately abandoned. However, the story serves as a prelude to the marriage with Nest, as we are told that soon afterwards Gerald of Windsor: so that he might form deeper roots for himself and his followers in that region, joined himself in lawful marriage with the sister of Gruffudd, prince of south Wales, called Nest. From her, in the course of time, he begat a noble progeny of both sexes, through whom the coastal regions of south Wales were kept by the English and the fortifications of Ireland were later conquered […]27 Nevertheless, despite the emphasis on lawful marriage, with its implications of legitimate birth, Giraldus later described, without any apparent sense of embarrassment, the role of two of his uncles – neither of whom was legitimate – in the naval attack on Anglesey that formed part of Henry II’s campaign against Owain Gwynedd in 117.28 According to Giraldus, one was ‘Henry the son of the first King Henry, and uncle of the second, by the noble Nest, daughter of Rhys ap Tewdwr’, who had been brought up in Dyfed in south Wales and who was killed in the attack; while the other, who survived, was Robert the son of Stephen, ‘not the full brother but the uterine brother of Henry’, and thus also born of Nest.29 The autobiography makes it clear that Nest also had at least one child with a certain Hay, probably the sheriff of Pembroke attested in 1130,30 and also lists Hywel and Walter as other sons, without naming their fathers.31 It is true that the identification of Henry I as the father of Nest’s son Henry was not universally recognized, and one source made him a Geraldine in the strict biological sense by describing him as a son of Gerald of Windsor. The Welsh chronicles, probably reflecting their ultimate twelfth-century sources, take the same line as Giraldus and call Henry the son of King Henry without qualification in their account of the 117 campaign against Anglesey.32 However, 26 Cf. David Walker, ‘Windsor, Gerald of (d. 1116x36)’, ODNB. 27 Giraldi Cambrensis opera, vi, pp 89–91; quotation at p. 91 (Itinerarium, I.12). My translation. 28 See also discussion in Johns, Gender, nation and conquest, pp 1–2. 29 Giraldi Cambrensis opera, vi, p. 130 (Itinerarium, II.7). 30 Giraldi Cambrensis opera, i, p. 9 (De rebus, I.9); see also n. 18 above. Lloyd, History of Wales, ii, p. 02, n. 64 is cautious (‘perhaps by “Hait”, sheriff of Pembroke in 1130’), but Hait’s paternity is accepted in Crouch, ‘Nest’. 31 Giraldi Cambrensis opera, i, p. 9 (De rebus, I.9); cf. Crouch, ‘Nest’. 32 Brut, Peniarth 20, p. 60, s.a. 116=117; Brut, Red Book, pp 136–7, s.a. 11=117. This is followed in the related chronicle, Brenhinedd y Saesson, or, the kings of the Saxons, ed. and trans. Thomas Jones (Cardiff, 1971), pp 18–9, s.a. 116=117. On the likelihood that the texts of Brut y Tywysogyon largely preserve, albeit in Welsh translation, the wording of their ultimate Latin sources, see David Stephenson, ‘The

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doubts are raised in the Welsh Latin chronicle known as the B-text of the Annales Cambriae, which states that ‘Henry son of Gerald was killed’, but adds, probably as a later gloss, ‘or as others would have it, he was the son of King Henry’.33 Although completed in the late thirteenth century in an environment sympathetic to Edward I, quite possibly at Neath abbey in Glamorgan, for the years down to 1263 the B-text is largely a native compilation, drawing on annals from St Davids down to 1202 or 1203 and thereafter those of several Cistercian houses patronized by Welsh princes.34 Moreover, David Stephenson has shown that several entries in the B-text (but not the C-text) for the years 1188–1200 reflect ‘a remarkable awareness of the kinship connections, ecclesiastical contacts, and political role of Gerald of Wales’, which suggests that this section of the narrative may have been ‘the work of someone acquainted with and favourably inclined to him’.3 The B-text’s account of the events of 117 is therefore probably based largely on its earlier St Davids source. If so, the description of the Henry killed in Anglesey as the ‘son of Gerald’ is likely to have been written shortly after the event. It may, then, have reflected the view of his half-brother David fitz Gerald, bishop of St Davids (1148–76), although this can only be a matter of speculation. On the other hand, however, the gloss referring to the opinion that ‘he was the son of King Henry’ was almost certainly a later addition, which, like two other instances where the B-text uses the phrase ut alii volunt (‘as others would have it’), may have derived from Whitland or Neath.36 The glossed entry in the chronicle may in turn have influenced a late thirteenth-century list of the lords “resurgence” of Powys in the late eleventh and early twelfth centuries’, ANS, 30 (2008), 182– 9 at 184–9; idem, ‘Welsh chronicles’ accounts of the mid-twelfth century’, CMCS, 6 (Winter 2008), 4–7, esp. 1–7; Owain Wyn Jones, ‘Historical writing in medieval Wales’ (PhD, Bangor University, 2014), ch. 4, esp. pp 222–9. 33 Annales Cambriae, ed. J. Williams Ab Ithel (RS, London, 1860), p. 47: ‘in quos Henricus filius Geraldi occisus est, velut alii volunt, filius fuit Henrici regis’. The reading is confirmed in the recent transcript by Henry Gough-Cooper, ‘Annales Cambriae: the B text’, p. 61, http://croniclau.bangor.ac.uk/ index.php.en (accessed 27 June 2016). Henry is not named in the brief account of the Anglesey campaign in Annales Cambriae, ed. Williams, p. 47, n. 1 (C-text); ‘Annales Cambriae: the C text’, p. 61, http://croniclau.bangor.ac.uk/index.php.en (accessed 27 June 2016). 34 For the provenance of the B-text, see Kathleen Hughes, ‘The Welsh Latin chronicles: Annales Cambriae and related texts’, in eadem, Celtic Britain in the early Middle Ages (Woodbridge, 1980), pp 67–8, at pp 79–8. Some of Hughes’s conclusions are modified in David Stephenson, ‘Gerald of Wales and Annales Cambriae’, CMCS, 60 (Winter 2010), 23–37, esp. 27, and idem, ‘The chronicler at Cwm-hir abbey, 127–63: the construction of a Welsh chronicle’, in R.A. Griffiths and P.R. Schofield (eds), Wales and the Welsh in the Middle Ages: essays presented to J. Beverley Smith (Cardiff, 2011), pp 29–4. For the manuscript, see Daniel Huws, ‘The Neath abbey Breviate of Domesday’, in Griffiths and Schofield (eds), Wales and the Welsh in the Middle Ages, pp 46–. 35 Stephenson, ‘Gerald of Wales and Annales Cambriae’, 32–7; quotations at 34, 36. 36 Ibid., 32. Cf. Johns, Gender, nation and conquest, pp 70–2, which suggests that the phrase in the B-text of the Annales Cambriae that casts doubt on Henry’s paternity was an interpolation motivated by bias against Giraldus either in early thirteenth-century St Davids or during the final stages of the chronicle’s compilation at Neath.

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of Carew, presumably of Pembrokeshire provenance, which likewise expresses doubt about the paternity of Henry in a reference to his death in Anglesey, though without identifying him as a son of Gerald of Windsor, describing him rather as ‘Henry Barreth, who was said to be the son of King Henry who died in Anglesey and left a son Meiler fitz Henry, later justiciar of Ireland’.37 Nevertheless, the basis of the gloss was the tacit rejection of any connection with Henry I in the putative St Davids source’s designation of Henry as the son of Gerald, which in turn suggests that, irrespective of his true paternity, Henry had been brought up as a son of Gerald of Windsor.38 This would be consistent with Giraldus’s reference to Henry’s upbringing in Dyfed, and also with Giraldus’s later statement that ‘Henry son of the king’ had held the lordship of Narberth.39 However, the claim that he also held the cantref of Pebidiog is probably incorrect, as this territory belonged to the bishop of St Davids. It has therefore been suggested that the Penbidiauc of the manuscript is a scribal error for Peuliniauc, the commote of Peuliniog, which lay adjacent to Narberth to the northeast and was held with it by Roger Mortimer in the late thirteenth century.40 An alternative explanation, though, may be that Pebidiog was indeed meant, and was named in the passage through a conflation of Henry fitz Henry with Earl Henry of Northumberland, son of King David I of Scotland (and thus also a ‘Henry son of the king’), to whom Bishop Bernard (111–48) had granted the stewardship of the ‘land of St David’, namely the cantref of Pebidiog (otherwise known as Dewisland).41 Nest was clearly fundamental to Giraldus’s view of his extended maternal kin, and his treatment of her merits further consideration in the light of other evidence. As we have seen, both his account of the journey round Wales in 1188 and the later autobiography emphasize her nobility and connections with the Welsh ruling house of Deheubarth. Yet the information given about her is 37 ‘“Cronica de Wallia” and other documents from Exeter Cathedral Library MS 314’, ed. Thomas Jones, BBCS, 12 (1946–8), 27–44 at 42: ‘Henricus Bareth, qui dicebatur filius regis Anglie, qui in Angleseya descessit et reliquid [sic] filium Meyler ab Henry postea justiciarium Hybernie’. For the manuscript containing this list, see Julia Crick, ‘The power and the glory: conquest and cosmology in Edwardian Wales (Exeter, Cathedral Library 314)’, in Orietta Da Rold and Elaine Treharne (eds), Textual cultures: cultural texts (Cambridge, 2010), pp 21–42. Cf. Annales Cambriae, ed. Williams, p. 10, s.a. 1277 (C-text): Master Henry, archdeacon of Brecon died, ‘cui successit magister Adam Bareth thesaurarius Menevensis’. For Adam, see M.J. Pearson (comp.), Fasti ecclesiae Anglicanae, 1066–1300, x: The Welsh cathedrals (London, 2003), pp 2, 6. 38 Cf. Kathleen Thompson, ‘Affairs of state: the illegitimate children of Henry I’, Journal of Medieval History, 29 (2003), 129–1 at 131–2. 39 Giraldi Cambrensis opera, i, p. 9 (De rebus, I.9): ‘Henricus filius Regis Nerberd et Penbidiauc’. 40 Description of Penbrokshire, iii, ed. Owen, pp 343–4. 41 For David I’s son Henry, earl of Northumberland (d. 112) as steward of St Davids, see St Davids episcopal acta, 1085–1280, ed. Julia Barrow (Cardiff, 1998), pp 9–60. Crouch, ‘Nest’ refers to Henry fitz Henry as lord of Narberth only, without any mention of Pebidiog. On the bishops’ acquisition of Pebidiog, see Huw Pryce, ‘The dynasty of Deheubarth and the church of St Davids’, in J. Wyn Evans and Jonathan M. Wooding (eds), St David of Wales: cult, church and nation (Woodbridge,

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limited to the identification of her Welsh natal kin, her Norman partners and her children. In other words, it seems that for Giraldus her role was purely instrumental, as a focal point linking a network of men and enhancing their status and legitimacy. These connections are also noticed, almost in passing, in the Welsh chronicles, known generically as Brut y Tywysogyon (‘The chronicle of the princes’). Thus we read that Gruffudd ap Rhys ap Tewdwr, after returning from exile in Ireland in 111, spent about two years in southwest Wales, ‘sometimes with Gerald, steward of Pembroke castle, his brother-in-law – for his sister was Nest, daughter of Rhys ap Tewdwr, wife of the said Gerald’.42 Later, in an account of the Lord Rhys’s rebuilding of Cardigan castle in 1171, we come closest to an acknowledgment that her progeny formed a distinct family group, for the chronicles explain that this had previously been seized from Robert, son of Stephen by Nest, daughter of Rhys ap Tewdwr – and that Nest was aunt to Rhys, and that Robert was first-cousin to him. And brothers of that Robert were David, bishop of Menevia, and William fitz Gerald, and many others.43 It is notable, though, that the wider kinship network is not presented as being descended from Nest as in the passage in Giraldus’s autobiography; rather, the focal point here is Robert, with Nest being explicitly linked only to him and the Lord Rhys. However, Nest first appears in the chronicles in a role about which all other sources, including Giraldus, are silent, namely her rape and abduction in 1109 from Gerald of Windsor’s castle, probably at Cilgerran, by her kinsman Owain ap Cadwgan, of the dynasty of Powys.44 The accounts, fairly similar to each other in different versions of the chronicles, are dramatic and detailed, and give Nest a voice by purporting to include words she spoke both to help her husband escape and later to ensure that Owain returned her children to their father.4 Recent work on the chronicles supports the view that the accounts, though extant in fourteenth-century Welsh translations of a lost Latin chronicle composed in the late thirteenth century, preserve to a considerable extent the wording of a contemporary, early twelfth-century text.46 If so, this would 2007), pp 30–16 at p. 30. 42 Brut, Red Book, pp 82–3, s.a. 1112=111; Brut, Peniarth 20, p. 39, s.a. 1112=111 is similar, as is Brenhinedd y Saesson, pp 124–, s.a. 1112=111. 43 Brut, Peniarth 20, p. 67, s.a. 1171=1171. Brut, Red Book, pp 14–, s.a. 1171=1171 is similar (but see ibid., p. 294, note on 1, 19); however, the kinship links are omitted in the account in Brenhinedd y Saesson, pp 174–, s.a. 1171=1171. 44 For detailed discussion and contextualization of the episode, see Johns, Gender, nation and conquest, pp 20–42. 45 Brut, Peniarth 20, pp 28–9, s.a. 1106=1109; Brut, Red Book, pp 4–7, s.a. 110=1109; Brenhinedd y Saesson, pp 104–7, s.a. 1106=1109. By contrast, Annales Cambriae, ed. Williams, p. 34, s.a. 1110 (B- and C-texts), merely note that the castle of Cenarth (Bychan) was burned or destroyed by Owain ap Cadwgan, who was expelled on account of this to Ireland, but returned the same year. 46 See above, n. 32.

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reinforce the case for accepting the accounts’ veracity. That Giraldus was silent about the rape and abduction of his grandmother is hardly surprising. After all, in the Expugnatio he had suggested that Derbforgaill, wife of Tigernán Ua Ruairc was complicit in her abduction by Diarmait Mac Murchada and gone on to observe that ‘[a]lmost all the world’s most notable catastrophes have been caused by women […].’47 Even if he believed Nest to have been an entirely innocent victim, Giraldus had little incentive to report her abduction, as this could have cast her in a shameful light seriously at odds with his glowing image of her as a royal progenitor and source of family pride.48 The Welsh chronicler in the early twelfth century, on the other hand, was particularly interested in the dynasty of Powys, whose power extended to Ceredigion in west Wales, including Llanbadarn Fawr, where the text may well have been written.49 His main focus, then, was on Nest’s abductor, Owain, a member of that dynasty, and on the dire consequences for him of his actions. The political repercussions were spelled out by Richard de Belmeis, royal justiciar at Shrewsbury (and bishop of London), who urged Owain’s cousins to expel him and his father from their land, ‘for he [Owain] has done wrong against the king, and he has done injury and shame to the lord king and great loss to Gerald his officer in respect of his wife and his sons and his castle and his spoils’.0 Owain fled temporarily to Ireland, but, though he later returned to Wales, his actions in 1109 were not forgotten and seven years later he was killed by a force of Flemings near Carmarthen ‘at the instigation of Gerald the steward, the man whose castle Owain had burned and whose wife Nest together with his booty and spoils he had carried off by force’.1 At the same time, the chronicles portray Nest as more than a spoil of war, for they depict her sympathetically as the victim of a violent assault who nevertheless had sufficient presence of mind to help save her husband and who subsequently secured the return of her children to their father. Gerald, by contrast, had his manliness impugned by this account, which describes him as awaking afraid on hearing the attack on the castle and then as fleeing ignominiously through a privy – at the suggestion of his wife – rather than fighting.2 Nevertheless, a little later the chronicler acknowledged his power, observing that in Dyfed ‘Gerald was supreme’.3 That Gerald did not turn against Nest after this episode, and may have 47 Giraldus, Expug. Hib., pp 24– (I.1). 48 Johns, Gender, nation and conquest, p. 62 comes to a similar conclusion. 49 J.E. Lloyd, The Welsh chronicles (Sir John Rhŷs memorial lecture; London, 1928), pp 17–18; Stephenson, ‘Resurgence of Powys’, 184–9. 50 Brut, Peniarth 20, p. 29, s.a. 110=1108. Brut, Red Book, pp 8–9, s.a. 110=1109, and Brenhinedd y Saesson, pp 106–7, s.a. 1106=1109 are similar. 51 Brut, Red Book, p. 99, s.a. 1113=1116. Brut, Peniarth 20, pp 44–, s.a. 1113=1116, and Brenhinedd y Saesson, pp 134–, s.a. 1113=1116 are similar. 52 Brut, Peniarth 20, p. 28, s.a. 1106=1109; Brut, Red Book, pp 7–9, s.a. 110=1109; Brenhinedd y Saesson, pp 106–7, s.a. 1106=1109. 53 Brut, Peniarth 20, p. 29, s.a. 1106=1109. See also Brut, Red Book, pp 8–9, s.a. 110=1109: ‘Dyfed, where Gerald was in power’ (‘ynn y lle yd oed Gerald ynn ueddyanus’). By contrast, the equivalent passage in Brenhinedd y Saesson, pp 108–9, s.a. 1106=1109 refers to ‘Dyfed, where Gerald was bent on ravaging’

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continued to follow her counsel, is indicated by his readiness a few years later to give refuge to her brother Gruffudd, despite his being a potential challenge to Norman power in Dyfed as the successor of Rhys ap Tewdwr.4 It is true that Gerald’s sons, along with other Norman lords including Stephen constable of Cardigan (father of Robert fitz Stephen) and William fitz Hait, came into conflict with Gruffudd and his sons during and after the Welsh risings of 1136–7. Yet what is more striking is how rapidly such conflict changed into cooperation, above all with William fitz Gerald, lord of Carew, who joined the sons of Gruffudd ap Rhys in an attack on Wiston castle in 1147 and to whom they entrusted the custody of Tenby castle after its capture in 113.6 And, if Giraldus may be believed, the Lord Rhys freed Robert fitz Stephen from captivity in 1168 on condition he join the prince in fighting Henry II, a condition that Robert avoided through being allowed to aid Diarmait Mac Murchada instead.7 In other words, the Welsh chronicles not only attest to the notion of a broader kin group embracing the partners and offspring of Nest but also to close connections between members of that group and Nest’s natal family, the royal house of Deheubarth, extending into Giraldus’s lifetime.

II

Let us turn now to assess the significance of Giraldus’s writings as evidence for family memory. As well as considering specific references to relatives such as those already discussed it is worth exploring how far other information he related may have derived from his family, and what this may imply about the transmission of memory within it. Here I shall leave aside the account of the conquest of Ireland, evidently indebted in a significant measure to participants among his kin.8 Rather, I wish to focus on the longer chronological perspective provided by his treatment of the Welsh past from the late eleventh century onwards in the Itinerarium Kambriae (‘Journey through Wales’). This text has often been quarried by historians, but important questions remain regarding its significance as evidence for the transmission of family memory and the extent to which this helps to explain the choice of material included and the manner in which it was presented. (‘Dyvet, lle yd oed Gerald yn mynnv diffeithiav’). 54 Brut, Peniarth 20, p. 39, s.a. 1112=111; Brut, Red Book, pp 82–3, s.a. 1112=111; Brenhinedd y Saesson, pp 124–, s.a. 1112=111. Crouch, ‘Nest’, comments that the refuge given to Gruffudd by Gerald ‘indicates that Nest maintained an ascendancy over her husband’. 55 Brut, Peniarth 20, pp 1, 4, s.aa. 113=1136, 114=1146; Brut, Red Book, pp 114–1, 120–3, s.aa. 1113=1136, 1144=1146; Brenhinedd y Saessson, pp 144–, 10–1, s.aa. 113=1136, 114=1146. 56 Brut, Peniarth 20, pp , 8, s.aa. 1146=1147, 112=113; Brut, Red Book, pp 124–, 130–1, s.aa. 114=1147, 112=113. William is mistakenly reported as being opposed to the sons of Gruffudd in the equivalent passages in Brenhinedd y Saesson, pp 10–3, 16–7, s.aa. 1146=1147, 112=113 (and notes, ibid., pp 313, 31). 57 Giraldus, Expug. Hib., pp 28–31 (I.2). 58 Cf. Martin,

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To begin with, it is clear that Giraldus viewed the relatively recent Welsh past from the perspective of the milieu in which he had been raised, namely the marcher settlers who regarded themselves as being subjects of the king of England. Thus, in addition to vague references to ‘our days’ (nostris diebus) or ‘our time(s)’ (nostro tempore, nostris temporibus),9 the most common temporal markers used to indicate when events occurred are the reigns of kings of England, most often Henry I, who reigned from 1100 to 113, or his grandson Henry II, who reigned from 114 to 1189.60 Henry I in particular stands out: in one place he is credited with no less than ‘the full subjection of Wales’,61 and several key events, such as the killing in 1136 of the powerful marcher lord Richard de Clare near Abergavenny in southeast Wales, are described as occurring shortly after Henry I’s death.62 This perception of Henry’s reign as a high-water mark of English domination of Wales already appears in the midtwelfth-century Gesta Stephani (‘Deeds of Stephen’), and is also echoed in the Welsh chronicles.63 Likewise, the activities of Giraldus’s kinsmen in the southern Welsh dynasty of Deheubarth are usually described with reference to the reigns of kings of England: for example, the Lord Rhys’s capture of Llansteffan and Laugharne castles is said to have happened after the death of Henry II.64 By contrast, events are virtually never dated solely with reference to Welsh rulers. The major exception is the statement that the Welsh siege of Pembroke castle held by Gerald of Windsor, mentioned earlier, began ‘shortly after Rhys ap Tewdwr perished at Brecon through the deceit of his own men’ – although it should be noted that, more typically, Giraldus had stated only a couple of sentences previously that Pembroke castle was built ‘under Henry I king of the English’.6 Moreover, since the death of Rhys in 1093 paved the way for a major extension of Norman power in south Wales, and indeed was interpreted as marking the end of kingship in Wales,66 it was no doubt firmly imprinted on the memory of the marcher families who benefited from it. This brings us to the kinds of historical material recorded by Gerald and the closely related issue of his sources for these. This material is introduced by way of commentary on the places through or near which the archbishop’s party passed in 1188: a sequence of lieux de mémoire in which the journey to preach the ‘Giraldus as historian’, p. 278; Bartlett, Gerald, pp 1, 20, 24. 59 For example, Giraldi Cambrensis opera, vi, pp 17, 21, 24, 36, 0, 61, 73, 110, 137 (Itinerarium, I.1, 2, 4, , 8; II.2, 10). 60 Henry II: for example, ibid., pp 19, 60, 62, 100 (I.1, , 6, 13); below, n. 64. 61 Giraldi Cambrensis opera, vi, p. 103 (Itinerarium, II.1). 62 Ibid., pp 47–8 (I.4). Cf. ibid., pp 19, 78, 88, 118, 121 (I.1, 9, 11; II.3, 4). 63 For example, Gesta Stephani, ed. and trans. K.R. Potter, revd R.H.C. Davis (Oxford, 1976), pp 14–1; Brut, Peniarth 20, p. 42, s.a. 1116; cf. R.R. Davies, ‘Henry I and Wales’, in Henry Mayr-Harting and R.I. Moore (eds), Studies in medieval history presented to R.H.C. Davis (London, 198), pp 133–47. 64 Giraldi Cambrensis opera, vi, p. 80 (Itinerarium, II.10). 65 Ibid., pp 89–90 (I.12): ‘sub Anglorum rege Henrico primo’; cf. ibid., pp 20–1 (I.2) on the devastation in Brycheiniog by the sons of Iestyn and by Hywel ap Maredudd, without reference to any other temporal markers. 66 Brut, Peniarth, p. 19, s.a. 1091=1093; Brut, Red Book, pp 32–3, s.a. 1090=1093; Brenhinedd y Saesson, pp 84–,

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crusade forms a connecting thread. A broad distinction may be drawn between, on the one hand, accounts of events in Wales in the later eleventh and twelfth centuries which are the main focus of the present discussion, and, on the other, native traditions concerning much earlier periods of Welsh history. This distinction is linked to a further one, for, whereas the former accounts seem to derive from information transmitted orally, the latter are quite often attributed to written texts – such as ‘ancient and authentic writings’ concerning St Illtud,67 the Life of St David,68 Bede’s Historia ecclesiastica,69 or ‘British histories’, including what was clearly the work of Geoffrey of Monmouth.70 This serves as a reminder that Giraldus cannot be regarded as merely a mouthpiece for his extended kin, or the marchers of southwest Wales more broadly, but was, of course, also a highly educated churchman whose interests included the native traditions, and especially the ecclesiastical traditions, of the land in which he was brought up and then held office as archdeacon of Brecon.71 The other main category of historical material in the Itinerarium is more germane to the present discussion – namely numerous flashbacks describing episodes in the (often violent) relations of the Welsh with the marchers and/or the English crown. These bear comparison with the emphasis on Anglo-Welsh conflict in thirteenth-century texts from southeast Wales and the borders such as the Annals of Margam and the History of Llanthony Priory.72 The emphasis is particularly clear in the few chapters devoted to the preaching party’s brief journey through north Wales. This was a far less welcoming and familiar region than the south, and Giraldus’s coverage of it is fairly thin, with few references to earlier events. However, most of the earlier events that are mentioned concern, first, the attack on the island of Anglesey by the border earls Hugh of Chester and Hugh of Shrewsbury in 1098 and, second, the expedition – already referred to above – against the same island in 117 led by Giraldus’s uncles Henry fitz Henry and Robert fitz Stephen as part of King Henry II’s campaign against the northern Welsh kingdom of Gwynedd in that year. This also involved hostilities s.a. 1091=1093; The chronicle of John of Worcester, iii, ed. and trans. P. McGurk (Oxford, 1998), pp 64– (an account argued to derive from a Latin text underlying Brut y tywysogyon in ibid., p. xxxii). 67 Giraldi Cambrensis opera, vi, p. 28 (Itinerarium, I.2); the episode does not occur in Vita Sancti Iltuti, in Vitae sanctorum Britanniae et genealogiae, ed. and trans. A.W. WadeEvans (Cardiff, 1944), pp 194–233. 68 Giraldi Cambrensis opera, vi, p. 102 (Itinerarium, II.1). Cf. ibid., pp 119–20 (II.4), derived from Vita Sancti Dauid. 69 Ibid., p. 10 (II.1). 70 Ibid., p. 31 (I.2). For Geoffrey, see ibid., pp 6, 80, 101 (I., 10; II.1), and also J.C. Crick, ‘The British past and the Welsh future: Gerald of Wales, Geoffrey of Monmouth and Arthur of Britain’, Celtica, 23 (1999), 60–7. 71 On this theme see further Brynley F. Roberts, ‘Gerald of Wales and Welsh tradition’, in Françoise H.M. Le Saux (ed.), The formation of culture in medieval Britain: Celtic, Latin, and Norman influences on English music, literature, history, and art (Lewiston, 199), pp 129–47. 72 ‘Annales de Margan’, in Annales Monastici, i, ed. H.R. Luard (RS, London, 1864), pp 1–40; Dugdale, Monasticon, VI.i, pp 128–34. See also F.R. Lewis, ‘A history of the lordship of Gower from the missing cartulary of Neath abbey’, BBCS, 9 (1938), 149–4; ‘Annales Dorenses’, ed. Felix Liebermann and Reinhold Pauli, Monumenta Germaniae Historica: Scriptores, xxvii (Hanover, 188), pp 14–31, at pp 20–30.

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in Coleshill (in modern Flintshire) that are likewise described.73 It should be added, however, that despite his predominant alignment with marcher society, pride in his family connections sometimes led Giraldus to include material that redounded to the glory of his purely Welsh kinsfolk, notably the story of how the birds of Llan-gors lake in Brycheiniog in southern mid-Wales proclaimed through their singing that his great-uncle Gruffudd ap Rhys (d. 1137) was the true prince of south Wales.74 Giraldus normally gives no source for these retrospective accounts, many of which are either unique to his text or uniquely rich in their detail: the killing of Gwenllian, wife of the Gruffudd ap Rhys just mentioned, by the Normans near Kidwelly in 1136, or the kidnap by Ifor Bach (Ifor the Little), Welsh lord of Senghennydd in the southeast, of William, earl of Gloucester and lord of Glamorgan, together with his wife and baby son from Cardiff castle, are notable cases in point.7 The former event is recorded nowhere else, the latter makes a brief appearance in thirteenth-century Glamorgan annals, which, unlike Giraldus, give it a date, namely 118.76 It may be significant that a few stories involved his uncle David fitz Gerald, the bishop of St Davids with whom he began his education. True, nearly all these tales relate to miracles or wonders, another major category of retrospective material.77 However, these might have been deemed especially in need of authentication by an episcopal witness, and there was perhaps less incentive to mention the bishop when relating other kinds of stories. Be that as it may, it is quite possible that David provides a further instance of the part played by bishops in transmitting memories to their nephews to which Elisabeth van Houts has drawn attention.78 As in the cases discussed by her, David was a maternal uncle, and many of the retrospective accounts related by Giraldus concern his maternal kin: the killing of Gwenllian, sister-in-law of Giraldus’s maternal grandmother, in 1136 and the attack on Anglesey by his uncles in 117 are good examples. It is not unreasonable, therefore, to suppose that he owed his knowledge of some of these events to Bishop David and also perhaps to his mother Angharad, both of whom may in turn have been told some of the earliest stories, set in the late eleventh and early twelfth centuries, by their mother Nest.79 Indeed, as has been argued with respect to other aristocratic families in this period, his mother may have felt a particular obligation to ensure that the traditions of her family, on both the Norman and Welsh sides, were transmitted to her children.80 A concern to preserve those traditions may be seen 73 Giraldi Cambrensis opera, vi, pp 129–31 (Itinerarium, II.7). 74 Ibid., pp 34– (I.2). 75 Ibid., pp 63–4, 78–9 (I.6, 9). 76 ‘Chronicle of the thirteenth century. MS Exchequer Domesday’, Archaeologia Cambrensis, 3rd ser. 8 (1862), 272–83 at 274. Cf. Hughes, ‘WelshLatin chronicles’, pp 81–2. 77 Giraldi Cambrensis opera, vi, pp 24, 30–1, 73, 7–7 (Itinerarium, I.2, 8). The last reference relates that the priest Elidyr told Bishop David of a visit he had made as a boy to the underworld. 78 Elisabeth van Houts, Memory and gender in medieval Europe, 900–1200 (Houndmills, 1999), p. 90. 79 Nest may have lived until c.1130: Crouch, ‘Nest’, followed by Johns, Gender, nation and conquest, p. 22. 80 Cf. Nicholas L. Paul, To follow in their footsteps: the crusades and family memory in the high Middle Ages (Ithaca,

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in the apparent naming of Giraldus after his maternal grandfather, Gerald of Windsor. Yet it is equally notable that Giraldus was Angharad and William’s third son.81 Further consideration of naming practices may help to throw additional light on the sense of lineage among the Geraldines: the choice of Nest as the name of Maurice fitz Gerald’s daughter is an obvious instance.82

III

In drawing this discussion to a close, I wish to stress two points. First, Giraldus’s depictions of his family were highly selective and tailored to the purpose of particular works. It is very likely, then, that he knew more than he chose to record. How, and how much more, he knew we can only guess, though it is very likely that oral traditions within his family were an important source. Nevertheless, second, partial and disparate though their evidence is, Giraldus’s writings played a crucial role in preserving his family memory, both in the narrow sense of memory about his family and more broadly in the sense of memories of the past circulating among its members, as witnessed, for example, by some of the flashbacks in the Itinerarium Kambriae. With regard to the former, Giraldus provides valuable evidence for the sense of a wide kinship group, linked by common descent from Nest and her various partners but sometimes called the Geraldines, and thus disguised as a patriline descended exclusively from her husband. Moreover, it is likely that, though given fullest expression in his writings, this sense was not merely a literary invention but reflected the self-understanding of members of that group as well as others’ perceptions of them, the latter revealed to a limited extent by the Welsh chronicles. Yet, overall, surviving sources apart from Giraldus’s writings made little attempt to preserve the memory of the Geraldines. The nearest we have to a family pedigree is a garbled list of the conquerors of Carew extant in a late thirteenth-century manuscript.83 The burial places of most of the early Geraldines are unknown,84 and no churches or religious houses appear to have taken a special interest in preserving their memory. Although Robert fitz Stephen was the original founder of the Cistercian abbey of Strata Florida in Ceredigion (in 1164), he was captured shortly afterwards by the Lord Rhys, who took over the patronage and became the effective founder.8 It is true that the NY, 2012), pp 64–. 81 Giraldus’s elder uterine brothers were named Philip and Robert: Bartlett, Gerald, p. 26. Walter de Barri was Gerald’s half-brother, and not born of Angharad: Giraldus, Expug. Hib., pp 116–19 (II.42). The name of William de Barri’s father was Odo: Lloyd, History of Wales, ii, p. 423; Pryce, ‘A cross-border career’, p. 3 and n. 4. 82 Giraldus, Expug. Hib., pp 142–3 (II.4). 83 ‘“Cronica de Wallia”’, ed. Jones, 42. 84 An exception is Meiler fitz Henry (d. 1220), who was buried at the Augustinian priory of Greatconnell he had founded in Kildare: M.T. Flanagan, ‘Meiler fitz Henry (d. 1220)’, ODNB. It may be that David fitz Gerald was buried in his cathedral church of St Davids: David Walker, ‘David fitz Gerald (c.1103x9–1176)’, ODNB. 85 F.G. Cowley, The monastic

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Geraldines showed devotion to St David during their campaigns in Ireland, an attachment they shared with other marcher invaders from southwest Wales.86 It is also true, of course, that the Geraldines had a direct stake in the church of St Davids. David fitz Gerald was bishop of the see (1148–76) and appointed his brother Maurice fitz Gerald steward of its lands,87 while their nephew Giraldus was twice nominated bishop, in 1176 and 1198, and on the second occasion campaigned vigorously to secure not only his election but also papal recognition of St Davids as a metropolitan see for Wales.88 However, the Geraldines’ relations with St Davids were controversial. David fitz Gerald was accused of misappropriating its lands to reward members of his family,89 while Giraldus faced opposition to his election from within the chapter and his attempt to become archbishop ended in failure.90 It is perhaps unsurprising, then, that the clergy there appear to have made no attempts to preserve the memory of the Geraldines in any systematic or sympathetic fashion. The nearest one of their number came to doing so was in several entries of the B-text of the Annales Cambriae for the end of the twelfth century that refer to Giraldus’s kinsmen, entries which may have derived from information supplied by Giraldus and reflecting his perspective.91 By contrast, it is possible that what have been termed ‘the main St Davids annals’ represented by the C-text of the Annales Cambriae sought ‘to write Gerald out of the story’ in its account of events at the turn of the thirteenth century, thereby expressing the hostility to Giraldus among a substantial portion of the clergy at St Davids.92 Furthermore, whereas the Welsh chronicles contain laudatory obituary notices of Sulien, bishop of St Davids (1073–8, 1080–) and his sons,93 such entries are conspicuous by their absence for David fitz Gerald and his kin, including Giraldus, who is nowhere mentioned in the extant Latin and Welsh chronicle texts. In short, then, the Geraldines were unable to rely on the institutional support of the church for the preservation of their memory and identity. Instead, their family history was recorded by, and only insofar as it served the literary purposes of, an individual churchman who was one of their number.

order in south Wales, 1066–1349 (Cardiff, 1977), p. 2. 86 The deeds of the Normans in Ireland: la geste des Engleis en Yrlande, ed. Evelyn Mullally (Dublin, 2002), pp 72, 78, 102, 141, lines 744–, 73, 987, 193–6, 3440–3, 340–3. 87 St Davids episcopal acta, ed. Barrow, pp –7. 88 Michael Richter, Giraldus Cambrensis: the growth of the Welsh nation (2nd ed., Aberystwyth, 1976), pp , 94–127. 89 Michael Richter, ‘A new edition of the so-called Vita Davidis secundi’, BBCS, 22 (1966–8), 24–9. 90 Richter, Giraldus, pp 92–3, 10, 11–17. 91 See above, n. 3. 92 Stephenson, ‘Gerald of Wales and Annales Cambriae’, 30. 93 For example, Brut, Peniarth 20, pp 18, 21, 0, 2, 4, 62, s.aa. 1089=1091, 1097=1099, 1124=1127, 1136=1137, 114=1146, 1162=1162; contrast ibid., p. 71, s.a. 1176=1176: ‘And David, bishop of Menevia [St Davids] died.’ For Sulien and his family, see Nora K. Chadwick, ‘Intellectual life in west Wales in the last days of the Celtic church’, in eadem (ed.), Studies in the early British church (Cambridge, 198), pp 121–82, at pp 162–76.

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C O L I N V E AC H

The myth of the Geraldines is intricately entwined with the early history of the English conquest of Ireland. This is largely down to the self-appointed family spokesman, Giraldus Cambrensis (Gerald of Wales), whose eulogizing prose placed them centrestage. Giraldus wrote two works specifically on Ireland: Topographia Hibernica (‘The topography of Ireland’)1 and Expugnatio Hibernica (‘The conquest of Ireland’),2 both of which he began in the late 1180s after having visited the island.3 So prominent is Giraldus’s work in the historical record that one simply cannot investigate the first two decades of the conquest without encountering his opinions.4 The Topographia made Giraldus’s reputation as a writer, and has been used by scholars as an indication of English views of the Irish at the time of the invasion.5 However, it is his follow-up book, Expugnatio Hibernica, which has done so much to shape the myth of the Geraldines in Ireland. As its name suggests, Expugnatio Hibernica detailed the progress of the conquest and settlement of Ireland by English aristocrats. However, Giraldus did not only, or perhaps even primarily, seek to recount the coming of the English to Ireland. Giraldus’s original name for his work, Vaticanalis Historia (‘The prophetic history’), perhaps gives a better indication of his treatment of the progress of the conquest.6 It is a work of historical literature that combined history, commentary and political prophecy to put forward Giraldus’s vision for how the conquest of Ireland ought to be carried out. Perhaps unsurprisingly, that vision gave pride of place to the Geraldines. The first recension of Expugnatio Hibernica was completed in 1189, and this is more-or-less the edited version we have today.7 However, Giraldus revisited his work again, and sent a second recension to ‘the noble and illustrious’ King John on the eve of the English king’s expedition to Ireland in 1210.8 Giraldus 1 Giraldi Cambrensis opera, v, pp 1–204; Giraldus, Topog. Hib. 2 Giraldi Cambrensis opera, v, pp 205–411; Giraldus, Expug. Hib. 3 Giraldus made three known trips to Ireland: the first as a guest of his Geraldine kinsmen from 1183 to 1184, the second as an advisor to John, lord of Ireland, in 1185, and the third in political disgrace from 1204 to 1206: Robert Bartlett, ‘Gerald of Wales (c.1146–1220x23)’, ODNB. 4 For Giraldus, see Huw Pryce, above, pp 53–68, and Robert Bartlett, Gerald of Wales, 1146–1223 (Oxford, 1982). 5 See Bartlett, Gerald of Wales, part III: ‘Ethnography’; John Gillingham, ‘Conquering the barbarians: war and chivalry in twelfth-century Britain’, in idem, The English in the twelfth century: imperialism, national identity, and political values (Woodbridge, 2000), pp 41–58. 6 Ad Putter, ‘Gerald of Wales and the Prophet Merlin’, ANS, 31 (Woodbridge, 2009), 90–103. 7 Giraldus, Expug. Hib., pp xxxiv–lxxv. 8 It had to have been sent after the birth of John’s

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was a brazen sycophant, and on one level this must be seen as another attempt to secure royal patronage.9 In his dedication of the work to King John, Giraldus pointed out that he wrote the first edition of his Expugnatio Hibernica at the suggestion of John’s father, King Henry II, but had never been rewarded for his effort.10 Although Giraldus, who was then in his sixties, declared that had given up seeking any but heavenly rewards for his labours, his rather extended lamentation of his unrewarded brilliance suggests otherwise. Giraldus had another, more political, motive for his gift: it supplied King John with an easy-to-follow narrative of the conquest of Ireland from its earliest days. According to Giraldus, he was doing John a favour by refreshing his memory about Ireland. Yet Giraldus’s history was anything but the ‘clear mirror’ of events he claimed it to be. As mentioned above, the Expugnatio was decidedly pro-Geraldine in its outlook, and was punctuated throughout with advice for how the conquest of Ireland could better be conducted. Giraldus’s bias has long been recognized, but what is especially fascinating is how he used his 1210 dedication to update his earlier advice from 1189 to fit the circumstances of John’s expedition. After listing several reasons why the English king should pay special attention to Ireland (including its possible use as a separate kingdom for John’s second son, Richard), Giraldus explains that in so doing: You can promote and rally your veteran military aristocracy, never anything other than loyal and devoted to both you and your father, by whose assault Ireland was first obtained and is to this day still retained. This so they might keep in check some of the new and recently arrived, who owe their position more to luck than any ability and their success more to other people’s efforts than their own, and so they might decisively abase their arrogance and humble their stubborn insolence. [These newcomers] have attained to such arrogance and autonomy that they may well presume to usurp the rule of the realm [of Ireland], as rumour has it they will.11 Giraldus makes it clear elsewhere in the dedication that the ‘veteran military aristocracy’ were the Geraldines and their early companions. The ‘newcomers’, whom Giraldus prudently refuses to name, are most likely some or all of the great lords of Leinster, Limerick, Meath and Ulster who did not participate in the initial phase of the conquest of Ireland, but rather gained their lands through second son, Richard (to whom it refers), on 5 Jan. 1209, but before his Irish expedition in the summer of 1210 (after which Giraldus’s plea to pay special attention to Ireland would have been superfluous). 9 When John looked to be losing his grip on the kingdom of England, Giraldus quickly changed his tune and prayed that Louis, son of the king of France, would end John’s ‘insular tyranny’ by uniting France and the British Isles (Bartlett, Gerald, appendix II: ‘Gerald’s poem welcoming Prince Louis, 1216’). 10 NLI, MS 700, fos 96v–99r; Giraldi Cambrensis opera, v, pp 405–11; Giraldus, Expug. Hib., pp 261–5. For an English translation see the appendix, below, pp 88–92. 11 Giraldus, Expug. Hib., pp 262–3; and see appendix.

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English royal patronage. Elsewhere, Giraldus added to the 1189 text of his Expugnatio Hibernica to argue that the same sort of aristocratic greed had hampered the conquest of Ireland. In 1189, Giraldus had simply blamed John’s failure to take full control of Ireland on his youth, inexperience and bad advisors.12 At some point before 1210, however, Giraldus shifted the blame to those who in the early days of the conquest had acquired vast lordships from the most fertile and productive lands. According to Giraldus, once these men had their power, they forgot their oaths to the king and his son (presumably Henry II and John), and aspired to rule Ireland themselves.13 Although he never named the culprits, it is clear that Giraldus was once again referring to the most powerful English aristocrats in Ireland. He clearly knew his audience. King John was a particularly paranoid king, and in talking up a magnate-led conspiracy, Giraldus struck the right chord. In this instance, as will be seen, King John had every reason to be nervous.14 But Giraldus did not stop there. Instead, he remarked that the influx of newcomers meant that Ireland needed stricter royal control, and that ‘the Irish realm should become more explicitly subject to the English crown in the levying of tribute, whether of gold or of hawks, or even of both of them, as if it were by a perpetual indenture and indissoluble bond.’15 On the eve of King John’s 1210 expedition to Ireland, Giraldus sent him a partisan history of the conquest and urged him to, first, promote and rally the heroes of that history (especially the Geraldines); second, crush the power of the magnates; and third, extend English royal control over Ireland to an unprecedented level. This is quite important. It speaks to the evolving nature of the conquest of Ireland, which had by then reached a phase of consolidation and centralization. Giraldus’s address to King John also highlights the social differentiation between the resident colonial aristocracy in Ireland, which mainly consisted of lesser barons and knights, and the transnational magnates who were their lords. In order to appreciate the origin and nature of this distinction, it is first necessary to understand how the Geraldines gained power in Ireland. 12 Giraldus, Expug. Hib., pp 242–5. 13 It is a particularly impenetrable section of text: ‘Quod autem pravis praecipue consiliariis tanti defectus essent imputandi, murmur quidem erat inter minores, et quasi certum etiam apud majores et discretiores. Quidam enim, qui peramplas regni terras in primis et fertiliores olim habuerant ac fructuosiores, vel in feodum minus provide datas, vel etiam magnis ex partibus occupatas, quique ad singulare forsan regni dominium, propter occupationes regis et suorum nimias nonnumquam aspiraverant, ut res ad vota non procederet, nec fidem patri debitam, nec filio fidelitatem, fidei sacramentique necnon et hominii vinculo praestitam, et quanquam triplici solvendo tamen ex facili respicientes, procurasse videbantur’ (NLI, MS 700, fo. 94r; Giraldi Cambrensis opera, v, p. 394). It is tempting to speculate whether Giraldus was referring to the first lord of Meath, Hugh de Lacy (d. 1186), who had been rumoured to aspire to the kingship of Ireland. John had blamed the failure of his 1185 Irish expedition on Hugh’s intransigence, which, as will be seen below, might have been a particularly poignant point to recall in 1209–10. For John and Hugh, see Colin Veach, Lordship in four realms: the Lacy family, 1166–1241 (Manchester, 2014), pp 61–7. 14 See below, pp 80–3. 15 Giraldus, Expug. Hib., p. 264; and see appendix, p. 87.

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In 1166, a coalition headed by the high-king of Ireland, Ruaidrí Ó Conchobair, expelled the king of Leinster, Diarmait Mac Murchada, from Ireland.16 Diarmait had been a particularly powerful provincial king, who had controlled the Hiberno-Norse city of Dublin, introduced European-style innovations to Leinster and cultivated an international profile. Consequently, he was able to draw upon his foreign connections for support in exile. The first such connection was the prominent Bristol merchant, Robert fitz Harding (d. 1170), who harboured Diarmait in the immediate aftermath of his expulsion. Bristol, with its thriving Irish Sea trade, was an obvious first port-of-call for the Irish king,17 but the most powerful of Diarmait’s connections was King Henry II of England. Finding that Henry was not in England, Diarmait tracked his court all the way to Aquitaine to seek an audience.18 This level of perseverance is an indication of Diarmait’s expectations. Only the previous year (1165) Diarmait had allowed Henry to hire the fleet of Dublin for an expedition against Wales. There are even indications that Diarmait may have helped Henry as early as the 1140s, when Henry was still fighting to win the kingdom of England from his rival, King Stephen (d. 1154).19 However deep the debt ran, Diarmait clearly thought that it was time for Henry to repay it. While Henry was certainly willing to help Diarmait, his lukewarm response to Diarmait’s entreaties stopped short of direct action. Instead, the English king gave Diarmait permission to hire a fighting force from his vast dominions. Diarmait returned to Bristol, and began his recruitment drive in the most obvious place for an invasion of Leinster: the Welsh March. Based once more in Bristol, Diarmait conducted a long and extensive search for men willing to risk their lives for him in a foreign land. After much time, he was finally able to extract the thinnest of promises of assistance from Richard fitz Gilbert de Clare (better known as Strongbow). In return for his help, Diarmait promised Strongbow his daughter Aífe’s hand in marriage and to make him heir to the kingdom of Leinster.20 That done, Diarmait set out with a small band of mercenaries to await Strongbow’s reinforcements in Leinster. It was apparently on his journey home that Diarmait recruited his first Geraldines: Robert fitz Stephen (d. before 1192) and Maurice fitz Gerald (d. 1176). 16 For Diarmait’s expulsion and request to Henry II, see M.T. Flanagan, Irish society, AngloNorman settlers, Angevin kingship: interactions in Ireland in the late twelfth century (Oxford, 1989), pp 56–78. 17 See John Bradley, ‘A tale of three cites: Bristol, Chester, Dublin and “the coming of the Normans”’, in H.B. Clarke and J.R.S. Phillips (eds), Ireland, England and the Continent in the Middle Ages and beyond: essays in memory of a turbulent friar, F.X. Martin, O.S.A. (Dublin, 2006), pp 51–66. 18 Giraldus, Expug. Hib., pp 26–7. 19 Flanagan, Irish society, pp 74–6; F.X. Martin, ‘Diarmait Mac Murchada and the coming of the AngloNormans’, in NHI, ii, pp 43–66, at pp 61–2. 20 Diarmait’s offer is analysed in Flanagan, Irish society, pp 79–111.

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As his patronymic suggests, Robert was not a descendant of the family’s eponymous ancestor, Gerald of Windsor. Instead, Robert’s father, Stephen, constable of Cardigan, had had a liaison with Gerald of Windsor’s Welsh wife Nest, which made Robert a half-brother of the fitz Geralds. Nor was Robert the only Geraldine half-brother. Nest’s grandson, Giraldus, claimed that, thanks to her, the Flemish lords of Haverford were the only significant family in southwest Wales not linked to him by blood.21 Nest even had an illegitimate child with King Henry I (whom she named Henry), whose own son, Meiler fitz Henry, also took part in the conquest of Ireland. Giraldus, at least, considered all of these partWelsh descendants of Nest to be of his own gens, clearly distinguishable from other colonists.22 One relative not included in his grouping was Nest’s nephew, Rhys ap Gruffudd (d. 1197), prince of Deheubarth, who struggled against his extended family for dominance in southwest Wales. Three years earlier, Rhys had captured and imprisoned his cousin, Robert fitz Stephen, when he gained control of the royal castle of Cardigan (of which Robert had been custodian). Giraldus reports that at the time of Diarmait’s journey through Wales, Robert had just been set free on the condition that he fight for Rhys against King Henry II of England.23 This is a clear illustration of the complex nexus of loyalties that existed in Wales’s mixed marcher society, but it was an extremely dangerous position for Robert, who could have been accused of breaking his fidelity to the English king. Consequently, Robert’s half-brothers David fitz Gerald (d. 1176), bishop of St Davids, and Maurice fitz Gerald persuaded Rhys to allow Robert to speak with Diarmait with a view to removing himself from Wales altogether. Consequently, when Diarmait came to the natural crossing-point to Leinster at St Davids (Pembrokeshire), he was welcomed there by Rhys, Bishop David, Maurice and Robert. An agreement was reached whereby Diarmait promised to grant both Robert and Maurice the strategic Hiberno-Norse town of Wexford and its hinterland if they helped him to recover Leinster.24 This was a risky, but welltimed venture for the Geraldines, whose prospects in southern Wales were looking dim thanks to Rhys ap Gruffudd’s ascendancy and increased English royal intrusion into the region.25 Having promised to help Diarmait, neither Strongbow nor the Geraldines were so rash as to rush to Ireland with Diarmait in 1167. One did not conquer a foreign kingdom at the drop of a hat. The logistical arrangements necessary for the mobilization and provisioning of their military forces would have taken the Welsh marcher lords some time, especially since this was to be an open-ended expedition overseas. In addition, there was the question of whether this exiled Irish king had any prospect of victory. Following Diarmait into the unknown was 21 David Crouch, ‘Nest (b. before 1092, d. c.1130)’, ODNB. 22 Giraldus, Expug. Hib., pp 156–7; and see Pryce, above, pp 56–63. 23 Giraldus, Expug. Hib., pp 28–9. 24 Giraldus, Expug. Hib., pp 28–31. 25 Flanagan, Irish society, pp 137–49.

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a leap of faith neither Strongbow nor the Geraldines were willing to make. Instead, Diarmait Mac Murchada returned to Ireland in August 1167 with only a small band of Pembrokeshire Flemings led by Richard fitz Godebert.26 The Geraldines would not arrive in Ireland for another two years, by which point those Flemings had helped to re-establish Diarmait in his ancestral Leinster territory of Uí Chennselaig.27 Finally, around 1 May 1169, Robert Fitz Stephen landed at Bannow Bay with a force of thirty knights ‘of his nearest relations and dependants’, sixty mounted men-at-arms, and around 300 archers and infantry.28 Giraldus provides descriptions of the major players in his Expugnatio Hibernica, most, if not all, of whom he would have known personally. Of Robert fitz Stephen he writes: What a unique example of courage and true endurance he was, a man who enjoyed mixed fortunes, and who was always prone to encounter adversity rather than good fortune; who so often, both in Ireland and Wales experienced with equanimity both the extremes of Fortune’s wheel, ‘enduring everything that adversity can inflict, and enjoying everything that good fortune can bestow’. Fitz Stephen was truly a second Marius … He was a well-built and sturdy man, and handsome, a man who lived well, generous and of an open and cheerful disposition, but excessively addicted to wine and women.29 Among Robert’s companions in 1169 were his nephews Meiler fitz Henry (the grandson of Henry I mentioned above), Miles, son of David fitz Gerald, bishop of St Davids, and Robert de Barri (Giraldus’s older brother). This was a welltrained and tightly knit war band built for conquest, which was reinforced the following day by a boatload of Flemish troops. The new arrivals quickly took Wexford, which Diarmait duly granted to Robert and the still-absent Maurice fitz Gerald. Robert and Diarmait then marched throughout Leinster, forcing its native kings into submission. By the time that the second wave of Geraldines arrived under Maurice fitz Gerald later that year, Diarmait Mac Murchadha was once again king of Leinster.30 Maurice fitz Gerald was the common ancestor of the two great Geraldine houses in Ireland: those of Kildare, descended from his eldest son Gerald fitz Maurice (d. 1204) and of Desmond, descended from his younger son Thomas fitz Maurice (d. 1213). He was also in his early sixties when he first set foot in Ireland. Gerald of Wales paints the picture of a wise old campaigner: 26 The deeds of the Normans in Ireland. La Geste des Engleis en Yrlande, ed. Evelyn Mullally (Dublin, 2002), ll. 404–19; Martin, ‘Diarmait Mac Murchada and the coming of the AngloNormans’, p. 66. 27 Lydon, Lordship, 2nd ed., p. 35; Otway-Ruthven, Med. Ire., p. 43. 28 Giraldus, Expug. Hib., pp 30–1; Deeds of the Normans, ll. 439–60. 29 Giraldus, Expug. Hib., pp 86–7. 30 Giraldus, Expug. Hib., pp 30–51; Deeds of the Normans, ll. 461–1065; Otway-Ruthven, Med. Ire., pp 44–5; Orpen, Normans, i, pp 149–73.

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Maurice was a modest and dignified man, with a high complexion and distinguished features, in stature moderately short, for he was taller than short men usually are, but shorter than those of medium height … He was a naturally good man, and yet he was far more interested in actually being good than in simply seeming to be … A man of few words, he said little … yet when circumstances demanded that he speak, he was as knowledgeable as he was slow to give his opinion. In war he was courageous and second to none in the valour he displayed … He was sober, temperate and continent, reliable, steadfast and loyal. He was indeed not without his faults, but he was devoid of all great or extraordinary vices.31 The last of the early Geraldines to arrive was Raymond ‘le Gros’, who landed at the creek of Dún Domnaill (co. Wexford) in about early May 1170.32 Raymond was the son of Maurice fitz Gerald’s eldest brother, William, but, as Giraldus relates, his corpulence had earned him the nickname ‘the Fat’. He was also one of Strongbow’s men, and his arrival was a signal that things were about to change for his Geraldine kinsmen.33 Upon landing in Ireland, Raymond was joined by a small force under Strongbow’s uncle, Hervey de Montmorency (d. c.1189). Hervey had arrived in the first boatload of Geraldines with Robert fitz Stephen, which suggests that Strongbow had had a hand in directing even the earliest English operations in Ireland. Hervey was thus a check on Geraldine ambitions from the outset. His arrival at Dún Domnaill was perhaps to coordinate preparations for Strongbow’s arrival later that year, but it also provided Raymond with desperately needed reinforcements. With Leinster, Wexford and Dublin all controlled by Diarmait and his allies, the Hiberno-Norse citizens of Waterford could see the writing on the wall. Joining with two disaffected Leinster kings, they attacked Raymond and Hervey on the Dún Domnaill headland. Although vastly outnumbered, the English forces managed to win the day, killing at least 500 of their enemies and capturing a further seventy.34 The question facing the English was what to do with the prisoners. According to the European code of chivalry, to which all of the knights present would have subscribed, prisoners were to be kept and ransomed. However, that was not the practice in Ireland. As Giraldus observed: In France men choose the open plains for their battles, but in Ireland and Wales rough, wooded country; there heavy armour is a mark of distinction, here it is only a burden; there victory is won by standing firm, here by

31 Giraldus, Expug. Hib., pp 118–19. 32 Martin, ‘Allies and an overlord, 1169–72’, p. 72. The place was later named Baginbun. 33 Flanagan, Irish society, p. 155. 34 Deeds of the Normans, ll. 1400–75; Giraldus, Expug. Hib., pp 56–8; Martin, ‘Allies and an overlord, 1169– 72’, pp 73–4.

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Giraldus posits a scene in which Raymond and Hervey argued over whether they should adhere to chivalry or local Irish customs in dealing with their prisoners. In the end, Hervey’s ruthless, if pragmatic, approach won the day. Compassion then would undermine conquest later. Consequently, the prisoners were slaughtered and their bodies thrown from the cliffs.36 This rivalry between the men is a recurring theme in Giraldus’s work, in which Raymond tends to display all the hallmarks of secular virtue (in this case, chivalry), while Hervey is portrayed as vice incarnate (here acting barbarously). The same is apparent in his descriptions of them. Giraldus writes of Raymond: To sum up the character, disposition and virtues of the man in a few words, he was generous and lenient, careful and thoughtful, and although a man of very great courage and skilled in the use of arms, it was his sound judgement and foresight which marked him out. He earned praise for both these qualities, having in his make-up a great deal of the soldier, but even more of the leader.37 By contrast, Giraldus’s vitriolic portrayal of Hervey is a study in character assassination: He was addicted to sex from his youth, and considered lawful any act which others wished to perform upon him, or he wished to perform upon others, involving lust in all its forms. He avoided neither those who were debauched nor any kind of debauchery. He was a jealous man, an informer and deceitful, wily, polished and thoroughly false, on whose tongue milk and honey were compounded with poison. He was inconstant and vain, with no reliable element in his make-up save his unreliability …38 Giraldus was quite fond of juxtaposing characters in his work, so the scorn heaped upon Hervey was most likely intended to highlight Raymond’s superior quality. However, the sheer ferocity of Giraldus’s attack on this ‘deceitful informer’, who was to become Strongbow’s steward of Leinster and later King Henry II’s marshal of Ireland,39 suggests that Giraldus was struggling to reconcile the Geraldines’ accomplishments with their increasingly subordinate position in the political milieu of conquest Ireland. 35 Giraldus, Expug. Hib., pp 246–7. See also Gillingham, ‘Conquering the barbarians’; M.T. Flanagan, ‘Irish and Anglo-Norman warfare in twelfth-century Ireland’, in Thomas Bartlett and Keith Jeffery (eds), A military history of Ireland (Cambridge, 1996), pp 52–75. 36 Giraldus, Expug. Hib., pp 58–65; Deeds of the Normans, ll. 1468–93. 37 Giraldus, Expug. Hib., pp 154–5. 38 Giraldus, Expug. Hib., pp 158–7. 39 M.T. Flanagan, ‘Montmorency,

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That inferior position was confirmed with Strongbow’s arrival three months later in August 1170. He immediately conquered Waterford, married Diarmait’s daughter Aífe, and was proclaimed heir to the kingdom of Leinster.40 The Geraldines’ supersession in this way did not sit well with Giraldus, who (characteristically) tried to explain it away. He posited a meeting before Strongbow’s arrival between Diarmait, Robert and Maurice, in which Diarmait revealed his ambition to become king of all Ireland.41 In return for their help in recruiting more of their race and kin (genus et gentem), Giraldus claimed that Diarmait offered his daughter Aífe and the succession to Leinster to each baron in turn. Already having lawful wives, ‘after a great deal of discussion’ they both refused and instead suggested that Diarmait send for Strongbow, to whom he had already offered Aífe. This scenario is almost certainly a figment of Giraldus’s imagination, and it shows that Giraldus was keen to portray the Geraldines as the true conquerors of Leinster. Only their morality prevented them from accomplishing what Strongbow did by marrying Aífe and inheriting the kingdom. Unfortunately for Giraldus and the Geraldines, things were about to get much worse.

THE GERALDINES IN THE ANGEVIN EMPIRE

The arrival in Ireland of King Henry II in 1171 recalibrated the island’s political hierarchy. Henry annexed all of Ireland to his vast dominions, known to historians as the Angevin empire, which already included most of Britain and two-thirds of France.42 This is not to say that Ireland was from that point an English possession. Instead, Henry held Ireland as a separate realm (regnum), which was no more governmentally dependent upon England than England was dependent upon Normandy or Anjou. In 1171, King Henry held all of his dominions, England, Ireland, Normandy, Anjou and Aquitaine as separate political entities, which all just happened to be under the rule of the same man. Ireland’s separateness allowed King Henry to reorganize its polity to best suit his purposes. That meant putting an end to the aristocratic free-for-all that had characterized the early stages of Geraldine involvement in Ireland. Giraldus writes that, the citizens of Wexford, having previously captured Robert fitz Stephen, brought him to King Henry in chains. They claimed that Robert was the first adventurer to enter Ireland without Henry’s permission, and had thus Hervey de (fl. c.1135–c.1189)’, ODNB. 40 Martin, ‘Allies and an overlord, 1169–72’, pp 75– 6; Otway-Ruthven, Med. Ire., pp 45–8. 41 Giraldus, Expug. Hib., pp 52–5. 42 For King Henry, see W.L. Warren, Henry II (2nd ed., London, 1991). For his dealings with Ireland, see Seán Duffy, ‘Henry II and England’s insular neighbours’, in Christopher Harper-Bill and Nicholas Vincent (eds), Henry II: new interpretations (Woodbridge, 2007), pp 129–53; Anne Duggan, ‘The making of a myth: Giraldus Cambrensis, Laudabiliter, and Henry II’s lordship of Ireland’, Studies in Medieval and Renaissance History, 3:4 (2007), 249–312.

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presented others with the opportunity for mischief there. Henry responded as the Wexford delegation must have hoped he would: ‘The king first of all reproached [Robert] severely for undertaking something so grandiose and as rash as the conquest of Ireland, displaying extreme rage and making many threats.’43 Henry imprisoned Robert in Raghnall’s tower, Waterford, chained to another man. Robert eventually gained his freedom, but not before King Henry had taken his town of Wexford as royal demesne. Henry then assigned Wexford’s former Geraldine lords, Robert fitz Stephen and Maurice fitz Gerald, to the garrison of the royal city of Dublin, under the newly created lord of Meath, Hugh de Lacy.44 Maurice was also granted the middle cantred of Uí Fáeláin (in which Naas is situated), which he later came to hold under Strongbow as lord of Leinster. Having thus been transplanted from southern to northern Leinster, Maurice’s family further extended their holdings there when his son Gerald married the heiress of Uí Failge (Offaly), Eva de Bermingham.45 Giraldus claims that Robert fitz Stephen received a similar grant from the king in Uí Fáeláin, but, if true, it was not confirmed by Strongbow (as Maurice’s was). Characteristically, Gerald of Wales puts this down to the manoeuvrings of a jealous royal administrator.46 In fact, Robert was called to fight for the king in Normandy in 1173, and did not return to Ireland until sent there as a royal official after Strongbow’s death in 1176.47 Having thus proved his loyalty and worth, the following year King Henry finally granted Robert lasting territorial compensation for Wexford. In that year, 1177, King Henry gave new impetus to the conquest of Ireland by making speculative grants of land in Munster. One, a grant of ‘the kingdom of Limerick’ (that is, Thomond) was to the Anglo-Norman baron, Philip de Briouze. The second grant, of ‘the kingdom of Cork’ (that is, Desmond) was a joint grant to Robert fitz Stephen and Miles de Cogan.48 The most obvious problem with these grants was that the territories already had Irish lords. If Robert and his associates wanted their lordships, they would have to go and take them. Philip de Briouze was not up to the task, and his grant quickly lapsed. Robert fitz Stephen and Miles de Cogan had more success, but were still hard pressed. They divided their lordship between them, Miles taking the four cantreds to the west of Cork, and Robert the three (safer) cantreds to the east. Robert kept some land in demesne, but granted much of it to his nephews Raymond ‘le Gros’ and Philip de Barri (Giraldus’s brother). Once his lordship had expanded, Robert granted some of the new territories to yet another nephew, Alexander fitz Maurice (a younger son of Maurice fitz Gerald). Robert fitz Stephen’s share of Cork was thus a family affair, and the Geraldines multiplied 43 Giraldus, Expug. Hib., pp 92–3. 44 For Hugh’s introduction to Meath, see Colin Veach, ‘Henry II’s grant of Meath to Hugh de Lacy in 1172: a reassessment’, Ríocht na Mídhe, 18 (2007), 67–94. 45 M.T. Flanagan, ‘Fitzgerald, Maurice (d. 1176)’, ODNB. 46 Giraldus, Expug. Hib., pp 172. 47 Flanagan, Irish society, pp 151. 48 F.X. Martin, ‘Overlord becomes feudal lord, 1172–85’, in NHI, ii, pp 98–126, at pp 112–14.

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in the region as assorted nephews, brothers and cousins were granted new conquests. When Robert died several years later, he was succeeded by his nephew Raymond ‘le Gros’.49 The Geraldines seem to have been specialists in frontier lordship, revelling in the cut and thrust of border warfare. Consequently, they were among the beneficiaries when King Henry’s youngest son John assumed lordship over Ireland in 1185. The new lord of Ireland carved up the defunct Briouze lordship of Limerick into smaller fiefs, which provided opportunities for men used to conquest and colonization. It was in this period of John’s lordship, in about 1197, that Thomas fitz Maurice, progenitor of the earls of Desmond, obtained his first Munster territory, Shanid (which castle was long afterwards called ‘Desmond’s first and most ancient house’).50 Although the Geraldines thus continued to find ways of expansion through conquest, from 1171 the political fortunes of Angevin Ireland were directed by its magnates, the provincial lords of Meath, Leinster and Ulster. There were several reasons for this state of affairs, but the most obvious was that Henry II and his son and successor as king of England, Richard the Lionheart, thought in terms of France, not Britain (let alone Ireland).51 Henry’s son, John, seems to have taken a genuine interest in Ireland as its lord from 1185 to 1199, but he lacked the resources to dominate its resident elites. This lack of strong centralized control meant that Angevin Ireland required a kind of corporate governance, and the most obvious partners of the lord of Ireland would come from the magnate class. The lords of Meath, Leinster and Ulster were transnational aristocrats (medieval multinationals) whose landed assets in England and Normandy allowed them to attend the English king in several realms, provided them with the resources to drive the conquest in Ireland, and acted as an insurance policy lest they grow too ambitious in the process.52 The Geraldines and other members of the lower aristocracy generally had no such prominence, resources or means of royal oversight. Until the lord of Ireland was able to invest heavily in his realm’s central administration, the Irish magnates would dominate its polity.

F RO M L O R D S H I P T O C O L O N Y

The year 1199 marked a turning point in the constitutional history of Ireland. In that year, John, lord of Ireland, succeeded his elder brother, Richard the Lionheart, to become king of England and head of the Angevin empire. At first, the change for Ireland was subtle. King John assumed the same Francocentric political perspective that his brother and father had maintained. That meant less 49 Orpen, Normans, ii, pp 43–7. 50 Orpen, Normans, ii, pp 164–5. 51 For their continental outlook, see Martin Aurell, The Plantagenet empire, 1154–1224, trans. David Crouch (Harlow, 2007). 52 For one such relationship, see Colin Veach, ‘King and magnate in medieval Ireland: Walter de Lacy, King Richard and King John’, IHS, 37 (2010), 179–202.

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personal involvement in Ireland, but whereas both Henry and Richard had been willing to co-opt resident magnates to the Irish administration, King John was singularly uncomfortable sharing power. Moreover, he was incredibly distrustful of magnate lordship and saw his upper aristocracy as rivals to, not active participants in, his rule. As the Anonymous of Béthune later wrote: ‘[King John] always wanted his barons at odds with each other and was never happier than when he saw enmity among them.’53 This attitude would eventually lead to a poisoned atmosphere of baronial paranoia, which in England culminated in the Magna Carta civil war.54 In Ireland, the immediate result was that King John bypassed the provincial lords of Meath, Leinster and Ulster, and employed the old Geraldine, Meiler fitz Henry, as his justiciar of Ireland. Meiler had been in the first boatload of adventurers with Robert fitz Stephen, and was a tenant of the lords of Leinster and Meath. By elevating Meiler to the position of being the effective viceroy of Ireland, King John indicated a potential new direction for Ireland.55 As one might expect given John’s penchant for factionalism, Meiler’s tenure in office was characterized by conflict. In 1201, he refused to back the new lord of Limerick, William de Briouze, when the local settlers (including a number of Geraldines) resisted Briouze’s lordship.56 From 1203, Meiler quarrelled with the powerful Munster baron, William de Burgh, who held an unrealized grant of the entire province of Connacht.57 The next year, in 1204, Meiler intrigued with the powerful Lacy family of Meath, and helped them bring down and replace the lord of Ulster, John de Courcy.58 Significant as the change in Ulster was, it paled in comparison to King John’s loss of Normandy to the king of France that same year.59 This was soon followed by the loss of several more of the Angevins’ continental lands, all of which forced John to pay more attention to the lands that he still held, including Ireland. John’s defeat also determined that the overriding imperative of his reign would be the recovery of those continental territories – at any cost. England was ideally suited to be a cash cow, which role it had frequently played for its Danish, Norman and Angevin kings.60 But Ireland was a land of overlapping lordships, 53 ‘Ses barons melloit ensamble quanques il pooit; moult estoit liés quant il veoit haine entre els’ (Histoire des ducs de Normandie et des rois d’Angleterre, ed. F. Michel (Paris, 1840), p. 105); such royally imposed factionalism is explored for Ireland in Peter Crooks, ‘“Divide and rule”: factionalism as royal policy in the lordship of Ireland, 1171–1265’, Peritia, 19 (2005), 263–307. 54 David Crouch, ‘Baronial paranoia in King John’s reign’, in J.S. Loengard, (ed.), Magna Carta and the England of King John (Woodbridge, 2010), pp 45–62. 55 For that new direction and its consequences, see Colin Veach, ‘King John and royal control in Ireland: why William de Briouze had to be destroyed’, EHR, 129:540 (2014), 1051–78; M.T. Flanagan, ‘Defining lordships in Angevin Ireland: William Marshal and the king’s justiciar’, in Martin Aurell and Frederic Boutoulle, (eds), Les seigneuries dans l’espace Plantagenêt (c.1150–c.1250) (Bordeaux, 2009), pp 41–59. 56 Rot. litt. pat., pp 4, 16b. 57 Helen Perros, ‘Crossing the Shannon frontier: Connacht and the Anglo-Normans, 1170–1224’, in Colony & frontier, pp 117–38. 58 Veach, Lordship in four realms, pp 116–18. 59 J.C. Holt, ‘The end of the Anglo-Norman realm’, PBA, 61 (1973), 23–66; F.M. Powicke, The loss of Normandy (2nd ed., Manchester, 1960). 60 Though even there John’s methods stoked rebellion: J.C. Holt, The Northerners

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lacking England’s centralized systems of control. From 1204, however, King John and Meiler fitz Henry set out to remedy that by Anglicizing the government of Ireland.61 In about August 1204, John ordered the construction of a strong castle at Dublin, to be the financial and judicial centre of his Irish realm.62 On 2 November 1204, he introduced the English system of judicial writs and mandated that they run throughout Ireland.63 Meiler fitz Henry was instrumental in achieving John’s aims, but he also acted on his own initiative. Amidst the strengthening of central control in Ireland, that same year Meiler swooped in to secure the inheritance of his Geraldine cousin, Gerald fitz Maurice.64 Gerald had died with an underage heir, which meant that all of his lands were held in wardship until his heir (the future justiciar Maurice fitz Gerald) came of age. As Gerald fitz Maurice had held his lands of several different lords, each of his lords was supposed to take custody of the lands for which Gerald was their tenant. His substantial lands in Leinster should therefore have gone to the lord of Leinster, William Marshal (d. 1219). However, Meiler decided to claim prerogative wardship, which in England meant that the king (or in this case his justiciar) had the right to custody of everything. King John backed Meiler’s importation of the practice to Ireland, further alienating the lord of Leinster. As that quarrel quietly rumbled on, King John took advantage of favourable political conditions in Munster to introduce the English mechanism for royal control of the localities: the shire system. This had the potential to bring the resident Geraldines and their fellow members of the lower aristocracy into a much closer relationship with the Dublin-based government, led by Meiler fitz Henry. The initiative’s main obstacle was King John’s friend, William de Briouze, who dominated northern Munster from his provincial lordship of Limerick. But John was not the sort of man to let friendship, or even chartered possession of a territory, stand in the way of administrative reform. He devised a process by which William de Briouze could – with a veneer of due process – be deprived of his lordship over Limerick.65 John’s plan appears subtle in the records of the English administration; Meiler fitz Henry’s application of it was anything but. In the winter of 1206–7, Meiler attacked Briouze’s lordship of Limerick, and took it by force.66 Meiler’s actions threw the lordship of Ireland into chaos. In the ensuing bloodshed the magnates and their followers lined up against Meiler. On the face of it, this (Oxford, 1992), ch. 9: ‘The loss of Normandy and its consequences’. 61 That process is detailed in Veach, ‘King John and royal control in Ireland’; see also, Frame, Colonial Ire. (2nd ed.), pp 64–70, 108–27. 62 Rot. litt. claus., i. p. 6b. 63 Rot. litt. pat., p. 47b. 64 Flanagan, ‘Defining lordships in Angevin Ireland’, pp 47–8. 65 For much of what follows, see Veach, ‘King John and royal control in Ireland’. 66 Rot. litt. claus., i. 77; AFM, iii, pp 146–8, s.a. 1205; AClon, p. 221, s.a. 1205. These Irish annals have a flawed chronology at this point: King John’s reaction to Meiler’s taking of Limerick came in February 1207, which proves that the attack must have taken place that winter.

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hardly seems a fair fight. The magnate lords of Limerick, Leinster, Meath and Ulster ruled over the vast majority of English-controlled Ireland, and could theoretically mobilize huge hosts from their military tenants to combat Meiler. But that was only the theory. In reality, the early thirteenth century witnessed a growing independence among the lower aristocracy (whether knights or barons), and their ability to follow different lords. Aristocrats actively recruited from among their rivals’ tenantry, hoping to entice men to their service through payments or the promise of greater rewards.67 No one could promise greater rewards than the English king, and Meiler (as the king’s representative) sought support from the magnates’ military followers. The Geraldines seem to have been among those who supported Meiler, but the tenants of Meath, Ulster and (to a lesser extent) Leinster remained loyal to their magnate lords.68 Recognizing that he was losing grip on Ireland, John planned to lead a royal army to Ireland in March 1208.69 However, before the expedition could get underway, Meiler was captured, made peace and delivered his son as a hostage. The Irish magnates were victorious. King John quickly changed tack and embarked on a policy of appeasement with the two most prominent magnates, the lords of Meath and Leinster.70 Part of that process involved removing Meiler fitz Henry as justiciar, and replacing him with an outsider, John de Gray, bishop of Norwich. All was not lost for the Geraldines, however, for, having made peace with the lords of Meath and Leinster, King John continued the process of shiring in Munster. This meant dismantling the lordship of Limerick, and, ultimately, destroying its lord William de Briouze. John harassed William in England and Wales, forcing him into a desperate revolt against the crown there, after which he and his family fled to Ireland.71 The magnate lords of Leinster, Meath and Ulster closed ranks to protect the fugitives, and King John’s Irish administration was once again powerless to challenge them. The situation dragged on, with the Lacy brothers going so far as to negotiate rebellion with the king of France in 1209 or early 1210.72 If this conspiracy was not the final straw, it at least came to light in the period immediately preceding King John’s expedition to Ireland in 1210. A royal voyage to Ireland was a significant enterprise: the only other reigning king of England to visit between 1172 and 1689 was Richard II.73 John’s household accounts show that an enormous royal army, including administrators as well as soldiers, was to be transported to Ireland in around 700 ships.74 After two years 67 David Crouch, The English aristocracy, 1070–1272: a social transformation (New Haven, 2011), pp 149–58; Veach, Lordship in four realms, pp 255–63. 68 Rot. litt. pat., pp 71–2. 69 Rot. litt. pat., p. 79. 70 Rot. litt. claus., i, 105; Rot. chart., pp 176, 178. 71 In addition to Veach, ‘King John and royal control in Ireland’, see Brock Holden, ‘King John, the Braoses, and the Celtic fringe, 1207–1216’, Albion, 33 (2001), 1–23 (which does not recognize the link with the shiring of Munster). 72 Veach, ‘King and magnate in medieval Ireland’, pp 199– 201; Veach, Lordship in four realms, pp 138–40. 73 Seán Duffy, Ireland in the Middle Ages (Basingstoke, 1997), p. 158. 74 S.D. Church, ‘The 1210 campaign in Ireland: evidence for a

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of seeing his authority flouted in Ireland, John readied himself to crush magnate power there. To return to the beginning of this chapter, it was in the charged atmosphere before embarkation that Giraldus sent King John his partisan history of the conquest of Ireland, reminding him of the way in which magnate ambition had in the past hampered the conquest, and advocating the promotion of Ireland’s ‘veteran military aristocracy’ (i.e., the Geraldines) to combat those who would now presume to usurp the realm of Ireland for themselves. Only once these magnates’ hold on the island had been broken could King John finally rule Ireland as Giraldus thought it ought to be ruled: firmly controlled from England. When King John finally launched his 1210 expedition, he did indeed rally its veteran military aristocracy, including the Geraldines. For instance, Thomas fitz Maurice joined the royal army, bringing with him several other members of the family.75 With so much of Ireland behind him, the English king could almost do as he pleased. King John strengthened the grip of English laws in Ireland, regularized the coinage, reorganized the Dublin-based administration, received the submission of several important Irish kings, threatened to put the lord of Leinster on trial in Dublin, banished the lord of Meath and chased the earl of Ulster and the family of the lord of Limerick into hiding in Scotland.76 Meath and Ulster thus reverted to the English crown, and were administered as if they were shires. Limerick had already been partially dismantled, and was converted into the shire of Munster.77 In other words, in 1210, John stamped English royal authority upon Ireland. The process by which Ireland was to become an English dependency had begun.

* * * The story of the Geraldines in the early years of the conquest of Ireland is in many ways the story of Ireland’s transformation from a land of conquest lordships, into a province of the Angevin empire, and, ultimately, into an English colony. This transformation was rapid, perhaps too rapid for many of those involved. The first phase lasted two years at the most, from the time that the first boatload of Geraldines arrived in 1169, until King Henry II assumed lordship over Ireland in 1171. This was a period of great opportunity, when an adventurer’s prospects were as great as his ambition. King Henry’s assumption of lordship put an end to such open-ended optimism (at least for the first pioneers). From that point, Ireland was part of the Angevin empire, which put it on an international stage. Ireland became the playground of transnational military revolution?’, ANS, 20 (1997), 45–57. 75 Rot. lib., pp 182–5. 76Veach, ‘King John and royal control in Ireland’; cf. Seán Duffy, ‘King John’s expedition to Ireland, 1210: the evidence reconsidered’, IHS, 30 (1996), 1–24. 77 Veach, ‘King John and royal control in Ireland’.

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magnates who also held lands in England, Wales and France. Grants within Ireland became the product of royal patronage, having as much to do with distant court politics as with local Irish conditions. These new, more powerful, men were placed above those who had come before, and reading Giraldus, one can feel his frustration at the change in emphasis. During the course of a particularly dramatic panegyric in favour of his fellow Geraldines, he writes: What a breed, what a noble stock, a stock which unaided would have been equal to the conquest of any kingdom had not envy, begrudging them their great valour, descended from on high into the depths.78 This transitional period lasted about three decades until the accession of King John in England. The overarching theme of King John’s rule in Ireland was his attempted replication in Ireland of the prerogatives he enjoyed in England as its king. This meant the reform of the Irish administration along English lines, but it also meant an attack on the quasi-independence of aristocratic lordship in Ireland. It is a measure of their growing disillusionment with the state of the conquest that the Geraldines (the original freebooters) seem to have backed this reform. With their help, John began converting Ireland from a separate province of the Angevin empire into a colony governmentally dependent upon England. In that sense, by 1210 English Ireland had been established. Now, it could start to expand.

APPENDIX

3.1:

G I R A L D U S C A M B R E N S I S ’ S D E D I C AT I O N O F

E X P U G NA T I O H I B E R N I C A T O K I N G J O H N ,

c.1210

TEXT 79

Reverendissimo domino suo et in Christo dilecto, nobili et illustri Anglorum regi Iohanni, domino Hibernie, duci Normannie et Aquitannie, et comiti Andigavie, Giraldus opus suum, et cum corporis animeque salute, prosperos in terris ad vota successus. Placuit olim excellenti et magnanimo regi Henrico patri vestro me in Hiberniam a latere suo vobiscum transmittere. Ubi cum multa notarem, nova quidem et notabilia, ceterisque regnis aliena prorsus et incognita, materiam ibidem cum diligencia colligens et congerens, Hibernicam postmodum in Anglia Topographiam de mirabilibus Hibernie scilicet et situ eiusdem librum edidi, et in patris vestri laudem triennii labore digessi. Cui quoniam labor hic placuit

78 Giraldus, Expug. Hib., p. 156. 79 NLI, MS 700, fos 96v–99r; Giraldi Cambrensis opera, v, pp 405–11; Giraldus, Expug. Hib., pp 261–5.

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utpote principi – quod nostris rarum est diebus – litterarum erudicione conspicuo, ad ipsius postmodum instanciam super expugnacione regni eiusdem hac ultima per ipsum et suos facta, iterato quidem, immo et fere continuato labore, sed nec isto nec illo, quia ‘probitas laudatur et alget,’ remunerato, librum emisi. Verum quoniam aut per incuriam, aut potius propter occupacionem nimiam, terre illius, inter occidentales insulas non ignobilis, iam diu in animo vestro visa quodam modo quasi sopita memoria fuit, ad eam excitandam librum eundem, iam correctius quidem et plenius editum, vestre sublimitati destinare curavi. Ubi a Lagenie principe Dermitio per suos in exilium pulso, et ad patrem vestrum in transmarinos Neustrie fines profugo, auxiliumque ab eo postulante obnoxius et impetrante, inchoata historia, usque ad adventum vestrum in insulam primum, ubi et vobiscum fuimus, et que ibi tunc gesta, et a singulis ducibus et magnatibus illuc transvectis, a primis seriatim usque ad ultimos temporis illius, quid actum ibi vel boni vel mali fuerit, aperte declaratur. Sic itaque tamquam in speculo dilucido considerari, longeque certius et plenius veritate historica perpendi poterit, quibus gloria conquestus huius amplior et maior digne attribui debeat. An primis eiusdem aggressoribus, Menevensis scilicet diocesis, nostrique generis viris; an secundis, Landavensis scilicet diocesis, viris generosis revera magis quam animosis, a primis quidem invitatis, et tamquam exemplo successuum suorum ad similia provocatis; an adventui tercio, virorum et armorum ac victualium et totius aparatus copia referto. Multum enim contulit, qui principium dedit; multum, qui nobili principio non modicas veniendo demum vires adiecit; longe plus autem ceteris omnibus, qui totam tam primis quam secundis auctoritatem apponens atque licenciam prebens, proprio demum adventu tota sibi regione subacta, sed propter festinam nimis eiusdem a terra reversionem, et intestinam suorum factam in ipsum conspiracionem, nondum in formam stabilem plene redacta, totum strenue negocium consummavit. Ius itaque vestrum patrisque vestri laborem tam egregium, rex animose, ne parvi pendatis; gloriamque vestram et honorem tantum aliis et alienis, indignis pariter et ingratis non tribuatis. Et propter insulam argenteam, cum duplex bonum sit, nec unum alterum excludat, sed appetibilius et preciosius duplicatum existat, insulam auream non omittatis. Aurum enim Arabie et argentum Achaie, unum et idem, diversis quamquam acervis, erarium implere solent. Preterea ad hoc etiam vos inducere debet quod vestre de cetero non immemor Hibernie sitis. Cum enim plurimos iam filios tam naturales quam legitimos vobis Deus et fortuna secunda contulerint, et plures his in brevi conferre queant, quatenus duos illorum duobus in regnis regia dignitate sublimare possitis, et innumeros quoque sub illis viros, precipueque sub Hibernico, cum regio rudis adhuc ea sit et informis, et a nostris maiori ex parte nondum habitata vel efficaciter occupata, de novo feodare et copiose ditare valeatis. Quod si nec propter gloriam vestram multiplicandam aut gazam augmentandam, nec propter prolem vestram locupletandam amplius et sublimandam, Hibernie vestre curam

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adhibere velitis, propter hoc saltem id faciatis, ut veterem miliciam vestram, tam patri vestro quam vobis in fide stabili semper obnoxiam et devotam, cuius etiam aggressu terra illa primum obtenta fuit, et usque in hodiernum adhuc retenta, quam novi quidam et recenter advecti, fortunaque magis ibidem quam virtute provecti, quatenus in aliorum labores absque labore succedant, opprimere non cessant, sublevare possitis et reformare; illorumque superbiam deicere potenter, et cervicosam insolenciam humiliare. Qui in tantam arroganciam et tam presumptuosam iam eruperunt, ut ad singularem etiam regni illius principatum sibi usurpandum ausi sint, ut fama pronunciat, aspirare. Unde et ad hoc quoque facere plurimum debet, quod cum in anteriora vos extendo, in orientem maxime versam, ut decet, faciem habeatis, et ad iniuriose sublata totis per Dei graciam nisibus revocandum aspiretis, nihil ab occidente verendum, nihil prorsus a tergo timendum relinquatis. Hostes namque domesticos iugiter in insidiis excubantes, et semper insurgendi solum tempus et locum expectantes, sedibus in vestris terrisque propriis si curetis, licet occiduis quidem, velut a tergo tamen tam propinquis, tamquam vel in sinu vestro serpentes abscondere, vel etiam ignem in gremio positum et iam in flammam erumpere promptum ac paratum confovere, manifestum proculdubio non solum incurie magne, verum et ignavie, vel etiam inertis insipiencie signum foret. Tutum etenim est principi cuilibet nulla prorsus in terris suis Hydre capita fovere. Tutum insulanis precipue regibus nullam in regnis suis omni ex latere preter mare solum marchiam habere. Porro si propter hec omnia, vel horum aliqua, induci forte possitis ut terre vestre totiens dicte, desolate dudum et quasi deserte, misereri cum effectu velitis, eamque in statum redigere laudabilem, vobisque et vestris non inutilem affectetis, hoc a nobis, Britannice forte nature nostre levitate, quam mutare non possumus aut exuere, regie maiestati consilium detur: quatenus ea duo, que pater vester Adriano pape pepigerat olim propter licenciam impetrandam intrandi in Hiberniam et expugnandi, prudenter et discrete sibi suisque providens, cum supremam in terris tanti tamque cruenti in Christianos aggressus auctoritatem sibi comparavit; scilicet ecclesiam Dei in finibus illis exaltare, et denarium annuum de singulis domibus beato Petro sicut in Anglia sic et in Hibernia dare, iuxta tenorem privilegii eiusdem pape super hoc a patre vestro prudenter et circumspecte perquisiti et in archivis Guintonie fideliter repositi, quemadmodum inferius historia manifeste declarat; ad exonerandam tam patris vestri, qui hec promiserat, animam – quoniam, ut ait Salomon in Parabolis, nihil minus principem decet quam labium mendax, precipueque cum Deo mentiri, et creaturam suo Creatori sponte transgredi periculosum existat et plectibile – quam ad vestram quoque et vestrorum liberandam, qui clipeum super hoc alium aut defensionem contra districtum Iudicem tanti fidelium cruoris effusi et adhuc forsan effundendi, vobis et vestris non habetis, devota complere voluntate satagatis. Quatenus, si de hoc conquestu, sicut decet et debet, Deus honoratur,

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et prosperitas in terris vobis ac vestris augeatur et perpetua denique felicitas, que superat omnia, subsequatur. Propter hec etenim promissa sed hactenus omissa, duos ibi tamquam ulcione divina credibile est defectus accidisse: quod tam diu efficacia conquestus illius et consummabilis utilitas et dilata; et quod primi ac precipui terre illius expugnatores, verbi gracia, Robertus filius Stephani, qui primus ex nostris terram illam intravit, et tamquam aliis viam aperuit et ostendit, Herveius de Monte Marisco et Reimundus, Iohannes de Curcy et Meilerius, legitimam de carne sua prolem suscipere non meruerunt. Nec mirum. Mendicat enim miser in insula clerus. Lugent ecclesie cathedrales, terris suis et prediis amplis quondam sibi fideliter et devote collatis, a predictis, et aliis vel cum ipsis vel post ipsos advectis, spoliate. Et sic ‘ecclesiam exaltare’ versum est ibi in ‘ecclesias spoliare.’ Hec igitur emendet princeps bonus, ad cuius etiam spectat honorem, quamvis quoque Deus in causa minime foret, ut in terris suis clerus ubique, qui ei in consiliis suis et conciliis magnis, cunctisque regni negociis magis arduis et rebus agendis principalibus fideliter assistere debet, honore debito letetur et sublevetur. Et ut in aliquo tam cruenti questus huius et conquestus particeps et placatus Deus existat, promissus census ille, modicus satis atque modestus, omnes quippe liberans et neminem gravans, de cetero detur. Item eadem impaciencia et hoc adicimus, quatenus in memoriam expugnacionis huius Hibernice per Anglos facte, quia crebra dominorum per vices rerum varias fieri mutacio solet, et ad sanguine remotos, vel etiam prorsus extraneos transcursu temporum devolvi hereditas plerumque videtur, in annuo auri, vel avium, vel etiam amborum tributo firmiter statuto, quasi perpetuo chirographo et indissolubili vinculo, regnum Hibernicum Anglicane corone subiectum omni palam tempore fiat. Verumtamen, quoniam res gesta per interpretem non adeo sapit aut animo sedet, sicut proprio et idiomate noto prolata, alicui, si placet, lingua simul et litteris erudito, ad transferendum in Gallicum ocius non ociosus liber hic noster committatur. Qui forte fructum laboris sui, quoniam intelligi poterit, assequetur, quem nos quidem, minus intellecti, quia principes minus litterati, hactenus obtinere non valuimus. Unde et vir ille eloquio clarus W. Mapus, Oxoniensis archidiaconius, cuius anime propicietur Deus, solita verborum facecia et urbanitate precipua dicere pluries, et nos in hunc modum convenire solebat: ‘Multa, magister Giralde, scripsistis, et multum adhuc scribitis: et nos multa diximus. Vos scripta dedistis, et nos verba. Et quamquam scripta vestra longe laudabiliora sint et longeviora quam dicta nostra, quia tamen hec aperta, communi quippe idiomate prolata, illa vero, quia Latina, paucioribus evidencia, nos de dictis nostris fructum aliquem reportavimus, vos autem de scriptis egregiis, principibus litteratis nimirum et largis obsoletis olim et ab orbe sublatis, dignam minime retribucionem consequi potuistis.’

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Sane quoniam dulciores anni nostri et tempora robustiora, quoad litteratos labores nostros, iam transierunt irremunerata, nunc senescentibus nobis, cum tamquam in ianuis assistens mors immineat, de cetero nos temporaliter remunerari nec expetimus a quoquam nex expectamus. Solum hoc etenim amodo desideramus, et desiderare debemus, ut divinum in primis et precipuis favorem nobis per opera bona, eius cooperante gracia, immo totum efficiente qui gratis omnia prestat, comparemus; et humanam per opuscula nostra graciam, si litterarum decus quandoque resurgat et in statum redeat, saltem in posterum, ‘Cum suus ex merito quemque tuebitur honor’, assequamur. T R A N S L AT I O N 80

To his most reverend lord and beloved in Christ, the noble and illustrious king of the English, John, lord of Ireland, duke of Normandy and Aquitaine, and count of Anjou, Gerald offers his work, and along with health in body and soul, wishes for the success of the king’s will in all his lands. Long ago, it pleased the excellent and magnanimous King Henry, your father, to send me alongside you to Ireland. There I noticed many new and noteworthy things, hitherto unknown and without parallel in other realms, carefully gathering and bringing together material, I later edited together in England a book, namely, ‘The Topography and Wonders of Ireland’, which, with your father’s encouragement, took me three years’ work. Since that prince was enthusiastic about this sort of endeavour – which is rare in our days – and outstanding in the sophistication of his knowledge of literature, at his suggestion I later wrote a book on the recent conquest of Ireland by the king and his men, now revised, or rather continually worked upon, but not gaining reward from him or anyone because ‘honesty is praised and left out in the cold.’81 But, either through lack of care, or more likely because you are preoccupied with other things, Ireland, of no mean reputation among the islands of the west, has indeed slipped your attention, though it was long one of your major concerns. So I have arranged to send to Your Highness this corrected and expanded version of the book, to rouse your interest. In this book is plainly declared in chronological order that which was done [in Ireland], both good and evil, beginning the tale with Diarmait, prince of Leinster – driven into exile by his own men and fleeing overseas as a refugee to your father on the borders of Normandy, to seek and humbly beg his aid – and proceeding to your first arrival on the island, when I was with you, and including what deeds were done by each of the captains and magnates who sailed there. In this way it can be considered, as if in a clear mirror and far more fully and accurately examined historically, to whom the glory of the conquest ought to be more broadly and appropriately attributed. Should it be to the first invaders, 80 My thanks to David Crouch for his help with this translation. 81 Juvenal, Satires 1: line 74.

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men of my own family from the diocese of St Davids; or is it to the second wave, from the diocese of Llandaff,82 men, in truth, of better family than valour, invited by the first invaders and inspired by the example of their successes to attempt the same; or the third expedition, much better provided with an abundance of men, arms, supplies and all manner of equipment? Much was conferred on the man83 to whom Ireland was given; much for the man who on his eventual arrival brought the means to match such an opportunity; far more than all of the others from the first and second waves of invaders, who had offered him the leadership and opportunity. He eventually subdued the whole region on his own coming, and after a very quick return to the mainland from a not-yet-fully stable lordship and the outbreak of rebellious conspiracy among his own men, completed the conquest. So, courageous king, you should not allow the extraordinary endeavour of both your father and yourself to be squandered; nor should you resign your glory and honour to other men, to foreigners, who are unworthy as well as ungrateful. You should not ignore the golden isle because of the silver one, because you can double the benefit if you do not overlook one for the other,84 for they should both be doubly more precious and desirable. Although, the gold of Arabia and the silver of Achaea alike usually fill up your treasury in great quantities. Furthermore, there is this reason not to be entirely unmindful of Ireland. Since God and fortune have now given you many sons, both legitimate and illegitimate, and they will expect much to be granted them, you can raise two of them to royal dignity in two realms and place countless men under them. You may particularly be able to make new enfeoffments and rich endowments under an Irish crown, since that realm is still rough and unformed, and is not yet fully conquered or occupied by our people. Even if not for the sake of extending your glory, increasing your wealth or further enriching and promoting your children, you should still pay attention to your realm of Ireland on account of this, that in so doing you can promote and rally your veteran military aristocracy, never anything other than loyal and devoted to both you and your father, by whose assault Ireland was first obtained and is to this day still retained. This so they might keep in check some of the new and recently arrived, who owe their position more to luck than any ability and their success more to other people’s efforts than their own, and so they might decisively abase their arrogance and humble their stubborn insolence. [These newcomers] have attained to such arrogance and autonomy that they may well presume to usurp the rule of the realm [of Ireland], as rumour has it they will. As a result, it should now be a matter of concern, because, while in the past you have primarily looked to the East for your military operations, as is fitting, 82 Strongbow and his followers. 83 King Henry II. 84 This is a reference to Pliny the Elder’s description of two islands at the mouth of the river Ganges, or Indus, in his Natural history, one rich in gold (Chryses) the other in silver (Argyres): Pliny’s natural history in thirty-

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and you aspire with the utmost of your power to recover there by God’s grace what you have so grievously lost, lack of anxiety about the West means that you fail to appreciate the danger coming from behind. You should be on guard in your halls and lands for domestic enemies constantly plotting and searching for every opportunity for the right time and place to rebel, especially in the West. And if we talk about your back, we should also talk of those so close to you, they are just like serpents concealed in your bosom or like the fire in the hearth, always ready and willing to burst forth into flame and set light to everything, which should be a manifest warning against not only carelessness, but also wilful laxity and foolish indifference. It is a matter of security for any prince not to let Hydra heads spring up in his lands. It is especially important that rulers of islands have no marches85 in their realms other than the sea. Moreover, if for the sake of all these reasons, or any one of them, you may be motivated to act mercifully to your aforesaid land [of Ireland], long laid waste and almost deserted, and if you aspire to restore it to a praiseworthy state which would benefit you and your followers, this advice is given Your Royal Majesty by myself, inspired by my careless Welsh nature, which I can neither change nor overcome: You should fully adhere to the two things your father long ago agreed with Pope Adrian [IV] in return for his permission to enter Ireland and conquer it, ordering it prudently and discreetly with [the pope] since he has supreme authority in all the world over bloodshed against other Christians. Namely, that the king should work to exalt God’s Church within his territories and give a penny annually from every household to St Peter, just as it is in England, the same in Ireland, in accordance with the terms of the papal privilege, most prudently and adroitly secured by your father, and faithfully kept in the archive at Winchester, just as the History makes plain below. For the sake of pardoning the soul of your father, who had promised these things – since, as Solomon says in Proverbs,86 nothing becomes a prince less than a lying tongue, particularly when deceit is directed towards God, and it is a dangerous and punishable thing for a creature to cross its Creator – this matter is now for you and your people to hasten to fulfil. [Your father] has no other shield and defender than you and your people before the Final Judge because of his spilling of the blood of the faithful, which indeed still continues to be spilled. In so far as God is honoured in the case of this conquest, as is fitting and right, the prosperity of your lands and those of your people will be increased and perpetual happiness, which surpasses all things, will follow without delay. It is likely because of these unfulfilled promises that two misfortunes have befallen through divine retribution: the completion of the conquest and the reaping of its benefits have been long delayed, and the leaders of the conquerors of Ireland, namely, Robert fitz Stephen, who was the first of my family in that seven books, trans. Jonathan Couch, 3 vols (London, 1842), i, p. 127. 86 Possibly Proverbs 6: 16–17.

85 Military frontiers.

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land who opened and showed the way to others, Hervey de Montmorency, Raymond [le Gros], John de Courcy and Meiler [fitz Henry], have not been permitted to beget a legitimate child of their body. And no wonder. The miserable clergy of the island go begging. Its cathedral churches mourn for their lands and ample estates, once faithfully and devoutly granted them, and despoiled by the same conquerors and the men who came with or after them. In this way ‘exalt the Church’ is changed to ‘despoil the Church.’ Accordingly, a good prince should correct the things which so closely reflect on his honour, even though God is by no means absent from the cause, so that in all his lands the clergy should regularly participate in his own consultations and great councils, and all the most difficult business of the realm, and faithfully support his principal policies, [the clergy] thereby being raised up and heartened by getting the honour due to them. And so that God might be involved in and consenting to any of the regrettable bloodshed, he should be given fully that promised tax, which is moderate and modest enough, benefiting everyone and harming no one. Furthermore, my impulsiveness makes me add this, that in reflecting on the conquest of the Irish by the English, which has involved frequent changes of lords for various reasons which have little to do with family, whose inheritance seems to be passing into the hands of strangers as time goes by, the Irish realm should become more explicitly subject to the English crown in the levying of tribute, whether of gold or of hawks, or even of both of them, as if it were by a perpetual indenture and indissoluble bond. Yet truly, since a history of deeds is not going to be completely understood or appreciated, as it is published in [the author’s] own voice and idiom, it is for anyone, if it pleases him, sufficiently learned in languages and letters to translate it into French, and I being a man of leisure if not in retirement, this book of mine ought to be translated. The fruit of this labour, so far as it can be understood, should indeed be brought to general attention, but because I have not been able [to have it translated] I am not appreciated, as princes today are less scholarly. Hence, the famously eloquent W[alter] Map, archdeacon of Oxford, may God preserve his soul, used often to say in his usual witty and courteous way when we met: ‘Many things, Master Gerald, you have written, and many you have still to write: I have just talked a lot. You have produced writings, and I words. Your writings are more praiseworthy and will have greater longevity than my words, but because [my words] are more accessible, being in the common language, whereas your writings, because they are in Latin, are less accessible, I have received some profit from my words, but you are unlikely to receive appropriate reward for your learned writings, because scholarly princes are largely obsolete and have vanished from the world.’ Of course, since my years of youth and vigour, the time of my literary endeavours, have now passed with no reward, and I am now growing old and

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coming to the point when death is standing in the doorway, I am not seeking or even expecting any temporal reward for them from anyone. In truth, from now on I desire, and ought to desire, nothing other than that I may achieve God’s favour for my good works, all indeed accomplished through His grace, He being worthy of thanks above all others. And I shall only attain a return from man for my little works, if when in the future my books are recalled and copied they say: ‘when we die we rest with the glory we have earned.’

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The early Geraldine castles of Ireland: some case studies

LINZI SIMPSON

I N T rO d u c T I O N

The Geraldines are a phenomenon in Irish history, their dominance throughout the Middle Ages and into the early modern period being unparalleled by any other family. While the historical sources chart the rise of this remarkable dynasty, its legacy can also be seen in the indelible imprint left on the physical landscape they once controlled – from the earliest earthwork castles that enabled them to conquer lands and subdue peoples, to the stone fortresses and prestige encastellated residences, unambiguous reflections of their wealth and influence at its height in the fifteenth century, when many of the castles were considerably enlarged and refurbished. This paper contains case studies of seven of the early castles built by the Geraldine dynasty in the three main areas under their control in c.1200, namely Naas, rathmore and Maynooth in co. Kildare, Geashill and Lea in co. Laois, and croom and Shanid, in co. Limerick (fig. 4.1), for all of which there is contemporaneous documentary evidence. The aim is to establish the kind of initial defensive fortifications that were built by the Geraldines with a view to shedding light on what this can tell us about the connections of, and the resources available to, this extraordinary family after Maurice fitz Gerald first set foot in Ireland as part of an initial invading force in the late 1160s. It presents an overview of the type of castles that are likely to have been built, accompanied by some general observations, which take on board recent developments in castles studies, specifically those arising from archaeological excavation of certain important sites. What this contribution does not purport to be is a comprehensive survey of all castles in all areas subject to initial Geraldine occupation. Maurice fitz Gerald (d. 1176) The founder of the Geraldine dynasty, Maurice fitz Gerald (c.1105–76), was undoubtedly a major figure in the invasion of Ireland in 116, figuring prominently in the near-contemporary account of the invasion written by his nephew Giraldus cambrensis.1 Already a military veteran by the time he came 1 Giraldus, Expug. Hib.



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4

Linzi Simpson

4.1 Locations of Geraldine castles, featured in the case studies.

to Ireland, he was born and raised in the Pembroke colony in southwest Wales, his father Gerald of Windsor (d. p.1116) and his grandfather before him both being high-status castle-builders and stewards. Maurice followed in their footsteps into the family business, coming to Ireland in his early sixties against the backdrop of the growing pace of the Welsh resurgence under rhys ap Gruffudd and hard years spent defending English interests in Pembrokeshire.2 So serious were Maurice’s intentions to relocate to Ireland that he and his kinsmen went there en masse, Maurice bringing his entire family, including not just his sons of fighting age but small children perhaps from a second marriage. He specifically came on the promise of lucrative rewards centred on receiving the Hiberno-Norse port of Wexford and the two adjoining cantreds, to be split between him and his half-brother, robert fitz Stephen. But following Henry II’s intervention, the latter reserved the maritime towns including Wexford in his own hands, resulting presumably in a considerable reduction in Maurice’s expectations.4 2 For origins see round, ‘Origin, I and II’; duffy, above, pp 21–52; see also G.H. Orpen, ‘The Fitz Geralds, barons of Offaly’, JRSAI, 44 (114), –11. 3 See table 1.2 above, p. 2. 4 Orpen,

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The early Geraldine castles of Ireland: some case studies

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Maurice did, though, receive a very significant grant from the king and the new lord of Leinster, Strongbow, which consisted of the middle cantred of ‘Offelan’, the territory of the uí Fáeláin (including Naas), and the cantred of Wicklow, the substantial size of both grants being reflected in the fact that they were granted for the service of twelve knights.5 Both land-grants, slightly connected at the northern end and ringing the broader southern hinterland of the port of dublin, were pivotal in controlling the main access routes to the southwest and south. Henry II evidently considered Maurice a man he could trust, a confidence presumably based on the close royal connections on his father’s side as described by Seán duffy above, and also the royal link established by Maurice’s mother Nest, which Huw Pryce discusses, being mother to a bastard son of Henry I raised as an older halfbrother to Maurice. Thus the romantic image of Maurice as a fearless and doughty adventurer, with maiden-like modesty coming to Ireland with few, if any, connections and little or nothing to lose, may undersell the networks and influence of Maurice at the time of the invasion.6 Even if Maurice was frustrated by the loss of Wexford he had no grounds for disappointment regarding his family circumstances, having produced no less than six sons and at least one daughter, thereby creating the dynastic building blocks for what was to follow.7 This was arguably one of his greatest achievements, his progeny spawning the great Geraldine dynasty, with its two main branches, the house of Kildare and the house of desmond, and substantial sub-branches that spread throughout much of the country. When he arrived in Ireland, he came with adult sons, well-trained in castle-building and warfare, and capable of taking command of the land-grants Maurice had received. Gerald fitz Maurice (d. 1204) On Maurice’s death in 1176, just seven years after the invasion, his eldest son and heir, William (d. c.11), inherited the Offelan and Wicklow lands, becoming the first baron of Naas and fixing his caput there. William promptly re-granted half of the Offelan lands to his brother Gerald (d. before Jan. 1204), along with rathmore and Maynooth, both of which had substantial fortifications.8 Gerald was to amass considerable lands in and around this time, adding significantly to his property portfolio by an advantageous marriage to Eva de Bermingham in c.11. Her father robert had received lands in uí Failge (Offaly), to the west of Normans, i, p. 282: A.J. Otway-ruthven, ‘The medieval county of Kildare’, IHS, 11:4 (15), 181–, at 181. 5 Wicklow is not dealt with in this survey. The king reserved all the maritime fortresses along the coastline, but Black castle, a peculiar stone castle built on a triangular natural promontory and accessed across a rock-cut ditch, was held by Maurice as it was restored to the crown on his death. The other lands in Wicklow appear later in relation to the barons of Offaly (Orpen, Normans, i, p. 82, n. 4; iii, p. 11; Otway-ruthven, ‘co. Kildare’, p. 181). 6 Giraldus, Expug. Hib., p. 51. 7 The sequence is thought to be William, followed by Gerald, Alexander, Maurice, robert and Thomas. 8 Orpen, Normans, i, p. 80: Orpen, ‘Barons of Offaly’, 100; Otway-ruthven, ‘co. Kildare’.

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Offelan, the main castles of which were Lea and Geashill. These passed to Gerald on his father-in-law’s death, thereby creating a solid land-block stretching from Offelan to Offaly. His elder brother William died c.11 and Gerald seems to have acquired his property also, thereby securing the barony and castle of Naas but also including lands in Munster, the early sources referring to castles at croom in the strategic Maigue valley in west Limerick,10 along with carrickittle. Gerald’s interests in Limerick probably brought his younger brothers, Thomas (d. 121) and robert, to that part of the world, if not with Gerald then certainly as part of the William de Burgh campaign in and around 1200. Both went on to play a major role in the subjugation of desmond in the first decade of the thirteenth century. Thomas’s caput was at Shanid, where there are substantial and spectacular remains of one of the most famous Geraldine castles. Gerald also received additional lands in Limerick and cork on the death without heirs of his brother Alexander, along with Imokilly, co. cork, through his uncle robert fitz Stephen, where the Inchiquin branch of the family subsequently developed. Thus, before his death in 1204 Gerald had amassed the core of the Geraldine lands in his own hands. When Gerald died c.1204, his heir Maurice was only nine years old and William Marshal, as lord of Leinster, petitioned the king for custody of the young heir, his vassal, until he came of age in 1215.11 Thus all the Geraldine castles and lands in Offaly and Offelan were in the hands of the lord of Leinster from 1204 to 1216, a crucial phase in the development of castles in Ireland, particularly with regard to building in stone.

OFFELAN

The castles of Naas, Maynooth and rathmore represented the main strongholds of the middle cantred of Offelan, but only Maynooth went on to develop into a major residence in the late Middle Ages, the male line of the barony of Naas dying out c.100. Maynooth and rathmore were only 25km apart and, along with Naas, were strategically placed, straddling and controlling the main western and south-western routes out of dublin; a third castle, at Straffan, lay halfway between Maynooth and rathmore (perhaps represented by the motte-and-bailey at Ladycastle Lower (Kd–014:017), just south of the modern village of Straffan).12 The proximity of Naas and rathmore, just 6.5km apart, reveals how William and 9 Orpen, ‘Barons of Offaly’, 100–2. 10 Paul Maccotter, Medieval Ireland: territorial, political and economic divisions (dublin, 2008, repr. 2014), pp 184–5. 11 Gerald’s heir received seisin of his father’s lands in 1216 (Orpen, ‘Barons of Offaly’, 100–2). The tenurial relationship was on both sides of Irish Sea as the Geraldines still held five knights’ fees in Pembrokeshire from its earl, William Marshal. 12 See www.archeology.ie (Historic Environment viewer), Licence 02E1781 for excavation of motte: Isabel Bennett (ed.), Excavations 2002: summary accounts of archaeological excavations in Ireland (dublin, 2004), no. 50; Bennett (ed.), Excavations 2003,

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4.2 Naas motte from the east.

Gerald must have worked together closely, organizing their section of Offelan as a single Geraldine block. Although Maynooth became Gerald’s caput, rathmore did not languish, being developed as a major manorial settlement, wellrepresented today by its surviving monuments, which include a medieval church, graveyard and earthworks.1 Similarly Naas, while no longer a caput by the early fourteenth century, still developed as a major walled town with no less than eight tower-houses protecting it in the fifteenth century.14 Naas Introduction Naas, located just 7km from dublin, was the caput of the barony and the most important stronghold in the area. Nás na ríg (‘Naas of the kings’) was already an ancient settlement, one of the royal sites of the kings of Leinster and caput of the uí Fáeláin dynasty from which the place-name Offelan was derived.15 Now a bustling town, traces of its historical past are hard to see but tucked away on the west side of the main street is a large mound of some antiquity, known locally as the ‘North Moat’ (Kd–01:0000) (fig. 4.2).16 Identified variously as the actual dublin, nos 42, 4, 44. 13 See www.archaeology.ie, Historic Environment Viewer. 14 For tower-houses, See Ben Murtagh, ‘The fortified town houses of the English Pale in the later Middle Ages’ (MA, ucd, 182); idem, ‘The castles of Naas’, JCKAS, 16:4 (18–4), 55–61. 15 John Bradley, Andrew Halpin and Heather King (eds), Urban archaeological survey – County Kildare, unpublished report by the Office of Public Works, 4 vols (16), vol. 4, pp 66–70. 16 Walter FitzGerald, ‘Query on Lord Kildare’s Great castle of Naas’, JCKAS, 4: (104),

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4.3 (above) Naas motte crowned by modern residence.

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4.4 (below) Naas motte, looking west from top of motte.

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Nás na ríg and the motte of the Geraldines, the monument may well be a combination of both, a common strategy of Geraldine motte-builders being to take advantage of existing earthworks whenever they could. Maurice must certainly have constructed a fortification at Naas and this mound is a good contender for such a motte, a castle which was taken over after his death in 1176 by his son William, the baron of Naas, remaining in use until the extinction in the male line c.100. The motte Whatever its origins, first impressions suggest that this monument is indeed a motte, advantageously positioned at the core of the medieval settlement, overlooking the town and almost opposite the site of the medieval church of St david (a dedication no doubt of Geraldine introduction). The motte has added height as it is perched on a high gravel ridge, although it is somewhat compromised by a nineteenth-century guard-house built on the summit (now a private dwelling) (fig. 4.). A summit diameter of approximately 0m, coupled with a base diameter of between 70m and 80m, makes it a very large example of its kind and suggests a significant fortification. The eastern side is likely to have been truncated somewhat by the development of the rear plots of the houses along the main street but the western side has a more gradual slope, opening out into a roughly triangular strip of land (fig. 4.4). A narrow terrace, 1.20m in width, runs around the top of the motte just m below the summit, which was first identified by Goddard Orpen in 111 when he suggested it might mark a foundation for a palisade or wall around the summit, having detected similar features at other mottes (fig. 4.5).17 While no excavation has taken place on the actual motte, investigations on the southern side at ‘Moatville’, on Abbey road, did produce evidence of medieval settlement, implying that the area around the mound was certainly in use in this period.18 The position of the bailey A motte of this size – assuming this is a motte – must have had a significant bailey, along with the enclosing ditches and banks that go with such a large fortification, and an attempt can be made to locate its position on the present streetscape and layout. The bailey is unlikely to have been on the southern side 8–1, 525–52; a second mound, the ‘South Moat’ (Kd–01:002) was located 550m to the southeast of the motte but this was demolished c.100. This was variously described as a hillock, an old rath (or ringfort), and a square fort (www.archaeology.ie, Historic Environment Viewer), the latter perhaps suggesting it may have been a moated site, a form of defended residence usually dated to the late thirteenth/fourteenth century. There is a possibility that this may also have been the site of Nás na ríg. 17 Orpen, Normans, ii, 80. 18 This site produced medieval sherds of pottery and animal bones: see Ben Murtagh’s report in Bennett (ed.), Excavations 1996, p. 15.

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4.5 (above) Naas motte, possible terrace.

4.6 (below) Gradient of motte at Naas.

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of the motte as this is bounded by Abbey road, which originally led to what Bradley has identified as the dominican friary, established in the 150s,1 always supposing the bailey was still there in the fourteenth century (fig. 4.6). The friary itself was on the western side, while the eastern side is bordered by the main street, which is also likely to have been a medieval route as it runs between the castle and the site of the medieval church. The bailey, therefore, is most likely to have been on the northern side of the motte, fronting onto the road and perhaps reflected in the property boundary (now convent Lane) depicted on the Ordnance Survey of 186 running along the western side of the motte. While the river to the north of the modern church, with its distinctive curve, can be identified as a modern millrace associated with a corn-mill further north, there may have been an original stream in this location, feeding into the moat around the castle. Comment The castle of Naas was caput of the barony of Naas and a major seigneurial centre, a status consistent with the surviving monument identified here, notwithstanding its understated location. The summit diameter of approximately 0m is indicative of a very large motte, most likely to have had a significant bailey attached. This massive earthwork castle was probably fashioned very soon after the invasion, most likely out of the ancient royal site of Nás na ríg, the act of historical vandalism having a twofold advantage – providing a readymade earthwork and allowing its occupiers make a firm statement of Geraldine domination to the existing Irish population (fig. 4.7). The castle of Naas is most likely to have been rebuilt in stone by William and, if not him, by Gerald who was in control of Naas by c.11 and was building in stone at other major strongholds.20 While there is no indication of any stone build surviving at the site today, this may well have been robbed out, this particular monument becoming almost invisible in the modern landscape. However, the terrace or path that encircles the motte just below the summit, while possibly a landscape feature, may be all that survives of a curtain wall or shell-keep on the top of the motte (although this is impossible to establish without further investigation). In general, shell-keeps can be dated to the early thirteenth century and they differed fundamentally from the larger rectangular keeps or donjons in that they simply represented the replacement with stone walls of the timber palisade around the summit of the motte (rather than the base), usually battered at the base but generally thinner at the upper levels, up to 1.5m in width. The wall effectively protected the interior and the buildings within the central space, which were not necessarily related to a perimeter wall.21 19 Bradley et al. (eds), Urban archaeological survey, vol. 4, pp 66–70. 20 Gerald built a classic shell-keep in croom (and possibly dungarvan, co. Waterford): see below, pp 1–45. 21 H.G. Leask, Irish castles and castellated houses (dundalk, 141), p. 42; P.d. Sweetman, The medieval castles of Ireland (cork, 11), pp 82–4.

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4.7 Naas motte, steep profile.

This type of structure was lighter than a donjon or keep and less risky – from a structural point of view – to build on a motte but was clearly very defensive as the interior was rarely more than 25m in diameter, resulting in limited space for residential living. The size of the summit of the mound would allow for a shellkeep on this site. It may also be the case that the mound was considered too unstable by the castle engineers to support stone build and that a new fortification was built somewhere else entirely, Bradley suggesting to the east of the motte where the site of the Black castle is marked on the Ordnance Survey map.22 Excavations carried out in 177– to the rear of Nos 14–16 Main Street,2 at the foot of the North Moat, did not find any trace of the castle, although the site was extremely truncated. This may also suggest that the castle was originally positioned closer to the street and was one of the eight tower-houses later recorded as existing within the walled town, as suggested by Murtagh.24 22 Bradley has suggested that the rebuilding in stone may have comprised a new castle constructed directly east of the motte, marked as Black castle on the first edition Ordnance Survey Kd–01:0110: Bradley et al. (eds), Urban archaeological survey, vol. 4, p. 50. However, Naas was in a border location, reflected in the fact that there were at least eight fortified tower-houses in the town, one of which still survives intact. 23 Kieron campbell, Excavations 1976–9, 0046. An emergency excavation at 14–16 Main Street North after a site measuring 1,400m square was demolished revealed thirteenth- and fourteenth-century pits. In total, the limited deposits produced over 100 medieval pottery sherds. 24 For excavation, see Kieron campbell in Bennett (ed.), Excavations 1977–9 (no. 45, 15–16 Main Street North);

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Rathmore Introduction When Gerald received half of the cantred of Offelan from his brother William, the two main centres were rathmore and Maynooth. But Maynooth was chosen as the main residence and, as a result, went on to be re-edified and refortified throughout the medieval and post-medieval period, in stark contrast to rathmore. This, however, has resulted in the spectacular survival of rathmore motte (Kd–020: 00001), particularly impressive as it includes the enclosing elements of the earthwork, which puts flesh on the bones of the many mottes dotted around the country (especially Naas which is almost twice as large as rathmore) (fig. 4.8). The Irish place-name Ráith mór (‘big fort’) – again like Naas – indicates an earlier settlement and this is corroborated by the fact that gravel-quarrying in the late nineteenth century, followed by archaeological investigations by the earl of Mayo, revealed that the motte was originally a late Iron-Age burial mound, which contained a number of cist burials, including full skeletons some of which were ‘inside a ring of undressed limestone’.25 The Geraldine castle-builders evidently took advantage of this ancient place and resculpted it into a typical motte-and-bailey for their own purposes. While the castle, positioned directly north of the medieval church,26 did not become a major caput, the associated vill or settlement (Kd–020:00004) was certainly developed by Gerald, boasting a market and a total of 6 burgesses in the early thirteenth century,27 and had clearly been intended to function as a place of some importance. The motte rathmore motte is a fine example of its type, a classic inverted ‘pudding-bowl’shaped mound with steep sides, dramatically sited on high ground at a staggered crossroad close to the village of rathmore. The enclosing elements survive almost intact, revealing a massive double-fosse, and possible triple bank-system, a rare survival in the field, the entire surviving monument measuring for tower-houses, see Murtagh, ‘Fortified town houses of the English Pale’; idem, ‘The castles of Naas’. 25 Earl of Mayo, ‘rathmore: the big rath’, JKAHS, 2:2 (186), 112–15. The reference records the ‘slipping’ of the southern face of the mound in 184, after which a ‘chamber, lined, roofed and floored with limestone slabs, with a large skeleton, was exposed’; more recent excavations in the vicinity of the motte produced occupation activity that could be dated from the late Iron Age to early christian period (20 Ad–420 Ad): Mullins, in Bennett (ed.), Excavations 1998, no. 7. 26 Limited investigations at the eighteenth-century church of Ireland church, adjacent to the motte and dedicated to St columcille, located sixteenthcentury elements within the build (Mullins, in Bennett (ed.), Excavations 2008, no. 68). The modern graveyard also contains a collection of small medieval grave-markers. 27 rathmore received both market and borough status before Gerald’s death by 1204; traces of this settlement survive as earthworks to the east of the motte (Bradley et al. (eds), Urban archaeological survey, vol. 4, pp 422–5).

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4.8 (above) rathmore motte, western bank.

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4.9 (below) rathmore motte from the north.

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approximately 100m in width. The motte itself is well-preserved, with a basal width of 45m and an unusual rectangular summit, orientated northwest/ southeast, measuring approximately 14m wide by 18m long. It is enclosed by ditch and bank, the former measuring on average 7.5m in width but with the base of the ditch higher than the surrounding ground (fig. 4.). The earthen bank measures a massive 18m in width by 7.50m in height on the eastern side (fig. 4.10), reducing to m in height by 12m in width on the western side. A second outer ditch survives on the western side, measuring approximately 17m in width by 6m in depth but this has been removed by the road on the eastern side. There may also be traces of the degraded remains of a western outer bank preserved in the existing western field boundary, which curves around the base of the motte and extends northwards. A bailey? A castle of this importance is most likely to have had a bailey and an examination of the topography may suggest that it is was located on the northern side of the motte (fig. 4.11), where the quarrying has taken place, following the line of the higher esker and possibly traceable in the surviving stub of the western field boundary, if this does indeed represent an outer bank.28 Alternatively, but probably less likely, the bailey may have been located east of the motte towards the centre of the manorial village (Kd-020: 00001) as the modern road is cut through the earthwork perhaps severing a connection on this side, although there is a fall in ground levels from west to east. Comment rathmore provides a fascinating insight into what those first Geraldine campaign castles looked like in the field, planted at existing centres of population both as an instrument of conquest and a way of organizing the land. The castle is most likely to have been constructed by Maurice himself and developed by Gerald and it is almost certain to have had a bailey attached. While its close proximity to Naas castle may have prevented significant development in stone, of which there is no trace, the actual summit of the motte is very distinctly rectangular in shape, measuring 18m east–west by 14m north–south, perhaps reflecting some sort of build on the motte. In support of this, the motte with rectangular summit at Killeedy castle in co. Limerick, thought by Orpen to have belonged to Maurice’s nephew Philip de Barri prior to 118, contains the remains of a rectangular keep, positioned on the motte, the summit of which measured approximately 1m long by 14m wide, almost identical dimensions to rathmore (fig. 4.12).2 Killeedy also had a large rectangular bailey complete with ditch, 28 Nearly 45% of all mottes in the republic of Ireland originally had baileys (Sweetman, Medieval castles, p. 22). 29 See G.H. Orpen, ‘Notes on some county Limerick castles’, JRSAI,  (10), 0 for plan and photograph. This motte-and-bailey castle was considered

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4.10 (above) rathmore motte, eastern bank from the north.

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4.11 (below) rathmore motte, looking north.

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4.12 Plan of Killeedy, co. Limerick (G.H. Orpen).

which measured approximately 40m by 60m but displaying no evidence of stone defences (although these may have been plundered).0 While a motte of its own, denuded of its enclosing elements, can appear small and insignificant, the remarkable survival of the banks and ditches at rathmore highlights how substantial these earthwork castles were, especially when fortified with timber keeps, palisades, and possibly a gate-house, as well as a fortified bailey. In this instance it is especially relevant when trying to establish how large the motte-and-bailey castle at Naas is likely to have been, the motte of which was twice the size of rathmore. While the massive double ditch and fosse arrangement at rathmore may have been influenced by a pre-existing late IronAge burial mound, the reuse and conversion into a medieval fortress also shows in the Middle Ages to be in county cork but is just inside the modern Limerick border. Today there are the remains of a motte and standing corner of a castle (LI-044:0:002), opposite the remains of a medieval church with traces of the bailey. A stone corner of a castle survives, which in c.108 was three stories in height with a defensive narrow window at ground-floor level. 30 decayed castles have traditionally been used as sources of stone throughout the post-medieval period.

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4.13 The keep at Maynooth castle.

how aggressive the Geraldine takeover was, the invading force appropriating and destroying places of special interest to the local population. despite the fact that the castle shows little sign of development, the fact that the vill of rathmore was granted borough status and a weekly market in Gerald’s lifetime is a glimpse into the modus operandi of this most dynamic colonizer. Maynooth castle Introduction The second place documented in connection with the grant from William to Gerald was Maynooth, which is located approximately 27km north of rathmore and was chosen as Gerald’s main caput in his half of Offelan, developing into the principal seat of the earls of Kildare. Like Naas and rathmore, a significant medieval vill developed around the castle, which is located opposite what was originally the medieval church, dedicated to St Mary (Kd–005:016). A significant castle (Kd–005:015) exists today positioned on a slight prominence overlooking the Lyreen river, the centrepiece of which is a fine donjon set within

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4.14 (above) The gate-tower at Maynooth castle.

4.15 (below) Plan of Maynooth castle (P.d. Sweetman).

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a rectangular precinct (fig. 4.1). Other surviving elements include a muchmodified gate-tower (fig. 4.14) to the southeast of the donjon and a range of later buildings along the eastern wall, including a tower on the southeast corner, parts of a hall and gallery and a seventeenth-century bastion on the northeast corner (fig. 4.15). This castle has had the benefit of an archaeological research programme by Hayden, the first in 16 consisting of a testing programme both within the donjon and to the west, followed by full excavation within the donjon.1 Like rathmore, the earliest settlement evidence could be dated to the prehistoric period, followed by a second period of occupation dating to the early medieval period. This was eventually subsumed when the area was laid out for cultivation, which continued until the arrival of Anglo-Normans in the late twelfth century, whose presence was identified by Hayden in the ground as organic deposits and hearths (the latter interpreted as campfires).2 This was followed by a far more substantial phase of occupation, which is likely to represent the construction of the first earthwork castle. The earthwork castle The donjon was found to sit on an artificially raised mound of sod, silt and gravel which extended beyond the footprint of the building as far west as the natural rocky outcrop marking the original line of the Lyreen river, at the base of the precinct wall.4 These deposits were only approximately 0.60m in height but, interestingly, the eastern edge correlated with the eastern wall of the donjon. This edge was defined by a timber fence (not substantial), orientated north– south but with an entrance at the southern end, midway along the donjon, indicating that there was an access route on this side, on the same side as the donjon.5 A sense of permanency was suggested by a mettled surface or road, orientated roughly east–west, that ran through this entrance and extended beyond the donjon on both sides. Excavation of the sod within the donjon, which may have been up to 1m in height originally, revealed several small and badly preserved flimsy rectangular post-and-wattle buildings and a large hearth, which produced an arrowhead, rowel spur and a scabbard chape, suggestive of a militaristic function.6 While the exact nature of this occupation is difficult to 31 Alan r. Hayden, 16 Archaeological excavations at Maynooth castle in co. Kildare (unpublished report, 16, lodged with National Monuments, d.o.E: 54); idem, in Bennett (ed.), Excavations 1996, no. 10; Bennett (ed.), Excavations 1999, no. 405. 32 Prehistoric levels include traces of structures followed by a kiln dated to the Iron Age. Two, possibly three, round houses were dated to the early medieval period, followed by a period of cultivation: Hayden, Excavations at Maynooth, p. 10. 33 Ibid. 34 The modern precinct wall was found to sit on medieval foundations indicating that the Lyreen river abutted the western and northern precinct wall. 35 Hayden suggests that they were originally approximately 1m in height but compacted by the construction of the donjon, marked by a thick layer of mortar. 36 Ibid., p. 11: finds included imported and local pottery, confirming a date range from the

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establish on present evidence, Hayden suggests that it may have been some sort of low motte, of which there are other examples in Ireland.7 But, whatever form it took, as Hayden points out, the fact that these buildings are arranged on the same axis as the later donjon and that the entrance is also on the same side may suggest that the castle-builders were influenced by what preceded the new build, adding weight to the suggestion that this represents an earthwork castle, which was replaced in stone. This same co-alignment between earthwork and castle was also found at Trim castle, also excavated by Hayden in the 10s, where he found evidence of a massive ringwork castle built by the great magnate Hugh de Lacy in or after 1172, replaced by the unusual cruciform keep.8 The stone donjon Hayden suggests that work began on replacing the earthwork castle between the 1170s and 1180s and was a big project that required considerable resources, the original complex consisting of the donjon, the walled precinct and the present gatehouse, the latter of which Hayden suggests is similar in date to the donjon, but much modified. The type of donjon chosen was a well-known one, the characteristics of which were a square or rectangular plan, a central spine wall dividing each level and a defensive entrance at first-floor level. While often two stories taller than the Maynooth example, their main strength was in the thickness of their walls and the fact that, while sometimes built on low mottes or elevated positions, they were also often built close to or on the curtain wall, to provide flanking power.40 The Maynooth donjon is large, measuring externally 22.60m long (north– south) by 1.40m wide and originally had four elaborate polygonal turrets on each corner, of which only one survives, supported on a squinch arch. It was originally two stories in height with a door at first-floor level in the north wall, originally accessed by a fore-work, the imprint of which is still clearly visible in the north wall of the donjon. Internally, the keep is divided by a central supporting spine wall and the excavations established that this wall incorporates three earlier stone piers at ground level, evidently the remnants of an original partition at this level (figs 4.16, 4.17). This partition carried through to the firstfloor level indicated by the survival of a single stone pier, which probably supported a timber partition. The first-floor level was the main residential floor, but the walls extended beyond the roof line and an extra floor was later added.41 late twelfth to the early thirteenth century. 37 Ibid., p. 54. 38 The ring-work at Trim was located on high ground with substantial banks, defended by double palisade fences and a strong gate-house. The ring-work was burnt in 117 and work began in 1174 on the unique three-storey keep, built to a cruciform design (Alan r. Hayden, Trim castle, co. Meath: Excavations 1995–8 (dublin, 2011), p. 20). 39 A section was found by Hayden beneath the existing modern precinct wall. 40 r. Allen Brown, English castles (London, 176), p. 45; richard Hulme, ‘Twelfth-century great towers – the case for the defence’, The Castle Studies Group Journal, 21 (2007–8), 216. 41 Hayden, Excavations at Maynooth, p. 11.

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Linzi Simpson 4.16 Maynooth castle, excavation within the donjon (courtesy Alan Hayden).

4.17 (below) Maynooth castle, mortar slick in the donjon (courtesy Alan Hayden).

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Other insertions include the wicker-centred vaulting at ground-floor level and three small chambers cut into the south, west and north walls at first-floor level. Hayden also noted that the donjon was built on the edge of a natural rocky outcrop, which allowed for sweeping views of the river on the northwest side but also had the effect of exaggerating the height of the castle, a similar strategy to that used at Geashill and carrickittle, co. Limerick, the latter built on a rocky knoll.42 The identification of the early piers within the donjon allowed Hayden to establish that Maynooth was built to a specific mathematical formula, the c.07m unit, which was also used in other early Norman keeps including Trim, also excavated by Hayden.4 Thus the central internal pier was found to be the exact centre-point of the castle. Comment The donjon at Maynooth was dated stylistically by Leask and others to the c.1200,44 but recent research and the excavation by Hayden has pushed this date back to sometime between the 1170s and 1180s, a very exciting prospect especially as the gatehouse (and therefore some form of precinct wall) is likely to be dated similarly.45 As buildings such as these were slow to construct, a recent estimation suggesting they could only be raised by approximately .7m in height a year,46 it is likely that Maurice (d. 1176) himself may have initiated the construction of the donjon almost immediately following on from some sort of earthwork campaign castle. In any event, the donjon was likely to have been well and truly completed by the time of his son Gerald’s death in 1204, being almost out of fashion by this date.47 The choice of this type of donjon tells us much about the resources available to Maurice fitz Gerald and his sons in the immediate aftermath of the invasion, as a project like this was evidently a serious commitment financially. Also, they must have had a team of experienced castlebuilders among their retinue, capable of building a high-status castle complex so 42 All that survives at carrickittle, where a tower-house was built in 1510, is an extraordinary and distinctive rocky outcrop in a low-lying area, extensively quarried, bleached white by lichen but with little trace of any building. A large shed was recently built on the site of the castle, of which nothing remains, although walls were reported as late as 116 by Westropp. A recent site visit (2015) suggests that there may be some evidence that the rock face was hewn at the western end: T.J. Westropp, The antiquities of Limerick and its neighbourhood (dublin, 116); idem, ‘The ancient castles of the county of Limerick’, PRIA, 26 (106–7), 55–108, 14–200, 201–64, at 254–64; Orpen, Normans, ii, p. 217. 43 Hayden, Trim castle, pp 14–5. 44 Leask, Irish castles, p. 7. 45 Hayden, Excavations at Maynooth, p. 55. While the excavation did not produce closely datable artefacts, the general chronology suggests a date between the late 1170s and the 1180s: Alan Hayden, in Bennett (ed.), Exavations 1996, no. 10; idem in Bennett (ed.), Excavations 1999, no. 405; see also Tadhg O’Keeffe, ‘Trim’s first cousin: the twelfth-century donjon of Maynooth castle’, Archaeology Ireland, 27:2 (Summer 201), 26–1. 46 Norman J.G. Pounds, The medieval castle in England and Wales: a social and political history (cambridge, 14), p. 20. 47 As earlier noted, Maurice II, Gerald’s heir, was underage at the time of his father’s death and did not get control of his inheritance until 1215 (Leask, Irish castles, p. 7).

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early after the invasion: to put it in context, by 1216 in England and Wales, there were only a hundred or so of this type of stone keep or donjon in existence.48 But what Maynooth really highlights is the status of Maurice fitz Gerald and his sons after the invasion: having the capability of building at this level places them not so far down the social scale from Hugh de Lacy, lord of Meath, who began to construct his elaborate three-storied keep at Trim, to a cruciform design, probably between 1174 and 1175.4 While Hugh was of a somewhat higher lordly order, perhaps not to be compared socially with the earliest of the Geraldines, the latter family were nevertheless still of the magnate class, that is, a class that could build in stone very soon after the invasion.

O F FA Ly

Gerald, Maurice’s son, held the barony of Offaly (including parts of cos Kildare, Offaly and Laois), received through his marriage to Eva de Bermingham probably in or around 11, which created a large lordship when added to his property in Offelan.50 The two major early castles are Geashill and Lea, to the north and west of Kildare respectively, both of which developed into major Geraldine residences. Both castles are within 18km of each other but, while there are substantial remains of Lea castle, the remains at Geashill are far less impressive despite the fact that the latter was the more important of the two.51 Both castles survived the plantation of the King’s county (now Offaly) and Queen’s county (Laois) in the mid-1500s, being major strongholds for the half a decade of insurgency that followed the dispossession of the uí Mhórdha (O’Mores) and uí chonchobhair Failghe (O’connors), when heavy fortification was required to protect a new wave of settlers more than three centuries after their original construction. Geashill castle Introduction Geashill castle (OF-026:005001) is located less than 15km northwest of Portarlington. All that is visible at the site is a motte, which contains the standing wall of a castle of dubious date (fig. 4.18).52 yet this was a key Geraldine residence in Offaly throughout the medieval period, the castle being continually occupied until it was destroyed in 1642 during the confederate Wars. It was subsequently 48 Hulme,‘Twelfth-century great towers’, 6. 49 Haydon, Trim castle, p. 2. 50 Their first son was born in 115 (Orpen, ‘Barons of Offaly’, 10). For later fortifications, see Paul M. Kerrigan, ‘castles and fortifications of county Offaly, c.1500–1815’, in William Nolan and Timothy P. O’Neill (eds), Offaly history and society (dublin, 18), pp –48. 51 caimin O’Brien and P. david Sweetman (eds), Archaeological inventory of County Offaly (dublin, 17). 52 It lies within the grounds of the modern Geashill castle and is difficult to access.

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4.18 Geashill castle.

replaced in the eighteenth century by a large mansion complete with courtyard, the former of which is now a roofless shell, having been burnt out in 122 during the civil War.5 The mansion was cut into the eastern side of the motte, the design of the new house emulating a castle, composed of four turret-like rooms on each corner. Additional buildings were constructed against the eastern side of this house extending as far as a rectangular courtyard, the southern block of which now forms the modern residence, known as Geashill castle.54 The standing elements of the original Geraldine castle are not immediately impressive, consisting of a motte, which is very overgrown, containing one tall wall fragment, shrouded in ivy at one end (fig. 4.1). The southern side of the motte is difficult to define and the eastern side is somewhat obscured, possibly partially removed by the later mansion. On the northern side, however, the shape 53 For detailed description, see rachel McKenna, Geashill: the evolution of its architecture (dublin, 2012). 54 The castle was famously defended by Lettice digby, who held out against the confederate leader, her cousin, but despite her endeavours, the castle was destroyed and she left for Warwickshire never to return (McKenna, Geashill, p. 8). The eighteenth-century mansion was built for the land agents of the estate, as its digby owners were absentee landlords. The house is a two-storey seven-bay dwelling.

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4.19 Geashill castle, interior of castle wall from the south.

4.20 (below) Geashill castle, interior of castle from the northeast.

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4.21 Geashill castle, detail of south precinct wall.

of the motte is very visible. On inspection of the wall the initial impression is of a much-modified castle structure, standing to its full height of three stories (fig. 4.20).55 A stretch of what might be part of the southern wall of the castle runs along the top of the motte as far as the mansion located on the eastern side, but this appears more like a summit wall (although the area is very overgrown) (fig. 4.21). Geashill, then, initially appears as a relatively small motte with an undated castle wall, much modified, crowning the summit. The historical and cartographic sources, however, suggest otherwise, the monument representing a good example of how substantial castles can become completely degraded over time, similar to the motte in Naas. Geashill was, at one time, the major fortification of the district. One of the first mentions is in 11 when it is recorded that Maurice fitz Philip was in dispute with Gerald fitz Maurice over Geashill and de Lega (Lea), both places presumably having castles by this date.56 But Gerald is likely to have received the lands much earlier than this, certainly before 115 when his son with Eva de Bermingham was born. There must have been a significant castle there nearly a decade later when, in January 1204, the king commanded Meiler fitz Henry, the justiciar, to hand over Lea and Geashill to William Marshal, as Gerald’s heir, Maurice, as earlier noted, was then a minor given into the Marshal’s custody until he came of age.57 There 55 See also caimin O’Brien, ‘The earthwork castle of Anglo-Norman Offaly’, in Nolan and O’Neill (eds), Offaly history and society, pp 15–80. 56 CDI, i, no. 101. Gerald was evidently successful, as in the same month the king granted letters of protection for Gerald fitz Maurice of Ireland, his chattels, men and possessions (ibid., no. 102). 57 This wardship was done

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was certainly a motte at Geashill when Gerald received it from robert de Bermingham and it is highly likely that Gerald started to build in stone as he was doing or had done in Maynooth. If this was not completed by his death in 120/4, Marshal is likely to have continued construction during the minority between 1204 and 1216.58 The castle was evidently refortified in 107 when it is recorded as having being ‘builded by the barons of Offaly’ when the district was under attack.5 That Geashill was the most important castle in the district and must have had significant fortifications is reflected in the cotton map of Leix and Offaly, dated roughly to the mid-to-late sixteenth century. In this source the symbol used to depict Geashill is that of a very large motte surmounted by a walled bawn (an enclosure attached to a castle) with three towers and at least three entrances.60 Added to this is an inventory of the castle, dated 1628, which annotates the contents of all of the buildings at Geashill and suggests a stronghold of considerable size – difficult to reconcile with the landscape today – providing critical information about the layout of the castle (and use of the rooms) just before its destruction.61 The list appears to provide detail in a sequential manner, possibly taken as one enters the castle complex. It begins with the ‘First room’, which appears by the contents to be a bed chamber – with a fireplace, imagery hangings and a satin window cloth – perhaps some sort of fore-work or barbican, followed by ‘the upper chamber over the gates’, containing quite lavish furnishings including three beds and two window curtains – presumably, therefore, a building with at least two windows. The ‘Lower chamber’, which also had two windows, contained lavish furnishings including a canopied bed and two feather beds – again, it was therefore a building large enough to house these. The ‘Porter’s Lodge’ contained a bolster while in ‘the Gateway’ (possibly a second gate as it has its own heading) there were two joined beds. The rest of the list of buildings, presumably within a bawn, includes the ‘Stables’, ‘Kitchen’, ‘Larder’, and the ‘Wash-House’ but, interestingly, there was also a ‘New chamber’, possibly a separate hall, which had two chimneys, nine wall hangings, three beds, seven curtains, a table, stools and a cupboard – quite a large structure therefore. Additional buildings include a ‘Brew House’, a ‘Granary’ (with no contents), the ‘Barn’, the ‘Storehouse’, the ‘dairy’, and the ‘room to the dairy’. The next rooms listed appear to have been within the keep proper: in ‘my Ladie’s closet’ were found water bottles, skillet, lamps, a warming pan, etc., the ‘Great with the agreement of the family and a third of the lands were granted in dower to Gerald’s widow Eva for her lifetime. 58 William Marshal had a vested interest in maintaining the two main castles of Offaly as he was effectively protecting his own patrimony as lord of Leinster. 59 Cal. Carew MSS, v, p. 16; see Walter FitzGerald, ‘The earl of Kildare’s manor of Geashill, in the King’s country; with notes on Killeigh, in the parish of Geashill’, JKAHS,  (118), 1–, at 25. 60 J.H. Andrews and rolf Loeber, ‘An Elizabethan map of Leix and Offaly: cartography, topography and architecture’, in Nolan and O’Neill (eds), Offaly history and society, pp 24–87, at pp 245, 265. 61 See Jane Fenlon, Goods and chattel: a survey of early household inventories in Ireland (dublin, 200), pp 20–.

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chamber’ contained a chimney, wall hangings, two curtains (for two windows?), tables, a cupboard bed, two feather beds, carpets and ten pikes, etc.; the ‘drawing chamber’ had tables, stools, chairs and a screen with a bed;62 in ‘ye round chamber’ there was one standing bed with valance; while the ‘women’s chamber’ had three feather beds and a bolster and bed clothes. The inventory, therefore, although late in date, correlates with the somewhat earlier cartographic information implying a castle precinct of considerable size, far larger than is represented by the motte and the standing wall today. The precinct was entered through a large two-storied gatehouse (with bed chambers), along with a porter’s lodge and a room in the gateway, the latter, as mentioned earlier, possibly a second gate perhaps from the outer ward to the motte and its enclosure. The New chamber, with its two chimneys and lavish wall hangings is likely to have been a separate hall, while the Great chamber and drawing chamber were presumably within the keep itself. The round chamber, suggestive of a round tower attached to the keep, is of extreme interest, the potential being that Geashill may originally have been a towered keep similar to Lea (see below). Although only one chamber is mentioned, it may be the case that the other floors and other three towers were empty because the inventory is of content rather than of each room. The earliest castle The initial fortification can be immediately identified in the field as a motte (OF026:005002) and this may have already been built by robert de Bermingham before Gerald received the lands, although this is not known. The motte is very overgrown but sits on an elevated position, on a natural esker overlooking lowlying ground to the north. The summit diameter is difficult to estimate as the southern slope of the motte is obscured, but in general from the north the motte is approximately 5m in height and at least 18m in diameter north–south. It is most intact on the northern side where it is well defined, as depicted cartographically on the first edition of the Ordnance Survey (186), but at the eastern end the area appears to have been built up to abut the mansion. A collection of old photographs taken from the north and dating to the late 1880s reveals more information, the distinctive motte profile being very visible from the north, possibly with ramparts representing the bailey, positioned on the eastern side of the motte where the house and courtyard now stand (figs 4.22, 4.2).6 Another photograph depicts the profile of the motte in more detail from 62 The drawing room was, of course, a room to which the owner of the house could ‘withdraw’ for more privacy; it was often off the great chamber (the second-most important room to the great hall), which was semi-private and usually led to the formal or state bedroom. 63 Although this rampart might be associated with the creation of the new sweeping drive, from the western side, put in after 188. The photographs are in the possession of the digby family, reproduced in McKenna, Geashill, p. 7.

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4.22 Geashill castle, mansion from the northeast, remains of old castle to right, 186 (courtesy Offaly History Archives and Lord digby).

4.23 Geashill castle, motte from the west, c.1887 (courtesy Offaly History Archives).

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4.24 Geashill castle, motte and mansion from the northwest, c.100 (courtesy Offaly History Archives).

the north, establishing that it had a long flat summit east–west with the masonry visible on the northeast corner (fig. 4.24). This section of a battered wall (OF-026:00500) represents a refortification of the motte, the foundations of a wall that presumably rose above the summit of the motte, perhaps even representing the base of some sort of gate-tower or shell-keep on the northeast corner of the motte (although the latter is perhaps unlikely) (fig. 4.25). The surviving section is built into the face of the motte and stands approximately 1.20m in height, composed of limestone blocks, measuring between 0.25m by 0.0m and 0.40m by 0.0m with smaller pinning stones in the interstices, all bedded in an off-white lime mortar. The wall proper is also extant in this location, although partially robbed out and difficult to view as it is ivyclad, but previous photographs depict it standing, rising up over the summit of the motte. This stonework is likely to have extended around the summit, perhaps represented by the precinct wall surviving along the southern side but this could not be established as the entire motte is overgrown. The revetting was presumably a means of strengthening the motte with the abundant stone ready to hand, while also adding height to the castle, a device also used at Maynooth castle. The castle wall The documentary sources, then, suggest that there was still a large keep in the early seventeenth century, which may possibly have had at least one round tower, and this is likely to have been located on top of the motte, the motte perhaps levelled out somewhat to form a platform. The west wall that survives is little help in dating this masonry as it has been very modified by later interventions,

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4.25 Geashill castle, detail of revetted motte section.

including fireplaces, windows and possibly the door. The wall stands to its full height of c.7.5m and has three floors (the upper floor added), with a rectangular door at ground floor, almost centrally placed and guarded by what appears to be a box machicolation (see below). A timber lintel over the door survives in the exterior of the wall but not the interior and there are bar-bolt slots in both jambs. The door is flanked on the southern side by a massive large kitchen fireplace, which appears post-medieval in date but with a mural flue. Two different builds can be identified, suggestive of some rebuild in this location. The first-floor level also has a fireplace with the scar of a lintel but this also has a flat segmented head with evidence of seventeenth-century brick at the base of the jambs. The arch is interesting as it suggests that the lintel was inserted at a later stage, as the latter cuts through the arch slightly. There is a window on the northern side with splayed jambs, the timber lintel of which cuts through the segmented arch of the fireplace, again suggesting that it was inserted. The third storey also contains a small fireplace at the southern end with seventeenth-century brick in the jambs but this floor appears, from the external view of the wall, to have been added onto the parapet level, presumably blocking the access to the wall-walk. There is no indication of the floor at first-floor level, implying that the beam slots must have been in the northern and southern wall.

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The external face of the castle wall has a slight basal batter and is rendered, displaying a somewhat modern appearance. There is a wall-scar at the southern end of the wall that projects out westwards, extending up to almost the full height of the wall and tied into it, indicating that there was an additional wall, perhaps from a tower as it extended the full height of the wall, although the scar is not very wide. This might well correlate with the description of the ‘round chamber’, perhaps suggesting a tower on this angle.64 The orientation of the main keep cannot really be established on the standing remains. The Lea donjon (see below) is approximately 25m in length, suggesting that a similar keep, orientated east–west could possibly fit, the eastern end clipped by the new mansion. The location of a tower on this angle would also help explain why there is no scar visible of the southern wall in the standing west wall. There is a medieval stone wall (OF–026:00500) running along the southern side as far as the mansion but this does not appear to be robust enough to be the standing castle wall. It stands approximately 1.50m in height and there is an entrance at the western end. This wall extends as far east as the ruined mansion but contains no features that are visible (although the area is very overgrown). At the western end it was not physically connected to the castle as the wall had been rebuilt with rounded cobbles.65 despite the fact that the castle wall has been considerably altered by various interventions, some features do provide some indication of date. In the external face, two stepped Irish-style crenellations rise at the southern end of the wall, suggesting a parapet turret at the southwest corner of a type that can be dated from the early fourteenth century onwards, when the documentary sources record that the castle was rebuilt. The possible box machicolation may also suggest a similar date.66 There is, however, still a possibility that the original form of this wall may form the remnants of an original keep built on the motte by Gerald or his successor after c.11. The bailey The motte presumably had a large bailey, given the importance of the castle. While this may have been located to the south, towards what is likely to have been a medieval church, this area is very overgrown and difficult to examine. In any event, all of the building developments (including the mansion, additional 64 There is a wall shown on the OS map of 188 but this is not the wall that originally projected out from the full height of the tower. 65 A smaller ivy-clad wall on the northern edge of the summit, which is probably later in date, may be related to a small walled enclosure depicted on the OS 188, north of the castle wall (but the area is very overgrown). 66 A similar chute is depicted by du Noyer at Kindlestown castle, co. Wicklow, dated to the first decade of the fourteenth century, which is not overhead a door but at the corner and is presumably a garderobe chute. This castle also has similar stepped crenellations to Geashill: for illustration, see Linzi Simpson, ‘dublin’s southern frontier: Kindlestown castle, delgany, co. Wicklow’, in Seán duffy (ed.), Medieval Dublin IV (dublin, 200), pp 27–68, at p. 05.

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wings and a courtyard) have taken place to the east of the motte taking advantage of the natural ridge running in this direction. The 1628 inventory records a number of buildings and those that survive, especially the eighteenth-century mansion, may deserve a closer look in case there are earlier surviving elements.67 In the first Ordnance Survey, the mansion appears out of place in comparison with the succeeding maps (using the church as a reference point) but displays a staggered layout of blocks perhaps more suggestive of a building that evolved over time rather than was constructed as a single build. This is supported by the fact that the aerial view of both 2000 and 2005 suggests the design of the house is not symmetrical, the western block composed of two almost turret-like rooms larger than those on the eastern side.68 The mansion also has a curious flattopped appearance and is composed of stonework similar to the castle, exposed where the render is falling, on the eastern external gable. Its close proximity to the motte is also interesting: Griffith’s valuation of 1841 records that the mansion had no basement at the motte end in contrast to the rest of the house, which may again suggest reuse of an earlier build, either one which had cellars which were reused or one which did not cut into the motte end, perhaps some sort of gatehouse.6 The courtyard buildings may also deserve a closer look, especially the southern range, which is now the modern Geashill castle House. This is a twostorey-over basement six-bayed house that has a most peculiar and distinct batter of stone and brick in the rear wall, not medieval in date but clearly emulating medieval build.70 Most intriguingly, the courtyard is surrounded by impressive boundary walls, which may originally have been part of the castle complex.71 This courtyard, then, may have been the outer ward of the castle. Comment Geashill castle was the main caput of the barony of Geashill, which must have been a very large castle indeed. This is certainly not reflected in the ruins today. Geashill was in a border location, the castle-builders making good use of the topographical landscape, exploiting a natural esker, complete with rocky outcrop, which offered an elevated site, modifying it to form a large motte. This motte was further strengthened when it was revetted in stone, the wall rising to create a precinct around the main keep. When Gerald received the lands on his marriage to Eva, he is most likely to have commissioned a castle if robert de Bermingham had not done so previously, and is likely to have built a castle with a major donjon as the later sources suggest. There is a possibility it may have been a towered keep in keeping with the castle of Lea, with which it is always 67 The render is falling off the mansion and is visible in places, the stonework similar to the castle. 68 See shop.osi.ie (Mapviewer). 69 McKenna, Geashill, p. 7. 70 The rear wall of Geashill castle House has a single row of four diocletian-type small windows, with distinctive segmental arches reflected throughout the building. 71 National Inventory of Architectural History, Offaly reg. no. 1481401: architect James rawson carroll.

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4.26 Geashill castle, ruined mansion.

linked. If William Marshal was responsible for building Lea in the minority of Gerald’s heir, as has often been suggested (see below), he might have constructed a similar castle at Geashill, not far away. While access is currently restricted, the reinterpretation and investigation of this castle is certainly warranted, especially as the ruined mansion is deteriorating rapidly: part of the west block (north wall) has already fallen down (fig. 4.26).72 The additional courtyard buildings would also certainly benefit from a detailed analysis, including Geashill castle House and the extraordinary courtyard wall. Lea castle Introduction The second major Geraldine castle of Offaly is Lea (LA-005:006; LA-005: 006002), as mentioned above, just east of Portarlington, which is a picturesque and extensive ruin set within low-lying pasture on the south bank of the river Barrow (fig. 4.27).7 While now occupying an isolated and rural location, the 72 See National Inventory of Architectural History, for additional photographs. 73 Leask, Irish castles, pp 50–1; Kieran O’conor, ‘Anglo-Norman castles in county Laois’, in Pádraig

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4.27 Lea castle in open countryside.

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4.28 Plan of Lea castle (courtesy Kieran O’conor).

castle originally formed the centre of a large medieval manorial settlement known as ‘Newtown’ by the late thirteenth century, the site of which lies to the southeast of the castle (LA-005:00600) (fig. 4.28).74 The castle is strategically located since it commands the Barrow, on what was probably a pre-existing crossing point, and would subsequently mark the boundary point between the English colony and what was sometimes termed the ‘Wild Irish’. The castle was certainly in Gerald’s hands, along with Geashill already mentioned, by 115 and it is likely that an earthwork castle of some description had been built there by robert de Bermingham, the original grantee. But it is also highly likely that Gerald started to build in stone at Lea as soon as he gained possession of the castle in the mid110s. That this remained a significant castle is demonstrated by its representation on the map of Leix and Offaly mentioned earlier, dated to the mid-sixteenth century. While Geashill is shown as a large motte surmounted by a walled castle with three towers and at least three entrances (almost oldfashioned), ‘Lee’ castle is shown rather ambitiously with what appear to be two bawns, front and rear, the front dominated by a tower and an additional building, the enclosure wall extending over as far as the banks of the Barrow.75 Lane and William Nolan (eds), Laois history and society (dublin, 1), pp 18–212; Sweetman, Medieval castles, p. 6; Tom McNeill, Castles in Ireland: feudal power in a Gaelic world (London, 17), pp 118, 144, 165. 74 See www.archaeology.ie (Historic Environment Viewer). 75 Andrews and Loeber, ‘An Elizabethan map’, p. 245.

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4.29 Lea castle, detail of surviving corner.

unlike Geashill, far more of the castle complex of Lea survives relatively intact, perhaps providing a glimpse of what Geashill castle might have looked like at its height (fig. 4.2). The inner and outer ward at Lea are well defined, a layout that is replicated at other well-known Geraldine castles such as Adare and Askeaton in co. Limerick, where the inner ward usually denotes the site of the initial first fortification, while the outer enclosure represents the fortification of the bailey. At Lea, the precinct is subtriangular in shape but the inner ward is distinctly oval with the adjoining five-sided bailey fronting onto the river Barrow on the north-eastern side. The landward side, however, where there was no river, was protected by a substantial ditch, approximately 10m in width, which is still visible as an earthwork in some locations.76 The inner ward contains the remains of a rectangular towered keep or donjon of which only one corner tower is intact with a stretch of curtain wall separating the inner and outer wards, dominated by a large later rectangular fore-work/gatehouse.77 This fore-work is flanked by the inner curtain wall, which has plunging loops on the western side and a 76 O’conor, ‘Anglo-Norman castles’, p. 187, fig. 8.. 77 McNeill, Castles in Ireland, pp 144, 188.

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curious d-shaped hollow turret on the eastern side. The outer ward was probably added onto the northern side of the castle – an historical reference to building works in 127 is usually cited as evidence of this – and this was accessed by a fine double-towered gatehouse, which was heavily altered when it was converted into a residence in the early modern period.78 The plan of the outer ward is somewhat odd and haphazardly shaped, consisting for the most part of a weak curtain wall with vulnerable angles and a noticeable absence of mural towers. These curious angles presumably represent buildings within the outer ward long gone. The first castle The inner ward is likely to be the earliest part of the castle and the location of any first defensive earthwork on the slight prominence or rise where the donjon was later constructed.7 The oval outline is reflected in the moat and the later curtain perhaps indicating it was some sort of earthen enclosure, either a motte, subsequently flattened out to provide a firm foundation for the tower, or, as suggested by O’Brien, a ringwork castle as defined by a large ditch and bank, which encircles the entire complex (LA-005:006002).80 Excavation by O’conor at the towered keep of carlow found some evidence that it may have been built over a demolished ringwork similarly to Ferns castle, another towered keep where excavations by Sweetman suggested an earlier earthwork castle had been levelled first and then used as a foundation for the keep.81 While there have been no excavations at Lea, presumably the first earthwork castle was located where the donjon now stands. The donjon The donjon represents a variant of the Maynooth type, forming part of a small group referred to by Leask as ‘towered keeps’, a divergent Irish type not found in either England or France.82 In essence, they represent a larger and more imposing version of the more common square or rectangular keep but with the addition of corner or clasping towers that rise from the ground level (not from the roof as at Maynooth), providing flanking cover, which increases the strength of the donjon considerably, while reducing the reliance on curtain walls. There is no evidence of a motte at Lea, other than a raised prominence, perhaps hinting 78 Leask, Irish castles, p. 50. 79 See O’conor, ‘Anglo-Norman castles’, p. 187 for etching of castle showing it higher than the later gate-house. 80 See National Monuments database entry by caimin O’Brien; see also idem, ‘Earthwork castle of Anglo-Norman Offaly’. 81 Sweetman, Medieval castles, p. : idem, ‘Archaeological excavations at Ferns castle, co. Wexford’, PRIA, 7c (17), 217–45. 82 Leask ascribed a general thirteenth-century date to this Irish style of castle and identified six examples, Lea, carlow, Terryglass, Ferns, Enniscorthy and Wexford (now gone): Leask, Irish castles, pp 47–51. But there are problems with the dating of these donjons, which are not so easily categorized or dated; Enniscorthy castle in Wexford, for instance, can be dated to the sixteenth century (McNeill, Castles in Ireland, p. 118).

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4.30 Lea castle, added upper floor.

4.31 Lea castle, north wall, first floor.

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4.32 Lea castle, four-storey tower.

that the initial earthwork might have been little more than a raised platform, such as that found at Maynooth. The northwest wall and part of the northeast wall form the bulk of the ruin, standing to three stories in height (figs 4.0, 4.1) with the tower extending to a fourth floor (fig. 4.2).8 The surviving ground-floor level was divided by a central spine wall and contained two vaulted chambers, one of which is partially collapsed, the other containing evidence of plank-centring (fig. 4.). The main door is in the northern wall at first-floor level, in the northeast angle of the surviving tower and flanked by a window on the east, guarded by a machicoulis. A staircase also survives within the western wall but this runs the length of the wall as a single straight flight (as opposed to a spiral mural staircase), only giving 83 See McNeill, Castles in Ireland, p. 122 for plan.

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4.33 Lea castle, vaulted ground floor.

4.34 Lea castle, squinch arch with wall-walk at parapet level.

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access to the third-floor level, suggesting there were additional staircases within the building now gone. Masonry details include a squinch arch between the corner tower and the main north wall, which carried the wall-walk at parapet level (fig. 4.4). The chambers were lit by large window embrasures, with trefoilheaded windows surviving in the west wall of the third floor. The northwest tower had loops at each floor but the ground floor (or basement level) had none, suggesting to O’conor that it functioned as a gaol.84 Comment The keep at Lea was originally dated by Leask to the mid-thirteenth century, by general typology and the double trefoil-pointed windows at third-floor level, and thus he suggests that it is likely to have been built c.1250 by Maurice fitz Gerald, second baron of Offaly (d. 1257).85 O’conor, however, has revised this date considerably on the basis that the keep was actually built in two stages, the upper two stories added to an existing keep, in a similar manner to Maynooth castle. This sequence places the trefoil-headed windows, now more closely dated to between 1225 and 120, in the later phase of the castle construction, pushing the construction of the keep itself even earlier still. This two-phase sequence is supported by the fact that the window embrasures of the added upper third floor have segmented pointed arches while the lower embrasures have rounded arches, and the fact that the mural staircase is also roofed differently at the third floor, composed of flat lintels while the remainder is arched.86 The addition is also visible in the external masonry of the tower. The similarities between the Marshal towered keep at carlow and Lea have long suggested that both castles were connected. carlow castle, Leask suggests, was constructed between 1207 and 121 by William Marshal the elder, lord of Leinster, with O’conor suggesting that it was finished in the 1220s.87 As mentioned above, the Marshals held Lea (and Geashill) for the minority of Gerard’s heir between 1204 and 1216 and Marshal may well have built Lea, possibly in tandem with carlow castle as part of his duty to consolidate his own lordship of Leinster.88 O’conor, on the other hand, suggests Maurice fitz Gerald (d. 1257) himself may have started to construct the castle on reaching his majority in 1216, perhaps in imitation of carlow castle, completing it around 1220.8 The emerging evidence from the prolific castle-builder Gerald (d. 1204) is that he is likely to have started to build in stone as soon as he got hold of the castle in the mid-110s, in tandem with Geashill. While Leask suggests that this 84 O’conor, ‘Anglo-Norman castles’, p. 188. 85 Leask, Irish castles, pp 50–1; McNeill, Castles in Ireland, p. 11. 86 O’conor, ‘Anglo-Norman castles’, p. 188. 87 Leask, Irish castles, p. 47; ‘Anglo-Norman castles’, p. 188. 88 carlow is almost identical in plan and probably went up between 1210 and 2015: O’conor, ‘Anglo-Norman castles’, p. 188. Marshal embarked on an extensive building programme at Pembroke castle in c.110, building the keep, the walls of the inner ward, the unusual horse-shoe shaped gateway and a hall by 120 (Mike Salter, The castles of south-west Wales (Malvern, 16), p. 72). 89 O’conor, ‘AngloNorman castles’, p. 18.

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innovative and peculiar type can be dated at its earliest to c.120, the evidence emerging from Maynooth is that earthworks were being replaced in stone by Gerald as early as the 1170s and 1180s and he was surely likely to have done so a decade later when he received Lea. The research excavation at Trim castle by Hayden revolutionized the dating of keeps in Ireland because it was revealed through dendrochronology that construction of this complex castle, built to an unusual and elaborate cruciform design, was started between 117 and 1176, being eventually completed by 1207.0 While admittedly Trim was built by the somewhat more substantial magnate Hugh de Lacy, lord of Meath, the fact remains that stone castles were replacing earthwork castles in Ireland far earlier than previously thought. Gerald is certainly likely to have begun to build in stone at both Lea and Geashill in c.115, and the keep at Lea may either be built on earlier remains or may incorporate them as part of the build. In essence, the Lea donjon is very similar to Maynooth, minus the towers, Lea measuring externally 25.0m long by 21.80m wide while Maynooth measures 22.60m long by 1.40m wide. It may be the case that the rounded towers, usually dated to the early thirteenth century, were added at a later date, although it should be noted that dendrochronological analysis at chepstow in Wales has suggested the double round-towered gates were being built as early as the 110s, far earlier than previously thought.1 The Geraldines were also loosely associated for a brief period with another of the known towered keeps, at Ferns, co. Wexford: when Wicklow castle was taken from the Geraldines after Strongbow’s death in 1176 (as his heir was not of age), they were granted Ferns in exchange and immediately began building a castle there;2 although presumably an earthwork castle (of uncertain location) which was later destroyed, the subsequent stone castle that emerged at Ferns is one of the towered keep types.

LIMErIcK

Introduction While still in the process of securing the grants of Offaly, Offelan and Wicklow, and building their castles to hold and settle these lands, Maurice’s heirs were also heavily involved in a second wave of conquest, which saw them pushing into the hostile territory of Munster in the southwest of the country. This was a family affair with William, Gerald, robert and Thomas (the latter the progenitor of the house of desmond) emerging as major players in conquering this more remote part of the island. This second phase of conquest by the Geraldines, at a time when considerable resources were being expended in their earlier grants, 90 Hayden, Trim castle, p. 20. 91 Ibid., p. 18. 92 Giraldus, Expug. Hib., p. 171; Orpen, Normans, ii, p. 8, n. 93 Orpen, Normans, ii, pp 145–78 (‘The occupation of Limerick, 112– 1206’); ibid., iii, pp 112–47 (‘The Geraldines in Munster in the thirteenth century’).

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reinforces our sense of the dynamism of this remarkable family who evidently had numerous followers, capable of making good these grants and of overseeing the construction of castles, built at each of their centres as their conquests progressed.4 Absolutely crucial to their military strategy in co. Limerick was the construction of strong fortresses because, by the late 110s, the entire region was in a state of war. The well-known strongholds such as Adare, Askeaton and Newcastle West all became flagship castles of the Geraldine empire and their layout today suggests that they followed a similar pattern of evolution, as previously mentioned, displaying evidence of an inner and outer ward sequence.5 This two-ward sequence usually reflects the development of the castle through time: the construction of the earthwork ringwork or motte – replaced or refortified with a stone keep and curtain wall – usually formed the inner ward, followed by either the encastellation of the bailey, or creation of an outer, larger ward, which often contains additional defensive buildings, such as gate-towers, mural towers and postern gates, along with functionary buildings such as granaries, storehouses and kitchens. Many of the Geraldine castles also contain significant constructions in the form of tower-houses built in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, sometimes with very substantial bawns. croom and Shanid were two of the first early castles for which we have documentary evidence, the latter a very well-known Geraldine residence, the former somewhat less well-known. croom formed part of a solid north–south line of advancement along with Adare, Askeaton and carrickittle, in Kiltealy, all constructed 17km to 22m from each other, while Shanid castle, built by Thomas (d. 121), thought to be the youngest son – an infant when first coming to Ireland, perhaps named from Archbisop Beckett following his murder on 2 december 1170 – was further west, deeper into Munster territory but flanked by the large Geraldine castle of Newcastle West a further 1km to the south. Croom castle Introduction croom castle (LI-00:025005) located just 10km to the southeast of the great Geraldine caput at Adare, is certainly one of the least-known Geraldine castles today, despite the fact that there are extensive and imposing remains of the castle, overlooking the village (fig. 4.5). The first view is of an impressive five-sided bawn, complete with angle turret and topped with modern crenellations, perched on a prominence overlooking the Maigue river (fig. 4.6). Within the centre are two tower-houses rising up from either end, just visible over the town wall. 94 c.A. Empey, ‘The settlement of the kingdom of Limerick’, in Lydon, Eng. & Ire., pp 1–25; John Bradley, Andrew Halpin and Heather King (eds), ‘urban archaeological survey – county Limerick’, unpublished report by the Office of Public Works,  vols (18). 95 See T.E. McNeill, ‘The larger castles of later medieval Ireland’, in roger Stalley (ed.), Limerick and south-east Ireland: medieval art and architecture (Oxford, 2011), pp 176–88.

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4.35 Plan of croom castle (courtesy caimin O’Brien).

4.36 croom castle, bawn wall and corner turret.

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considerable stretches of both the eastern and north stretches of bawn wall survive, along with traces of an outer moat between 8m and 10m in width on both the northern and southern side. While the initial appearance is a late fifteenth- or sixteenth-century tower-house complex, within the bawn rather unexpectedly are the substantial remains of a much earlier castle, the eastern half of an unusual polygonal shell-keep, dated by typology to the early thirteenth century but with the two tower-houses incorporated within the earlier build (figs 4.7, 4.8). Only the eastern side survives as a large battered polygonal wall but, unusually, it is not on a motte but rather situated on a naturally elevated site, overlooking the river. This may suggest significant ground works in and around the shell-keep, which effectively removed the keep or a slight alteration to the building style in that there was never a motte and the shell-keep was built simply as a keep on a low platform. The castle was refortified in the fifteenth/sixteenth century by the insertion of a tower, which rises above the existing keep wall in a central location. A second tower, later in date, was added at the southern end (fig. 4.). The castle continued to be occupied throughout the 1700s and in c.1800, the entire castle was converted into an ‘encastellated dwelling’, croom castle House, which is still occupied today.6 Today within the bawn there are numerous derelict farm-buildings, and a housing development has recently been built next to it, on the eastern side. Gerald fitz Maurice (d. 1204), received the manor of croom in Limerick through his marriage to Eva de Bermingham, previously mentioned, probably c.11 but certainly by 115 when his son was born (there being a traditional suggestion that it was originally an Ó donnabháin (O’donovan) fortification).7 It was one of the first castles built in the region as the fertile Maigue valley was settled early on in the campaign, the castle sited on an elevated position overlooking the river, where there was probably a crossing. croom developed into a major Geraldine residence and is probably most famous as the source of the Geraldine battle-cry Crom Abú.8 croom is first mentioned in 1215 when Maurice, the heir of Gerald, came of age and petitioned the king for the return of the lands of his father, including the castle of crumeth (croom) and dungarvan (see below). 96 Ella Armitage, The early Norman castles of the British Isles (London, 112), p. 4. 97 Westropp, ‘Ancient castles of Limerick’, 65. 98 Orpen, ‘Barons of Offaly’, 100. 99 CDI, i, no. 586 (‘Maurice FitzGerald made a fine with the K. of 60 marks, to have the lands of Gerald his father in Ireland, with the castles of crumech’ and dungarvan in Oglassin, which belong to Maurice by right of inheritance. Mandate to the justiciary of Ireland, that having received security for the 60 marks he cause seisin to be given to Maurice’); and no. 58 (‘The king commands the justiciary of Ireland that when Maurice FitzGerald shall have found security for a fine of 60 marks, the justiciary cause seisin to be delivered to Maurice of the lands of Gerald, his father, and of the castles of crumeth and dungarvan, in Oglassin, of his inheritance’).

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4.37 croom castle, before collapse.

4.38 croom castle, after collapse.

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4.39 croom castle, tower at southern end.

The earliest castle There is no indication of a motte at croom, the castle apparently being built on a platform on a break in slope overlooking the river on the eastern side but with level ground on the west. This area is very disturbed in this location, with ominous mounds of earth, one of which was investigated and found to be modern.100 There may have been an earthwork castle originally, probably more likely to be a ringwork than a motte but this is purely conjectural. The shell-keep As mentioned previously, shell-keeps are usually dated to the early thirteenth century and they differed fundamentally from the rectangular donjons or towered keeps in that they often originated in the replacement in stone of the 100 A mound of earth, thought to possibly be a motte, was investigated by Bruce Sutton at croom who found it contained modern rubbish (7E1060).

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timber palisade around the summit of a motte and were therefore independent of the internal buildings.101 At croom the keep originally measured internally approximately 22m north–south by 18m in width, the walls varying from 7.10m to approximately 8m in height and m to 1.50m in width.102 Such is the destruction that it is most likely that the western part of the castle was actively dismantled when the various other buildings were constructed in the bawn in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The surviving half is an imposing build, constructed of local limestone and has a substantial basal batter 5m in height, the walls averaging m in width at the base reducing to 1m at the top (fig. 4.40). The only evident original features are a number of putlog holes (originally for scaffolding) roughly corresponding to the top of the batter but not much else. There are two narrow slit windows, one above the other in the angle of the shellkeep and the southern tower, which may be original but the masonry around them is pointed in a similar manner to the later tower. There is a curious recessed section at the northern end, the function of which is unknown but with quoin stones, leading caimin O’Brien to suggest that it may represent the remains of an entrance. However, it may also mark the line of the curtain wall meeting the shell-keep, inserted at a later date (see below). The main entrance? The fifteenth-century tower almost centrally placed in the east wall has unfortunately collapsed but originally the entrance was via a neat eighteenth- or nineteenth-century rebuilt rectangular door at ground-floor level that led into a chamber roofed by a high arch.10 The subsequent collapse of this portion of the castle has exposed the internal build of the tower (although not the lower levels, obscured by masonry and not accessible), which may now suggest that the later tower actually incorporated part of an original gateway, resulting in the somewhat awkward angle of the fifteenth-century tower. O’Brien suggests that there may have been an original two-storey tower in this location that was reused as a base in the fifteenth/sixteenth century, explaining the fact that neither the ground floor nor first floor of the later tower had any window openings and that the eastern wall, at 2.60m wide, is 0.50m thicker than the rest. In addition to this, the lower levels of the later tower-house follow the incline of the batter up to the top of the original shell-keep, again hinting that the lower levels represent original masonry. The collapse exposed a vertical joint on the southern side of the tower base but this has collapsed on the northern side exposing the core of the battered wall, which appears contemporary with the arch within the tower, including the infill 101 Leask, Irish castles, p. 42; Sweetman, Medieval castles, pp 82–4: Brown, English castles. 102 See caimin O’Brien’s description and plan at www.archaeology.ie (Historic Environment Viewer). 103 See ibid., for caimin O’Brien’s photograph before the collapse. The jambs of the rectangular door are composed of smaller limestone and a section above the door has been

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4.40 croom castle, basal batter.

of earth backfilled after the arch had been set.104 The west wall of the vaulted chamber, however, appears to have been added or at least not bonded in with the main build as there are significant gaps along the joint especially at the northern end. Internally, the collapse of the tower reveals a very high vault, which may originally have represented the roof of the gateway into the castle. The bawn The shell-keep is positioned on the western side of the large five-sided bawn, measuring approximately 60m east–west by 45m north–south, with a possible extension bawn wall on the north-western end. The walls survive very intact on the northern and eastern side but have been considerably reduced in height on the southern side and refashioned into a garden retaining wall. While generally ascribed to the fifteenth/sixteenth century, these battered walls may well be earlier, especially the northern wall where the render that has fallen off has revealed some inconsistency in masonry or building patterns. On the northeast corner there is the angle turret or tower, while croom castle House, by its general external appearance and the fact that it forms part of the perimeter wall rebuilt entirely. 104 Found at other castles with vaults (pers. comm. Ben Murtagh): this backfilling at croom would have been very difficult to achieve post-construction without dismantling the original battered wall, which is very thin at this point. Thus it is thought to be an original feature of the building.

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is also likely to be earlier in date (suggested by some oddly placed small rectangular windows, a battered base and the general width or depth of the house). On the western side, the shell-keep itself is likely to have formed part of the curtain wall, as intimated by the turn southwards of the northern bawn wall where a basal batter can be traced in the west gable of a derelict outbuilding east of the existing farmyard gate: a curious recessed section in the shell-keep wall directly opposite may mark the line where a later wall was inserted into the shellkeep. On the southern side, the southern surviving wall also terminates half way along the keep but any scar is likely to have been removed by the tower that was added at this end. Comment croom castle was evidently a significant Geraldine castle and one, like the other case studies, which evolved over time into the early modern period, only facing severe threat of dereliction in this past century. The castle can be linked historically to a certain ‘dungarvan castle’ in Oglassin when, in July 1215, Maurice fitz Gerald petitioned the king on coming of age for the lands his father held, including specifically croom and dungarvan.105 Orpen, knowing that the city of Waterford, which was reserved to the king, had been granted in fee farm to Thomas fitz Anthony along with the castle of Waterford and dungarvan,106 presumed that the dungarvan in Oglassin was a different dungarvan (perhaps in Imokilly where Gerald had also inherited lands from his brother Alexander).107 However, Oglassin/Oglassyn is located just west of dungarvan,108 which might just suggest that this castle is indeed dungarvan castle in Waterford (fig. 4.41). dungarvan was an important place, first mentioned in 1175 in the Treaty of Windsor, as the western limit of Waterford, and it received borough status as early as 1205.10 The Geraldines are historically associated with dungarvan but not until somewhat later and it is difficult to explain the contradictory grants to both fitz Anthony and Maurice, Gerald’s heir, at this time. However, if the dungarvan linked to croom in the 1215 documentary references is not the well-known town and castle of that name, it is a peculiar fact that the castles at dungarvan, co. Waterford, and croom, co. Limerick, which still survive are practically identical in type and layout. dungarvan castle in co. Waterford, unlike croom, has had the benefit of a series of targeted research archaeological investigations by Pollock over the years, which have produced a good chronological sequence.110 dungarvan castle is an early thirteenth-century polygonal shell-keep which has an identical internal diameter to croom and with no evidence of a motte, despite the fact that it is a shell-keep. As at croom, 105 CDI, i, nos 586 and 58 (July 1215). 106 CDI, i, no. 584. 107 Orpen, ‘Barons of Offaly’, 12. 108 Mac cotter, Medieval Ireland, p. 161. 109 Orpen, Normans, ii, p. 16. 110 david Pollock, in Bennett (ed.), Excavations 1995, no. 265; ibid., 1996, no. 87; ibid., 1997, no. 571; ibid., 1998, no. 65. dungarvan castle became a Geraldine castle also but only in the late 1250s.

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4.41 Plan of dungarvan castle (courtesy P.d. Sweetman).

dungarvan castle forms part of the curtain wall and is also set within a five-sided bawn. The bawn walls, although not all contemporary, have been dated to the late thirteenth century and the additional features include a massive d-shaped, twintowered gateway and a circular mural tower on the southeast angle, probably of a similar date.111 The shell-keep formed part of the curtain wall, the keep constructed on a low-lying site but on a slightly elevated position of just 2m, the platform a combination of natural ground and an area deliberately filled in. It was originally defended by a large moat, which was open until the sixteenth century and possibly flooded at high tide implying it was a major part of the fortification. The entrance to the keep was at first-floor level and is now only marked by an infilled section of masonry, which is relatively modest in size (and difficult to see) but was probably originally 1.80m in width. Excavations in the passageway from the doorway produced evidence of a drawbridge pit suggesting access by such a means, which sloped upwards as the ground level within the keep was higher than outside. Within the keep the investigations also found evidence of a contemporary early thirteenth-century hall along the northern wall, two storied originally but with an additional floor 111 See Sweetman, Medieval castles, p. 55, for plan.

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4.42 rear of croom castle House.

added, along with another building which had no basement but was located opposite the hall, between it and the entrance. At this date the castle also had a possible outer enclosure or bailey, defined by a stone bank.112 The massive southern curtain wall was then constructed followed by the large gate-tower and round mural tower in the late thirteenth century with a rectangular tower in the northwest corner, replaced by a d-shaped tower also in the late thirteenth century. A series of stone footings of buildings dating to this period were also found along the curtain walls. The dating sequence and layout of dungarvan may help clarify what was at croom when it was first built. An examination of the photograph of the rectangular doorway in the tower before the collapse does reveal an infilled section above the rectangular doorway, topped by a flat arch, identical to that eighteenth-/nineteenth-century rebuilt door below (as identified by O’Brien) but which may also mark the location of an earlier entrance at first-floor level, such as that at dungarvan. If this is the case, this might suggest that there was originally a moat around the shell-keep with access via a drawbridge, leading into the narrow tower and providing access either through the opening that might 112 Pollock, in Bennett (ed.), Excavations 1996, no. 87.

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have led to a stair in the south wall, or through the blocked-up doorway at firstfloor level visible in the west wall (although the west wall might be later in date as it does not appear to be bonded in with the main structure). The five-sided bawn also needs to be re-examined and the surviving structures analysed for earlier origins that might help date this wall and establish whether it represents an addition in the late thirteenth century, such as has occurred at dungarvan. Some of the buildings within the bawn enclosure should also be re-examined, for example, the outhouse directly east of the farmyard gateway, the west gable of which forms part of the bawn wall, the corner turret and croom castle House (fig. 4.42), the latter to eliminate the possibility that it originally formed part of a gatehouse as the footprint of the building, as recorded in the first Ordnance Survey. croom castle was either constructed by Gerald before his death by January 1204 or during the minority years between then and 1216 but not much beyond 1216 as it was slightly out of fashion by that date (although the heir Maurice may perhaps have constructed it on reaching his majority). The castle, along with dungarvan, probably reverted to the crown or was perhaps granted for the minority to another magnate, for which records do not survive. The choice of castle type is interesting, the use of the polygonal keep adding an aesthetic dimension to what was essentially a defensive but smaller castle with walls that were only 1m in thickness at the top. The use of the round or polygonal shellkeep was certainly adopted more readily in Wales than elsewhere,11 signalled by cardiff castle in Wales built in the late eleventh century on top of the remains of a roman fort. A motte was added and in the mid-twelfth century was considerably enlarged by the construction of an imposing polygonal shell-keep. While now entered through a high polygonal tower, the latter was a later addition that was added c.100, the entire castle being set within a large rectangular walled bawn.114 While the motte is the largest built in Wales, however, the shell-keep is still only 2m wide by m high, a comparable size to croom. Shanid castle Introduction Thomas (d. c.121) was perhaps the youngest son of Maurice fitz Gerald but, nevertheless, one of the most important as progenitor of the great house of desmond. While probably brought to Munster by Gerald, his older brother, he became heavily involved in the Munster campaign under de Burgh and, as a reward, received in c.118 a major grant in connello (uí chonaill) at a place called Shanid.115 There he built a motte-and-bailey castle,116 which became his 113 Six shell-keep castles survive in Wales: one, Wiston castle in Pembrokeshire, is very wellpreserved but smaller than croom. This may have been rebuilt by William Marshal when earl of Pembroke. 114 John r. Kenyon, The medieval castles of Wales (cardiff, 2010), p. 18. 115 Orpen, ‘Notes on some county Limerick castles’. 116 Although the earthwork castle is

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4.43 Shanid motte-and-bailey.

main caput and its location must be considered one of the most striking and majestic of all the Geraldine castles (L0-101:081002) (fig. 4.4).117 The motteand-bailey, which is particularly well preserved, contains the fragmentary remains of what was once a very elegant thirteenth-century polygonal keep, sitting on top of an oval motte complete with curtain wall, a section of which survives along the south-eastern side although in a very fragmentary state (fig. 4.44). Most unusually, the trapezoidal bailey also survives, clearly defined by earthworks on one side, and producing a distinctive keyhole shape to the entire monument. The castle is sited on an elevated knoll giving it sweeping views of the Shannon estuary and, while now in very rural location, like Lea there was a significant medieval settlement here which included a church, of which there is no trace (fig. 4.45). In the sixteenth century, the castle was cited as one of the oldest of the Geraldines’ castles in co. Limerick, its importance reflected in the sometimes attributed to William de Burgh, that Thomas was in this area in the late 110s is suggested by a reference which records the ‘seed of Maurice FitzGerald’ killing an Irish man in this area, presumably Thomas (Orpen, ‘Limerick castles’, 5). 117 Orpen, Normans, ii, p. 164; see Sweetman, Medieval castles, p. 25 (plan) and p. 84 (discussion); see www.archaeology.ie (Historic Environment Viewer).

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4.44 Shanid castle, detail of motte summit.

war-cry of the desmond branch, Seanad Abú. On the death of Thomas in c.121, the castle reverted to the crown until his son John came of age in the 1220s, in a similar situation to his brother Gerald and young heir Maurice.118 Based on the castle-building activities of his brothers, it is likely Thomas himself built the stone castle, an ongoing project presumably continued by his son John, on coming of age in the 1220s. The first fortification The first fortification was evidently a classical motte-and-bailey, the castlebuilders taking advantage of a naturally hilly area and rocky outcrop to ensure a solid foundation capable of supporting the stone keep and curtain wall.11 The oval summit of the motte measures approximately 26m in diameter (northeast– southwest) and it was enclosed by a substantial fosse and bank, which is particularly well-preserved on the southern side, the bank measuring a full 7.5m in height. A gap in the defences on the eastern side suggests that the original entrance was on that side, probably protected by some sort of gate-tower: in 158 118 Orpen, Normans, ii, pp 164–217; idem, ‘Limerick castles’. 119 Leask, Irish castles, pp 41–2.

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4.45 Plan of Shanid motte (courtesy P.d. Sweetman).

the ruined castle is recorded as having a collapsed barbican.120 The trapezoidal bailey is positioned on the north-eastern side of the motte, on sloping ground, cut into two terraces, and defined by a ditch and bank. The addition of the bailey considerably expanded the size of the fortification with an internal space measuring approximately 45m by 0m protected by large and well-preserved banks and a fosse, although these were not as extensive as those surrounding the motte. 120 Westropp, ‘Ancient castles of Limerick’, 24.

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The donjon unfortunately, only a small section of the donjon is still standing but enough survives to establish that it was polygonal on the outside and circular on the inside, surrounded by a curtain wall – a relatively rare type of castle in Ireland (figs 4.46, 4.47).121 In Orpen’s time (10) the southern and western part of the tower were still standing along with a section of the curtain wall along the southeastern end.122 unfortunately, only a fragment of the south-western end of the keep is now in situ but this stands to its full height of 10.60m although almost devoid of features. Two massive collapsed chunks of masonry lie to the north of the standing ruin, clearly part of the keep originally, one of which displays evidence of plank-centring in a window ope. The tower was two-storied in height with a basement and an internal diameter of just 6.7m, which is a very limited space, the walls themselves a massive .4m in width. The facing stones of the base of the tower have been robbed out but the interior still provides clues about the original internal layout. The ground floor or semi-basement is lower than the outside ground level and the one beam-slot indicates the first-floor level, with the wall-walk forming a second level. But no other beam slots are identifiable hinting that a certain amount of rebuilding has taken place. The level of the beam slot correlates with the base of a straight southern jamb and a partial internal segmented arch at the south-western end of the standing ruin. This suggests a very wide embrasure, which has been identified as a window by Leask,12 but may have been a door at first-floor level as the embrasure is very large. The upper levels are something of a puzzle and may also suggest that the upper section was rebuilt. The wall-walk survives at parapet level with crenellations in situ but also with a series of thin narrow loopholes beneath, although there is no sign of these in the interior, with the original access therefore blocked, presumably by a rebuild. The basal foundation course of the curtain wall still survives in a small stretch along the eastern side of the ruin, a section which was standing to its full height in the early 100s when it was photographed. The wall was originally 4.5m high and was crenellated but was only 1.5m wide, suggesting it was not very defensive. The bailey, which is generally small, may also have had a curtain wall although nothing is now visible. The castle is likely to be dated to the first quarter of the thirteenth century but there is little surviving additional major development of the castle throughout the medieval period. Shanid was overtaken somewhat in importance in the late 1280s, by the development of Newcastle West and Askeaton castle, which might have impacted negatively on the subsequent development of the castle.124 121 Leask, Irish castles, pp 41–2. 122 See Orpen, ‘Limerick castles’, p. 4, for photograph taken before 10. 123 Leask, Irish castles, p. 42. 124 T.J. Westropp, ‘On certain typical earthworks and ring-walls in county Limerick’, PRIA, c (116–17), –42, 444–2; Orpen, Normans, ii, p. 165.

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4.46 Shanid castle, the keep.

4.47 Shanid castle, detail of keep interior.

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Comment The use of the polygonal donjon was generally rare in Ireland, and while the reputed aim of this design was to eliminate the vulnerable corners, in reality if the polygonal tower was small as at Shanid, this was probably of limited success in this regard, demonstrated by the fact that this design was short lived, dating from the early to mid-thirteenth century. Two additional polygonal donjons can be identified in Ireland but on a much larger scale at Athlone, co. Westmeath and castleknock, co. dublin, neither of which have diagnostically datable features.125 The oval motte at castleknock, co. dublin, for instance, with its large polygonal donjon surrounded by a curtain wall, while similar in design to Shanid, co. Limerick is on a much larger scale, the documentary sources implying that it was built in the early thirteenth century, before Thomas’s death in 121. The polygonal design, however, does appear as a motif in Geraldine construction used at croom, already discussed, but also possibly in dungarvan, co. Waterford which may possibly have been in Geraldine hands early on. Perhaps the choice had as much to do with fashion and style as anything else, the polygonal tower being constructed of a particularly attractive stone.126 By the thirteenth century, therefore, the desmond Geraldines had their spectacular castle at Shanid, a flagship construction which, while militarily defensive, was also aesthetically pleasing, and demonstrated that Thomas, like his older brothers before him, was up to speed with the current trends in castle-building and, more importantly, had the resources to build it.

* * * This study of some of the early Irish castles built by Maurice fitz Gerald and his sons has thrown some light on this extraordinary dynasty, which might help explain their successes in Ireland and the foothold they managed to gain in the territories they had carved out for themselves by c.1204. Historically, and due in no small part to Gerald of Wales, the accepted version of events is very much tied up with the story of Maurice fitz Gerald himself, coming to Ireland with his sons, and succeeding not on the basis of high-born entitlement but on the brawn of his sexagenarian valour. He came as a great military leader, having finally abandoned Wales, bringing his wife and children with him, the entire invasion very much a family affair. But was this really the case? did Maurice arrive in 125 T.E. McNeill, ‘The great towers of early Irish castles’, ANS, 12 (10), 111. 126 Leask suggests one of the best comparisons for Shanid is not in Wales but at Launceston in cornwall, where the castle consists of a circular donjon within a curtain wall on top of a motte, set on a rocky out-crop. While visually similar to Shanid, Launceston, however, was originally a shellkeep built in the late twelfth century, to which a circular tower was then added (and in differentcoloured stone): charles Oman, Cornwall and its castles (London, 126), pp 10–26.

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Ireland as a man possessing little more than personal valour and many kinsmen, having little or nothing to lose, in a last ditch attempt to sort out his family fortunes? The examination of some of the first castles built by Maurice and his sons in Ireland is certainly suggestive of a different story, demonstrating that the first Geraldines had far more than just an adventuring spirit behind them having first arrived on Irish soil. Maurice fitz Gerald, of course, had a noble castle-building pedigree. Born around 1105, he was perhaps the second son of Gerald of Windsor with Welsh royalty on his mother’s side in the form of Nest, daughter of rhys ap Tewdwr. As Seán duffy has shown above, Maurice’s father, Gerald, was probably born in Windsor castle, where his own father Walter fitz Otar was castellan under William the conqueror. Following in the career footsteps of his father, Gerald was appointed castellan to the newly constructed Pembroke castle and was effectively left in charge of the embryonic colony, governing for Anulf de Montgomery, an absentee lord. Maurice is likely to have been born in the massive motte-and-bailey of Pembroke castle not many years after his father became constable.127 He was of course very familiar with the castles of Wales, especially southeast Wales, for example, carew (caeriw) castle in Pembrokeshire, which is likely to have been built by his father within the ruins of an Iron-Age fort,128 and cardigan castle, home of his half-brother robert fitz Stephen.12 The strategically placed chepstow castle in Monmouthshire, along the Welsh– English border and later held by richard de clare (Strongbow), the leader of the Anglo-Norman invasion of Ireland from 1170, must also have been a familiar sight to Maurice. Sited on a cliff and built by William fitz Osbern in and around 1067, this important castle, with its four baileys, had defences that were of stone from the very beginning, the great tower, a rectangular stone keep, reputedly completed by 100. Maurice, on reaching maturity, also went into the family business, and as lord of Llansteffan, along with his brother William, lord of Emlyn, dominated much of the Anglo-Norman colony in Pembrokeshire. At Llansteffan, Maurice was building in stone at a castle spectacularly sited overlooking carmarthan Bay but set within an existing promontory fort of Iron-Age date, the castle-builders taking full advantage of the existing banks and ditched defences. Now a substantial stone enclosure castle (complete with precinct wall, inner gatehouses and towers intact), it is unlikely that there was ever a motte in this location, the substantial banks and ditch suggesting it was more likely to have been a ringwork castle. Thus when Maurice came to Ireland with his grown-up sons, he brought 127 The earliest fortification was a ringwork (Salter, Castles of south-west Wales, p. 4). 128 This is crowned by a stone keep known as the Old Tower, which has been attributed to Gerald in the past but is more likely to date to the late twelfth or early thirteenth century: d.J. cathcart King, The castle in Enlgand and Wales: an interpretative history (London, 188), p. 78. 129 The earliest fortification here was also a ringwork. The present castle was rebuilt in stone by the Lord rhys ap Gruffudd c.1171, after it was captured (Salter, Castles of south-west Wales,

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with him intimate knowledge of some of the most spectacular early castles in the British Isles, in southwest Wales, most of which were built between c.1100 and 115.10 While he had, at his fingertips, the knowledge and capability of campaigning in the field, of building the basic and rudimentary earthworks required for such an invasion, as described by Gerald of Wales,11 he also had extensive knowledge of building in stone. Not only that, Maurice came to Ireland in the vanguard of what was to be something of a mass exodus of kinsmen from the Pembrokeshire colony, men he could trust, with whom he had worked and who had experience of frontier life, their futures all firmly set on what was potentially opening up in Ireland, a country three times the land-mass of Wales. When Maurice began receiving his various land-grants in Ireland he set about doing what he had been doing thirty years previously in Wales, building fortifications to secure the lands, subduing the inhabitants by conquering their settlements and establishing manorial communities to exploit the new lands. This study of some of early Geraldine castles in Ireland has sought to restore Maurice and his sons to the status of castle-building barons, as reflected in the size and diversity of castle types they built initially in Ireland, which, up until now, have not been looked at as a single unit. The research excavations by Hayden at Trim castle demonstrated scientifically that Hugh de Lacy was building a very elaborate and unusual state-of-the-art keep in stone in Ireland by 1174 – evidently with a team of experienced castle engineers – and this fact alone should prompt a rethink of how long earthwork castles were in use at the major castle sites in Ireland before they were rebuilt in stone. In terms of the case study castles, the conclusion by Hayden that the earthwork castle at Maynooth was also in the process of being replaced by a large stone donjon in the late 1170s and 1180s must place the Geraldines high in that pecking-order, Maurice having both the resources to build in stone and the experienced castle-builders to carry out the task soon after the invasion.12 The point is that Maurice and his sons did in Ireland what they did best – they began to build stone castles as soon as they could and on Gerald’s death by 1204, when he held most of the Geraldines lands in his own hands, they had made a pretty good start by completing the donjon at Maynooth, along with its gate-tower and curtain wall. This is the castle we must use as a marker when dealing with the early Geraldine castles. As has been wellflagged, Gerald died leaving a nine-year-old heir at a time crucial for castle development in Ireland (most notably the introduction of the circular keep or tower), and it was to be 1216 before his son Maurice took possession of his father’s lands. In the interval, the Leinster lands, in Offelan and Offaly (and also those in Pembroke), went to William Marshal as lord of Leinster, himself a pp 4, 17). 130 Salter, Castles of south-west Wales, p. 4. 131 castles of ‘branches and sods’: Giraldus, Expug. Hib., p. 28. n. 58 (Ferrycarrig, the first castle built in Ireland). 132 Presumably there were teams of castle-builders in the newly opened-up market of Ireland, the bigger magnates building castles for their vassals.

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formidable castle-builder who had almost completed significant castle-building works at Pembroke castle. While the minority should have stymied the progression of the Geraldines in this period, the fact is that Gerald had significantly advanced the Geraldine fortunes by the time of his death, as had his older brother William at his demise c.11. As well as Maynooth, there was a major castle and manor in the fertile lands of Kildare at Naas that started life as a large motte-and-bailey but was probably refortified in stone, with a smaller motte-and-bailey at rathmore, this fortification converted into a functioning manorial settlement also, complete with burgesses and a weekly fair by 1204. The Geraldine lands in Offaly were also well-incastellated, controlled by two major fortifications, each with a manorial settlement, a motte-and-bailey in Geashill with evidence of original stonework around the motte, and a probable ringwork at Lea, controlling the mighty Barrow river. In Limerick, they had built at croom in the rich and fertile Maigue valley – although it is not clear what the original earthwork castle (if there was one) was like – and at the spectacular motte-and-bailey at Shanid, again developing it into a manorial settlement. The castles were built at existing Irish settlements, on prehistoric mounds, on communications routes and along major rivers, the castle-builders adapting the existing topography, using natural ridges and eskers in Offelan and Offaly and rocky outcrops in Limerick. These castle sites continued to be developed and the break in construction is difficult to identify in the field where there are surviving castles. At Lea, the towered keep is of a type usually dated from the early thirteenth century, and was therefore built either by William Marshal during the minority, modelled perhaps on his great castle at carlow, or by Maurice the heir who resumed control of the lands in 1216. William Marshal is certainly a likely contender, as lord of Leinster and having charge of the heir, possibly using this opportunity to build a defensible and modern castle in his lordship at the expense of the Geraldine estate. Alternatively, the young heir may have collaborated with Marshal to build the castle on reaching his majority, perhaps even using Marshal castle-engineers. But perhaps the question of most relevance with regard to the Geraldines is: what was at Lea before the towered keep was constructed? While the first earthwork castle is likely to have been a ringwork (due to the low-lying ground), on present evidence it seems unlikely that Gerald did not start to build in stone on receiving the lands in the mid-110s. Is it possible therefore that there was an earlier castle at Lea, one that was either demolished to form part of a foundation, or one incorporated within the new build, the stonemasons skilfully blending in the old with the new by the addition of the round towers? At Geashill, its sister castle, the evidence suggests that the motte was probably revetted in stone originally, most likely earlier in date than the towered keep at Lea, opening up the possibility of an earlier phase of stone build in Lea also. In Limerick, at croom, there is a similar potential gap in chronology, the shell-keep found there

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being generally dated to the early thirteenth century, possibly built by Gerald’s hands before 1204, an early date possibly supported by the fact that there appears to be no earlier motte (and none was found at dungarvan co. Waterford, which appears to be linked to croom). At Shanid, there is little difficulty in dating, as this never formed part of Gerald’s lands having been granted directly to Thomas, his younger brother. The initial earthwork was a fine motte-and-bailey but the elegant polygonal castle, with its unusual form can be attributed to Thomas of Shanid, who died in 121. In summing up, the rapid construction of castles and their continued development makes it clear that Gerald fitz Maurice must have had considerable funds at his disposal prior to his death by 1204 as, at that point, he was managing at least six different castles in as many locations, a considerable achievement when one considers the resources required to build even one castle in stone, along with the timescale (assuming a construction-rate of just under four metres a year).1 The variety in castle-type, along with the stylish design of some, reflects the experience of this castle-building family, as suggested by even the most cursory glance at their background. As to resources, while the HibernoNorse port of Wexford was clearly a loss to Maurice fitz Gerald, he went on to receive very strategic and significant lands in Offelan, the lands of the barony of Naas alone comprising over 70,000 acres in the fertile plains of northern Kildare. The cantred of Wicklow, with Black castle at its centre,14 while sometimes dismissed as mostly comprising mountainous lands, did nevertheless contain fertile lands along the coastline and also the lands on the western side of the mountain, in and around Baltinglass, abutting Offelan at the north-western end.15 As much of the area to the south and west of dublin had been retained in the king’s hands and carved into the royal manors of Obrun and Othee, these lands were relatively peaceful compared to other parts of the country and were well-populated and therefore profitable immediately after the invasion.16 The grant also provided control points from the routes south of dublin, along with deep-sea access.17 Maurice also retained interests in Wales, specifically the stewardship of the diocese of St david, which he held of his brother, Bishop david, and which Maurice managed to get converted into a hereditary position in the 1170s at the very time when he was busy building castles in Ireland.18 This holding was significant enough, approximately five knights’ fees, but is unlikely to have been producing the kind of revenue Maurice required to embark on a new castle133 Pounds, The medieval castle in England and Wales, p. 20. 134 Maurice is said to have died in Black castle in Wicklow, where he had retired. 135 Maccotter, Medieval Ireland, pp 174–5. 136 Linzi Simpson, ‘Anglo-Norman settlement in uí Briúin cualann’, in Ken Hannigan and Kevin Whelan (eds), Wicklow history and society (dublin, 14), pp 11–25. 137 The entire littoral from Bray to Arklow was reserved to the crown (Orpen, Normans, i, p. 68). 138 See duffy, above, pp 42–.

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building spree in Ireland. The answer must lie in the fact that the early Geraldines were not simply castle-builders or military men but also good project-managers for the works that had to follow: the establishment of manorial centres, the importation of tenants, the collection of rents from the native population and the cultivation of the newly acquired lands, as can be seen at rathmore, which, as we have seen, had burgesses and a weekly market by 1204. They simply followed the general pattern of castle-building elsewhere in Ireland, for example, constructing their castles at pre-existing settlements of importance where there was existing, infrastructure in the form of roads, bridges, communications routes, stores of food, developed farmland and, most importantly of all, population. These unfortunate tenants presumably either capitulated and thus continued to farm their lands, simply paying their rent to their new lord until they were perhaps supplanted with incoming colonists, or they did not and were driven off, defeated or killed. With the manor or new economic units came the administrative staff to run them, to establish the markets and fairs, to lay out and manage the burgage plots and, most importantly, to gather in the rent and to convert it into cash for reinvestment in additional castle-building as happened during the secondary push into Munster. As the case studies above show, the castles of Maurice fitz Gerald and his sons required considerable resources in terms of finance but also reflect their overseas connections, which enabled the first generation, even the youngest Geraldine, to build at the height of the fashion, in some instances ahead of castle-building developments in England.1

139 The author would like to thank Alan Hayden, caimin O’Brien, Kieran O’conor and david Sweetman for their generous use of images for this article. Special thanks to Amanda Pedlow, Offaly heritage officer and Michael Byrne, secretary of the Offaly Historical and Archaeological Society, for all their help in procuring other images.

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Geraldine lordship in thirteenth-century Ireland

B R E N DA N S M I T H

It was in the writings of Giraldus Cambrensis (d. 1220x23) about the conquest of Ireland that ‘the Geraldines’ made their first appearance as a distinct historical entity. With the establishment of the Geraldine earldom of Desmond in 1329, thirteen years after the establishment of the Geraldine earldom of Kildare, Giraldus’s depiction of his gens as destined for greatness in Ireland seems prophetic.1 From a very early moment in the conquest this group of related families from south Wales stood out from other leaders of the colony. Unlike them, they had not been part of the English royal circle before crossing the Irish Sea, and must rely on wit and muscle alone to find glory in Ireland.2 At the time of Giraldus’s death, however, there was no reason to believe that within a century or so the Geraldines would be the most important resident colonial family in Ireland. Recognition of their distinctiveness from the outset does not oblige us to accept Giraldus’s teleology, and an examination of the fortunes of his relatives when freed from such constraints is revealing of the nature of English power in thirteenth-century Ireland. Giraldus was unspecific about the intended recipients of his praise at that point in his narrative at which he eulogized the virtues of the Geraldide. Was it simply the descendants of Gerald of Windsor (fl. 1100) that he had in mind or, rather, the various descendants of Gerald’s wife, Princess Nest, including not only her children by Gerald, but also the issue of her romantic liaisons with Stephen of Cardigan and Henry I? Despite such ambiguity – or perhaps because of it – the term ‘Geraldine’ had common currency in Ireland by the second half of the thirteenth century at the latest.3 Stephen de Exeter, author of the Annals of Multyfarnham, composed before 1274, used it on two occasions, in 1264 and 1269, with reference to the dispute between Walter de Burgh, earl of Ulster and I am grateful to Dr Colin Veach for his comments on an earlier draft of this essay. 1 Giraldus, Expug. Hib., pp 168, 170. The reference to individual relatives of Giraldus in Ireland, generique toti, is at p. 168. Robert Bartlett, Gerald of Wales, 1146–1223 (Oxford, 1982), pp 20–5. 2 Robin Frame, ‘King Henry III and Ireland: the shaping of a peripheral lordship’, in Frame, Ire. & Brit., pp 37–8; Robin Frame, ‘Conquest and settlement’, in Barbara Harvey (ed.), The twelfth and thirteenth centuries (Oxford, 2001), p. 43. 3 The History of William Marshal, composed in the 1220s, speaks of an attack upon the Marshal in 1207 by Meiler fitz Henry and his ‘cousins and other relatives’, but does not use the term ‘Geraldine’ (M.T. Flanagan, ‘Defining lordships in Angevin Ireland: William Marshal and the king’s justiciar’, in Frédéric Boutoulle (ed.), Les seigneuries dans l’espace Plantagenêt (c.1150–c.1250): Actes du colloque organisé à Bordeaux et Saint-Emilion les 3, 4 et 5 mai 2007 (Bordeaux, 2009), p. 50).

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lord of Connacht, and Maurice fitz Gerald and Maurice fitz Maurice.4 Clyn’s annals, which are independent of Multyfarnham, employ the term in 1264, but the Annals of Dublin kept at St Mary’s abbey, in referring to the same incident, name the two Maurices without mention of ‘Geraldines’.5 Finally, a calendared extract from the Irish pipe roll of 1271 relating to the dispute states that Geoffrey de Geneville, lord of Meath, was to be compensated for having led an army ‘upon the Geraldines’ in 1265.6 Without being able to verify the editor’s translation against the now destroyed original, however, we must leave this instance of the use of ‘Geraldines’ in the doubtful column.7 Extreme caution is needed when approaching the next appearance of the group noun ‘Geraldines’ in the colonial annals. Under the year 1287 Clyn notes: Mortuus est Geraldus filius Mauricii, capitaneus Geraldinorum; hereditatem suam dedit domino Johanni filio Thome, filio adwunculi sui; hic Johannes, primus de hac natione factus est comes Kildarie.8 The reference to John fitz Thomas’s accession to the earldom of Kildare confirms that this entry was not written before 1316, some thirty years after the event it records, and it might have been made as late as the 1330s.9 Seán Duffy has demonstrated that it was only at the very end of the thirteenth century that it became common for English commentators in Ireland, whether chroniclers or civil servants, to write in terms of groups rather than individuals.10 In 1287, it is questionable whether the Geraldines considered themselves to be a natio, and probable that they would have greeted the news that they had a capitaneus with incomprehension.11 We must not be misled by Clyn’s anachronistic use of capitaneus Geraldinorum into imagining the late thirteenth-century Geraldines to have been early forerunners in organization or behaviour of the lawless ‘race of the Poers’ referred to in a plea roll of 1305, or of the equally troublesome ‘Rupenses’ and ‘Cantonences’ (Roches and Condons) found in Clyn’s account of events in east Munster in the 1340s.12 The decades around 1300 saw in parts of Ireland the growth of kin-groups at the expense of other forms of family 4 Multyfarnham, pp 162, 165. 5 AClyn, p. 147; CStM ii, pp 290, 316. 6 Rep. DKPRI 36, p. 37. I am grateful to Mr Stephen Hewer for this reference. Mr Hewer has conducted valuable research of matters relating to this paper: Stephen Hewer, ‘Capturing settler magnates in late thirteenth-century Ireland: comparing two generations of Geraldine–de Burgh discord’ (MPhil., Bristol, 2013). 7 The limitations of the calendared version of the Irish pipe rolls are discussed in Philomena Connolly, Medieval record sources (Dublin, 2002), pp 20–2. 8 ‘Gerald fitz Maurice, captain of the Geraldines, died. He gave his inheritance to Lord John fitz Thomas, the son of his uncle. This John, first of this lineage, was made earl of Kildare’: AClyn, p. 154. 9 AClyn, pp 37–8. 10 Seán Duffy, ‘The problem of degeneracy’, in Lydon, Law & disorder, pp 87–106. 11 James F. Lydon, ‘Nation and race in medieval Ireland’, in Simon Forde, Lesley Johnson and Alan V. Murray (eds), Concepts of national identity in the Middle Ages (Leeds, 1995), pp 103–24. 12 Duffy, ‘Problem of degeneracy’, pp 104–5.

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organization, in large part as a reaction to a deteriorating security situation, but the thirteenth-century descendants of the original Geraldine invaders were not party to this development.13 When John fitz Thomas needed military muscle to further his ambitions from the late 1280s onwards he did not look for it among his extended family, but turned instead to his powerful neighbour, Piers de Bermingham, with whom he entered into an indenture of retinue.14 In like manner, when fitz Thomas agreed to supply Finn Ó Díomasaigh with troops to help in the defence of Kildare in 1306, he ensured that the cost would be borne not by himself or his relatives, but by the Dublin exchequer and the local settler community.15 Contemporaries who wrote about the Geraldines in the thirteenth century appear not to have had in mind the various descendants of Nest, but rather the descendants of Maurice fitz Gerald, the son of Nest and Gerald of Windsor, who died in 1176. Of Maurice’s sons the eldest, William, established the line of the barons of Naas, which continued also to hold the ancestral family lands in Wales.16 Of the junior branches, one established itself at Shanid in north Limerick, and from them descended the earls of Desmond and various Kerry lords; another secured Offaly and went on to gain the earldom of Kildare.17 Relations between the Shanid and Offaly branches were particularly close and enduring. The two families were neighbours in north Limerick at Shanid, Adare and Croom, and in the 1250s John fitz Thomas of Shanid held Oregan in Offaly of his Geraldine cousin, the lord of Offaly.18 When contention arose between two members of the Offaly branch about the descent of the estate in 1257, Lord Edward assigned it to John fitz Thomas of Shanid until he should decide between the claimants.19 In 1298, John fitz Thomas of Offaly was awarded custody of the Desmond Geraldine heir, Maurice fitz Thomas, the future first earl of Desmond, on the death of the latter’s father.20 Maurice fitz Gerald, lord 13 Robin Frame, ‘Power and society in the Lordship of Ireland, 1272–1377’, in Frame, Ire. & Brit., pp 191–220, esp. pp 205–7; Brock Holden, Lords of the central marches: English aristocracy and frontier society, 1087–1265 (Oxford, 2008), pp 228–9. 14 Cormac Ó Cléirigh, ‘The problems of defence: a regional case-study’, in Lydon, Law & disorder, pp 32–3; Brock Holden, ‘Feudal frontiers? Colonial societies in Wales and Ireland, 1170–1330’, Studia Hibernica, 33 (2004–5), 76–8. 15 Robin Frame, ‘Military service in the Lordship of Ireland, 1290–1360: institutions and society on the Anglo-Gaelic frontier’, in Frame, Ire. & Brit., p. 289. 16 For the early and significant use of the term ‘baron’ by William, lord of Naas, see David Crouch, The image of aristocracy in Britain, 1000–1300 (London, 1992), p. 113. 17 From the late twelfth century all three branches also had estates elsewhere in Ireland: Orpen, Normans, ch. 27; G.H. Orpen, ‘The Fitz Geralds, barons of Offaly’, JRSAI, 44 (1914), 99–113; and see MacCotter, below, pp 170–93. 18 Mark Keegan, ‘The archaeology of manorial settlement in west county Limerick in the thirteenth century’, in James Lyttleton and Tadhg O’Keeffe (eds), The manor in medieval and early modern Ireland (Dublin, 2005), pp 17–39; Orpen, ‘Fitz Geralds’, 104. 19 Orpen, ‘Fitz Geralds’, 106. 20 Cormac Ó Cléirigh, ‘The absentee landlady and the sturdy robbers’, in Christine Meek and Katharine Simms (eds), The fragility of her sex: medieval Irishwomen in their European context (Dublin, 1996), pp 109–10. In 1204, a member of the wider Geraldine kin, Meiler fitz Henry, who was justiciar at

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of Offaly, established the first Franciscan house in Ireland at Youghal in the late 1220s, and was buried there in 1257, yet it was the Geraldines of Desmond, rather than of Offaly, who subsequently chose it as a mausoleum.21 The closeness of the two branches was recognized by other contemporary lords. In the 1270s and 1280s Geoffrey de Geneville secured custody of the lands and marriages of the underage heirs of both the Desmond and Offaly families.22 Thomas de Clare’s attempts to establish himself in Ireland involved close association with the Geraldines. He first visited the country in 1269 when he received the wardship and marriage of the heir of Maurice fitz Gerald, lord of Offaly.23 He married a cousin of his ward, Juliana daughter of Maurice fitz Maurice, which brought him the manor of Inchiquin and the rich town of Youghal, and also arranged for the marriage of his son and heir, Richard, to Joan, daughter of Thomas fitz Maurice, head of the Desmond Geraldines.24 The fruits of his alliances were on display in 1283 when an attack on Mac Carthaigh in west Cork was led by de Clare, and his Offaly and Desmond Geraldine allies.25 A decade later, William de Vescy, lord of Kildare, as part of his campaign against John fitz Thomas, lord of Offaly, encouraged his Mac Carthaigh allies to attack Thomas fitz Maurice, head of the Desmond Geraldines.26 The clearest indication of the strong sense of identity that existed among the Geraldines, and the extent to which this identity was rooted in the ownership and transmission of family land, came in the summer of 1287. The lord of Offaly, Gerald fitz Maurice, was close to death and had no children. Rather than allow his estate to devolve through his aunt to the family of Cogan, he began to grant it away to his father’s first cousin, John fitz Thomas, the sole surviving male representative of the Offaly branch of the Geraldines.27 For the next twenty-five years fitz Thomas devoted himself to the unlikely task of reassembling the lands held by his grandfather, Maurice fitz Gerald, lord of Offaly, who had died in 1257. Had there not existed among the many parties involved in this process some sense that this Geraldine estate was naturally a single unit that deserved to be reconstituted, then fitz Thomas could not have achieved what he did. His ambition defied contemporary conventions – and at times legal principles – and the time, took the custody of Offaly into his own hands following the death of his cousin, Gerald fitz Maurice. The custody rightly belonged to William Marshal, earl of Pembroke and lord of Leinster (Orpen, ‘Fitz Geralds’, 101; M.T. Flanagan, ‘Meiler fitz Henry (d. 1220)’, ODNB; see Veach, above, p. 81). 21 Colmán Ó Clabaigh, The friars in Ireland, 1224–1540 (Dublin, 2012), p. 12. 22 Ó Cléirigh, ‘Absentee landlady’, p. 105; CDI, 1252–84, pp 260, 284. 23 Frame, ‘King Henry III and Ireland’, p. 49 n. 109. 24 Beth Hartland, ‘English lords in thirteenth and early fourteenth century Ireland: Roger Bigod and the de Clare lords of Thomond’, EHR, 122 (2007), 318–48. 25 Katharine Simms, ‘Relations with the Irish’, in Lydon, Law & disorder, pp 79–81. 26 Keith J. Stinger, ‘Nobility and identity in medieval Britain and Ireland: the de Vescy family, c.1120–1314’, in Brendan Smith (ed.), Britain and Ireland, 900–1300: insular responses to medieval European change (Cambridge, 1999), pp 235–6. 27 Robin Frame, ‘Fitzgerald, Maurice (d. 1268)’, ODNB. For land and noble identity, see R.R. Davies, Lords and lordship in the British Isles in the late Middle Ages, ed. Brendan Smith (Oxford, 2009), pp 140–57.

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had the course of action pursued by the Geraldines been anticipated earlier in the thirteenth century by other magnate families faced with the dismemberment of their estates as a result of female inheritance in the absence of male heirs of the direct line, such as the de Lacys or Marshals, then the history of Ireland would have been very different.28 While Geraldine lordship had distinctive features, in its motivations and expression it was for the most part indistinguishable from the general run of settler lordship in Ireland. In this land of warfare and frontiers it is to be expected that the conquerors should have built castles, and developed alliances with native rulers.29 Geraldine castles sprang up within a generation of their arrival from Wales at Maynooth, Croom, Shanid and elsewhere, and in the early fourteenth century John fitz Thomas looked for government support to help rebuild the Offaly castles of Lea and Geashill.30 In like manner, in having a native Irish godfather, and in establishing military alliances with the native family of Ó Díomasaigh, fitz Thomas conformed to the behaviour of his colonial contemporaries.31 His establishment shortly before his death in 1316 of an Augustinian friary at Adare was another manifestation of lordship that was commonplace among the colonial elite.32 The monastery was as much a statement of colonial intent as was the castle, and since their arrival in Ireland the Geraldines had endowed the church with lands and resources.33 The house of Augustinian canons at Naas was perhaps founded by William fitz Maurice, baron of Naas, in 1200, while Meiler fitz Henry established the Augustinian house at Great Connell in Kildare in 1202. Maurice fitz Gerald was possibly the founder of the Hospitaller house at Kilteel in Kildare shortly after reaching his majority in 1216, and, as we have seen, founded the first Franciscan house at Youghal between 1224 and 1229. He retired to this house in 1256 and died there in the habit of a Franciscan the following year.34 His grandson, also Maurice fitz Gerald (d. 1268), appears to have established a friary for the same order at Clane in 1258.35 Turning to the Munster Geraldines, John fitz Thomas of Shanid founded a Dominican house at Tralee in 1243 and was buried there with his son following 28 Orpen, ‘Fitz Geralds’; Ó Cléirigh, ‘Absentee landlady’. 29 Robert Bartlett, The making of Europe: conquest, colonization and cultural change, 950–1350 (London, 1993), pp 5–105. 30 Ó Cléirigh, ‘Problems of defence’, pp 29–30, 42–3, 54; Keegan, ‘Archaeology of manorial settlement’, pp 23–9; David Sweetman, The medieval castles of Ireland (Cork, 1999), pp 36–8; see also Simpson, above. 31 Duffy, ‘Problem of degeneracy’, p. 98. 32 For this, and what follows, see Gwynn & Hadcock, MRHI, under the orders named. 33 Patterns of church endowment by the Norman conquerors in England in the years after 1066 are fruitfully explored in Emma Cownie, Religious patronage in Anglo-Norman England, 1066–1135 (Woodbridge, 1998). 34 Brendan Smith, ‘Fitzgerald, Maurice (c.1194–1257)’, ODNB. In like manner, Meiler fitz Henry appears to have retired to Great Connell, and was buried there on his death in 1220 (Susan Leigh Fry, Burial in medieval Ireland, 900–1500: a review of the written sources (Dublin, 1999), p. 145). 35 Ó Clabaigh, The friars in Ireland, p. 13. The founder cannot have been Gerald fitz Maurice, as stated, as he was still a minor on his father’s death in 1268. However, Maurice fitz Gerald appears still to have been a minor in 1258.

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their deaths in the battle of Callann in 1261. In 1268, his grandson, Thomas fitz Maurice, founded a Dominican house at Youghal and was buried there in 1298. A house of Augustinian friars was founded by the same man at Dungarvan in 1290. The lord of Kerry, Thomas fitz Maurice, founded a Franciscan house at Ardfert in Kerry in 1253. Giraldus Cambrensis’s Barry relatives were particularly generous patrons of the church. A de Barri probably founded the Cistercian house at Middleton in Cork in 1180, while Odo de Barri founded the Cistercian house of Tracton in Cork in 1225. Philip de Barri founded a Dominican house in the town of Cork in 1229 and a house of Augustinian canons at Ballybeg, also in Cork around 1230. With Gerald de Prendergast he also founded a house for Augustinian canons at Enniscorthy in 1229.36 John fitz Thomas’s labours in the decades around 1300 to reconstruct his grandfather’s lordship and add to the security of his Leinster lands coincided with the high-point of English power in medieval Ireland.37 The 1270s and 1280s saw durable English settlements established in Thomond by Thomas de Clare, and in the 1300s the earl of Ulster, Richard de Burgh, was building castles and winning battles that established his lordship even in Donegal and Fermanagh.38 Expansion had not been a smooth, cumulative, process. In the 1230s and 40s, rapid and spectacular advances were made in the conquest and colonization of Connacht, replicating similar advances in Munster in preceding decades, but early deaths among the descendants of the first conquerors in the 1250s and 1260s slowed momentum.39 From the 1270s, furthermore, parts of the country that had accepted a loose form of English control for generations, such as the Wicklow and Dublin mountains and the Leinster midlands, became troublesome war zones.40 The Geraldines were deeply involved in the expansionary thrusts into Munster, Connacht, and southwest Ulster, but also felt the impact of increased Irish resistance from the middle of the century. At Callann in Kerry in 1261 the head of the Desmond Geraldines, John fitz Thomas, and his son and heir, John, were killed in battle by Fínghin Mac Carthaigh, and in 1265 Aodh Ó Conchobhair, king of Connacht, not only destroyed Geraldine castles in north Connacht, but also launched a spectacular raid from Roscommon into the Geraldine lordship of Offaly.41 Ó Conchobhair’s raid testified to the deep involvement in Connacht affairs of the Offaly Geraldines by the 1260s. Geraldine lords had played an important role in Ireland since the late 1160s, and one of the original conquerors, Meiler fitz Henry, grandson of Nest and King Henry I, had served as justiciar of Ireland from 1199 to 1208.42 Maurice fitz Gerald, lord of Offaly, became the first 36 Gwynn & Hadcock, MRHI, under the orders named. 37 Curtis, Med. Ire. (2nd ed.), pp 156– 77; Otway-Ruthven, Med. Ire., pp 191–223. 38 Robin Frame, Colonial Ire. (2nd ed.), pp 42–3, 48–9. 39 Frame, ‘King Henry III and Ireland’, pp 54–5. 40 Lydon, Lordship (2nd ed.), pp 95–7; Ó Cléirigh, ‘Problems of defence’, 25–56. 41 Peter Crooks, ‘Divide and rule: factionalism as royal policy in the Lordship of Ireland, 1171–1265’, Peritia, 19 (2005), 263–307; James Lydon, ‘A land of war’, in NHI, ii, pp 251–2; Frame, Colonial Ire. (2nd ed.), p. 52. 42 M.T. Flanagan, ‘Meiler

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Geraldine to act as justiciar since Meiler fitz Henry when appointed to the post in 1232, and it was during his justiciarship – he held the post without interruption for thirteen years, a medieval record – that Connacht was invaded and English rule established throughout the province.43 Richard de Burgh, to whom Connacht had been granted by Henry III, enfeoffed Maurice in south Galway almost as soon as the conquest began in 1235.44 By the mid-1240s he had acquired Sligo from the lords de Burgh had enfeoffed there, Hugh de Lacy, earl of Ulster, and Jordan de Exeter, and de Lacy then granted to him his rights as earl of Ulster over Donegal and Fermanagh. In Mayo, Maurice acquired yet more land, again from the original de Burgh grantees, Gerald de Roche and his cousin, Raymond fitz Griffin. Fitz Gerald’s exploits in Connacht raised the Geraldines to the highest level of the colonial aristocracy for the first time. In the various parts of Connacht in which he acquired land fitz Gerald built castles and established manors and towns. The town and castle of Sligo are the most impressive monuments to his colonial achievement, but he also built castles elsewhere in Sligo, at Banada and Ardcree. In Galway he built castles at Ardrahan and Lough Mannin, and established manors there and at Kilcolgan. In Mayo he built the castle of Lough Mask, and founded the towns of Ballinrobe and Shrule.45 In 1252 he also built a castle at Cáeluisce on the Erne, in a daring attempt to link his Sligo lands and potential estates in Fermanagh and Donegal.46 As had been the case at the initial conquest of Ireland, the conquest of Connacht involved not only the erection of castles and the establishment of towns, but also the endowment of new religious houses. At Sligo Maurice introduced the Premonstratensian canons and Dominican friars in 1242 and 1252 respectively, and the latter foundation prompted his godson, Feidhlim Ó Conchobhair, king of Connacht, to found a Dominican house at Roscommon in the following year.47 Relations between these two men were often difficult, but in 1245 Feidhlim signalled his dependence upon Maurice by assisting him in the construction of the castle at Sligo, and by then accompanying him with a large force to north Wales to fight for Henry III.48 This campaign was deemed unsuccessful by the fitz Henry (d. 1220)’, ODNB; Seán Duffy, ‘John and Ireland: the origins of England’s Irish problem’, in S.D. Church (ed.), King John: new interpretations (Woodbridge, 1999), pp 221– 45; Crooks, ‘Divide and rule’, 280–4; Colin Veach, ‘King and magnate in medieval Ireland: Walter de Lacy, King Richard and King John’, IHS, 37 (2010–1), 179–202; Flanagan, ‘Defining lordships in Angevin Ireland’, pp 44–59. 43 Smith, ‘Fitzgerald, Maurice’; Brendan Smith, ‘Irish politics, 1220–1245’, in TCE VIII (2001), pp 13–22. 44 For what follows, see Orpen, Normans, ch. 28. 45 Tom McNeill, Castles in Ireland: feudal power in a Gaelic world (London, 1997), pp 130–7; Patrick Holland, ‘The Anglo-Normans in county Galway: the process of colonization’, JGAHS, 41 (1987–8), 73–89; Patrick Holland, ‘The Anglo-Norman landscape in county Galway: landholdings, castles and settlements’ JGAHS, 49 (1997), 159–93. 46 Frame, Colonial Ire. (2nd ed.), p. 40. 47 Gwynn & Hadcock, MRHI, pp 207, 229. 48 Freya Verstraten, ‘Both king and vassal: Feidlim Ua Conchobair of Connacht, 1230–65’, JGAHS, 55 (2003), 13–37; James Lydon, ‘Lordship and crown: Llywelyn of Wales and O’Connor of Connacht’, in R.R. Davies (ed.), The British Isles, 1100– 1500: comparisons, contrasts and connections (Edinburgh, 1988), pp 48–63, esp. p. 59.

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king, and cost fitz Gerald the justiciarship.49 This did not, however, impair his activities in Connacht, and on his death in 1257 he left a far larger estate to his successors than he had inherited himself. Some indication of its worth comes from 1269 when the custody of the Offaly heir, Gerald fitz Maurice, the greatgrandson of the Connacht conquistador, and his lands in Connacht, Kildare, Offaly, Limerick and east Cork, was awarded to Thomas de Clare. He promptly sold the custody to William de Valence for 3,500 marks [£2,333]. To put this sum in perspective, receipts at the Dublin exchequer for the two-year period between Michaelmas 1270 and Michaelmas 1272 amounted only to £4,681 12s. 3d.50 In 1283, Geoffrey de Geneville paid de Valence £1,200 for this custody. By this time, however, Gerald’s minority was almost at an end, and the fact that de Geneville arranged for his ward to marry his daughter suggests that his thinking about the value of what he had purchased was based on its long-term worth, rather than its potential to yield short-term profit.51 Maurice fitz Gerald’s career not only raised the standing of his family in Ireland but also brought the Geraldines into closer contact with the crown. Fitz Gerald’s military expedition to Wales in 1245 came two years after his son and heir, Gerald, had died while campaigning with the king in Poitou; a venture in which the head of the Munster Geraldines, John fitz Thomas of Shanid, had also participated.52 Once established, this tradition of service abroad in the king’s wars persisted among the Geraldines throughout the rest of the century. Gerald fitz Maurice (d. 1287), lord of Offaly, the grandson of the man who had died in Poitou in 1243, served in Wales in 1283–4, while in the 1290s and 1300s the next lord of Offaly, John fitz Thomas, later the first earl of Kildare, saw action in Edward’s armies in Flanders and Scotland.53 Closer to home, the leaders of the Offaly Geraldines, Maurice fitz Gerald (d. 1268) and his uncle Maurice fitz Maurice (d. 1286), fought for Henry III and the Lord Edward at Evesham in 1265.54 The increased contact with the crown that such military endeavours engendered brought benefits to the Geraldines. After service in Poitou, John fitz Thomas of Shanid frequently attested royal charters in England and in 1259 finally secured a longed-for royal grant of the Decies and Desmond.55 His grandson and heir, Thomas fitz Maurice, in 1284 married Margaret, daughter of Thomas Berkeley of Berkeley castle in Gloucestershire, one of the most important barons in England, and their son, Maurice, became in time the first 49 David Carpenter, The struggle for mastery: Britain, 1066–1284 (London, 2003), pp 362–6; R.R. Davies, The age of conquest: Wales, 1063–1415 (Oxford, 1987), pp 300–4; Smith, ‘Fitzgerald, Maurice’. 50 Lydon, Lordship (2nd ed.), p. 95; Philomena Connolly, Irish exchequer payments, 1270–1446, (Dublin, 1998), p. 1. 51 Orpen, ‘Fitz Geralds’, 109; Hartland, ‘English Lords’, 342–3. 52 Orpen, ‘Fitz Geralds’, 107–8; AClyn, p. 142; Frame, ‘King Henry III and Ireland’, pp 37–8. 53 Orpen, ‘Fitz Geralds’, 110; Ó Cléirigh, ‘Problems of defence’, pp 42–3, 54; Frame, Colonial Ire. (2nd ed.), p. 80. 54 Robin Frame, ‘Ireland and the baron’s war’, in Frame, Ire. & Brit., p. 62. 55 Frame, ‘Ireland and the barons’ wars’, p. 68.

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earl of Desmond.56 The Offaly Geraldines did even better on the English marriage market in this generation. In 1266, in the aftermath of the royalist victory over Simon de Montfort and his allies, a marriage was arranged between the young Maurice fitz Gerald, lord of Offaly, who was already a widower, and the king’s niece, Agnes de Valence. The fact that Maurice met his death two years later while crossing the Irish Sea bears witness to the intensity and importance of contact with England in the story of the Geraldines in the thirteenth century.57 While the Geraldines were undoubtedly among the most significant and successful lords in thirteenth-century Ireland, the elevation of two of their number to Irish earldoms in the first third of the fourteenth century should not blind us to the limitations of their achievements, and their at-times ambiguous status in colonial society. ‘In the person of Meiler [fitz Henry, justiciar 1199– 1207]’, Marie Therese Flanagan has argued, ‘a Geraldine lord had had his chance to serve in the administration of the Angevin lordship of Ireland and had signally failed’.58 When their chance came again, in 1232, with the appointment as justiciar of Maurice fitz Gerald, disaster almost ensued once more. Maurice’s role in the death of Richard Marshal, earl of Pembroke, from whom he held his Leinster lands, on the Curragh in April 1234, earned him not only the condemnation of contemporary chroniclers, but also the wrath of Richard’s brother and successor, Gilbert.59 Royal and papal intervention were required to keep Marshal vengeance within some bounds, and only the diversion of settler energies towards the conquest of Connacht from 1235, and Marshal’s other concerns in England and the Welsh March, prevented the possible destruction of fitz Gerald.60 On two other occasions in the thirteenth century, in 1264–5 and 1294–5, Geraldine lords were at the centre of serious disturbances in the lordship arising from feuding with other settler lords, and, in particular, with the de Burghs. They did not emerge victorious from either of these contests, and had to work hard in their aftermaths to regain the royal favour that their activities had put in jeopardy.61 56 Frame, Colonial Ire. (2nd ed.), p. 35; Robin Frame, ‘Fitzgerald, Maurice fitz Thomas, first earl of Desmond (c.1293–1356)’, ODNB; Bridget Wells-Furby (ed.), A catalogue of the medieval muniments at Berkeley castle, 2 vols, Bristol and Gloucestershire Archaeological Society, Gloucestershire Record series vols 17 & 18 (Bristol, 2004), i, p. 573; Bridget WellsFurby, The Berkeley estate, 1281–1417: its economy and development, Bristol and Gloucestershire Archaeological Society (Bristol, 2012), pp 15–16. 57 Robin Frame, ‘Historians, aristocrats, and Plantagenet Ireland, 1200–1360’, in Chris Given-Wilson, Ann Kettle and Len Scales (eds), War, government and aristocracy in the British Isles, c.1150–1500: essays in honour of Michael Prestwich (Woodbridge, 2008), pp 140–1; Ó Cléirigh, ‘Absentee landlady’, pp 101–2; J.R.S. Phillips, ‘The Anglo-Norman nobility’, in Lydon, Eng. in med. Ire., p. 95. 58 Flanagan, ‘Defining lordships in Angevin Ireland’, p. 54. 59 Smith, ‘Irish politics’; F.M. Powicke, King Henry III and the Lord Edward: the community of the realm in the thirteenth century, 2 vols (Oxford, 1947), ii, pp 740–54. David Crouch, ‘Earl Gilbert Marshal and his mortal enemies’, HR, 87 (2014), 1–11. 60 Crooks, ‘Divide and rule’, 293–6. 61 Otway-Ruthven, Med. Ire., pp 181–223; Seán Duffy, Ireland in the Middle Ages (Dublin, 1997), pp 125–8.

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The Geraldines were not unique among the leading settler families of the thirteenth century in being brought into closer contact with the crown as a result of its warlike proclivities. Associated with the Offaly Geraldines in their foreign adventures, for instance, were Peter de Bermingham who campaigned in north Wales in 1245 and Piers de Bermingham who served in Scotland in 1301.62 The three de Lacy brothers, Walter, Hugh and William, campaigned in Poitou with Henry III in 1230.63 Richard de Burgh, lord of Connacht died on the Poitou campaign of 1243, while his son and successor, Walter de Burgh, served on the Gascon campaign of 1253–4.64 Walter was also with the Lord Edward for military operations at Bristol in 1263, and possibly participated in the battle of Evesham in 1265 alongside not only the leaders of the Offaly Geraldines, Maurice fitz Gerald and his uncle Maurice fitz Maurice, but also Theobald Walter, ancestor of the Butlers of Ormond.65 Nor was any Geraldine lord in the thirteenth century ever as close to an English king as was Richard de Burgh, earl of Ulster (d. 1326). His minority, following the death of his father Walter in 1271, was spent in the royal household of Edward I and he married Margaret de Guines, a kinswoman of Queen Eleanor of Castile.66 In Edward’s eyes de Burgh was undoubtedly the most important man in Ireland, and the king went so far in 1301 as to tell him in writing that he valued him ‘more than other men in the land for many reasons’.67 Even in Connacht, the record of the Geraldines as conquering lords, while impressive, was neither unparalleled nor unsullied by disappointments and missed opportunities. As might be expected, the de Burghs, to whom Connacht was granted, left a significant mark on the landscape, building castles and founding towns at Galway, Loughrea, Meelick and Portumna.68 Extremely busy, also, were the de Berminghams, responsible for the establishment of towns and castles at Athenry and Dunmore in Galway. Other de Burgh grantees, such as the de Stauntons, Dofins and de Exeters also built castles in Galway and Mayo. After 1257, Maurice fitz Gerald’s descendants failed to strengthen his inheritance significantly. In the year of his death the castle at Cáeluisce was burnt by Ó Domhnaill, and was not rebuilt.69 In 1293, John fitz Thomas, with the help of Piers de Bermingham, did rebuild Sligo castle, which had been ruined in an Ó Conchobhair raid, only to see it destroyed again in the following year by Aodh Ó Conchobhair.70 When in 1300 the earl of Ulster, Richard de Burgh, began 62 Orpen, ‘Fitz Geralds’, 103–4; Ó Cléirigh, ‘Problems of defence’, pp 42–3. 63 Colin Veach and Freya Verstraten Veach, ‘William Gorm de Lacy: “chiefest champion in these parts of Europe”’, in Duffy, Princes, prelates & poets, p. 78. 64 Brendan Smith, ‘Burgh, Richard de (d. 1243)’, and Robin Frame, ‘Burgh, Walter de, first earl of Ulster (d. 1271)’, ODNB. 65 Frame, ‘Ireland and the barons’ wars’, p. 62. 66 Frame, Colonial Ire. (2nd ed.), pp 42–3. 67 Lydon, Lordship (2nd ed.), p. 112; James Lydon, ‘Irish levies in the Scottish wars, 1296– 1302’, in Crooks, Government, p. 192. 68 For this, and what follows see Frame, Colonial Ire. (2nd ed.), pp 51–2; McNeill, Castles in Ireland, pp 130–7. 69 Frame, Colonial Ire. (2nd ed.), p. 41. 70 Simms, ‘Relations with the Irish’, p. 77.

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construction of the substantial castle of Ballymote in the former Geraldine lands of Sligo, he intended it in part as a critical comment on the limitations of Geraldine colonization in Connacht.71 Nor did the family stand out among the new lords of Connacht as great benefactors of the church. It is noteworthy that the Red Book of Kildare contains more grants from churchmen to the Offaly Geraldines than grants from them to the church.72 The Premonstratensian house founded by Maurice fitz Gerald at Sligo in 1242 did not endure, being demolished three years later to make way for the castle in the town.73 The Dominican house at Sligo survived as the sole example of Geraldine religious endowment in Connacht. Lesser families were at least as generous. Milo de Bermingham welcomed the Dominicans to Athenry in 1241, and his kinswoman, Basilia, and her husband, Jordan de Exeter, did the same at Strade in Mayo in 1252. John de Cogan founded a Franciscan house at Claregalway in 1252, while Carmelite houses were established at Ballinasmall in Mayo by the de Prendergasts in the 1280s, and at Burriscarra, also in Mayo, by Adam de Staunton in 1298. Geraldine landholding, although extensive, had features that constrained the family’s ambitions. They held very little of their land as tenants-in-chief of the crown, and as a consequence were not lords of liberties.74 Beth Hartland has argued that the correlation between magnate power and the possession of liberties has been exaggerated, and it is true that in comparison with liberties in Britain their Irish equivalents had limited privileges.75 But liberties still had the potential to yield valuable income to those who held them, especially in the sphere of the administration of justice, and were jealously guarded by their lords.76 When Maurice fitz Gerald faced the wrath of successive Marshal lords of Leinster after 1234, and when John fitz Thomas tangled with William de Vescy, lord of Kildare, and Richard de Burgh, earl of Ulster and lord of Connacht in the 1290s, the fact that the lords of Offaly held their lands of their enemies, who were also lords of liberties, placed the Geraldines at a serious disadvantage.77 The restricted nature of their landholding, and their anxiety to compensate for this in other ways, might explain why the Geraldines were so much more willing than other great settler families to serve as Irish justiciar. The 71 Frame, Colonial Ire. (2nd ed.), pp 80, 90. 72 Red bk Kildare, nos 28, 48, 56. 73 For this, and what follows, Gwynn & Hadcock, MRHI. 74 Orpen, ‘Fitz Geralds’, 99–101. For the complicated tenurial situation in Kildare, see A.J. Otway-Ruthven, ‘The medieval county of Kildare’, IHS, 11 (1959), 191–9. 75 Beth Hartland, ‘The liberties of Ireland in the reign of Edward I’, in Michael Prestwich (ed.), Liberties and identities in the medieval British Isles (Woodbridge, 2008), pp 200–16. 76 For a brilliant discussion of the general theme, see Keith Stringer, ‘States, liberties and communities in medieval Britain and Ireland (c.1100–1400)’, in Prestwich (ed.), Liberties and identities, pp 5–36. For Ireland, see Robin Frame, ‘Lordship and liberties in Ireland and Wales, c.1170–c.1360’, in Huw Pryce and John Watts (eds), Power and identity in the Middle Ages: essays in memory of Rees Davies (Oxford, 2007), pp 125–38. 77 De Vescy’s use of his powers as lord of the liberty of Kildare against fitz Thomas is discussed in Stringer, ‘Nobility and identity’, pp 210–11.

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post was held by a member of the family for twenty-five of the hundred years between 1197 and 1296, and for almost half the period between 1199 and 1245.78 Resident settler lords who held liberties rarely took up the post, and when William de Vescy, lord of the liberty of Kildare, did seek the justiciarship in 1290 it was precisely in order to direct its associated powers against his enemy, John fitz Thomas.79 The impression that Geraldine lordship in the thirteenth century had a tendency to overreach itself, with destabilizing consequences for the English position in Ireland, was a contemporary one. In 1305, Richard de Burgh, earl of Ulster and lord of Connacht, complained that the Ó Conchobhair kings of Connacht had been rioting out of control since 1265, when the Geraldines had first challenged de Burgh power in the province, and that only he was able to restrain them.80 De Burgh had suffered personally from Geraldine ambition, having been imprisoned for three months in Lea castle in the lordship of Offaly by John fitz Thomas in 1294; an incident that weakened, if only temporarily, his control over the Irish of Ulster.81 Modern historians have tended to concur with this contemporary assessment. James Lydon held the behaviour of John fitz Thomas to blame for increased Irish attacks on the Leinster settlement after 1294, while Beth Hartland has argued that it was the bullying tactics of fitz Thomas, rather than fear of Irish raids, that encouraged English lords who had previously shown commitment to Ireland, such as Emelina de Longespee, Alan de la Zouche, and John de Mohun, to liquidate their assets in the lordship. The same, of course, holds true for William de Vescy, lord of Kildare, who returned his Irish estates to King Edward I in 1297.82 Cormac Ó Cléirigh’s assessment is blunt: ‘On balance, it is difficult to avoid the conclusion that fitz Thomas threw away the Geraldines’ Connacht inheritance through a mixture of violent recklessness and legal ineptitude’.83 Robin Frame, by contrast, has refrained from identifying the Geraldines as especially culpable for disputes among the settlers in the second half of the thirteenth century, pointing instead to the Lord Edward’s grant of the earldom of Ulster to Walter de Burgh in 1263 as the cause of much subsequent instability.84 A century ago G.H. Orpen wrote that ‘one of the difficulties of writing in any detail the history of Ireland in the thirteenth century is that there was little or no 78 Meiler fitz Henry (1199–1207); Maurice fitz Gerald (1232–45); David de Barri (1266–8); Maurice fitz Maurice (1272–3); Thomas fitz Maurice (1295): NHI, ix, pp 470–2. 79 The Irish-based holders of Irish liberties who acted as justiciar were Geoffey de Geneville, lord of Meath (1261–4, 1273–6), and Richard de Burgh, earl of Ulster (1299–1300). 80 Simms, ‘Relations with the Irish’, p. 82. 81 Simms, ‘Relations with the Irish’, p. 71; Ó Cléirigh, ‘The problems of defence’, pp 34–5. 82 James Lydon, ‘The years of crisis, 1254–1315’, in NHI, ii, pp 188–9; Beth Hartland, ‘Reasons for leaving: the effect of conflict on English landholding in late thirteenth-century Leinster’, Journal of Medieval History, 32 (2005), 20–2. 83 Cormac Ó Cléirigh, ‘Fitzgerald, John fitz Thomas, first earl of Kildare (d. 1316)’, ODNB. 84 Frame, ‘Ireland and the barons’ wars’, pp 66–9; Crooks, ‘Divide and rule’, p. 298.

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history common to the whole country’.85 To pursue the fortunes of a settler magnate family such as the Geraldines in this period serves to modify this statement. Maurice fitz Gerald and John fitz Thomas were national figures, with countrywide interests and ambitions. In the 1240s Maurice not only built the town and castle of Sligo, but also purchased the Dublin and Wicklow lands of Andrew le Blund, nephew of the archbishop of Dublin. In 1252, he constructed a castle on Lough Erne, but four years later retired to the Franciscan house at Youghal that he had founded three decades before, and died there in the following year.86 John fitz Thomas probably grew up in the Geraldine castles of Connacht, and campaigned both there and in Munster, and Leinster, but he also spent time on his peaceful manors in east Cork, north Limerick and Kildare, and was buried in the Franciscan house at Kildare.87 The Geraldine arena, of course, was not confined to Ireland: from the 1240s onwards we see its leading men crossing the Irish Sea, often en route to fight for their king, whether in France, Wales, England, Flanders or Scotland. By choice and by circumstance the military dimension of lordship defined the careers of these Geraldine leaders, but on their quiet manors of Maynooth, Croom or Adare, it is conceivable that they cultivated other aspects of lordship, perhaps to the extent of implementing the latest ideas on estate management coming into vogue in England in the 1270s.88 Just as the de Verdons were marcher lords in Louth and Ewyas Lacy but not in Coolock or Staffordshire, and the Bigod earls of Norfolk were marcher lords in southeast Wales, but not in East Anglia or Carlow, so the lordship of the Geraldines, although confined to Ireland, was also characterized by range and variation.89 There is much still to learn about the operation of English lordship in medieval Ireland, and thus about the lordship of Ireland itself, but there is no better place to start than with consideration of the lordship of the Geraldines.

85 Orpen, Normans, p. 500. 86 Smith, ‘Fitz Gerald, Maurice’; Frame, ‘King Henry III and Ireland’, p. 41. 87 Ó Cléirigh, ‘Fitzgerald, John fitz Thomas’; Ó Cléirigh, ‘The problems of defence’, pp 31–3; Seán Duffy, ‘The Turnberry band’, in Duffy, Princes, prelates & poets, pp 124–38. 88 Bruce M.S. Campbell, English seigniorial agriculture, 1250–1450 (Cambridge, 2000), pp 421–4; Michael Prestwich, Plantagenet England, 1225–1360 (Oxford, 2005), pp 427– 43. 89 Mark S. Hagger, The fortunes of a Norman family: the de Verduns in England, Ireland and Wales, 1066–1316 (Dublin, 2001), pp 84–161; Marc Morris, The Bigod earls of Norfolk in the thirteenth century (Woodbridge, 2005), pp 120–2, 188; Margaret Murphy, ‘The profits of lordship: Roger Bigod, earl of Norfolk and the lordship of Carlow, 1270–1306’, in Linda Doran and James Lyttleton (eds), Lordship in medieval Ireland: image and reality (Dublin, 2008), pp 75–98; Hartland, ‘English Lords’, 347–8; Beth Hartland, ‘Vaucouleurs, Ludlow and Trim: Ireland in the career of Geoffrey de Geneville (c.1226–1314)’, IHS, 32 (2001), 457–77.

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The dynastic ramifications of the Geraldines

PAU L M A c c O T T E R

In this contribution I begin by discussing briefly the phenomenon of lineage ramification in Ireland, and then proceed to discuss the origins and territories of the various branches of the Geraldines in Ireland. These use various surnames: FitzGerald, FitzMaurice, FitzGibbon, carew, carey, Barron, and Pierse all occur. I have attempted to list all relevant published sources in footnote references. A particularly valuable source is Kenneth Nicholls’s unpublished Geraldine pedigrees, which he kindly made available to me. In the absence of any other reference it may be taken that these are the unspoken source below.

Dy N A s T I c R A M I F I c AT I O N

Ramification: to ramify, to divide into branches, to branch out. The Geraldines are the best example of this phenomenon among Anglo-Norman families in Ireland. Before specifically looking at the Geraldines it may be helpful to consider the process of ramification in Ireland in general. such a process is normally considered to apply to leading family groups where a king or powerful man conquers, acquires or expands significant landed wealth and establishes his many offspring on this, the process then being continued over several succeeding generations, with a concomitant removal of the pre-existing and unrelated possessors of the land. In Ireland the process of ramification is evident early, albeit in a semi-legendary context, with for example the progeny of Niall Naígiallach, the Northern and southern Uí Néill, in the northern half of Ireland, and of Eógan Mór, the Eóganacht ‘federation’, in the south. Much later, during the tenth and eleventh centuries, we see a similar and very ‘historical’ expansion among the Dál cais, where the descendants of Brian Bóraime and several of his immediate relatives settle widely in north and east Munster outside of their original homeland. The classic example concerns the Mag Uidhir (Maguire) lineage of Fermanagh who, between the late thirteenth and seventeenth centuries, acquired most of the lands of Fermanagh. It is clear therefore that medieval Ireland was a polygynous society, where the siring of offspring was related to power and prestige.1 1 Edel Bhreathnach, Ireland in the medieval world, ad 400–1000 (Dublin, 2014), pp 86–7.

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Ramification of lineages is a well-known phenomenon throughout history, but tends to be a process occurring early in the timeline of nation-state evolution, at least in Europe. This has significance for Ireland, for the civic culture of the Anglo-Normans who came to Ireland in the late 1160s was very much that of a centralized state where the conditions for ramification did not exist or if they did were actively discouraged. At the same time the process of ramification remained a feature of Gaelic Irish society at this time, and it is remarkable that, rather than the Anglo-Norman presence inhibiting ramification, as happened in parts of scotland at the same time, the reverse was the case and important lineages of Anglo-Norman blood showed a marked tendency to ramify, most notable among several examples being the Geraldines.2 What were the conditions that existed in thirteenth-century Ireland that promoted ramification among the AngloNormans? These may be defined as three: availability of land on which to plant offspring, availability of women to bear many offspring, and favourable legal and societal conditions. Anglo-Norman lineages subject to ramification appear to have possessed much landed wealth from an early period in the colony. In Leinster and Meath the original unit of primary subinfeudation came to be called a ‘barony’, where the cantred is seen to be divided into two or three baronies, often held by five fees. In connacht and Munster, however, the cantred itself was the original unit of subinfeudation, and so the lands of an average lordship here were significantly larger than in Leinster and Meath.3 Thus a necessary condition for ramification is present from the beginning here. In this way we see the great lineages of Anglo-Norman Ireland first arising in Munster and connacht. Lineages such as the Geraldines, Burkes, Barrys, Powers, Roches, Barretts, Butlers, condons, costellos, Berminghams and others all first expanded from significant landed bases in these provinces. In this way ramification of lineages remains a localized phenomenon in Anglo-Norman Ireland from 1169 to the early fourteenth century, after which it becomes more prevalent as the power of the Dublin administration and its legal system diminishes, and the descendants of the Anglo-Normans become ‘more Irish than the Irish themselves’. Ramification was, of course, the antithesis of the common law inheritance system of primogeniture, where everything is inherited by the eldest legitimate son and, if there is no son, evenly divided among any daughters. There had always been a tension between primogeniture and ramification. As early as the late 1180s Richard de carew, the bastard son of conquistador Raymond le Gros, had succeeded to his father’s moiety of the kingdom of cork, and many powerful lordships had been sundered by the common law rule of partible inheritance among heiresses. In particular, the lordships of Leinster and Meath were so affected but there were many other 2 see the example of the Rochforts of Kildare as early as 1299 (CJRI, i, p. 326). 3 Paul Maccotter, ‘Functions of the cantred in medieval Ireland’, Peritia, 19 (2005), 308–32, passim.

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lesser examples. Another relevant development here was the operation of a marcher law as distinct from the customary common law in those parts of the colony most distant from Dublin, leading to acceptance of de facto inheritance rights by the illegitimate. Turning to the gender issue, it seems clear that there was in Anglo-Norman Ireland a societal de facto, as against de jure, acceptance of polygyny (where a man has several female partners concurrently). The English common law strictly forbade the inheritance of property by bastards (those born ‘out of wedlock’), thus essentially preventing ramification where fully implemented. Under law the bastard is thus ‘the son of nobody’ or filius nullius. (This remained the position under the common law until 1926.) In areas where something like polygyny was recognized – essentially, Gaelic Ireland with its inclusive rule of legitimacy, and those parts of Anglo-Norman Ireland where marcher law, as distinct from common law, applied and the rule of disenfranchisement of bastards was ignored – it was in the interest of women to optimize the future prospects of their children, and thus themselves, by having them sired by powerful men, whether inside or outside of lawful marriage. It is likely, therefore, that in much of AngloNorman Ireland, and from an early period, powerful colonial lords had children by lawful wives, concubines, servants, and probably even by the daughters of men of lower order among their tenantry (droit de seigneur?). The small body of published criminal law cases from the period provides many examples of practices suggesting such a milieu, among them abduction, rape, concubinage, extramarital relationships, promiscuity, illegitimacy among the gentry class and the arranged marriage of girls as young as eleven.4 such social mores provide the only explanation for the remarkable ramification of Anglo-Norman lineages in the thirteenth century in Munster and connacht as indicated in the sources.5

ThE ORIGINs OF ThE GERALDINEs

The Geraldines as a family and later a lineage stand apart in their valour, naked acquisitiveness, thirst for domination, and success in multiplication. Limiting ourselves mostly to those Geraldines who used the surname ‘FitzGerald’ in Ireland, we can trace at least 117 landowning branches securely linked to the main stems by c.1600, while there were dozens of others of obscure ancestry. As seán Duffy has examined earlier in this volume, the earliest ancestor on record is Walter fitz Oter, castellan or keeper of the royal estate of Windsor castle and its forest, who occurs as a tenant-in-chief in Domesday Book, with extensive 4 CJRI, i, pp 173, 175, 189, 197, 206, 289, 307, 343, 365, 368, 464; ii, pp 32, 39, 102, 112–13, 142, 181, 220, 311, 397, 468–9, 471, 477, 494–5, 505. 5 In particular, we note the lists of pardons of men of the same surname at the behest of their family head during the period 1315–17. Dozens of such instances occur, sometimes involving more than a hundred men of the same surname (NAI, KB [unpublished Justiciary Roll calendar series]).

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holdings in several southern English counties.6 Walter was still alive in 1100 but had been succeeded by his eldest son, William, at Windsor by no later than 1116. William was ancestor to the Windsor family of stanwell, Middlesex. Most of his younger brothers followed their father’s profession of dapifer or stewart to powerful men, including Gerald, who had to venture further than his brothers in order to win a position.7 This theme – of a younger son striking out in the world to make his own way rather than depending on an inheritance – recurs constantly in the early history of the Glin and shanid Geraldines and their ancestors. Gerald became one of the chief men of Arnulf de Montgomery in the latter’s invasion of southwest Wales, where he established the Norman colony of Pembroke during the early 1090s, Gerald becoming his castellan of Pembroke castle and thus de facto custos of the infant colony. In a diplomatic move designed to nullify the perennial Welsh threat on his borders, Gerald took as his wife Nest, daughter of Rhys ap Tewdwr, king of Deheubarth. Reappointed castellan in 1105 upon Pembroke becoming a royal county, Gerald added the cantref of Emlyn to his existing cantref of Pembroke by conquest around 1109. Around the same time Nest had been carried off by a raiding Welsh lord along with her two sons and a daughter by Gerald, as well as another son of his sired with a concubine, although the children were later returned. The facts of Nest’s subsequent career as mistress to King henry I are well known. Gerald probably erected the original motte-and-bailey on the site of an earlier native fortification at caeriw near Pembroke, which he made his caput, and from which one branch of his descendants took their surname, carew. Gerald himself used the same surname as his brothers, de Windsor. his somewhat premature death in or soon after 1116 left three certain sons: William ‘of carew’ (probably born by the concubine), David, and Maurice ‘fitz Gerald’, and, it has been suggested, a fourth son, Robert, ancestor to the Fitz Gerald family of Essex.8 William succeeded his father as castellan of Pembroke, while David became the local bishop (of st Davids, in 1148). Maurice seems to have spent most of his life in the service of his brothers with little visible reward. The death of henry I in 1135 marked the beginning of a long period of indigenous recrudescence in south Wales during which the Norman colony came under sustained pressure and suffered resultant shrinkage. In 1136–7 all of ceredigion was overrun by the Welsh except its caput at cardigan, protected by William and his brother Maurice. Despite stout resistance, as in 1146 when William, Maurice and their half-brother William fitz hay attempted unsuccessfully to recapture the fallen 6 see Duffy, above, and Round, ‘Origins I’. Much nonsense has been written about Walter, including such spurious connections with the Gherardini of Florence; see Fitzgibbon, ‘Gherardini’; for discussion, see Duffy, above, p. 22 and crooks, below, pp 236–9. 7 For much of what follows, see Paul Maccotter, ‘The carews of cork’ (MA, NUI (Ucc), 1994), pp 1–3. 8 Nicholas Vincent, ‘Warin and henry Fitz Gerald, the king’s chamberlains: the origins of the Fitzgeralds revisited’, aNS, 21 (1998), 233–60, esp. 250–2.

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Norman fortress of Llansteffan, the colony continued to contract in the face of Welsh pressure and lack of support by a disinterested monarch. In the early 1160s, Rhys ap Gruffudd again overran ceredigion, resulting in a stream of Anglo-Norman refugees pouring southwards, and placing William’s cantref of Emlyn in the frontline against the Welsh. In 1166, Emlyn, in turn, fell. This period of extended marcher conflict explains why so many of the cambroNorman invaders of Ireland, and particularly Maurice fitz Gerald and his sons, possessed considerable military skills. As the youngest son, Maurice’s precarious position was ameliorated somewhat by being granted the stewardship of the episcopal lands of st Davids by his brother, Bishop David, probably during the late 1150s. On the modest lands that went with this office Maurice erected his residence, castle Maurice.9 his relative poverty, in addition to his martial experience, must explain why Maurice, then aged at least 61, went to Ireland as an adventurer in 1169. The details of his subsequent career are well known. Upon his death, in 1176, Maurice’s estate, consisting of the barony of Naas and the cantred of Wicklow, passed to his eldest son, William. Maurice sired six sons in all, and clearly some of these were adults who supported Maurice during his Irish activities.

E A R Ly G E R A L D I N E s : T h E c A R E W s

Maurice fitz Gerald was not, however, the sole Geraldine ancestor as his brothers William and Bishop David also sired offspring. William, who uses the style ‘fitz Gerald’ in addition to ‘de carreu’, had never, as far as we know, set foot in Ireland by the time of his death in 1173 but all three of his sons did partake in the reduction of Ireland: Odo, the eldest, was ancestor to the English carews while his younger brother, Raymond ‘le Gros’, was ancestor to the Irish carews; the third son, Griffin, was ancestor to the short-lived Fitz Griffin line, barons of Knocktopher, co. Kilkenny, and eponyms of carrick-on-suir (‘carrickmacgriffin’). several charters survive that show William fitz Odo de carew granting burgages and lands in Dunleckny and st Mullins, co. carlow, in one of which he mentions his demesne lands in Idrone, showing him to have been its lord.10 In 1195, his father Odo had granted one messuage in st Mullins to Dunbrody abbey, suggesting that he may have been enfeoffed of Idrone by his brother Raymond.11 William had been active in cork in the period 1177–82, probably as a follower of his uncle, Raymond. William’s descendants held court at Dunleckny (bar. Idrone East), and held ‘Idrone’ by service of five knights’ fees from the heirs of the Marshals, though their lordship only extended to the northern half of Le Gros’s Idrone (approximately the present barony of Idrone East), the southern half of which, st Mullins, must have reverted to the Bigod 9 Reg. Gormanston, pp 165–7.

10 CStM, i, no. 95.

11 Ibid., ii, p. 98.

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lords of carlow, though the lords of carew still claimed overlordship of it in the mid-fourteenth century.12 Idrone was overrun by Art Mac Murchadha around the time of the death of Leonard fitz John de carew of carew in 1371. his son, Thomas, who came of age in 1392, briefly recovered Idrone upon Mac Murchadha’s temporary retreat in the face of Richard II’s campaign against him, but Thomas does not appear to have retained Idrone for very long.13 his descendant, sir Peter carew, recovered Idrone from the Kavanaghs in a brutal and controversial manner around 1570, but it was subsequently sold by sir George carew, earl of Totnes, in 1586.14 A junior branch, of fourteenth-century origin, retained lands at Rathduff in Dunleckny until dispossessed in the seventeenth century. The descendants of this carew family remained settled long after around Leighlinbridge, co. carlow.15 The carews of Moulsford in Berks, Beddington in surrey and the carew baronets of haccombe and those of Antony in cornwall all descend from these Idrone carews. The carews of cork descend from Richard, bastard of Raymond le Gros, who inherited le Gros’s moiety of the kingdom of cork alias Desmond during the late 1180s.16 his descendants remained a powerful family until their power was broken by the reckless behaviour of the last lord, Thomas de carew, who sold his moiety of Desmond to the first earl of Desmond in 1329. The family possessed the cork manors of castlecorth (Ballynacorra near Midleton), Dunmakothmund (castle salem near Rosscarbery) and Dunnamark (Bantry) in addition to lands in counties carlow, Waterford, Mayo and Kilkenny. Two minor branches survived in Imokilly into the seventeenth century, and there is evidence to suggest that some modern east cork careys are ‘hidden’ carews, while the numerous carews of county Tipperary appear to be natives of the surname of Ó carráin and thus not true carews.17 The cork carews partook in the invasion of connacht after 1235, planting a junior branch there who are eponyms of Ballycaroon in Tirawley and were still present there in 1618, perhaps the ancestors to at least some connacht Kerranes of today.

T h E D E s c E N DA N T s O F M AU R I c E F I T z G E R A L D

Apart from William, noted above, other adults among the sons of Maurice fitz Gerald at the time of the invasion must have been Gerald (ancestor to the later earls of Kildare), enfeoffed in half of the barony of Naas by William soon after 12 Brooks, Knights’ fees, pp 60–2; CIPM, ix, p. 405; NAI cal. Justiciary Roll 6° Edward II, p. 345. 13 Lambeth Palace Library, carew Ms 606, fo. 32; CCR 1392–6, p. 388; CPR 1391–6, p. 486. 14 sir Peter carew the younger sold it to Dudley Bagenal in 1574, the sale being confirmed by his brother sir George in 1586. 15 TcD, Ms 656, fo. 47; Irish fiants, Edw. VI, no. 348, Eliz. I, no. 6447; Memorials of the dead (Ireland), ii (Dublin, 1894). 16 Paul Maccotter, ‘The carews of cork, I–II’, JCHaS, 98 (1993), 61–74; 99 (1994), 66–82. 17 see Maccotter, ‘carews of cork’, passim (largely based on my MA thesis); Maccotter, ‘The sub-

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their father’s death, and Alexander, who played a prominent role in the cambroNorman conquest of the kingdom of cork after 1177, where he obtained the cantreds of Ocarbry alias Athlacca (co. Limerick) and Oglassyn alias Inchiquin (cork and Waterford) from his uncle, Robert fitz stephen, another son of Nest by a different partner.18 Upon Alexander’s death without heirs his lands passed to his brother Gerald (which explains how the Kildare line came to hold the cantred of Ocarbry). The fourth son is likely to have been Maurice fitz Maurice. he obtained the barony of Kiltrany (Burnchurch), co. Kilkenny, and the fee of Morice castle, the latter lying in the cantred of Wicklow, no doubt by enfeoffment from his brother William.19 These enfeoffments can probably be dated to the late 1180s or early 1190s. The youngest sons, Robert (ancestor to the FitzMaurice lords of Kerry) and Thomas (ancestor to the shanid or Desmond Geraldines), must have been infants when their father came to Ireland. The chronology again suggests that Robert was the elder of the two. he is first found seized of a modest fee at Tipperkevin, co. Kildare, sometime during the 1190s.20 This, although church-land, lay adjacent to the barony of Naas, thus associating him with his eldest brother, William. The youngest son, Thomas fitz Maurice, first appears when granted two fees in eastern county Limerick by King John, in 1199. These grants may have been the result of a petition made to the king by Thomas at Rouen.21 Both Robert and Thomas are likely to have arrived in Limerick as followers of their brother, Gerald. In addition to Athlacca, Gerald had obtained the cantred of Ocarbry Otheragh (the manors of Adare and croom) from Philip de Worcester, around 1200.22 Both Robert and Thomas occur as witnesses to a charter of Gerald’s widow, of around 1205, and Robert’s descendants later held lands in Athlacca.23 The fortunes of these brothers would be made by their participation in the conquest of western Desmond (Kerry and west Limerick), a conquest made between 1201 and 1207.

T h E G E R A L D I N E B A RO N s O F OV E R K

These descend from Bishop David fitz Gerald of st Davids. his son, known variously as Milo (or Miles) fitz Bishop or Milo fitz David, was prominent in the invasion of Ireland, and was rewarded with the barony of Overk in Kilkenny by strongbow. he died after 1215. The main line of his descendants held Overk until sold to Edmund le Botiller in 1314 by the fifth baron, Roger fitz Milo. The infeudation and descent of the Fitzstephen/carew moiety of Desmond, I–II’, JCHaS, 101 (1996), 64–80; 102 (1997), 89–106. 18 Red bk Kildare, p. 14; Maccotter, ‘The subinfeudation and descent’, 95. 19 Brooks, Knights’ fees, pp 158–9, 240–1; Kenneth Nicholls, ‘The land of the Leinstermen’, Peritia, 3 (1984), 535–58, at 539n. 20 Kenneth Nicholls, ‘The FitzMaurices of Kerry’, JKaHS, 3 (1970), 23–42, at 27. 21 Rot. chart., 19b; Reg. Gormanston, p. 163. 22 Paul Maccotter, Medieval Ireland: territorial, political and economic divisions (Dublin, 2008, repr. 2014), p. 184. 23 Nicholls, ‘FitzMaurices’, 27.

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fourth baron, Milo fitz Milo had, however, at least two illegitimate sons, the first of whom, John ‘fitz Milo Baronis’, is found seised of lands in clone and Ballygub in Overk at the time of his uncle’s sale of Overk. It would appear that the subsequent ‘FitzGerald alias Barron’ family of Brownsford who held these lands in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries were his descendants. Two possible early cadet lines are known, descending respectively from two probable sons of the first baron, Gerald and Alan ‘fitz Milo’. The first line held lands in Deesbeg in Limerick and in Wexford and ended with one henry fitz Gerald of county Limerick, flourishing around 1320. The second line held lands in Wexford and in Kerrycurrihy in cork, and disappear by 1300.24

T h E B A RO N s O F N A A s

William, the second baron, had inherited his lands of Naas and of the cantred of Wicklow (the core of the modern county) from his father Maurice fitz Gerald. While Wicklow was largely mountainous, the barony of Naas contained a fertile 70,000 acres. William had married Alina, strongbow’s daughter, and died c.1199. shortly before his death he had received a grant of the Limerick barony of carrickittle from King John. The fourth baron, David fitz William (d. 1260), left three sons and three daughters. All of the sons died without lawful issue, the last and seventh baron, hugh, around 1300, leaving the lordship to be divided among three daughters and their husbands. Kenneth Nicholls suggests that the FitzGerald alias Williams family of Baronrath, co. Kildare, who became extinct in the sixteenth century, were illegitimate offspring of the barons of Naas.25

T h E B A RO N s O F O F FA Ly

These descended from Gerald fitz Maurice. his first territories consisted of the manors of Rathmore and Maynooth, comprising half of the barony of Naas, in which he was enfeoffed by his brother, William, probably during the late 1170s. Gerald also acquired the lands of his brother, Alexander, who had died without heirs. These consisted of the Limerick manor of Athlacca and the great cork manor of Inchiquin with its port of youghal. Gerald was certainly possessed of these by the late 1180s and, around 1200, obtained the cantred of Ocarbry Otheragh from Philip de Worcester. Earlier, Gerald had acquired the barony of Offaly through marriage with the heiress of Robert de Bermingham. This area does not equate with the modern county of Offaly, but consisted of portions of 24 G.D. Burtchaell, ‘The Geraldines of county Kilkenny: the barons of Overk and the barons of Knocktopher’, JRSaI, 23 (1893), 179–86. 25 J.h. Round, ‘The barons of the Naas’, The Genealogist, n.s., 15 (1899), 1–6; Reg. Gormanston, pp xii–xiii, 145, 147, 153–4, 157, 163–4.

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the modern counties of Kildare, Offaly and Leix. Therefore, by the time of his death in 1204, Gerald was the most powerful of the sons of Maurice fitz Gerald. The second baron, Maurice, took part in the invasion of connacht and was rewarded with the rich manors of Ardrahan and Kilcolgan in south Galway, and also acquired lands around Lough Mask and an area to the north corresponding approximately to modern sligo, as well as title to Tír conaill (Donegal). These lands were ruled from the Geraldine manor of sligo, established in 1245. Before 1257 Maurice enfeoffed his younger son, Maurice fitz Maurice, in his sligo lands and in the great manor of Inchiquin. This Maurice had also purchased the Limerick manor of corcomohide and the Kerry cantred of Osurrys, and left no male heir upon his death, in 1286, his daughter Juliana and her husband Thomas de clare inheriting. The main line became extinct in 1287 with the death of the fourth baron, Gerald fitz Maurice who, before his death, had enfeoffed his cousin, John fitz Thomas, in the barony.26

T h E E A R L s O F K I L DA R E

These descended from Thomas fitz Maurice, a younger son of the second baron of Offaly. Little is known of Thomas, who received the sligo manor of Bannada during the 1260s from his brother, Maurice. he died at the Geraldine castle of Lough Mask in connacht in 1271. his son, John fitz Thomas, fifth baron of Offaly, was a remarkable man who elevated himself to magnate status after first acquiring much of the lands of his cousin Gerald fitz Maurice, fourth baron of Offaly, and his uncle, Maurice fitz Maurice, both of whom had died within a year of each other in 1286 and 1287, leaving heiresses. These acquisitions were made through force and purchase, and in this way John acquired the Kildare, Limerick and Kerry lands of his relatives, and most of the connacht holdings (apart from those in Galway). his aggression was not, however, always successful: in 1293 he engaged in a dispute with his overlord in Kildare, William de Vescy, and with Richard de Burgh, lord of connacht, which resulted in John having to cede his connacht estates to de Burgh. In Kildare, fitz Thomas’s dominant position was finally recognized in law when he was ennobled as earl of Kildare in 1316, and the lordship of Kildare erected into a palatine liberty. This position of dominance had arisen through extensive land acquisitions throughout the lordship.27 Again, not all of fitz Thomas’s acquisitions were retained by his descendants. The cantred of Osurrys in Kerry and, along with it, dominance of the entire Anglo-Norman colony there, was lost to the Desmond Geraldines after 1328.28 26 G.h. Orpen, ‘The Fitz Geralds, barons of Offaly’, JRSaI, 44 (1914), 99–113; Red bk Kildare, pp 14, 16–17, 26–8, 30, 50; Maccotter, ‘Fitzstephen/carew moiety of Desmond’, ii, 95–6; seán Duffy, ‘The Turnberry Band’, in Duffy, Princes, prelates & poets, pp 129–31. 27 Fitzgerald, Earls of Kildare; Red bk Kildare, passim; Crown surveys. 28 Paul Maccotter, ‘Lordship and colony in Anglo-Norman Kerry’, JKaHS, 2:4 (2004), 39–85, at 68–9.

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John fitz Thomas’s descendants continued to acquire lands in a fashion typical of the great magnates, steadily eroding the knightly class within their dominium as well as expanding its borders. Note for example the fourth earl’s acquisition of the Limerick manor of Tobernea (Deesbeg) and a partial interest in the lordship of carrigaline in cork in marriage with a Rochford heiress, or the purchase of the Meath manor of Moylagh by a later earl from an absentee, in 1460. In this way the Kildare earls came to rule a powerful lordship containing most of Kildare, much of northern Wicklow, and parts of Meath, mostly lying in a single block. The earls also retained the Limerick manors of Adare, croom (from which they took their war-cry, Crom abú) and Tobernea throughout the late medieval period, but their chief place remained the great castle of Maynooth. The Kildare earldom became the greatest single lordship in late medieval Ireland until the execution of the tenth earl, ‘silken Thomas’, in 1537, a history well-recorded elsewhere. The dukedom (of Leinster) persists to the present day.

T h E E A R L s O F K I L DA R E : c A D E T L I N E s

Late medieval records for the Kildare lordship are plentiful and allow us to link many of the cadet Geraldine lines into the main stem.29 The earliest group of offshoots are those collectively known as the MacThomas Geraldines (not to be confused with the Waterford lineage of the same name, for which see below). Most genealogical sources give the ancestor here as Thomas (d. 1410), a bastard of Maurice, the fourth earl. however, one sources refers to an older Geraldine line as the ancestors. These were of Ballysonan (mod. Ballyshannon), the later chief place of the MacThomases, and can be traced at Ballysonan for three generations during the second half of the fourteenth century, beginning with one Robert fitz Gerald. In any case, all sources agree that the MacThomases were an offshoot of the Kildare main line. The lineage was fecund. sir William fitz Thomas, sheriff of Kildare in 1430, and son of the eponym, was father to (inter alia) William Oge and James. William Oge is described as ‘lord of the Blackwood’ in 1473. his son John acquired Donore in 1509 and another son, Oliver (living 29 For much of what follows, see Walter FitzGerald, ‘The Fitzgeralds of Lackagh’, JCKaS, 1 (1891), 245–64; idem, ‘Mullaghmast: its history and traditions’, 379–90; idem, ‘William Fitzgerald of castleroe and his tomb in the Kilkea churchyard’, JCKaS, 3 (1899–1902), 229–53; idem, ‘The Fitzgeralds of Ballyshannon (co. Kildare) and their successors thereat’, 425–52; idem, ‘The history of Morett castle and the Fitzgeralds’, JCKaS, 4 (1903–5), 285– 96; idem, ‘Belan’, JCKaS, 5 (1908), 239–52; idem, ‘Glassealy and its tenants: with the career of Walter “Reagh” Fitzgerald’, JCKaS 7 (1913), 83–108; Lena Boylan, ‘Thomas Fitzgerald of Lackaghe’, JCKaS, 14 (1966–7), 382–96; Kenneth Nicholls, ‘The descendants of Oliver Fitzgerald of Belagh’, Ir. Geneal., 4 (1968–70), 2–9, 93–109, 194–200; Anon., Sketch of the history and descent of the Geraldines of Queen’s county (Mountmellick, 1913).

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in 1518), Belan, and were thus ancestors to these two major lines. From James fitz Willliam (living in 1442) descend the lines of Mullaghmast and Burton. The latter line were the beneficiaries of several grants from various earls of Kildare during the second half of the sixteenth century, enabling them to plant junior lines at youngstown and Kilmead. The fourth generation of the main line was represented by sir Gerrot mac shane, the first to be evidentially linked with Ballysonan, in 1498. From his brother, William, descended a line possibly resident in Naas, who became extinct during the later 1500s. sir Gerrot’s heir was his son, James, ancestor to the later MacThomas main line, who continued to use the eponym into the late 1600s. James and his brother sir Gerald fitz Gerrot disputed the chieftainship, and one English official described the latter as ‘chief of the bastard Geraldines’ in 1539 in reference to his temporary leadership of the MacThomas line. From sir Gerald’s eldest son, George, descended the family of Ticroghan and from another son, Gerald Oge, the line of castletown Moylagh and Rathtroane. A third son of sir Gerrot mac shane was John, ancestor to the line of Laragh and their cadet line of Rogerstown, co. Westmeath. Thus ends the lineage of MacThomas in Kildare, the eldest if bastard junior line of Kildare. several other offshoots of the main line can be found. The line of Blackhall by clane shows confused genealogy, said to descend from either a son of the first or fourth earl, while the first sure reference to the family is to one Patrick fitz Maurice (son of Maurice, the fourth earl?) who held the manor in 1376. The castlerow line was a much later offshoot. Another nest of related offshoots descends from John fitz John, a bastard of John cam, the sixth earl. John fitz John is found in possession of Osbertstown in 1442 and, in addition to the main Osbertstown line, several others descend from him, the Geraldines of Nurney and Brownstown and those of Timahoe and Ellistown. From the latter in turn descends the line of Piercetown, co. Westmeath, from Gerrot fitz Redmond Oge who had a grant of Piercetown in 1576 from his father, Redmond of Timahoe. John fitz John had obtained Osbertstown in marriage with a Flatisbury heiress. The ancestor to the Lackagh line was sir Thomas – killed at the battle of stoke Field in England in 1487 – the son of Thomas, the seventh earl. he had been chancellor of Ireland and had apparently acquired the lands of Lackagh, Kildrought (celbridge) and Dunmurraghill in marriage with a Preston (Gormanston) heiress. The Duneany line was an offshoot of Lackagh, descending from Gerald fitz Maurice of Lackagh, who was hanged by Fiach mac Aodha Uí Bhroin (Fiach Machugh O’Byrne) in 1581. The line of Newtown (co. Dublin) appears to descend from James, brother to the Great Earl, Gearóid Mór, and that of Glassely from the earl’s son, Walter (d. 1537). From Oliver, Walter’s brother, descend several lines, those of Belagh, Newcastle, and Portanure (co. Longford) and those of Imo, co. Leix. The Timogue (co. Leix) line descends from Gerald, the eldest and bastard son of the eleventh earl, Gerald (d. 1585), who had a 1,001 year lease on Timogue from his father.

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T h E F I T z G E R A L D s A N D B A R RO N s O F B U R N c h U Rc h

These descend from Maurice, probably the fourth son of Maurice fitz Gerald (d. 1176). he obtained the barony of Kiltrany (mod. Burnchurch), co. Kilkenny, and the eponymous fee of Morice castle, the latter lying in the cantred of Wicklow, no doubt by enfeoffment from his brother William. (The name Morice castle is obsolete: the territory comprised the Wexford parishes of Inch and Kilgorman.) These grants can be dated to around 1190, and Maurice was still living in 1218. The family retained Burnchurch until the cromwellian period, but Morice castle was overrun by the Mic Mhurchadha (MacMurroughs) during the fourteenth century. Two junior branches are known. Those of Goslingstown descend from Peter FitzGerald, son of baron Rowland FitzGerald, living during the 1550s, while those of Killesk, co. Wexford, are a later offshoot of the main line, from the early 1600s. An interesting habit of this family since at least the 1540s was the use of ‘Baron’ or ‘Barron’ as an alias along with FitzGerald. Barron is a surname found today largely in Kilkenny, Waterford and Wexford, and it seems clear that some at least of these are really descendants of the Geraldines of Burnchurch. Down to c.1500 the family practised the typical Geraldine habit of using patronyms instead of a surname.30

T h E F I T z M AU R I c E L O R D s O F K E R Ry

As noted above, this line descends from Robert, son of Maurice the conquistador, who is found active in Limerick c.1205, and appears to have acquired the Kerry cantred of Othorna and Oflannan, alias the manor of Lixnaw. This descent was first discovered by Kenneth Nicholls, who expertly demolished the traditional descent of the FitzMaurices from Raymond le Gros. Robert also appears to have acquired the Kerry manor of Molahiffe. The surname eponym is the grandson of Robert, Maurice fitz Thomas. This Maurice (d. 1306) obtained the cantred of Altry, alias Listowel, in marriage with an heiress. From this position of prominence in Anglo-Norman Kerry the family later came under pressure on several fronts. Molahiffe was lost to the Mic charthaigh (Mccarthys), probably in 1325, while various earls of Desmond subsequently made serious inroads into the FitzMaurice lordship of Altry, leaving them with only half the cantred by the early 1400s, and subjecting them to what amounted to a Desmond ‘black rent’.31 Three offshoots descend from younger sons of Lord John fitz Nicholas who flourished during the last decades of the fourteenth century. These are the FitzMaurices of Duagh and of Beheens, the third being 30 G.D. Burtchaell, ‘The Geraldines of county Kilkenny: the Barons of Burnchurch’, JRSaI, 22 (1892), 358–76; Maccotter, Medieval Ireland, p. 171. 31 Goddard h. Orpen, ‘The origins of the Fitzmaurices, barons of Kerry and Lixnaw’, EHR, 29 (1914), 302–15; Nicholls, ‘FitzMaurices’, passim; Maccotter, ‘Lordship and colony in Anglo-Norman Kerry’, 63–5.

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known as clanrichard, of Lickbevin (now Faha at the mouth of the shannon), who, as defeated rivals for the lordship, later adopted the surname ‘FitzGerald’ rather than FitzMaurice. Further branches of fifteenth-century date were found at Ardglass and at Tubbrid. We may note in passing that the Mayo Fitzmaurices are not Geraldines but Prendergasts.32

T h E P I E Rc E s O F c L A N M AU R I c E , c O U N T y K E R Ry

( F I T z M AU R I c E s )

The surname Pierce was adopted by the descendants of Peter or Piers, a younger son of Lord Maurice fitz Thomas (d. 1306). The chief place of his descendants was at Ballymacaquim, and other early cadets (late fourteenth century) branching from the main line were those of Aghamore, Meenogahane and the line known as the Macshanes of crossmacshane (now cloontubrid). The family provided one bishop of Ardfert (1536–83), whose descendants continued to own property in Ardfert and its hinterland. Further offshoots of sixteenth-century date were those of Drommartin, Ballyhorgan and Ballybranhig.33

ThE GERALDINEs OF shANID

(EARLs

OF DEsMOND)

From various evidences it is quite clear that Thomas son of the original Maurice fitz Gerald took part in the invasion of western Desmond after 1201 as a follower of William de Burgh. We can be certain that Thomas obtained the cantred of shanid and parts of that of Ardagh, as well as the manors of Moynour (Tarbert) in Altry and Glenogra in Ocarbry as de Burgh’s tenant no later than 1205. Exactly when Thomas fitz Maurice obtained the cantred of Acmys and the manor of Dunloe is less clear, but this seems to have occurred before his death around 1213.34 Thomas fitz Maurice must have made shanid itself his chief place, from which his descendants took their war cry, Seanad abú. Thomas fitz Maurice’s son John came of age during the 1220s. During his life he was responsible for the greatest single expansion of his family’s fortunes in the history of his house. In his first years in the lordship he was probably responsible for constructing the first stone fortifications at shanid and castleisland,35 as well as for the development of the important port of Tralee in Acmys. But it is his marriage to Margery, one of the daughters and heiresses of the great magnate, Thomas fitz Anthony, which led to his greatest acquisition of power. Fitz Anthony died in 1229 and John eventually outmanoeuvred the other daughters and their husbands to obtain the lion’s share of fitz Anthony’s lands.36 These 32 Paul Maccotter, ‘The Prendergast alias MacMaurice lineage of clanmaurice barony, co. Mayo’, Ir. Geneal., 12:3 (2008), 295–310. 33 J.h. Pierse, ‘The origin of the Pierse family of county Kerry’, JKaHS, 5 (1972), 14–32. 34 Maccotter, ‘Lordship and colony in AngloNorman Kerry’, 47–8. 35 cf. simpson, above, pp 145–51. 36 CdI, ii, p. 102; Brooks, Knights’

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consisted of the great honour of Dungarvan, containing more or less the western half of county Waterford, as well as the bailiwick of the shires of cork and Kerry and the lordship of the cantred of corkely and Berre on the south cork coast. With this acquisition John fitz Thomas came to hold significant territory in Kerry, Limerick and Waterford, control of much of the local government functions in cork and Kerry, and lordship over much of the Mac carthaigh territories in south Kerry and west cork. Thus overnight he had risen from being one of several mid-range lords in Munster to becoming one of its most powerful magnates. The spread of territory and offices he came to hold became the foundation of the great Desmond lordship, which would be developed by his descendants to become the second-greatest lordship in medieval Ireland, after that of Kildare. From this foundation on the lands of John fitz Thomas, his descendants would acquire the lordship of all of county Kerry (fitz Thomas already possessed the overlordship of the Mac carthaigh lands in south Kerry and the Ó conchobhair (O’connor) lands in Altry),37 and would expand eastwards to absorb much of county Limerick and parts of south Tipperary, and would acquire significant lands and lordships in county cork. The primary mover in this expansion was John fitz Thomas’s great-grandson, Maurice fitz Thomas, created first earl of Desmond in 1329 and given the palatine lordship of Kerry. Maurice fitz Thomas has earned some notoriety among modern historians for his conduct of what has been seen as a lengthy rebellion against the king and his Irish administration.38 No magnate however justifies better Frame’s description of the Irish magnates as having been ‘shabbily treated’ by historians of the last century.39 Fitz Thomas’s behaviour needs to be put within the context of his time and that of his predecessors, military aristocrats of a vibrant and expansionist society. For generations these had lived the lives of marcher lords, always at the very edge of the area of royal authority and at the forefront of the conquest of new lands. Fitz Thomas’s blatant selfadvancement in the face of the near collapse of royal government in the aftermath of the Bruce invasion of Ireland is hardly surprising in view of such an ancestry. he was merely advancing the interests of his house as his predecessors had done, the difference in his case being that these interests no longer coincided, as those of his ancestors seem to have, with those of the Dublin administration. Far from being a megalomaniac with hopes of becoming king of Ireland, fitz Thomas merely responded to changing circumstances as any other magnate would likely have in his position. It is against this background of weak fees, pp 46–8. 37 Maccotter, ‘Lordship and colony in Anglo-Norman Kerry’, 47–51, 54–7, 60–2, 71–2. 38 see Frame, below, pp 194–222; and G.O. sayles, ‘The rebellious first earl of Desmond’, in J.A. Watt, J.B. Morrall and F.X. Martin (eds), Medieval studies presented to aubrey Gwynn S.J. (Dublin, 1961), passim, but esp. p. 204. For the inquisitions concerning the so-called ‘rebellion’, see sayles, ‘The legal proceedings against the first earl of Desmond’, aH, 23 (1966), 1, 3, 5–47. 39 Frame, Eng. lordship, pp 329–30. Frame’s comments on Desmond throughout this work do much to counter the tendentious statements made concerning him by previous historians.

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government authority and of his inheritance of an extensive lordship, much of which lay at the edge of the colony, that we should view Maurice fitz Thomas. Insufficient cognizance has been taken of what was clearly fitz Thomas’s chief motive during the years of his so-called ‘rebellion’: his efforts to obtain the great de clare inheritance in Munster and connacht that had passed to English absentees.40 After the death of the last male de clare, in 1321, fitz Thomas’s men seized control of the entire inheritance. This consisted of the settled remnant of Thomond (Bunratty and Quin, co. clare), the Limerick manors of Any (Knockainy), Inyskisty (Askeaton), Mahoonagh, corcomohide, the Kerry cantred of Osurrys, and the great manor of Inchiquin with its appurtenances in counties cork and Waterford. In order to retain these, fitz Thomas, by now the first earl of Desmond, engaged in an open rebellion throughout Munster against the administration until he was finally defeated by a royal army in 1345. Despite this, Desmond was able to retain Osurrys and Inyskisty, as well as clonmel and other lands in south Tipperary, which he had purchased in 1338. Political realities dictated his eventual rehabilitation after an exile of some years in England; the fullness of this recovery was such that he ended his days running the country as the king’s justiciar. The principal acquisitions of the later earls included the cantred of Offerba in Kerry, that of Any in Limerick (both probably during the last decades of the fourteenth century) and the cork manors of carrigaline and Inchiquin, during the early fifteenth century. The area corresponding to the later barony of Kinnatalloon in cork was acquired by the Desmonds piecemeal over a period of a century from the time of the first earl onwards.41 The shanid Geraldines demonstrated exemplary ramification, due much to the activities of John fitz Thomas of shanid (d. 1261) who sired four bastards, each of whom in turn spawned significant sub-lineages. While the pedigrees of some of these illegitimate sons are recorded in sixteenth-century genealogies, the earliest detailed account of them as a group dates from the seventeenth-century Leabhar Muimhneach.42 This account tells of how John fitz Thomas sired the legitimate Muiris mac seáin by his wife, but that he also had another son Muiris by the wife of Ó cinnéidigh, and Giobún by the wife of Ó coinín, and seán Mór na sursainge by the wife of Ó cuileáin, and Tomás by the wife of Ó conchobhair (a later genealogy, attributed to Torna Ó Maolchonaire, makes these latter four the sons of ‘honora, daughter of Feilim O connor, king of connacht’, but this represents an euphemistic cleaning-up of the story). how much truth is there in this statement? 40 A.F. O’Brien, ‘The territorial ambitions of Maurice fitz Thomas … with particular reference to the barony and manor of Inchiquin, county cork’, PRIa, 82c (1982), passim. 41 Maccotter, ‘Lordship and colony’, 65–6; Kenneth Nicholls, ‘The development of lordship in county cork, 1300–1600’, in Cork history and society, pp 157–211, at pp 187–90. For the earls in the later period, see Mccormack, desmond. 42 Tadhg Ó Donnchadha (ed.), an Leabhar Muimhneach maraon le suim aguisíní (Dublin, 1940), pp 286–7.

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The evidence indicates that the first three of these four sons John fitz Thomas is said to have had by women other than his wife are the ancestors of the later lineages bearing the titles knight of Kerry, White knight, and knight of Glin respectively. First, Maurice fitz John (the Muiris of an Leabhar Muimhneach) is well-attested as a prominent man in Kerry between 1295 and 1321.43 second, Gilbert (Giobún) fitz John occurs between 1285 and the mid-1290s, in references which associate him with Kerry and Limerick:44 in a charter of Lord Thomas fitz Maurice of shanid (d. 1296, father of the first earl of Desmond) Gilbert was referred to as ‘my paternal uncle’ (patruus) thus confirming that he was a son of Lord John fitz Thomas. And third, John fitz John of Glin occurs between 1287 and 1313, and in two references is described as ‘John fitz John fitz Thomas’, thus confirming his filiation also. As for the fourth, Tomás mac seáin, the genealogies make him ancestor to the FitzGeralds of Ardnagragh (coardal) and other branches in Kerry, and it may be no coincidence that one Thomas fitz John occurs in colonial records as a man of some substance in Kerry in 1295.45 Therefore, these references confirm that these men were sons of John fitz Thomas. All five of Thomas fitz Thomas’s sons occur during the same period, 1285 to 1321. yet John himself died in 1261. These dates suggest that all – or at the very least John and Maurice – had been born during the 1250s. Turning to the question of their mothers, we have no way of verifying this relatively late tradition, yet it is entirely likely that the three most important knightly cadet lineages of the house of shanid were indeed the result of ‘irregular’ liaisons. As to the named mothers, while one may be tempted to dismiss these as fanciful, in all cases linkage can be made between their septs and lands within the lordship of John fitz Thomas. Uí chuileáin were pre-invasion kings of western Uí chonaill, which included shanid, and retained rulership of the clenlish district of southern connello into the fourteenth century.46 It is even possible that the mother of John fitz John was none other than the Mac carthaigh wife of Mathghamhain Ó cuileáin, ‘king of claonglais’, who stabbed her husband to death in 1266.47 Uí chonchobair had been kings of ciarraighe and retained lands in Altry, some of which lay in the Geraldine manor of Moynour (Tarbert), thus making the family tenants of the shanid Geraldines.48 While the connection between John fitz Thomas and the Dalcassian septs of Uí choinín (cuneen) and Uí chinnéidigh (Kennedy) may at first sight seem obscure, we know that John held the cantreds of Ocassin and Omilid in what is today eastern county clare at the time of his death (no doubt the result of an expansion northwards from the lands of Uí hAinmire north of Limerick city which had been granted to Thomas fitz Maurice in 1199). Both Dalcassian septs 43 Maccotter, ‘Anglo-Norman Kerry’, 70. 44 Paul Maccotter and Kenneth Nicholls (eds), The pipe roll of Cloyne: Rotulus Pipae Clonensis (Midleton, 1996), p. 187. 45 CJRI, i, pp 3, 56. 46 Paul Maccotter, ‘The rise of Meic carthaig and the political geography of Desmumu’, JCHaS, 111 (2006), 59–76, at 68, 71. 47 aI, 1266.2. 48 Maccotter, ‘AngloNorman Kerry’, 71–2.

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are associated with lands in these cantreds, so once again were vassals of the shanid Geraldines during the middle of the thirteenth century.49 It is hard to see how a scribe writing in the seventeenth century could have been aware of such connections, and the most balanced view is that these traditions regarding the various mothers are based on a factual account. Each of these four sub-lineages will now be dealt with.

ThE FITzGIBBON WhITE KNIGhTs

(shANID

GERALDINEs)

In 1282x96 Thomas fitz Maurice of shanid granted ‘the territory of Meane’ to his uncle, the first White knight. This appears to be the manor of Meanus, near Killorglin. This remained in the hands of the White knights until c.1550, when it escheated to the Desmond earls, who must subsequently have re-granted it to the knights of Kerry.50 In this and one further reference, Gilbert fitz John, ancestor of the White knights, is solely associated with Kerry, and it seems to have been his son, sir Thomas (d. 1346), who erected this house into something of substance. he was one of the leading followers of the first earl of Desmond during the latter’s ‘rebellion’, under cover of which he seems to have acquired various lands, including the south Tipperary manor of clonbeg, caherelly in east Limerick, and probably the cork manor of Brigown (Mitchelstown), if not acquired by his son, Maurice. By the sixteenth century the main line is found in possession of various chief rents in Kerry as well as the lands of Listrim there, but their main holdings included various lands in south Tipperary as well as lands around Mitchelstown and Kildorrery in cork and other lands around Kilmallock across the Limerick border, in which county they also held much of Mahoonagh parish and other lands.51 The ramification of this lineage is easy to follow as they adopted the surname Fitzgibbon or Mac Giobún after the first white knight. The earliest offshoot was that of camphire and their cadets in Ballynatray, in west Waterford, which appears to descend from henry fitz David, a grandson of Gilbert. From henry’s brother, John fitz David, descend both the MacJohn Fitzgibbons of Kilbolane and the Machenry Fitzgibbons of Kilmore, both eponyms living into the early 1400s. An offshoot of the latter was the family of Ardskeagh, and the Machenrys, in addition to lands in north cork, possessed significant lands in Limerick, at Ballingarry, Dunmoylan, and elsewhere. John’s father, Thomas fitz John, had acquired Kilbolane (in northwest cork) during the 1380s, while the acquisitions of his brother henry fitz Thomas are more obscure. Kilmore is a 49 CdI, ii, pp 326–7, 429 (where for cruchlidocassyn read Truchkidocassyn (Trícha Cét Ua Caisín) and for Oxilyd read Omilyd (Ua mBlait)); CT, pp 123, 130. 50 Maccotter and Nicholls, Pipe roll of Cloyne, p. 187; Maccotter, ‘Anglo-Norman Kerry’, 62. 51 Maccotter and Nicholls, Pipe roll of Cloyne, pp 187–90, 241, 243; ‘The Desmond survey’, nos 74, 76, 250, 280, at http://www.ucc.ie/celt/.

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territory lying south of Kilbolane.52 The fourth knight, Maurice fitz Maurice (d. 1419), had his title usurped by his brother David na nEch, from whom the main line descended. These would fail in the male line in 1611. Maurice fitz Maurice was ancestor to the Fitzgibbons of Knocklong, co. Limerick (the ‘sept of the Old Knight’). Other Limerick branches were found at cloonsherick in Mahoonagh and in Kilquane.

ThE KNIGhTs OF GLIN

(shANID

GERALDINEs)

sir John fitz John was already possessed of the fee of Glyncorbry (Glin) in west Limerick by 1290 and, in 1299, is recorded as possessed of Glyncorbry and Morgans by service of one knight’s fee as of the manor of shanid. Other references to him occur as holding land in Mahoonagh (1287) and in the manor of Glanneth in Kenry (1309). The overlords of these lands included the future first earl of Desmond, as well as Thomas de clare of Bunratty and John fitz Thomas of Kildare, indicating that John fitz John was already an important man with powerful connections. his son, sir Thomas fitz John, was a prominent Desmond follower during the latter’s ‘rebellion’, but we have no indication that he acquired more estates. his son, John fitz Thomas of Glin (d. after 1364), appears to have gained possession of the manor of Glanneth from its le Poer lord around 1360, and here later was located the chief castle of the Glin family (castletown Glanneth, later castletown Kenry). clearly, as important followers of the earls of Desmond, the knights of Glin must have continued to expand their territories and lordship here, but the exact process is not visible. By the mid-1500s we find the knights in possession of Glin itself and also of the mesne lordship of the barony of Kenry, of which they possessed directly around one quarter of its area, and also portions of the manors of croagh and cappagh to south of Kenry.53 The history of this line is one of extreme ramification, due largely, it would appear, to David fitz John, a younger son of the first knight, who was dead by 1317. he in turn had four sons. The most prominent of these was the powerful John fitz David, ancestor to the FitzGerald ‘lords of clenlish’, whose large territory lay around clenlish in southwest Limerick, and whose chief castle was at Gortnatubbrid (springfield). This had been the territory of the native Uí chuileáin kings until at least the 1260s, and it is hardly coincidental that one of this family was mother to the first knight of Glin. A number of other branches 52 Maccotter and Nicholls, Pipe roll of Cloyne, pp 243–4; Abraham FitzGibbon, ‘Notes on the pedigree of the White Knight’, JRSaI, 15 (1879–82), 640–730; James Graves, ‘Unpublished Geraldine documents’, JRSaI, 1 (1871), 591–616; idem, JRSaI, 4 (1877), 157–66. 53 Kenneth Nicholls and Paul Maccotter, ‘Feudal warlords: the knights of Glencorbry’, in Tomás Donovan (ed.), The knights of Glin: seven centuries of change (Limerick, 2009), pp 48–79, at pp 52–65, 78–9.

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can be linked to this John, including those of Kilfinny, Finniterstown, and Tomdeely in Limerick, Pilltown and Monatray in Waterford, and Trabolgan in east cork. A third son of David son of the first knight, henry fitz David fitz John, is found in possession of the large estate of Pallas(kenry) in 1331, when still a minor. This twenty-one-ploughland estate corresponded largely to the area of the parishes of Ardcanny and chapelrussell. A number of Geraldine cadet lines are later found settled on the lands of this manor, including those of Killashuragh (shannongrove), Ballydoole, Muckenagh, Farranmarine, Drommoher and Bolane. henry’s brother, David fitz David, appears to be ancestor to the line of Ballycahane. some lines show a later separation from the main line of the knights. The Ballygleaghan line descends from a second son of the ninth knight living in the 1550s while the Ballynamona line descends from that knight’s brother. several other cadet lines are found holding lands within the manor of Glanneth, and these were probably also of the lineage of Glin. Among these were the families of Mornane, Ballyshonickbane, Newtown and Ballynacourty. yet another offshoot must have been the Geralds of Morgans, from which the Glin family still claimed a chief rent in 1641. yet another group of Geraldine cadet lines paid chief rents to Glin from their lands in eastern Kenry, including those of court, Ballycasey, curraghbridge and an entire group of small freeholders in Kildimo parish.54 The last knight of Glin, the honourable Desmond FitzGerald, sadly died in 2011.

OThER GERALDINEs IN cOUNTy LIMERIcK

Limerick, even more so than Kerry, was the core area of Geraldine settlement in Munster. In addition to those lines noted above bearing a clear link to the Geraldine tree there were, especially in Limerick, many other Geraldine lines of uncertain origin. In many cases these lines are distinguished by the use of patronyms, but this practice was also present among non-Geraldine lines, so caution is needed here. some of these lines are located in those parts of Limerick in the lordship of the earls of Kildare, including those of Boulabally, Pullagh, Ballyfreera, Thomastown and Ballingaddy, and may well descend from the Kildare house. Others are found in the Desmond lordship of Any, at Ballynamona and Rathjordan, and yet others in connello, at Ballingarry, Woodstock, cloncagh, Ballyhahill, Rathkeale, Lissanisky, cloncrew and elsewhere.55

54 Ibid., pp 65–76.

55 PRONI, Ms 3078/1/1/3; ‘Desmond survey’.

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(shANID

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The descent of the later knights of Kerry from sir Richard fitz Maurice, who flourished during the second quarter of the fourteenth century, is certain.56 In the tradition mentioned above he is made the son of Maurice fitz John. Though previously unnoticed, contemporary evidence of Maurice exists: he must be the Maurice fitz John who was a prominent man in Kerry in the period around the turn of the fourteenth century. Record of Maurice first occurs in 1284, when fined for default in electing four knights, clearly indicating that this ‘Maurice fitz John’ was already an important man in Kerry. In 1295, he acted as pledge for another in Kerry and was one of the mainpernors of the county sheriff, while between the years 1307 and 1313, at the very least, Maurice held the county serjeantcy of Kerry. Both his use of patronym and his office, the latter an hereditary possession of the shanid line, attest to Maurice’s Geraldine origins. he crowned his career with the office of the shrievalty of Kerry in the years 1320–1. By 1326 we find mention of Maurice’s son, Richard fitz Maurice, as one of the ‘rout’ of Maurice fitz Thomas, first earl of Desmond, then raiding in county Tipperary. he was sheriff of Kerry in 1329, and is again associated with the earl in 1345, when, as sir Richard fitz Maurice, he is recorded in his following, this time in county Waterford. Evidence of fitz Maurice’s importance is seen in his 1348 appointment by the administration as one of the two receivers of the profits and issues of the confiscated lands of the first earl of Desmond. In this patent sir Richard is described as a tenant of the earl. This reference is explained by a May 1349 reference to sir Richard in a list (which he heads) of the free tenants of Desmond’s cantred of Osurrys (Osurrys consisted of the southern and western parts of the Dingle peninsula). The reference of 1349 suggests that Richard must then have obtained possession of the demesne lands of the cantred. These included lands in Dunquin, Kilmalkedar, Murreagh, Ventry, Dingle and, probably, Minard. The Dingle lands may well have included the site for the castle of the knights in Dingle itself, while the lands in Ventry must equally be the fee of Rahinnane, where the main towerhouse of the knights is found in a later period. Therefore, sir Richard was firmly established upon the demesne lands of Osurrys by 1349. This can only have occurred after the death of the first earl of Kildare, in 1328. Kildare had held de facto possession of Osurrys for twenty years before this, which included, apparently, Rahinnane. sir Maurice, son of Richard fitz Maurice, held various roles in the governance of counties Kerry and cork and married the daughter and heiress of sir Nicholas de courcy during the 1360s, who brought with her the north Kerry manor of Glanerdalliv and the cork manors of Rathcourcy and Ballycrenane in 56 This section on the knights of Kerry is drawn from my paper on the family entitled ‘The earlier Geraldine knights of Kerry’, JKaHS, forthcoming.

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Imokilly, and Killowny near Kinsale. sir Maurice played a leading role in the de facto takeover of the superior manor of Inchiquin in Imokilly by the Desmond earls between the 1360s and the early 1400s, and several of his sons were established on lands here from whom descend the distinct and numerous Geraldines of Imokilly (see below). The known cadet branches of the knights of Kerry are all late. One such were the FitzGeralds of Mogeely (North), co. cork, who held lands first acquired by the second knight, sir Richard fitz Maurice, and who separated from the main line during the mid-1500s. The Geraldines of Ballineanig and those of Ennismore (both in Kerry) separate from the main line late in the sixteenth century. Other Geraldine cadets of unknown origin are found on the Dingle peninsula, some on the old demesne lands of Osurrys, and so may also be of the lineage of the knights. These include the MacUlicks of Dunquin and Minard and the FitzGeralds of Gallarus and those of caherboshinny. The modern titular usage of ‘knight’ among the family derives from the creation of sir Peter FitzGerald as first Baronet Valencia, in 1880; the family continued to possess significant property in Kerry down to the late 1800s.

T h E F I T z G E R A L D s O F A L L E N , c O U N T y K I L DA R E

(KNIGhTs

OF

K E R Ry : s h A N I D G E R A L D I N E s )

The ancestor to this line was Robert fitz Maurice, made by the genealogists a younger brother to sir Richard fitz Maurice, knight of Kerry. sir Robert was prominent in Kildare during the period 1326 to 1346, and his Kerry origin is generally accepted by historians. My recent work showing the prominent position of the first two earls of Kildare in Kerry politics during the period 1287 to 1328 (see under earls of Kildare above) gives context to sir Robert’s move to Kildare. sir Robert’s manor of Kilmeague formed the core of the later lordship of Allen. The family later ‘went native’ and became a thorn in the side of the Pale from their border location. A number of junior branches are known. These were located in Ballyteig, Punchersgrange, carrick (near Allen) and Barnacrow, and most of these were early offshoots of the main line. Another important if itinerant branch was descended from John fitz William of Allen, living in 1413, several lines of whose descendants lived in various parts of Dublin and Meath, including Tyrrellstown, Ashtown, Dunboyne and Damastown.57

57 Kenneth Nicholls, ‘The Geraldines of Allen’, Irish Geneal., 4:2 (1969), 93–108; 4:3 (1970), 194–200.

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(KNIGhTs

191 O F K E R Ry : s h A N I D

GERALDINEs)

We have noted above how sir Maurice fitz Richard, knight of Kerry (d. after 1401), had acquired land and influence in the barony of Imokilly in east cork. This was partly through marriage with an heiress, but more importantly, it is clear that sir Maurice and some of his sons played an important role in the Desmond earls’ lengthy and ultimately successful efforts to acquire Imokilly. No less than three of sir Maurice’s sons were so involved. David fitz Maurice is found active in Imokilly in 1403. his brother Edmund – according to some sources deposed as knight of Kerry by another brother, Nicholas, bishop of Ardfert (1408–50) before 1411 – was ancestor to the Geraldines of Ballycrenane and Ballykineally (who remained at Ballykineally until the last of them died in 1928). The principal ancestor here however was another brother, a bastard, Richard fitz Maurice, whom James ‘the Usurper’ (d. 1462/3), sixth earl of Desmond, made his seneschal of Imokilly during the 1420s, and who was still alive in 1442, apparently residing at castlemartyr. The seneschalsy became an hereditary possession of Richard’s senior line of descendants, the Geraldines of castlemartyr, whose main line became extinct in 1728. The family provided two bishops of cork and cloyne during the period 1469 to 1520 and were also hereditary military marshals to the Desmond earls. A second important line of descendants of the first seneschal was the Geraldine deans of cloyne, of cloyne and Ballymaloe. The most prominent of these, sir John fitz Edmund (d. 1612), was the leading catholic loyalist of the Elizabethan era in Munster, as a result of which he acquired extensive estates in cork, Kerry and Limerick. By the late sixteenth century we find two dozen Geraldine branches in Imokilly. In a remarkable example of ramification, fifteen of these can be shown to descend from Richard the first seneschal who had lived a mere century-anda-half before, and several more are likely of similar descent. These certain descendants are the Geraldines of castlemartyr, Ballymaloe, corkbeg, castlerichard, coolcap, coologorra (now Mount Uniack), Rostellan, cornaveigh, Ballintemple, Ballyregan, Ballyroe, Kilbarraree, carrigacottaig (now castlemary), Kilbree and Dromadda. Those of Ballycrenane and of cahermone descend from other brothers of Richard, and there are another five lines of Geraldines in the barony of uncertain descent, those of Milshane, Garranejames, Ballyhonuck, Garrymore and Ballymacoda. The castleishen Geraldines of the nineteenth century were descendants of the cloyne line while those of Glenane were of the stock of the earlier Ballintemple branch.58 58 Maccotter and Nicholls, Pipe roll of Cloyne, pp 134–7, 143, 147, 149, 153–5, 158, 166, 169, 174, 176–7, 181, 204, 229–31, 233–4, 248; Paul Maccotter, ‘The Fitzgeralds of Imokilly’, in Pádraig Ó Loingsigh (ed.), The Book of Cloyne (cloyne, 1993), pp 79–100; idem, ‘The Geraldine clerical lineages of Imokilly and sir John fitz Edmund of cloyne’, in David

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T h E G E R A L D I N E s O F A R D N AG R AG h , c O U N T y K E R Ry

(shANID

GERALDINEs)

These are the descendants of the fourth natural son of John fitz Thomas of shanid (d. 1261), Thomas fitz John, who appears to be living in 1295 as noted above. The genealogists make him the ancestor to the sliocht sheáin Geraldines of Ardnagragh (modern coardal) in the manor of castleisland, co. Kerry. This was a shanid Geraldine manor. In addition to some branches around Ardnagragh the main area of settlement of cadet lines was on the northern side of the Dingle peninsula. A plea of novel disseisin of 1485 shows one branch well established at Murririgane and elsewhere on the northern side of the peninsula, upon lands of the FitzMaurice lords of Kerry. These ‘slught Edmund’ Geraldines had ramified into several branches by the seventeenth century, including those of Murririgane, Glandine, Ballygarrett and Teerbrin. Another branch was of Ballymacegoge on the north side of Tralee Bay.59

L AT E R O F F s h O O T s O F T h E D E s M O N D E A R L s : M Ac T h O M A s O F D E c I E s , L O R D s O F D E c I E s , F I T z G E R A L D s O F B RO G h I L L

The MacThomas Geraldines of the Decies, co. Waterford were descended from sir John fitz Thomas, older and bastard brother of the first earl of Desmond. he was notorious for leading a band of young landless knights on land raids in the fashion soon to be followed by his brother Maurice, and died a young man in 1324.60 The real builder of this line – and its eponym – was his son sir Thomas, known as le Néve or ‘the Nephew’ (of the first earl). he was a prominent leader among Desmond’s ‘rout’ during the rebellion of the 1330s and 1340s, under cover of which he seems to have dispossessed the Walsh family of Glenahiry and Kilmanahan in Decies, apparently his first holding. Over the following generations the family acquired more lands and ramified into several branches. These included those of Woodhouse, Knockmoan, clonea and Farnane. The main line also held much land in Limerick, at Pallas near Bruree.61

Edwards (ed.), Regions and rulers in Ireland, 1100–1650 (Dublin, 2004), pp 54–77, passim; Nicholls, ‘Lordship in county cork’, pp 187–90; R.G. Fitzgerald-Uniacke, ‘The Fitzgeralds of Rostellane, in the county cork’, JRSaI, 25 (1895), 163–70; idem, ‘The Fitzgeralds of Glenane, co. cork’, JRSaI, 42 (1912), 164–9. 59 NAI, Ms Lodge’s Records of the Rolls, i, 277; vi, 380; Lambeth Palace Library, carew Ms 608, fo. 44b; Book of survey and Distribution, co. Kerry; an Leabhar Muimhneach, p. 287; M.A. hickson, J. Fitzgerald and M. Fitzgerald, ‘The story of the slught Edmund: an episode in Kerry history’, Kerry archaeological Magazine, 3:15 (1915), 186–205. 60 aClyn, 1324. 61 Gabriel Redmond, ‘The Fitzgeralds of Farnane, county Waterford’, Journal of the Waterford and South-East of Ireland archaeological Society, 13 (1910), 112–21, 168–75; 14 (1911), 27–39, 72–81; 15 (1912), 168–76; ‘Desmond survey’, 54, 59, 62–3, 205, 325.

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The Geraldine lords of Decies descend from sir Gerrot FitzGerald, younger son of James the sixth earl (d. 1462/3), who was enfeoffed in the honour of Dungarvan by his father. These lands comprised much of the western half of county Waterford. This line included an archbishop of cashel and was ennobled as Viscount Decies in 1569. The chief seat of the family was at Dromana, where representatives in the female line, the Grubb family, still reside. There was one cadet line, of Ballyogarty near Kilmacthomas.62 The FitzGeralds of Broghill (near charleville in north cork) descend from Thomas, the deposed fifth earl of Desmond (d. 1420). The family forfeited as rebels after the Desmond rebellion.63

62 Therese McKenzie, dromana: the memoirs of an Irish family (Dublin, 1906). Desmond rebellion, see Edwards, below, pp 341–78.

63 For the

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Rebellion and rehabilitation: the first earl of Desmond and the English scene

RO B I N F R A M E

Maurice fitz Thomas, first earl of Desmond, may seem a familiar figure. In this he differs from most Irish fourteenth-century earls, who have at best walk-on parts in the historiography of the period, which remains very thin. Desmond had a long career. He was born around 1293, a son of Thomas fitz Maurice of Desmond (d. 1298) and Margaret, daughter of Sir Thomas Berkeley of Berkeley castle in Gloucestershire. Though he did not formally receive his inheritance until 1314, he was active before that, certainly as early as 1312, when he married Katherine, daughter of Richard Burgh (d. 1326), the ‘Red Earl’ of Ulster, the dominant Irish noble of the age, and his wife Margaret de Guines, who was a kinswoman of Eleanor of Castile, Edward I’s queen.1 He died forty-four years later, in Dublin castle in January 1356, while serving as governor of Ireland, having been created earl of Desmond in 1329. Such longevity does not in itself mark him out: other leading magnates of later medieval Ireland were just as durable. It was the turbulence of his career, recorded in the laconic Latin of the Dublin annalist and Friar John Clyn, that long attracted the notice of historians and controversialists. The discovery and publication some fifty years ago by G.O. Sayles, a distinguished historian of English law and government in both England and Ireland, of a rich, though problematical, vein of fresh evidence has ensured him continued attention from modern scholars.2 This essay explores a comparatively neglected aspect of the first earl of Desmond’s history: his position within the wider English polity. It must be 1 CStM, ii, p. 341; the stages by which he took up his inheritance and role from 1308 are traced in Keith Alan Waters, ‘The earls of Desmond in the fourteenth century’ (PhD, University of Durham, 2004), pp 21–5. 2 He figures strongly in the more substantial general histories published since 1966: Otway-Ruthven, Med. Ire., chs 7, 8; Lydon, Lordship (1st ed.), ch. 8; James Lydon, ‘The impact of the Bruce invasion, 1315–27’, in NHI, ii, ch. 10; J.A. Watt, ‘The Anglo-Irish colony under strain, 1327–99’, in NHI, ii, ch. 13. I have revisited Desmond at intervals, most extensively in ‘The justiciarship of Ralph Ufford: warfare and politics in fourteenth-century Ireland’, Studia Hibernica, 13 (1973), 7–47; Frame, Eng. lordship, chs 5–9; Frame, ‘Power and society in the lordship of Ireland, 1272–1377’, in Ire. & Brit., ch. 11; and Frame, ‘Fitzgerald, Maurice fitz Thomas, first earl of Desmond (c.1293–1356)’, ODNB. There is a detailed account in Waters, ‘Earls of Desmond’, ch. 1. Modern work is well reflected in the substantial biography by Ronan MacKay, ‘FitzGerald, Maurice fitz Thomas 1st earl of Desmond’, DIB. For publications on Desmond’s regional milieu, see below, nn 4, 27.

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conceded at once that the bases of the earl’s power lay in Ireland. As Rees Davies remarked: ‘however much these great magnates [of Ireland] turned in the outer circles of English court culture, the landscape of their lives and lordship was dominated by forces and circumstances far removed from those of aristocratic lordship in most of England.’3 More work is undoubtedly needed to uncover the regional and local roots and branches of that power, along the lines pioneered by Kenneth Nicholls, Paul MacCotter, Keith Waters and others, who have done much to expose the web of transcultural alliances and enmities within which Desmond operated, and the pyramid of clientship, jurisdiction and brute force at the summit of which he sat.4 But Davies’s comment should not lead us to underestimate the extent to which, in the fourteenth as much as the sixteenth century,5 status and power flowed along additional channels, signified by membership of a wider aristocratic society, focused on the households, courts and councils of the Plantagenet kings. Nor was it simply a matter of Desmond’s personal links with high society in England. Despite his reputation for lawlessness, vital aspects of his career can be understood only in the context of the English legal framework and the conventions of crown patronage and service within which (for the most part) he pursued his aims. In this respect he resembles many other great nobles in the later medieval West, for whom the recognition and support provided by royal overlordship might stabilize and augment territorial assemblages that were often fragile and contested. In southern Ireland during the fourteenth century, as we shall see, English lordship was neither ‘remote’ nor ‘inert’.6

S O U RC E S A N D P E RC E P T I O N S

That Desmond’s death occurred in Dublin castle may seem ironic, for he had spent the years 1331–3 as a prisoner there, charged with felonies and treasonable conspiracies; equally so, the fact that he ended up holding the highest official post in Ireland under Edward III, the king who, after a major outbreak of violence in Ireland in 1345, had held him in captivity in England for four years. In 1355, Edward summoned the elderly earl back from Ireland, appointed him 3 R.R. Davies, Lords and lordship in the British Isles in the late Middle Ages, ed. Brendan Smith (Oxford, 2009), p. 132; for recent comments on the characteristics of such more distant, or ‘border’, lords and lordship, in Britain as well as Ireland, see Michael Brown, Disunited kingdoms: peoples and politics in the British Isles, 1280–1460 (London, 2013), ch. 7. 4 K.W. Nicholls, ‘The development of lordship in county Cork, 1300–1600’, in Cork history and society, esp. pp 187–91; Paul MacCotter, ‘Lordship and colony in Anglo-Norman Kerry, 1177– 1400’, JKHAS, 2nd series, 4 (2004), 39–85; Waters, ‘Earls of Desmond’, chs 4 and 5. 5 Cf. David Edwards, The Ormond lordship in county Kilkenny, 1515–1642: the rise and fall of Butler feudal power (Dublin, 2003), ch. 2, esp. pp 91–2, 98–100; Ellis, Tudor frontiers, pp 254–5; and Edwards, below, pp 341–78. 6 See John Watts, The making of polities: Europe, 1300–1500 (Cambridge, 2009), pp 91–6 (quotation at p. 93).

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justiciar, and provided him with a goodly purse of expenses towards his return journey.7 Those who study the period after 1460 may have a sense of déjà vu. It is as though Desmond – whose career has a certain amount in common with that of his rumbustious older kinsman, John fitz Thomas, first earl of Kildare (d. 1316), who likewise ended up as a respected elder statesman – shaped a template for several Geraldine earls of the Yorkist and Tudor periods. Those later figures may be easier for us to visualize: literally so, since there are surviving portraits of several sixteenth-century magnates, including a Holbein sketch of the ninth earl of Ormond.8 But it should not be assumed that fourteenth-century nobles and the political, legal and cultural worlds in which they moved were necessarily less sophisticated than their sixteenth-century equivalents. Often it is the different character of the evidence, both written and visual, that can make them appear so. Despite his apparent familiarity, the first earl of Desmond is an elusive and complicated figure, difficult to capture. Making sense of him requires awareness of the historiographical traditions that have formed his image, together with the character of the sources that helped in turn to shape those traditions. Desmond has become known as the ‘rebellious’ earl, from the title of an influential article published in 1961 by G.O. Sayles.9 The article is, primarily, a commentary on a set of indictments against Desmond that Sayles had found in the records of the King’s Bench at Westminster, to where the record had been summoned from Ireland in 1351 as a step in the process by which the earl’s outlawry was reversed. Sayles published an edition of this material five years later.10 Most of the indictments were the product of two crises in Desmond’s career. In 1331 and again in 1345, he was brought down by English-born governors of Ireland, who proceeded to collect dossiers from juries in Munster towns and counties. The jurors denounced Desmond as a sort of grand mafioso, who ran a protectionracket across much of southern Ireland. They condemned his dealings with the Gaelic Irish ‘enemies’, notably Brian Bán Ó Briain (O’Brien), head of an excluded branch of the Thomond dynasty. But they went much further, accusing him of aiming to usurp Edward III’s authority and make himself ruler of Ireland. There are two main sets of ‘kingship’ allegations, and they are very different in character. In 1331–2, Desmond was accused of conspiracies that went back to 1327, and allegedly involved magnates from other parts of Ireland and also Irish leaders in Munster.11 In 1345–6, the indictments, while still making much of his ties with the Irish, spoke of treasonable letters to the kings of France and Scotland, and of an embassy to Avignon in 1344. This mission allegedly 7 TNA, E 403/377, mm 25, 27; he received 200 marks to equip himself for going to Ireland, with an additional imprest of £40. 8 Edwards, Ormond lordship, pl. 4. See also the portrait, once attributed to Holbein, of the ninth earl of Kildare, which is reproduced on the cover of the present book; and for comment on its authenticity, see Byrne, below, p. 283. 9 Sayles, ‘Rebellious first earl’ (repr. in G.O. Sayles, Scripta diversa (London, 1982), pp 239–66). 10 Sayles, ‘Legal proceedings’. 11 Ibid., pp 5–11, 12–16.

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proposed to Pope Clement VI that he should remove King Edward’s title to Ireland and replace him with Desmond, who would rule as papal vicar, or deputy.12 Historians have displayed considerable ambivalence about these more dramatic charges, recounting them at length while expressing varying degrees of doubt about their veracity.13 More than thirty years ago, I set out a case for regarding them with scepticism, and do not propose to revisit the subject in detail here.14 Their relevance to the present discussion lies chiefly in the fact that they harmonized all too well with some twentieth-century assumptions about the baneful character of noble power in Ireland. It seems fair to say that, between the 1930s and the 1990s, the small band of scholars who published on the later medieval lordship of Ireland were not ‘magnate-friendly’. One reason for this was that several – notably Jocelyn OtwayRuthven, Geoffrey Hand and indeed James Lydon, whose range was wider than most, but who cut his scholarly teeth on the exchequer records15 – were, like Sayles, trained in the history of English law and administration. Another was the survival from the 1290s onwards of unusually extensive and varied records of the Dublin government. As a result, the lead story tended to be the rise and decline of central administration in Ireland. This is, of course, a perfectly legitimate theme; but it produced, not so much a ‘crown-centred’ view as a ‘Dublincentred’ view, which tended to privilege the opinions and interests of royal ministers in Ireland. A ‘crown-centred’ view might be equally questionable, but it would be wider and more complex, a point that is neatly made by the story of Desmond’s own rehabilitation after 1346, which not only bypassed Dublin completely but took place against the wishes of royal officials in Ireland. There is still work to be done to restore, for the period c.1250–c.1450, the link between regional lordship in Ireland and the courts and councils of the kings of England, around which historians working on earlier and later ages structure their accounts, whether of Henry II and Strongbow or de Lacy, or of Tudor monarchs and various Geraldine and Butler earls. The Dublin-centred perspective had the effect of pushing the nobility to one side. Even now, two earls of Kildare, whose careers spanned ninety years from 1342 to 1432, barely register on the historical seismograph.16 And – scandalously – there is still no adequate modern study in print of the Red Earl of Ulster, the greatest lord of all. But neglect is only part of the story. There was also a 12 Ibid., pp 20–2, 43–6. 13 For example, Sayles, ‘Rebellious first earl’, pp 206–7, 219; Otway-Ruthven, Med. Ire., pp 249–50, 281; Lydon, Lordship (1st ed.), pp 196–7; Watt, ‘Anglo-Irish colony under strain’, in NHI, ii, pp 356–7. 14 For background and a detailed critique of the evidence, see Frame, Eng. lordship, pp 177–82, 212–14, 267–72. It should be noted that the conspiracy story that Sayles and his successors assigned to July 1326 in fact appears to relate to July 1327, during the months of instability that followed the deposition of Edward II (ibid., p. 180 n. 101). 15 On Otway-Ruthven and Lydon, see Peter Crooks, ‘The Lecky professors’, in Crooks, Government, pp 37–53, where Lydon’s grounding in administrative history is emphasized at pp 48–9. 16 The fourth earl, Maurice (1342–90), has one index entry in NHI, ii; his son, the fifth earl, Gerald (1390–1432), has none.

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tendency to present great lords chiefly as obstructions to royal government.17 At its most extreme, the Dublin administration was sanitized into an abstraction labelled ‘the rule of law’, while magnates stood for its opposite, with Desmond as the veritable demon prince of ‘disorder’.18 This is a very old view. Already in 1612, Sir John Davies identified the first earl of Desmond as the fountainhead of all that was bad. According to Davies, Desmond pioneered the imposition of ‘Irish exactions’ such as coign and livery; he rejected English laws and government; he opposed the revocation of liberty jurisdictions (which Davies, like fourteenth-century English judges and exchequer officials, abhorred); he refused to come to parliament; he was the first to create a division between ‘the English of England’ and ‘the English of Ireland’.19 Much of this is nonsense, some of it half-truth. Most of it came from a hostile reading of a few short passages scattered through the Dublin annals, a source that was constantly redacted and elaborated between the fourteenth and seventeenth centuries. Ironically, Edmund Curtis was to take the same material and give it a positive spin, turning Desmond into a spokesman for the settler elite and a doughty opponent of English oppression.20 Curtis’s interpretations, as so often, are a mixture of the insightful and the misguided. Their shortcomings were pointed out by Sayles, who insisted (rightly) that Desmond’s behaviour needed to be viewed alongside that of aristocrats elsewhere in Europe.21 But Sayles’s sympathies undoubtedly lay with the crown and its agents: Desmond ‘made orderly government in the south-west of Ireland very largely impossible’.22 To that extent, he might be said to have picked up the pen that Sir John Davies had laid down three-and-a-half centuries before. Any attempt to break out of this pattern, and reimagine the worlds inhabited by fourteenth-century magnates in Ireland, faces problems; in the case of Desmond, acute problems. The written sources they themselves have left are largely records of conveyancing and estate-management. There is a shortage of the types of material that have enabled historians of the English aristocracy to reconstruct the mentalities and styles of life of at least some noblemen and women:23 here, accounts of household expenditure, together with wills, disclose 17 For further comment on these matters, see Robin Frame, ‘Historians, aristocrats and Plantagenet Ireland, 1200–1360’, in Chris Given-Wilson, Ann Kettle and Len Scales (eds), War, government and aristocracy in the British Isles, c.1150–1500: essays in honour of Michael Prestwich (Woodbridge, 2008), pp 131–47; and Peter Crooks, ‘Factions, feuds and noble power in the lordship of Ireland, c.1356–1496’, IHS, 35:140 (2007), 425–54. 18 Hostility towards noble (or ‘feudal’) power, of which Desmond is presented as a chief exponent, is marked in the work of James Lydon: Lydon, Lordship (1st ed.), pp 196–9; idem, Ireland in the later Middle Ages (Dublin, 1973), pp 52–6; idem, ‘Impact of the Bruce invasion’, in NHI, ii, pp 297–300; Lydon moderated his tone in his last book: The making of Ireland: from ancient times to the present (London, 1998), pp 86–9. 19 Sir John Davies, A discoverie of the true causes why Ireland was never entirely subdued, nor brought under obedience of the crowne of England, until the beginning of his maiesties happie raigne (London, 1612, STC 6348), pp 202–7. 20 Curtis, Med. Ire., ch. 11, ‘The rebellious Anglo-Irish, 1327–1360’; on Curtis, see Crooks, ‘Lecky professors’, pp 25–36. 21 Sayles, ‘Rebellious first earl’, pp 225–7. 22 Ibid., p. 203. 23 The work of K.B.

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their annuitants and servants, and also provide details of diet, entertainment, building-work, fashions in piety, funerary arrangements, clothing, jewels, education, right down to the books that enabled the young girls of the house of Lancaster to learn their ‘ABC’.24 Alongside that, there is the much better survival of the architectural landscape in England. In both respects, Desmond’s English relations provide a chastening comparison. There is a vast and varied Berkeley archive, with a smattering of wills, marriage settlements and household documents among the thousands of charters and other records relating to the landed estates; this material enabled the early seventeenth-century Berkeley steward and antiquarian, John Smyth, to compile a massive celebratory account of the family.25 The ‘built heritage’ of Desmond’s English kinsfolk also contrasts dramatically with the bare, ruined remnants (in some cases impressive enough by Irish standards) of Askeaton, Castle Island, Newcastle West or Dungarvan. Berkeley castle has been in continuous occupation since the thirteenth century; the nearby parish church of St Mary contains the tomb of Desmond’s first cousin, Thomas Lord Berkeley and his second wife, their effigies preserved for posterity in fine alabaster. At Lingfield in Surrey, a similar effigy of Thomas’s brother-in-law, Reginald Lord Cobham survives, with his Garter proudly displayed on his left leg, above a tomb rich in heraldry and references to his battle honours.26 Both men were to play an important part in Desmond’s career. If it is difficult to produce rounded pictures of Irish fourteenth-century earls, it is especially hard to put flesh on Desmond. This applies (to make an oversimple distinction) to both the Gaelic and the English aspects of his activities. The annals of Inisfallen have tantalizing passages in 1325–6 revealing him kingmaking among the Mac Carthaigh (MacCarthy) dynasty;27 but then those southwestern annals cease. Between 1326 and 1356 there is not a single mention of the earl in the other Gaelic Irish annals, which have a north-western focus and are anyway thin at this period. Even the justiciar Ralph Ufford’s spectacular campaigns of 1345, which saw him enter Ulster, depose Énrí Ó Néill (O’Neill) and replace him with Aodh Reamhar Ó Néill, before riding to the opposite corner of Ireland to destroy Desmond, are passed over in silence. We are also McFarlane, from the 1940s onwards, was critical in establishing this historiographical genre; see in particular his posthumously published lectures and essays: The nobility of later medieval England (Oxford, 1973); Davies, Lords and lordship – the final work by one of McFarlane’s most distinguished pupils – extends his approach beyond England. 24 McFarlane, Nobility, p. 43. 25 John Smyth, The Berkeley manuscripts: the lives of the Berkeleys, lords of the honour, castle and manor of Berkeley, in the county of Gloucester, from 1066–1618, with a description of the hundred of Berkeley and its inhabitants, ed. John Maclean (3 vols, Gloucester, 1883–5). For Desmond’s grandfather, uncle and cousins, see ibid., i, pp 153–361. Smyth had access to household material that has since been lost. 26 Nigel Saul, Death, art and memory: the Cobham family and their monuments (Oxford, 2001), ch. 7; the Berkeley and Cobham tombs are illustrated at pp 150–1. 27 AI, pp 432–5 (1320.2 [recte 1325]; 1321.4 [recte 1326]). For his dealings with Gaelic Irish lords, see Keith A. Waters, ‘The earls of Desmond and the Irish of south-western Munster’, Journal of Medieval History, 32 (2006), 54–68; MacCotter, ‘Lordship

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without the occasional written agreements with Irish leaders that survive from the circles of the earls of Kildare, Ormond and even Ulster. Desmond is the reputed author of some courtly verses in French. But direct evidence of his association with Gaelic literary culture, notorious from Arnold le Poer’s alleged description of him in 1327 as a ‘Rymoure’ – if Gaelicization is indeed the point of that insult28 – has proved hard to pin down.29 Jury-claims that he had told his Irish allies ‘that it was destined that the Irish would chase all the English out of the land of Ireland’ seem to echo a common bardic theme, present, for instance, in a poem addressed by Gofraidh Fionn Ó Dálaigh (O’Daly) to Gerald, the third earl (‘in poems to the Goill we promise the driving of the Gaoidhil from Éire; in those to the Gaoidhil we promise the driving of the Goill east overseas!’).30 So too, the allegation of an improbable conspiracy c.1331 between a group of lords, headed by Desmond, to conquer the entire country and share it among themselves, places emphasis on Ireland’s historic provinces.31 But, all in all, this vital dimension of Desmond’s career has to be reconstructed from scraps, hints and hostile comments, or through analogies. The same is true of the English seigneurial aspects of his lordship. It would be unreasonable to expect an equivalent of the incomparable Ormond Deeds, but there is no Desmond cartulary, akin to the Red book of Kildare. We do not even have a Desmond parallel to the lists of charter headings that offer glimpses of the workings of Burgh lordship in Ulster and Connacht. All that remains is the occasional stray survival. In 1325, and again in 1336, we glimpse Desmond pursuing his own errant receivers for debt in the Dublin bench.32 In 1338, we meet his steward, Sir John Coterel, together with his confidential clerk, Master Stephen Lawless, later bishop of Limerick, busy at Dungarvan, auditing the accounts of his reeve of Stradbally in Decies.33 That the earl maintained a formal council – as would be expected of any magnate of the period – is confirmed by the incidental claim of Master William Cogan (a Desmond apparatchik, who was rector and also lord of Ballyhay in Cork) to have taken his oath of membership of it at Newcastle, co. Limerick in 1336.34 It was to Newcastle in 1343 that, according to a hostile jury, Desmond summoned a meeting, involving Sir Thomas fitz John, his nephew, Sir Walter Mandeville, Sir John Coterel, his steward, ‘and many others of his council’, of whose names the jurors professed ignorance, before taking the big decision to reoccupy Youghal in defiance of the and colony’, 54–6. 28 Evelyn Mullally suggests that Arnold’s meaning was ‘that composing harmless vers de salon was all that Maurice was fit for’ (Mullally, ‘Hiberno-Norman literature and its public’, in Settlement & society, pp 332–3); see also Alan Bliss and Joseph Long, ‘Literature in Norman French and English to 1534’, in NHI, ii, pp 710, 719–20. 29 CStM, ii, p. 364; see also Simms, below, p. 265. 30 Sayles, ‘Legal proceedings’, p. 13; Gofraidh’s poem (A Ghearóid déana mo dháil) is quoted in translation in James Carney, ‘Literature in Irish’, in NHI, ii, p. 696; for editions, see item §1, appendix, below, p. 274. 31 Sayles, ‘Legal proceedings’, p. 12. 32 NAI, RC 8/14, p. 491; NAI, RC 8/19, pp 27–8. 33 COD, i, no. 717. 34 CIPM, x, no. 397; Inquisitions & extents, no. 324; for Master William, see Paul MacCotter and Kenneth Nicholls (eds), The pipe roll of Cloyne (Midleton, 1996), pp 197–8.

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king’s ministers.35 We know, too, but only from passing references, mostly in Clyn, that he was active in dubbing knights from among those close to him, creating a chivalric fellowship that was as much social and political as military, and which must have reflected (or created) a line of demarcation between his English and Irish noble followers.36 But there is an absence of the contracts of retinue such as those that survive in the Ormond and Kildare archives. We have a single tantalizing glimpse of a lost written agreement with one of his knightly circle, Thomas son of Sir Walter Mandeville.37 When these and other fragments are gathered together, they offer at best an insubstantial counterpoise to the weight of external – and by its nature deeply hostile – testimony preserved in the inquisitions.

DESMOND’S LINKS WITH THE OUTSIDE WORLD

While it is natural to view Desmond primarily within an Irish – and more specifically a southern Irish – setting, a wider lens must be employed if his changing fortunes are to be understood. Two vignettes may serve to illustrate the sheer number of contacts that existed at this period between the ruling groups of England and of English Ireland, forming a social and political network within which the earl moved. Both belong to the year 1346. Both involve aristocratic households departing Ireland. Both are reported by the ‘Dublin’ annalist, one of Desmond’s few friends among contemporary witnesses.38 In May 1346, Maud of Lancaster, the widowed countess of Ulster and kinswoman of Edward III, set sail from Dublin with the body of her second husband, Ralph Ufford. Ufford, an upwardly mobile banneret of the king’s household (a rank at this period equivalent to the parliamentary peerage), had been governor of Ireland since 1344. As well as denouncing Maud for ‘acting like a queen’ in Ireland, the annalist nastily remarks that her husband’s corpse ‘was scarcely to be reckoned among saintly relics’.39 In the previous summer, Ufford had blown Desmond’s house down: storming Askeaton castle in Limerick and 35 Sayles, ‘Legal proceedings’, p. 35. 36 AClyn, pp 219, 225, 229. 37 K.W. Nicholls, ‘Abstracts of Mandeville deeds, NLI, MS 6136’, AH, 32 (1985), 18–19. 38 On the outlook of the Dublin writer, whose apparent identification with the English of Ireland during the 1330s and 1340s would repay further study, see Bernadette Williams, ‘The Dominican annals of Dublin’, in Seán Duffy (ed.), Medieval Dublin II (Dublin, 2001), pp 153–68, pp 164–5. The chronicler’s hostility to outsiders, criticisms of government policy and favourable comments on Desmond and other Irish magnates bears a resemblance to the St Albans chronicle tradition, with its hostility to kings’ foreign advisers, defence of the laws of England and celebration of noble opponents of the crown such as Simon de Montfort and Thomas of Lancaster. More mundanely, the Dublin area regularly endured the billeting of justiciars’ households and retinues, whereas Desmond and his myrmidons were normally at a safe distance. Friar Clyn, writing at Kilkenny, within the Butler orbit and closer to the scene of Desmond’s heavy-handed actions, wore no such rose-tinted spectacles. 39 CStM, ii, pp 388–9.

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Castle Island in Kerry; sequestrating his lands and privileges; imposing large fines on scores of people and communities associated with him. These were the lucky ones. Desmond’s knights, who had held Castle Island against the king’s banner, suffered horrible deaths. Sir John Coterel, his steward, was judicially drawn at the horse’s tail, hanged, beheaded, gutted with his entrails burnt, and then quartered. In the words of the Kilkenny annalist, John Clyn (who was no Desmond-lover): the ‘quarters [were] dispatched to various parts of the province as a reminder of his tyranny and as a warning to others.’40 Metropolitan values had come to Ireland with a vengeance. Indeed the great late-Victorian legal historian, Frederic William Maitland, who meditated on developing concepts of treason at this period, might have urged us to see the episode, not as a piece of ‘medieval’ barbarity but as the birth-pangs of what John Gillingham has wryly described as ‘that sturdy infant, the modern state, baptized in the blood of noblemen’.41 Certainly, Ufford and his justices had little to learn from John Tiptoft, earl of Worcester, man of taste and education, who was to execute Desmond’s great-grandson in 1468. Amid all this gore, Desmond had escaped to the Irish, probably to his Mic Charthaigh clients and allies. But then, in September 1346, a second aristocratic flotilla departed Ireland. The Dublin annalist tells us that the earl of Desmond sailed from Youghal to England, with his second wife Countess Aveline, daughter of Nicholas fitz Maurice of Kerry, and two young sons. One was certainly Maurice, later the second earl, who was to spend most of his teenage years outside Ireland; the other either the infirm Nicholas, who was to be passed over for the earldom, or Gerald, the future third or ‘poet’ earl.42 (By 1346, Desmond was already well into his fifties, and in modern parlance an elderly father – a point of some significance to which I shall return.) According to jury indictments, he had spent his time in hiding egging on the Irish to attack the English.43 This may or may not be so, but at least as much effort must have gone into delicate and wholly unrecorded diplomacy with the royal court, and with his contacts in England. Instrumental in the détente were three English lords who stood bail for Desmond’s good behaviour. Two were his first-cousins, Thomas Lord Berkeley and the latter’s brother Sir Maurice Berkeley of Uley. The third was the Berkeleys’ brother-in-law, Reginald Lord Cobham (table 7.1).44 40 AClyn, pp 233, 235. The brutally terse record of the judgment on two others captured at Castle Island, Eustace le Poer and William Grant, survives in Reg. Gormanston, pp 188–9. 41 Maitland’s famous discussion of treason and the state is in Frederick Pollock and F.W. Maitland, The history of English law (2nd ed., Cambridge, 1898), ii, pp 500–8. The quotation appears in Gillingham, ‘Killing and mutilating political enemies in the British Isles from the late twelfth to the early fourteenth century: a comparative study’, in Brendan Smith (ed.), Britain and Ireland, 900–1300: insular responses to medieval European change (Cambridge, 1999), pp 114–34, at p. 133; cf. Matthew Strickland, ‘Treason, feud and the growth of state violence: the “war of the earl of Carrick”, 1306–7’, in Given-Wilson et al. (eds), War, government and aristocracy, pp 84–113. 42 CStM, ii, p. 389. 43 Sayles, ‘Legal proceedings’, pp 21–2, 44–6. 44 The news was conveyed to the Dublin ministers, who had vehemently opposed Desmond’s release, by letters dated at Windsor in late July 1346 (Foedera, III.i, p. 87).

Thomas (d. 1361)

Table 7.1: Desmond and the Berkeleys.

Maurice of Uley (d. 1347)

Maurice Berkeley (d. 1326)

Maurice fitz Maurice Nicholas

Joan = Reginald Cobham (d. 1369) (d. 1361)

Gerald fitz Maurice, 3rd e. Desmond

Avelina FitzNicholas (2) = Maurice fitz Thomas, = (1) Katherine Burgh 1st e. Desmond (d. 1331) (d. 1356)

Reginald Russell (2) = Margaret Berkeley = (1) Thomas fitz Maurice (d. 1298)

Thomas Berkeley (d. 1321)

Maurice Berkeley = Isabel (d. 1281)

Richard filius regis = Rohese, daughter of Robert of Dover

King John (1199–1216)

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Thomas Berkeley’s first wife, who had died in 1337, was a daughter of Roger Mortimer, whose rogue regime had ennobled Desmond and given him the palatine liberty of Kerry back in 1329. She lay buried in the abbey of St Augustine in Bristol, a Berkeley foundation, which had Irish property.45 Sir Maurice of Uley was to die in 1347, at the siege of Calais. Reginald Cobham – administrator, businessman, soldier, Garter knight – has been described as a ‘great stalwart’ of Edward III’s regime.46 Just days before Desmond sailed from Youghal, he had been one of the three senior knights deputed to take care of the young Black Prince at the battle of Crécy. Cobham was to be with the prince again in 1356 at the battle of Poitiers, and was to be entrusted with the safekeeping of John II, the king of France who was captured there. Desmond spent his initial year of captivity at Berkeley, eased by the £356 a year the king had granted him for the maintenance of his household, a detail of which, interestingly, the Dublin annalist was aware.47 Meanwhile Edward was encamped before Calais. He returned to England in triumph in October 1347. Towards the end of November, two king’s serjeants-at-arms were dispatched to Berkeley to see Desmond, who must soon have been conveyed to London.48 He may or may not have arrived in time for the Christmas court at Guildford, when the king knighted his young namesake, Maurice fitz Thomas, fourth earl of Kildare, who had been with him at Calais. He was almost certainly there by the time of the Westminster parliament of January 1348, which (unusually) was attended by the justiciar and treasurer of Ireland, and where important Irish matters, including the unprofitability of the country and the fate of the earldom of Ulster, were considered.49 One payment for Desmond’s upkeep describes him as ‘in the king’s custody because of misdeeds committed against the lord king’.50 But a better sense of his position may be gained from a gift made in March 1348 ‘for staying at London for the marriage of Joan, the king’s daughter’.51 He was in elevated company. Another honoured prisoner was King David II of Scotland, who had been captured at the battle of Neville’s Cross outside Durham in October 1346. David was a grandson of the Red Earl of Ulster, and hence, 45 Her husband and son maintained a chantry there in her memory (A catalogue of the medieval muniments at Berkeley castle, ed. Bridget Wells-Furby (2 vols, Bristol and Gloucestershire Archaeological Society, 2004), i, p. 439). For the Irish interests of St Augustine’s, see Brendan Smith, ‘Late medieval Ireland and the English connection: Waterford and Bristol, c.1360–1460’, Journal of British Studies, 50:3 (2011), 550. 46 W. Mark Ormrod, Edward III (New Haven and London, 2011), p. 133. The Berkeley brothers figure extensively in Nigel Saul, Knights and esquires: the Gloucestershire gentry in the fourteenth century (Oxford, 1981). Cobham’s career is explored in Saul, Death, art, and memory, ch. 6. 47 CCR 1346–9, p. 106; CStM, ii, p. 389. 48 TNA, E 403/340, m. 16. 49 PROME, iv, pp 412, 424, 433. 50 TNA, E 403/342, m. 6. Payments after June 1348 drop the pejorative words and describe him simply as staying in England at the king’s order or ‘for certain business touching the king’ (TNA, E 403/342, mm 13, 27; E 403/345, m. 19; E 403/347, m. 16; E 403/350, m. 3). His name is several times blundered by the exchequer clerks as ‘John Morice fitz Thomas’ or ‘John fitz Morys count de Dessemont’. The error seems to have arisen because payments were made through John fitz John, his esquire. 51 TNA, E 403/340, m. 35.

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during the lifetime of Desmond’s first countess, Desmond’s nephew by marriage. He had been delivered to the Tower by Sir Thomas Rokeby, the sheriff of Yorkshire: Rokeby would become justiciar of Ireland in 1349, and would be in office when Desmond returned home.52 At the Tower, King David had been received by the constable. This was John Darcy, who had frequently been governor of Ireland during the 1320s and 1330s. Darcy was now a senior figure of distinction, recently steward and chamberlain of the king’s household. He had remarried in Ireland in 1329, taking as his wife Joan Burgh, the widowed countess of Kildare, making him briefly Desmond’s brother-in-law. Their daughter, Elizabeth Darcy, was shortly to marry the young second earl of Ormond. By the time Desmond reached London, a further notable prisoner had arrived: Charles of Blois, the duke of Brittany, nephew of the king of France. His captor was Sir Thomas Dagworth, a distinguished career soldier, who had recently married another cousin of the king, Eleanor Bohun, the widowed countess of Ormond.53 This accumulation of detail is designed to make two straightforward points. First of all, Desmond was no isolated, backwoods figure. He was not badly connected and was keen to be even better connected. He may have had Gaelic Irish ancestry: his great-great-grandfather, Thomas fitz Maurice (d. 1213) left a widow named ‘Sabina’, which usually stands for the Irish Sadhbh.54 What is not a matter of speculation is his descent, on the Berkeley side, from King John, through John’s illegitimate – but entirely respectable – son, Richard FitzRoy or Richard of Dover.55 When in 1292 Edward I had made an important grant to Desmond’s parents, Margaret Berkeley was referred to consanguinea regis, ‘the king’s kinswoman’.56 We may sometimes obsess too much about ethnic identities, at the expense of reflecting on what it meant to be ‘noble’: for instance, during 1343 Desmond, his future enemies Ralph Ufford and Countess Maud of Ulster (who was present at Avignon), and his ally Cormac Mac Carthaigh ‘prince of the Irish of the land of Desmond’ all sought and gained similar privileges from Pope Clement.57 Nevertheless, in view of the long tradition that would stress the Norman and Welsh heritage of the Geraldines, it may be worth pointing out that the Berkeleys were an English family, descended from Eadnoth, a landowner and staller (court official) under Edward the Confessor.58 Eadnoth’s grandson, Robert 52 See Robin Frame, ‘Thomas Rokeby, sheriff of Yorkshire, the custodian of David II’, in David Rollason and Michael Prestwich (eds), The battle of Neville’s Cross, 1346 (Stamford, 1998), pp 50–6. 53 See Michael Jones, ‘Sir Thomas Dagworth et la guerre civile en Bretagne au xiv siècle: quelques documents inédits’, Annales de Bretagne, 87 (1980), 621–39; Jones describes the marriage to Eleanor as, from Dagworth’s point of view, ‘une alliance stupéfiante’ (ibid., p. 626). 54 Orpen, Normans, iii, p. 116 n.; there is, of course, no certainty that Sabina/Sadhbh, whatever her identity, was the mother of Thomas fitz Maurice’s heir. 55 CP, ii, p. 127. 56 CDI 1285–92, no. 1051; Orpen, Normans, iii, p. 145. A copy of this charter survives at Berkeley (Berkeley muniments, i, p. 573). 57 Calendar of papal registers: papal petitions, i (London, 1896), pp 15, 19, 31, 69, 74. 58 Ann Williams, The English and the Norman Conquest (Woodbridge, 1995), pp 119–22.

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fitz Harding, a Bristol merchant and Gloucestershire landowner, may have helped to fund Strongbow’s 1170 expedition to Ireland.59 It is not unlikely that Desmond had spent time at Berkeley before 1346. His maternal grandfather, old Sir Thomas Berkeley, lived on until 1321.60 During Desmond’s childhood, his mother and her second husband, Reginald Russell, travelled between Ireland and England; in 1314 they acquired a ten-year lease of lands on the Berkeley manor of Arlingham, on the Severn some five miles north of Berkeley castle.61 We know that Maurice fitz Thomas and Katherine his wife were themselves out of Ireland at Easter 1325.62 And Berkeley castle may well have been a stoppingpoint on Maurice’s journey to or from Windsor when he received his earldom and the liberty of Kerry in 1329; by the time the formal confirmatory grants were sealed, the king and court had moved west to nearby Gloucester.63 The second point is to emphasize the sheer number of aristocratic links – some strong, some admittedly more marginal – that connected Ireland, not just to England but to the very heart of the Plantagenet polity (table 7.2). For example, a recent study of the parliamentary peerage in Edward III’s time picks out fourteen established figures and twelve ‘new men’ as especially important.64 Among the old brigade, seven had, or acquired, Irish interests;65 an eighth was the Cumbrian baron, Anthony Lord Lucy, justiciar of Ireland in 1331–2, Desmond’s first English nemesis.66 Preeminent among the ‘new men’ were the 59 Marie Therese Flanagan, Irish society, Anglo-Norman settlers, Angevin kingship: interactions in Ireland in the late twelfth century (Oxford, 1989), pp 76, 116–17. Though we have no direct evidence, it is possible that some of the Berkeleys who appear in southwest Ireland in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries were connected with the Gloucestershire family. A Thomas and a Henry Berkeley witnessed a deed of Thomas de Clare c.1280 (Black bk Limerick, p. 31; cf. pp 102, 104, 105–6). A Henry Berkeley held lands at Dunquin, co. Kerry in 1307 (CJRI 1305–7, pp 405, 425–6). A Master Thomas Berkeley was dean of Limerick c.1354 (Papal petitions, i, pp 268, 304), and around the same period, a Thomas Berkeley held lands of the earl of Kildare at Uregare, co. Limerick (Red bk Kildare, no. 182). 60 In 1298, Thomas had custody of Thomas fitz Thomas, Desmond’s short-lived elder brother; in 1301 he was granted the marriage of Thomas and the next heir, should Thomas die, but sold the marriage to Edmund Mortimer of Wigmore the following year (CDI 1293–1301, nos 533, 773; CDI 1302–7, no. 142). 61 CDI 1293–1301, no. 729; CDI 1302–7, no. 26; Berkeley muniments, i, pp 92–3. 62 NAI, RC 8/14, p. 441. 63 CChR 1327–41, p. 123; Foedera, II.ii, p. 770; Ormrod, Edward III, p. 612. These grants were rapidly transmitted for enrolment in the Irish courts and exchequer (NAI, RC 8/15, pp 403–7). 64 J.S. Bothwell, Edward III and the English peerage: royal patronage, social mobility and political control in fourteenth-century England (Woodbridge, 2004), pp 167–9. The distinction between ‘established’ and ‘new’ men is artificial, relating simply to acquisition of the status of a parliamentary peer: for example, Henry of Grosmont, an agnatic great-grandson of Henry III, was by ancestry and wealth very ‘old’ indeed. 65 Roger Mortimer (Trim and Laois); John Hastings and Richard Talbot (Wexford, as co-heirs of Valence); Bartholomew Burghersh and Henry Ferrers (Meath and Louth, as co-heirs of Verdun); Thomas Lucy (Limerick, as co-heir of Multon of Egremont); John Darcy the Younger (as heir to certain of his father’s Irish acquisitions). 66 Anthony Lucy, unlike his son Thomas, had no known Irish property. A reference to his lands ‘in Ireland’ (in Henry Summerson, ‘Lucy, Anthony, first Lord Lucy (c.1283–1343)’, ODNB) rests on the misidentification in CPR 1292–1301, p. 615, of ‘Molcorkyn’ as an Irish place-name: it denotes Mockerkin near Cockermouth in Cumbria (A.J.L. Winchester, Landscape and society in medieval Cumbria (Edinburgh, 1987), pp 26, 48).

Beatrice = Maurice, 2nd e. Desmond (d. 1415) (d. 1358)

(2)

Thomas Dagworth (d. 1350)

EDWARD III (1327–77)

EDWARD II (1307–27)

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Table 7.2: Irish earldom families and the kin and household of Edward III. Elizabeth Burgh = Lionel of Antwerp, (d. 1363) e. Ulster (d. 1368)

Elizabeth = Maurice, 4th e. Kildare (d. 1390) [as above]

James Butler, = Eleanor = 1st e. Ormond (1) (d. 1363) (d. 1338)

Joan [as left] Elizabeth = Humphrey Bohun e. Hereford (d. 1307) (d. 1322)

EDWARD I [as left] (1272–1307)

Elizabeth = James Butler, 2nd e. Ormond (d. 1390) (d. 1382)

Margaret = Ralph Stafford (d. 1348) (d. 1372)

Margaret = Hugh Audley (d. 1342) (d. 1347)

Maurice, 4th e. Kildare [as below] (d. 1390)

Elizabeth = Bartholomew Burghersh (d. 1360) (d. 1355)

Theobald Verdon = Maud Mortimer (d. 1316) (d. 1312)

Ralph Ufford (2) = Maud = (1) William Burgh, (d. 1346) (d. 1377) e. Ulster (d. 1333)

(2)

Joan [as right] = Gilbert Clare, (d.1307) e. Gloucester (d. 1295)

= Joan = ( 2) John Darcy Thomas, 2nd e. Kildare (1) (d. 1329) (d.1347) (d. 1328)

Richard Burgh, e. Ulster (d. 1326)

Elizabeth = Robert I, (d. 1329) K. of Scots (d. 1329)

EDWARD I [as right] (1272–1307)

John (1) = Elizabeth = (d. 1313) (d.1360)

Henry (d. 1345)

Edmund, e. Lancaster (d. 1296)

HENRY III (1216–72)

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six earls Edward famously created from his inner circle in 1337 on the eve of the French war. No fewer than four of these had property in Ireland. They included Ralph Ufford’s elder brother, Robert Ufford, earl of Suffolk.67 A fifth, Henry of Grosmont, earl of Derby, later earl and duke of Lancaster, was the brother of Countess Maud of Ulster, and for a time exercised considerable influence over appointments to the Dublin government.68 In view of Desmond’s associate membership – to put it no more strongly – of this super-elite, it is not surprising that his response to his predicament in 1345– 6 was to initiate (or eagerly seize upon) contacts with the royal court. As a fugitive outlaw, with immensely serious accusations laid against him, he was not in a position to redeem himself, as young Kildare was to do, by the timehonoured route of the magnate in trouble, that of military service overseas.69 This path was, however, followed by Sir Walter Mandeville, one of Desmond’s senior advisers, and in a most unusual way, which illustrates the place the crown occupied in the mentality even of second-rank lords in southern Ireland. Having escaped the noose and the machete in 1345, and anxious to restore his fortunes, Walter took the bold step of travelling incognito to join Edward III’s army at Calais. He was discovered and arrested, but eventually the tactic worked, and he earned his pardon.70 The completeness of his return to favour is apparent in 1352, when he sat alongside the rehabilitated earl of Desmond and Thomas Rokeby, the justiciar, on a judicial commission appointed by Edward III to investigate the alleged failure of the archbishop of Cashel to maintain a chantry at Dungarvan to offer prayers for the soul of the king’s late father.71 Mandeville’s foray on to the wider stage is in no way surprising. It is paralleled by the activities of three members of Desmond’s inner circle whom we have already encountered. John Coterel, Stephen Lawless and William Cogan were not untypical of the professionals employed by fourteenth-century nobles in Britain and beyond; nor do they appear very different from their equivalents who served Maurice fitz Thomas’s sixteenth-century successors.72 They might be described as A-list factotums: men of law, men of business, and also diplomats, who can be glimpsed negotiating their master’s business in England and beyond. It has been suggested that Coterel came from a Kilkenny legal family.73 He had property in several Irish counties, including Dublin, in his own name and that of Eleanor his wife; some of it was held in chief of the crown, for 67 Robert Ufford is discussed below; the others were Hugh Audley earl of Gloucester, William Bohun earl of Northampton and William Montagu earl of Salisbury, who through their marriages held portions of the lordships of Kilkenny, Youghal and Inchiquin, and Carlow respectively. 68 Philomena Connolly, ‘The proceedings against John de Burnham, treasurer of Ireland, 1343–9’, Colony & frontier, pp 58–9. 69 See Frame, ‘Historians, aristocrats and Plantagenet Ireland’, pp 139–41. 70 Frame, ‘Power and society’, in Ire. & Brit., p. 217. 71 TNA, C 47/10/22, no. 9; I am indebted to Professor Seymour Phillips for this reference. 72 On ‘the agencies and agents of lordship’, see, e.g., Davies, Lords and lordship, ch. 7; and for the Tudor parallels, McCormack, Desmond, pp 41–9. 73 MacCotter, ‘Lordship and colony’,

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he did homage to the king in England for it.74 Clyn remarks at the time of Coterel’s execution that he ‘was said to have imposed, upheld and invented many oppressive, foreign and intolerable laws’.75 This was probably not a coded reference to Gaelic custom. It is more plausible to connect it with the accusations made by juries about the abuses of English common law in Desmond’s lordships – imprisonment without indictment, torture, executions without due process, and so forth.76 It may even hint at the use of Roman law, which in the common-law world was associated with oppression. Sir John had spent several months in 1344 in England, apparently on two separate visits, conducting detailed negotiations with the royal court for a grant to Desmond of the custody of the Ormond lands and heir, and incidentally acquiring privileges for himself. He entered into an indenture with the king on Desmond’s behalf, and may even have delivered the staggering sum of 1800 marks (£1200) towards the Ormond custody, for Edward later admitted to a troubled conscience over receiving the money, when in the end Desmond did not have the marriage.77 Master William Cogan and Master Stephen Lawless appear to have been university men. They were implicated in Desmond’s fall. Cogan was arrested by Ufford and had his property seized.78 Both incurred (and paid, at least in part) fines to regain the king’s peace.79 Lawless is particularly interesting. He had transacted business at the papal curia at Avignon on Desmond’s behalf in 1343, when he was chancellor of the diocese of Limerick. The papal chancery describes him as ‘Master Lawless, learned in civil and canon law’. At Desmond’s petition, Lawless was allowed to add one more canonry to the six he already held in various Cashel dioceses; this was in St Patrick’s, Dublin, the inner sanctum of the English administration in Ireland, where he obtained the prebend of Howth.80 It was Stephen Lawless who was accused, by a jury empanelled by Walter Bermingham, justiciar of Ireland (himself a product of political reeducation in England after his father’s execution by Anthony Lucy in 1332), at Tralee in late August 1346 of having headed the embassy, allegedly in 1344, which petitioned the pope to cancel Laudabiliter and hand the keeping of Ireland to Desmond.81 I have argued elsewhere that the story as it stands seems 82, n. 140. 74 CCR 1343–6, p. 207; CPR 1345–8, p. 368. 75 AClyn, p. 235. 76 E.g., Sayles, ‘Legal proceedings’, pp 9, 16, 21–2, 43, 45. 77 CPR 1354–8, p. 412; see Frame, Eng. lordship, pp 271–2. 78 NAI, RC 8/26, pp 265–9. 79 TNA, E 101/241/14, 17, 20, show payments from Cogan, who seems to have owed 100s a year, coming in between Oct. 1346 and Aug. 1350. Lawless made a similar payment in Sept. 1350 (TNA, E 101/241/20). 80 CPL 1342–62, pp 59, 60; Papal petitions, i, p. 15; H.J. Lawlor, The fasti of St Patrick’s, Dublin (Dundalk, 1930), p. 114. 81 William Bermingham, who was accused of numerous misdeeds, including conspiracies with Desmond, was sentenced to death on the grounds (or pretext) that he had tried to escape from custody (CStM, ii, pp 376, 377; Philomena Connolly, ‘An attempted escape from Dublin castle: the trial of William and Walter de Bermingham, 1332’, IHS, 29:113 (1994), 100–8). Walter was taken to England, fought in Scotland, and married a Multon relative of Anthony Lucy; in 1344 he was retained by Ufford of the king’s council in Ireland, and served against Desmond during the summer and autumn of 1345 (Frame, Eng. lordship, pp 220–2; Frame, ‘Ralph Ufford’, pp 16, 45–6).

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implausible.82 The mission to Avignon is said to have occurred at exactly the same time as John Coterel was negotiating with the king over the Ormond custody. And the timing of the Tralee inquisition is fishy: it was taken at almost the exact moment when Desmond was preparing to set sail from Youghal, and when the Dublin ministers were sending messages to the king, desperately trying to prevent his pardon and restoration. It is also difficult to believe that even a ruler so adept at recycling former enemies into friends as Edward III would have instantly endorsed (as he did in 1354) the papal provision of Lawless to the bishopric of Limerick if he had seriously suspected him of forwarding a diplomatic campaign against his right to be lord of Ireland in the recent past.83 At Calais, back in 1347, Edward had received further accusations against Lawless. He was told that ‘Master Stephen Lawless of Ireland has been making various suggestions at the court of Rome with the intent of barring the king from his right lordship in Ireland’, and that Stephen had been indicted and outlawed in Ireland. The petition asked for his arrest.84 The identity of the petitioner may be thought to detract from, rather than add to, the credibility of these allegations. He was Sir John Carew, lord of Idrone in Carlow, a knight of Edward’s household, who had come to Ireland with Ufford in 1344.85 He was intimately associated with the Dublin administration, and must have been aware of the Tralee indictments; in early October 1346, he had been appointed a keeper of the peace in the cantred of Imokilly, the contested area of Youghal and Inchiquin.86 He was later to serve as sheriff of Cork and as escheator and (briefly) governor of Ireland.87 Edward’s response to the information laid by Carew was general to the point of evasiveness: he merely stated that the law should be executed for his profit in both England and Ireland. And in fact Lawless and Cogan were rapidly rehabilitated. Lawless visited England, and both men were integral to the process by which their master regained his lands.88 In 1348, the king granted custody to two other stalwarts of his regime, Ralph Lord Stafford and Richard Talbot, both 82 Frame, Eng. lordship, pp 267–70. 83 Desmond was granted custody of the temporalities of Limerick on 21 July 1353, six weeks after the death of Bishop Maurice Rochfort (CFR 1347–56, p. 368, where ‘Lismore’ is an error). The election of Lawless, which is said to have taken place in ignorance that the appointment had reverted to the papacy, was endorsed by the pope on 19 Feb. 1354; the provision was accepted by the king on 29 Apr. (Vetera monumenta Hibernorum et Scotorum historiam illustrantia, ed. Augustinus Theiner (Rome, 1864), p. 306; CPL 1342–62, p. 529; CPR 1354–8, p. 38). 84 Philomena Connolly (ed.), ‘Irish material in the class of Chancery Warrants series I (C. 81) in the Public Record Office, London’, AH, 36 (1995), 157. This document escaped my notice in 1982. 85 He received £40 for eighteen months’ service in Ufford’s retinue, and compensation for two horses lost on campaign in Ulster (TNA, C 260/57, no. 28). 86 Robin Frame, ‘Commissions of the peace in Ireland, 1302–1461’, AH, 30 (1992), 9. 87 For his career, see Robin Frame, ‘Carew, Sir John (d. 1362)’, ODNB; Ronan MacKay, ‘Carew (le Carreu, Carrue), John (d. 1362)’, DIB. John was the ancestor of Sir Peter Carew who made fanciful claims to lands in Cork and Kerry under Elizabeth I. 88 For further details and fuller references, see Frame, Eng. lordship, pp 290–1. It is also revealing that as early as 1347–8 parts of Desmond’s lands had been placed in the custody of his close associates, such as David Roche of Fermoy, his son-in-law, and Thomas

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of whom had Irish interests, in Kilkenny and Wexford respectively. Negotiations were probably already under way for the marriage of Desmond’s heir, the young Maurice fitz Maurice, to Stafford’s daughter, Beatrice, which took place in 1350. Stafford and Talbot were clearly working with Desmond, and they used Lawless and Cogan as their agents in Ireland. After the lands were conditionally restored to the earl late in 1349, Master Stephen and Master William were appointed by the king to judicial panels to investigate his complaints about damage to his property when it had been out of his control.89 Just as Desmond was at home at Berkeley, Windsor or London, his agents too moved readily on a wider stage, where they did business with men of a similar stamp who were in crown service or the service of English magnates. One knotty subject must have been the arrangements surrounding the marriage contract of Maurice fitz Maurice and Beatrice Stafford, for which Ralph Stafford undertook to pay £1000, while Desmond settled lands valued at £200 a year on the couple in jointure.90

DESMOND WITHIN THE ENGLISH POLITY

Tracing Desmond’s wider connections and uncovering some of the agents who did his business at home and abroad is one thing; coming close to the earl himself is quite another. But it may be possible to identify certain characteristics of the outlook and political responses of this many-faceted magnate. Historians have sometimes expressed surprise at the respectable conclusion to his career,91 perhaps forgetting that it also had a fairly conventional beginning: for there is little in his history before 1318 to hint at the extreme ups and downs that followed. In that year, Richard Clare, lord of Thomond, Maurice fitz Thomas’s ally, and probably also his brother-in-law, was killed at the battle of Dysert O’Dea.92 In 1321, Richard’s only son, Thomas Clare, whose custody Maurice had shared, died while still under age, creating protracted instability across the former Clare lordships in Munster, from Youghal to Bunratty, and incidentally leaving Maurice to inherit the longstanding Clare alliance with the Clann Bhriain Ruaidh branch of the Thomond dynasty, of which Brian Bán Ó Briain was the leading member. The Clare inheritance fell to be divided between Richard’s sisters, who had married into the English baronial families of Badlesmere and Clifford. These events coincided with the factional struggles that were to dominate the last phase of Edward II’s reign and Edward III’s minority, in which the Badlesmeres in particular were heavily involved. Maurice – partly no doubt out of acquisitiveness but partly to protect his own lands which were fitz Gilbert (NAI, RC 8/24, pp 222, 346, 664). 89 CPR 1350–4, pp 84, 161, 164. 90 McFarlane, Nobility, p. 85. 91 For instance, Lydon, Ireland in the later Middle Ages, p. 56, describes his appointment as justiciar in 1355 as ‘a fantastic end to a career of treason, rebellion and crime’. 92 For further details of these events, see Frame, Eng. lordship, pp 159, 172–3, 187–9.

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geographically intermingled with those of the Clares – strove to retain custody in the face of royal orders to relinquish it, and also to assert his own claims over parts of the inheritance. In particular, he wished to gain acknowledgement that Youghal and Inchiquin in Cork, which lay in the Badlesmere share, were held of him, rather than directly of the crown. He buttressed this claim by acquiring in the late 1320s a grant from Thomas Carew, the representative of Robert fitz Stephen, the original recipient in 1177 of the eastern portion of the kingdom of Cork. This complicated dispute has been exhaustively explored, by A.F. O’Brien and others, so perhaps the details may be taken for granted.93 Whatever the merits of Maurice’s case (and they were probably few), it was accepted by the Dublin government in 1338, then questioned in England in 1342, leading to the installation of royal custodians, who were in turn violently ejected by Desmond’s men. It is also worth noting that the earl seems to have had no parallel quarrel with the Cliffords, with whom, it has been suggested, he eventually came to amicable agreements over property in Limerick and Kerry.94 His unruly behaviour in this period may suggest, not the proverbial ‘over-mighty subject’ revelling in and profiting from disorder, but an ambitious and touchy magnate, floundering, at times violently, in an unstable regional milieu, set within a wider political world that had been deprived of its normal bearings. Whereas the assertions of those who testified against the earl are all too clear in the record, Desmond’s own voice remains mostly silent. Just occasionally, it is possible to detect his attitudes towards royal authority. In the spring of 1330, Brian Bán Ó Briain and his followers, who included men of English blood, were responsible for killing Sir James Beaufo, the sheriff of Limerick. Later in the year, Roger Outlaw, the deputy justiciar, led an expedition against Brian in north Tipperary. The campaign fell apart, in quarrels between the earls of Ulster and Desmond, both of whom were remanded in custody at Limerick. Desmond escaped.95 Later inquisitions, held by Anthony Lucy at Limerick in 1331 and 1332, accused Desmond of having issued an order to the people of the county not to obey Beaufo, and of having received and succoured Brian in full knowledge of his misdeeds.96 But the record of an earlier case, heard before Outlaw at Limerick in 1330, also survives.97 Unlike the jury presentments transmitted to England in 1351 and published by Sayles, the case proceeded far 93 A.F. O’Brien, ‘The territorial ambitions of Maurice fitz Thomas, first earl of Desmond, with particular reference to the barony and manor of Inchiquin, co. Cork’, PRIA, 82C (1982), 59–88; Frame, Eng. lordship, pp 169–70, 187–8, 229–30, 272–3; Paul MacCotter, ‘The subinfeudation and descent of the Fitzstephen/Carew moiety of Desmond (Part I)’, JCAHS, 101 (1996), 64–80. 94 MacCotter, ‘Lordship and colony’, pp 52–3; Waters, ‘Earls of Desmond’, p. 40. In the later fourteenth century, Sir Thomas Clifford pursued a career in Ireland which included serving as sheriff and a knight of the shire in co. Limerick (Robin Frame, ‘Lordship beyond the Pale: Munster in the later Middle Ages’, in Roger Stalley (ed.), Limerick and southwest Ireland: art and architecture (Leeds, 2011), p. 9). 95 CStM, ii, pp 373–4; AClyn, p. 199. 96 Sayles, ‘Legal proceedings’, pp 9, 14. 97 Cambridge University Library, Additional MS 3104, fo. 61b.

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enough for Desmond’s defence to be recorded, though no verdict was reached, allegedly because of a shortage of non-aligned jurors in county Limerick. No doubt with legal advice, the earl maintained that all his dealings with Brian had been for the sole purpose of maintaining the king’s peace. Three reasoned arguments were advanced in his support. First, that ‘he and every other lord of the land of Ireland was, for the enhancement of the peace (pro melioracione pacis), used to treat with and receive the felons of their own marches, according to the custom of the land of Ireland, without the permission of the king being sought or obtained’. Second, that while he had indeed made a truce with Brian, this was at the request of the bishop of Limerick and the community of the county. And, third, that at some point during the proceedings a royal writ authorizing him to negotiate and make truces had in fact reached him. There is a strong whiff of special pleading about these claims. But they were similar to those he had successfully advanced during the Bruce incursion into Munster in 1317, when he was accused of making illegal purveyances and treating with Irishmen outside the king’s peace.98 They were not necessarily more tendentious than the statements of juries empanelled by aggressive English governors of Ireland, who had arrested the earl or driven him into exile, and were eager to justify their actions. It is also possible to deduce some of the earl’s attitudes and priorities from the grants he sought and received from the crown, for these tend to play back the words and phrases he used in his petitions, which rarely survive. Such material is full of formulaic rhetoric; it is no more to be taken literally than the tropes of bardic poems. But just as much as the poetry, it deserves to be taken seriously.99 One petition that has been preserved belongs to 1351. By then Desmond had been restored to his lands and rights, and had sought the cancellation of the outlawries against him: Most excellent prince and most formidable lord, your liege Maurice son of Thomas, earl of Desmond, implores you thus. In times past, he has often been injured and arrested by your ministers in Ireland out of envy and malice … As a result, he and his lands have been destroyed, to the diminishment of your lordship and to his own great damage and the undermining of his status. And as a further consequence (as he has heard), you had little or no profit.

98 NAI, KB 1/2, m. 17. See Robin Frame, ‘The Bruces in Ireland, 1315–18’, in Frame, Ire. & Brit., p. 86; Robin Frame, ‘War and peace in the medieval lordship of Ireland’, in Frame, Ire. & Brit., pp 237–8. 99 For the value and pitfalls of this type of evidence, see Gwilym Dodd, Justice and grace: private petitioning and English parliament (Oxford, 2007). On Ireland, see Robin Frame, ‘Rediscovering medieval Ireland’, PRIA, 113C (2013), 200–2; and Brendan Smith, Crisis and survival in late medieval Ireland: the English of Louth and their neighbours, 1330–1450 (Oxford, 2013), pp 183–4.

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Robin Frame Since, because of all this, he still fears that he may in the future be impeached by such ministers, he begs your good and gracious lordship to receive him into your special protection, with his lands, franchises and other possessions, so that he will not be molested, arrested, or bodily injured by your ministers in that land, whoever they may be, for any accusation that may be made against him by those ministers. Rather, the case must be placed before you, my lord, in England; and the earl must be given adequate warning so that he can travel there and make his answer before you and your council.

There follows a plea about his debts. Everything was granted; the endorsement is per ipsum regem (‘by the king himself ’).100 Desmond was saying what it suited him to say, what indeed he had to say. By now, he and the king were performing a stately political saraband, with predetermined steps. Desmond portrayed himself in that much used (and abused) posture: the loyal subject of the crown who had been mistreated by the king’s evil advisers and agents. This was precisely the stance that had been taken in 1341 by an assembly of the English of Ireland, which successfully resisted draconian fiscal measures imposed from England, denounced the king’s ministers in Ireland, while protesting their undying loyalty to the king himself.101 Even so, amid the clichés, there is no mistaking two things: Desmond’s acute feeling of grievance, and his deep sense of insecurity. Both were genuine. Jury statements have led historians to depict him as an acquisitive bully, which of course he was. But this does not mean that his behaviour was indiscriminate or merely whimsical, as it tends to appear in Sayles’s article and some other works deriving from it, or that he was invariably the aggressor. Nor should we assume that Desmond was always able to restrain the ambitions of members of the competitive affinity for whose actions the authorities held him responsible, any more than John of Gaunt could control the gentry of his palatinate of Lancaster.102 Viewed from Desmond’s standpoint, royal agents in Ireland had indeed launched attacks on his interests. At the broadest and simplest level, he sought to obtain a position of dominance across much of southern Ireland, and – just as important – to have his status validated by the crown. Many of his actions suggest a particular focus on eastern Cork, south Tipperary and Waterford, a region which from Limerick and Kerry must have seemed a tempting Sudetenland with its valuable riverine settlements and wealthy seaports. In 1339, 100 Affairs Ire., p. 203. The contents of the petition are rehearsed in the ensuing letters patent, dated 16 Sept. 1351 (CPR 1350–4, p. 134). They were re-enrolled in England, presumably at Desmond’s request, at the time of his appointment as justiciar in May 1355 (Foedera, III.i, p. 300). 101 Stat. John–Hen. V, pp 342–5; for the 1341 episode and its significance, see Robin Frame, ‘English policies and Anglo-Irish attitudes in the crisis of 1341–42’, in Frame, Ire. & Brit., ch. 7, esp. pp 127–9. 102 Simon Walker, ‘Lordship and lawlessness in the palatinate of Lancaster, 1370–1400’, in Political culture in later medieval England (Manchester, 2006), ch. 1.

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he bought Clonmel, Kilsheelan and Kilfeakle from the absentee Grandison family, a transaction that was approved both by Dublin and by the king himself, and (unusually) recorded by Clyn, who reports that the purchase price was 1100 marks (£733 6s. 8d.).103 From the 1350s, when the second earl of Ormond was of age, the acquisition led to a long-running wrangle over the jurisdictional status of these properties: were they held in chief of the crown, or were they within the ambit of the Butler liberty of Tipperary?104 There were two other projects, pointing in the same direction. The first was the longstanding and highly contentious claim to overlordship of Youghal and Inchiquin. The second we have already glimpsed in the travels of Sir John Coterel: to retain custody of the Butler lands and to buy the marriage of the Ormond heir.105 There followed a bidding war with the countess of Ormond and Thomas Dagworth, which during 1344 Desmond believed he had won. In 1331, Anthony Lucy had held an inquisition that overturned the longstanding and hitherto unchallenged Carew title to Cork, thus undermining Desmond’s recently acquired status as overlord of Youghal and Inchiquin. There is, perhaps, still something to be said for Orpen’s view that Lucy’s action amounted to ‘a political blunder as well as a monstrous injustice, and was certainly not the way to make the earl of Desmond a loyal subject of the crown’.106 Ufford’s administration attacked the earl’s interests even more brutally. Within weeks of his arrival, in July 1344, the justiciar moved south and again threw Desmond’s people out of Youghal and Inchiquin. Then in October, he transferred the Ormond custody to Countess Eleanor and Thomas Dagworth. This was just weeks after Desmond’s messengers had clinched his expensive deal with the king in England.107 There were other straws in the wind. Robert Ufford, earl of Suffolk was actively pursuing a claim to a share of the valuable manor of Kilmeadan in Waterford, which had been granted to the Uffords’ grandfather, the justiciar Robert Ufford (d. 1281), by the future Edward I during the minority of Thomas fitz Maurice, Desmond’s father.108 Desmond did not have to be paranoid to view the new Dublin regime as partisan and hostile. 103 CCR 1339–41, p. 180; AClyn, p. 227. 104 CCR 1349–54, p. 319; CCR 1354–60, pp 7–8; see Waters, ‘Earls of Desmond’, pp 170–1; also Peter Crooks, ‘“Hobbes”, “dogs” and politics in the Ireland of Lionel of Antwerp, c.1361–6’, Haskins Society Journal, 16 (2005), 140–1. 105 Desmond had custody of the lands from 1338 or 1339, and paid £50 into the Dublin exchequer on 7 April 1342 (47th rep. DKPRI, pp 69–70; 53rd rep. DKPRI, pp 42–3; TNA, E 101/241/7). 106 Orpen, Normans, iv, p. 237. The ‘monstrous injustice’ presumably related to the denial of the Carew title to Cork; ceding the title to Desmond, without royal licence, was quite another matter. 107 The key documents are CFR 1337–47, pp 404–5 (grant on 1 Sept. 1344 of the custody and marriage to Desmond and his wife jointly, for 2,300 marks); and CIRCLE, Close roll 18 Edw. III, no. 189; RCH, p. 48, no. 152 (grant under the Irish seal on 18 Oct. 1344 of custody to the countess of Ormond and Thomas Dagworth). 108 CDI 1252–84, p. 426; Inquisitions & extents, no. 40, p. 22; CDI 1302–7, no. 95. Earlier parliamentary petitions from Robert on the matter are in PROME, iii, pp 391, 459; Rot. parl., ii, p. 14. William Burton, one of the justiciar’s leading knights, who was to be entrusted with the arrest of the earl of Kildare, and Godfrey Folejambe, a justice of the justiciar’s bench, were among

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It was this assault on his interests that pushed Desmond into open resistance. A central feature of his rising was the wasting of the Ormond lands in north Tipperary. During July and August 1345, he and his supporters were in the field against the justiciar’s forces, though it is not clear that Desmond himself directly confronted the royal army.109 This marked a crossing of the Rubicon. Setting aside the conspiracy charges, before 1345 the evidence juries presented against him had mostly related to, sometimes violent, pursuit of particular claims and vendettas, receiving and treating with those classed as Irish enemies of the crown, and disobedience to the commands of royal ministers. Many of the incidents were attributed to his clients and associates, with Desmond’s role limited to abetting or receiving the malefactors. Charges such as these occupied a borderland – at this period, ill-defined – between felony and trespass, on the one hand, and treason and revolt on the other. In 1345, his behaviour was clearly treasonable, even under the relatively narrow definition that was to be adopted in the 1352 Statute of Treasons. Juries confirmed the earl’s personal presence at various outrages; and the clerks who recorded the presentments were careful to employ phrases associated with treason, for instance accusing the earl and his men of attacks ‘with banners displayed (vexillis displicatis)’, or of rising ‘against the king’s banner’.110 The events of 1345–6 illustrate Desmond’s vulnerability. The crown might not administer southern Ireland in daily or even monthly detail, but its power to intervene was such that it was impossible to cling to what were officially stigmatized as usurpations for any length of time. The underlying causes of the earl’s political insecurity are scarcely mysterious. Three interrelated problems stand out. One was the character of his lordship, which was neither unitary nor self-contained. Geographically, it was composed of dispersed clusters of power distributed across the southern counties, from Limerick and north Kerry to Waterford.111 Alongside this lay an elaborate tenurial (or ‘feudal’) geography, which meant that Desmond held some things directly of the king and others of intermediate lords, just as other lords might hold partly of him and partly of the the earl’s attorneys in Ireland (CPR 1343–5, p. 308; ibid., 1345–8, p. 91; Frame, ‘Ralph Ufford’, pp 11, 30–1). 109 For the chronology, see Frame, ‘Ralph Ufford’, pp 29–30. 110 Sayles, ‘Legal proceedings’, pp 21, 24, 26–7, 39. The words attributed to a jury at Buttevant were particularly forceful: Desmond and his followers had risen ‘cum vexillis displicatis more guerrino ad terram domini regis super ipsum dominum regem et fidelem populum suum hostiliter et contra eorum ligeanciam conquerendam’ (ibid., p. 39). Likewise, a Clonmel jury stated that leading associates of the earl ‘felonice et contra pacem domini regis vi armata insurrexerunt modo guerrino contra Radulphum de Ufford justiciarium Hibernie et contra vexillum ipsius domini regis coram predicto justiciario existens’ (ibid., p. 28). For a wide-ranging recent discussion, see Claire Valente, The theory and practice of revolt in medieval England (Aldershot, 2003), ch. 2, esp. pp 32–44; on the 1352 statute, J.G. Bellamy, The law of treason in England in the later Middle Ages (Cambridge, 1970), ch. 4; and on the significance of banners, M.H. Keen, The laws of war in the late Middle Ages (London, 1965), pp 105–9. 111 Waters, ‘Earls of Desmond’, ch. 3, provides a detailed analysis of the estates; for a broad overview, see McCormack, Desmond, ch. 1.

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crown, or of third parties. The royal right of prerogative wardship – that is, to have custody of all the lands of a minor if any part of them was held in chief of the crown – was not just theoretical: it was cited explicitly when Youghal and Inchiquin were seized back from Desmond in 1342.112 Nor was his formal power solely, or perhaps even primarily, a matter of landed estates and their profits. It was a bundle of rights, including jurisdictions (from the palatine liberty of Kerry downwards) and office-holding (Desmond was for a time sheriff of Waterford and Cork, and later hereditary chief serjeant of both counties). Moreover, the components of his authority were not static. It was essential to bulk them up through grants of wardships and custodies when the estates of others were in the king’s hand, through minorities or forfeiture. In short, almost all that he had flowed from the crown; its protection and expansion required constant negotiation and renegotiation. That point is neatly illustrated by a schedule of Desmond’s debts, drawn up in the Irish exchequer shortly after his death.113 The total came to £3,538. The major components may be divided into broad categories (table 7.3), each of which reveals an aspect of the earl’s relationship with royal authority. Arrears of accounts for offices Liberty of Kerry (reserved crown pleas)

£ 510

Sheriffdom of Cork

£ 152

Sheriffdom of Waterford

£ 429

Arrears of accounts for custodies Butler lands

£ 562

Father’s lands in Kerry (before 1314)

£ 133

Youghal and Inchiquin

£ 64

Bishopric of Kerry temporalities

£ 32

Amercements For not producing (in court) those he pledged For not attending parliament Arrears of scutage, c.1270-1345 Unspecified debts

£ 1,000 £ 100 £ 45 £ 448

Table 7.3: Desmond’s debts at his death, 1356.

Debts were not in themselves a problem; every great lord had them, and they often ran on for generations. In normal circumstances there was no expectation that they would be abruptly collected. They are almost better seen as a part of 112 CCR 1341–3, pp 636–7. 113 NAI, RC 8/27, pp 269–75; the calendaring of this entry (from Memoranda roll of the Irish exchequer, 31–2 Edw. III) is imperfect, perhaps because of damage to the original roll, but the main items are clear.

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the crown’s political capital: permission to pay by light instalments, or the cancellation of parts of an uncollectable debt in return for services rendered, were an inexpensive form of royal patronage. Desmond himself had succeeded in getting enormous arrears of the rent of Decies from his father’s time and his own written off in the mid-1330s.114 But they left the debtor exposed should the authorities wish to move against him for other reasons. Secondly, even setting aside the dubious claim to the Carew portion of Cork, there were weaknesses in Desmond’s titles to what he held that made him even more dependent on royal goodwill. His father had struggled for a decade after coming of age in 1282 to get confirmation of the 1259 grant of Desmond and Decies. This had been issued by the future Edward I when he held Ireland under the supervision of Henry III. Edward’s power to make such an alienation of crown property was questionable. Though he had eventually confirmed it as king in 1292, nothing was necessarily forever.115 But above all, there were the unsavoury circumstances in which Desmond had been granted his earldom, the palatinate of Kerry and the sheriffdoms in 1329. All the actions of the minority government, in England and Ireland, were voided by Edward III after he overthrew Roger Mortimer in October 1330: in the phraseology of the time, Roger had illegally ‘accroached to himself royal power and the government of the kingdom’.116 In the light of this, despite his arrest and imprisonment in 1331, Desmond was fairly gently treated. His status as an earl was not challenged; he recovered the liberty of Kerry as early as 1334; and though he did lose the hereditary sheriffdoms of Waterford and Cork, he retained the chief serjeanties of those counties. The Mortimer association highlights a third source of Desmond’s insecurity. Much of his career was played out against a background of acute political instability. He was born at the zenith of Edward I’s rule and died just as that of Edward III was reaching its peak. In between, however, lay protracted crises of the Plantagenet state. These affected Ireland profoundly. The most obvious impact may be that of the Bruce invasion and the Anglo-Scottish wars more generally. Paradoxically, these were an opportunity for Maurice fitz Thomas to prove his loyalty, as he did in Ireland in 1316–17, and in Scotland, where he served with a huge retinue of 651, including four bannerets and 176 men-atarms, in 1335.117 A far greater problem was the factional whirligig of the last 114 44th rep. DKPRI, pp 23–6. 115 For the complexity and protracted contentiousness of this matter, see Orpen, Normans, iii, pp 130–1, 134, 136–7, 140, 145; Robin Frame, ‘King Henry III and Ireland: the shaping of a peripheral lordship’, in Frame, Ire. & Brit., p. 38; Paul Brand, ‘The early history of the legal profession of the lordship of Ireland, 1250–1350’, in Brand, The making of the common law (London, 1992), p. 52. 116 PROME, iv, p. 103. 117 Frame, ‘Bruces in Ireland’, in Frame, Ire. & Brit., pp 94, 95–6; Ranald Nicholson, ‘An Irish expedition to Scotland in 1335’, IHS, 13:51 (1963), 197–211 (table at 211). Military summonses for the Brittany campaign of 1342 (mostly ineffective) required 40 men-at-arms and 60 hobelars from Desmond, a force almost double that asked of the earl of Kildare (Foedera, II.ii, p. 1203).

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phase of Edward II’s reign, and its aftermath.118 This destabilized Ireland because so many of those involved had Irish interests. The protagonists ranged from the two principals, Hugh Despenser (who had a share of Kilkenny and wanted more) and Roger Mortimer (lord of Trim and Laois and a former governor of Ireland); to the Badlesmeres, who got caught on the wrong side in 1322 but came back into favour in 1327; down to smaller fry such as John Mautravers, the alleged murderer of Edward II, whose family held, and often visited, Rathkeale in Limerick. Desmond’s career was not just incidentally affected by these events; it was fundamentally shaped by them. Mortimer’s largess, born of the need to win friends in Ireland, had of course brought Desmond his earldom and palatinate in 1329. To that (very considerable) extent he can be said to have profited from the political turmoil of the 1320s. But for much of that decade he had been confronted with the lack of a stable political centre with which to deal. After 1330, he faced the consequences of having benefited from a disreputable regime. It was the denial, or withdrawal, of recognition and favour that pushed him into opposition. Whether or not it led him seriously to contemplate a future where he himself was sovereign in Ireland is likely to remain a matter for dispute. If it did, this is likely to have been a distinctly desperate second-best. The centrality of the wider political environment to an understanding of the vicissitudes of Desmond’s career is also evident during his final years, when his own interests and public affairs again came together, but in a much more benign way. On Desmond’s side, there was a fundamental change that has not been much emphasized. Only in middle age, after his marriage to Aveline, daughter of Nicholas fitz Maurice of Kerry, did he acquire sons, or at least legitimate, lasting sons.119 There were no doubt potential female and collateral heirs to many of his lands: for instance, his daughter Amy, who married David Roche, lord of Fermoy, appears to have been a child of his first marriage, to Katherine Burgh (d. 1331).120 But only with the birth of Maurice fitz Maurice in 1336 was there an heir to the earldom and to the liberty of Kerry, for those grants – in what was becoming the standard pattern in England and Ireland – were restricted to Desmond and the heirs male of his body.121 By the 1340s, there is evidence of new dynastic considerations in his behaviour. If a land settlement enrolled in the Irish exchequer in 1557 is not an outright forgery but a retouched version of a fourteenth-century original, he may, after the fashion of the time, have entailed his lordships upon his sons in orderly sequence.122 In 1344, a petition, submitted 118 Frame, Eng. lordship, ch. 5; for the wider background, see Seymour Phillips, Edward II (New Haven and London, 2010), chs 8–11. 119 For the marriage, see K.W Nicholls, ‘The Fitzmaurices of Kerry’, JKAHS, 3 (1970), 33. 120 For Amy and David Roche, see Pipe roll of Cloyne, p. 183. A bardic poem emphasizing Amy’s kinship to two earls, of Desmond and Ulster, confirms her legitimacy (ABM, pp 461–2, verses 14–15, 36–7; item §3 in Simms, appendix, below, p. 275). I am indebted to Dr Katharine Simms for this reference. 121 CChR 1327–41, p. 123; CP, iv, p. 237 n. There is a full analysis of the terms on which the four Irish earldoms of 1316–29 (Kildare, Louth, Ormond and Desmond) were held in CP, x, app. C, pp 35–9. 122 The text of

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to the pope in the name of the archbishop of Cashel and six of his suffragans, requested a dispensation for his daughter Joan to marry the young earl of Kildare, who had recently come of age.123 The effort and cash he put in to get the marriage of James Butler, the Ormond heir, was intended to lead to another favourable match. Desmond was now by far the most senior among the small group of major magnates in Ireland; around 1340, when Kildare and Ormond were still under age, he was the only active earl. Did he aspire to complement his landed and jurisdictional power with a patriarchal authority reminiscent of that once possessed by his father-in-law, the Red Earl of Ulster? In 1326 Earl Richard’s last appearance in Dublin and his death-bed at Athassel, co. Tipperary, the site of the family mausoleum, had been splendid social occasions, attended by the great, the good and the avaricious.124 The other feature involves the Plantagenet realm itself. It was in some ways a developed fiscal and administrative state, but at the same time a dynastic empire – a characteristic it shared with many European regimes from the time of Charlemagne to 1789, or even 1918. Mark Ormrod has argued persuasively that Edward III in his middle years used members of his own growing family in an organized and conscious way to help spread his influence and bind his expanding dominions together. An early sign of this strategy was the marriage in 1342 of Lionel, his second surviving son, still an infant, to Elizabeth Burgh, the heiress of Ulster and Connacht and of extensive lands in England and Wales.125 All this was an extension of the conventional wisdom that aristocratic marriages were a means of strengthening the links between regions and provinces. Desmond’s marriage strategies, of course, collapsed along with everything else in the disaster of 1345. But, while the cards fell very differently from what he seems to have planned in the early 1340s, they did so in a way that offered compensating advantages. Between 1347 and 1350 each of the three southern Irish earldom families was drawn into an English marriage, and each head, or his heir, served Edward III in France or Scotland (or both). In addition to the two marriages already mentioned – James Butler to Elizabeth, daughter of John Darcy and the widowed countess of Kildare, and Maurice of Desmond to Beatrice Stafford – the earl of Kildare, who had been destined for Desmond’s daughter, instead married Elizabeth, daughter of Sir Bartholomew Burghersh (see table 7.2, above). The father of each bride had some Irish lands. But it is more significant that all three were from Edward III’s inmost circle. Each, indeed, had served as this entail (CP, iv, app. J, pp 772–3), dated Jan. 1343 (or possibly Jan. 1345), is unacceptable as it stands: it places Gerald, the eventual third earl (whose descendants held the earldom after 1358) ahead of his older brothers, relegating Maurice, the heir, to fourth place. However, Desmond’s style matches that in a rare surviving deed of the first earl (NAI, RC 8/26, pp 324– 5), and the witness-list is plausible. See Waters, ‘Earls of Desmond’, pp 81–2. 123 CPL 1342– 62, pp 164–5; Papal petitions, i, p. 79. 124 CStM, ii, p. 364; AClyn, p. 185; Affairs Ire., p. 127. 125 W.M. Ormrod, ‘Edward III and his family’, Journal of British Studies, 26:4 (1987), 398–422. See also Frame, ‘Historians, aristocrats and Plantagenet Ireland’, pp 144–7.

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steward and/or chamberlain of the king’s household. Darcy and Stafford had together tried to bar the doors of the English parliament against the irate Archbishop Stratford of Canterbury, the king’s fallen chief minister, in 1341.126 Burghersh more than once acted as Edward’s mouthpiece, announcing to parliament good news from the front in France; it was he, too, who in 1346 conveyed the famous scare-story of a French plan to invade and ‘destroy and ruin the whole English nation and language’.127 Desmond, in short, had been drawn towards the very centre of what was at once a web of kinship and friendship, and a polity.

* * * When Maurice of Desmond, the old earl’s eldest son, married Beatrice Stafford in 1350, Ralph Stafford gave the young couple a ten-year lease of his third of the lordship of Kilkenny. He also took Maurice with him on a continental campaign in 1355,128 an episode mentioned in a Gaelic poem that praises the earl through the standard device of lamenting his absence from Ireland.129 (Whether Maurice himself regretted it, or preferred the bright lights, we have no way of knowing.) Had he lived, and had his marriage proved fertile, Desmond history might look very different. An interest in the lordship of Kilkenny would have complemented perfectly the first earl’s territorial ambitions. The second earl, moreover, thanks to his father’s resumption of harmonious relations with the king and his circle, had a politically valuable record of war service, and a stronger court connection than most of his ancestors. This is immediately visible in Edward III’s receptiveness to his petitions in the months after his father’s death.130 But it was not to be. Early in 1358, Earl Maurice – like Milton’s Young Lycidas and like his own distant kinsman, Maurice fitz Gerald of Offaly, in 1268 – went to a watery grave in the seas between Britain and Ireland. He was only twenty-one. Beatrice outlived him by nearly sixty years. She had two further husbands, English ones, and was present at the coronation of Henry IV in 1399. When she died in 1415, her status as countess of Desmond almost forgotten, she was the relict of a brief phase when ‘Desmond’ might almost have become ‘Ormond’. As it was, the tensions created by Desmond Geraldine encroachment on the Butler sphere were to sour the politics of the lordship of Ireland into the 1360s, and far beyond.131 The first earl’s belated accommodation with Edward III may, 126 Ormrod, Edward III, p. 237. 127 PROME, iv, p. 390; Ormrod, Edward III, pp 256, 283, 295, 330, 338. 128 Both received payments for going overseas in the king’s service in October 1355 (TNA, E 403/378, mm 1, 3). 129 Bergin, Irish bardic poetry, no. 17 (item §2 in Simms, appendix, below, p. 275). 130 CCR 1354–60, pp 248, 251, 378; CPR 1354–8, pp 562, 635; CFR 1356–68, p. 22. 131 See Crooks, ‘“Hobbes”’, 134–44; and Peter Crooks, ‘The “calculus of faction” and Richard II’s duchy of Ireland, c.1382–9’, in N. Saul (ed.), Fourteenth Century England V (Woodbridge, 2008), pp 94–115.

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nevertheless, have been critical for the prospects of his house. Together with the king’s recent experience of the difficulties involved in trying to control and exploit the Desmond lordships directly, it almost certainly shaped Edward’s decision in 1358–9 to smooth the passage of the inheritance to Gerald, the future third earl, rather than exercising his right to retain custody during the lifetime of Nicholas, the handicapped middle brother. It serves as a reminder that successful exercise of power required not just local resources and alliances, but also the approval of a sovereign lord whose links with southern Ireland were manifold and closely textured.

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The ascent and descent of Desmond under Lancaster and York

P E T E r C rO O K S

Great was the credit of the Geraldines ever when the howse of York prospered, and likewise the Butlers thryved under the bloude of Lancastre.1 Edmund Campion Never was a truism so untrue as Campion’s in 1468, the year Thomas, the seventh or ‘great’ earl of Desmond, was beheaded for treason at Drogheda. Only a few years before, Desmond was in the ascendant. On 3–4 March 1461 the usurper Edward of York, son of richard duke of York, was elected and inaugurated as King Edward IV of England. The following year in Ireland a pitched battle took place at Piltown, co. Kilkenny, near the Waterford–Tipperary border where the landed interests of the extended Butler family grated against those of the Munster Geraldines. Piltown was a proxy battle – though we might well ask whether the Butlers and the Geraldines were proxies for Lancaster and York, or whether the Wars of the roses provided the excuse for the Geraldines to best the Butlers in battle.2 His defeat of the Butlers propelled Thomas of Desmond to the summit of the English establishment in Ireland. In 1463, Edward IV appointed Desmond as deputy lieutenant (chief governor) of Ireland. On the face of it, this was an extraordinary come-back for the earls of Desmond. Not since 1368 had the head of the Munster Geraldines held office as chief governor of Ireland. But, almost as swiftly, Desmond was undone. Within a space of ten days in February 1468 he was arrested, attainted and executed at the order of Edward IV’s dogged servitor and governor of Ireland, Sir John Tiptoft, earl of Worcester – ‘that fierce butcher and horrid beheader of men’ (trux carnifex et hominum decollator horridus), as he was to become known in England.3 Even before the axe came down on Desmond’s neck, the manner of his death was becoming the subject of mythification. The work of the spin-doctors is 1 Edmund Campion, Two bokes of the histories of Ireland […], ed. A.F. Vossen (Assen, 1963), p. 111. A similar sentiment is expressed in BL, Lansd. MS 159, f. 3 (1526): ‘The earls of Kildare and Desmond come of one stock, and have always held with the house of York … The Butlers have always been loyal to the House of Lancaster, for which the earl of Ormond was attainted in the time of Edward IV’ (L&P Hen. VIII, iv: 1524–1530, no. 2405, pp 1075–6). 2 George Butler, ‘The battle of Piltown, 1462’, Ir. Sword, 6 (1963–4), 196–212; McCormack, Desmond, pp 58–61. 3 Three fifteenth century chronicles with historical memoranda by John

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already apparent in the official record of his attainder on the Irish statute roll (§5), in which Desmond stood accused on an ill-defined charge of contriving and committing heinous crimes and treasons by forging alliances with the Irish and providing them with arms and victuals in war.4 This was an opportunistic and selective enforcement of the Statute of Kilkenny (1366). Hardly a member of the Anglo-Irish nobility could have claimed innocence had that Statute ever been rigidly enforced. Yet it was sufficient unto the purposes of the lord deputy and Desmond lost his head. The most scandalizing of the myths to arise from the execution of Desmond concerns Edward IV’s supposedly wicked and vengeful consort, Elizabeth Wydeville (d. 1492). The tale survives in at least three sixteenth-century versions, though only two have previously been discussed in detail.5 The earliest, dating from c.1541, is contained in the preamble to a petition presented on behalf of a later earl of Desmond to Henry VIII.6 In it we are told that Thomas of Desmond had grown up in the king’s household and was ‘in singular favour with his Highness, so far forth that his grace took much pleasure and delight in his talk’. While hunting, the king requested Desmond to inform him frankly of the mood of the court. Desmond demurred but, pressed by the king, admitted: ‘I find no fault in any manner of thing, saving only that your Grace hath too much abased your princely estate in marrying a lady of so mean a house and parentile; which though it be perchance agreeable to your lusts, yet not so much to the security of your realm and subjects.’7 The queen, ‘conceiving upon those words a grudge in her heart against the said Earl’, saw to it that letters were written under the king’s privy seal instructing the chief governor of Ireland to summon Desmond and accuse him falsely of offences punishable by death. The tale next appears – though oddly its occurrence here appears to have been overlooked – in the second ‘boke’ of the manuscript Histories of Ireland, composed by Campion in ten weeks towards the end of his Irish sojourn in 1570–1. In Campion’s version, Desmond spoke ‘certayne disdainefull wordes againste the late mariage’ of Edward IV to lady Elizabeth. In revenge the queen caused Desmond’s ‘trade of life after the Irishe manner, contrary to sondry olde statutes enacted in that behalfe’ to be used against him as a pretext for his arrest and execution.8 Campion is the crucial link in the transmission of the story to the Book of Howth. While in Ireland, Campion met Sir Christopher St Lawrence (d. 1589), which may explain how the tale found its way (though not with any attribution to Campion) into St Lawrence’s work of historical compilation.9 A good tale improves in the telling and, in the Book of Stowe, ed. James Gairdner (London, 1880), p. 183. 4 The numerals in parentheses refer to the documents printed in the appendix to this chapter. 5 Thereafter it is elaborated in numerous texts including Edmund Spenser’s View of the present state of Ireland (ed. James Ware, in Ancient Irish histories, 2 vols (Dublin, 1809), i, p. 109); and Thomas russell’s ‘relation of the FitzGeralds of Ireland’ (Unpublished Geraldine documents, pt 1, pp 365–7). 6 Cal. Carew MSS, 1575–88, pp cv–cviii. 7 Ibid., pp cv–cvi. 8 Campion, Two bokes, ed. Vossen, p. 111. 9 For St Lawrence’s use of Campion’s Histories in his own compilation, see the

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Howth, Desmond openly defies the queen, crying: ‘better it were for the King to follow his friends’ counsel … rather than to marry a traitor’s wife’. The queen thus sought to ‘bring the Earl of Desmond to confusion’. Having spent the night with the king, she rose from their bed before daybreak, stole his privy seal and so transmitted to Ireland the order for Desmond’s execution.10 The tale of the meddling and murderous Elizabeth Wydeville was clearly a living tradition by the second quarter of the sixteenth century. But when did that tradition come to life? Was it already circulating in Ireland in the closing decades of the fifteenth century? And what, if anything, were its factual underpinnings? To the last of these questions, we have a range of ready-made answers. In 1915, Goddard Orpen argued that to accept the tale would be pure folly. Sixty years later, Art Cosgrove argued that to reject it entirely would be dangerous. But then, as recently as 2005, just when belief in the tale seemed to have withered away, John Ashdown-Hill and Ann Carson gave its historicity a ringing endorsement.11 The clincher in their argument is that Desmond was in England in the summer of 1464. Edward IV married Elizabeth Wydeville in the early summer at Grafton (Northants) in the house of Elizabeth’s father, richard (d. 1469), first earl rivers. The date for the ceremony of May Day (1 May 1464), which is given in early sources, may be a romantic embellishment, but is not too far wrong. These coincidences appear to give the story some circumstantial credibility. In reality the argument is specious because the marriage was kept a secret throughout the summer. The king only revealed to his horrified counsellors that he was already married when it became necessary to stall plans underway for his betrothal to Bona of Savoy, sister of the queen of France. This was at the Great Council at reading on 14 September 1464.12 The reading council formally received Edward’s bride; but nobody in England – neither the king’s counsellors nor the wider public – considered his choice anything but unsuitable and grossly impolitic. Given the levels of public criticism, it strains credibility that the queen would have singled out the earl of Desmond for special treatment; but, in any analysis in Valerie McGowan-Doyle, The book of Howth: the Elizabethan Re-Conquest of Ireland and the Old English (Cork, 2011), esp. p. 71. 10 Cal. Carew MSS, v, pp 186–7. 11 Goddard Henry Orpen, ‘review of Henry F. Berry (ed.), Statute rolls of the parliament of Ireland, 1–12 Edward IV (Dublin, 1914)’, EHR, 30:118 (Apr., 1915), 341–3; Art Cosgrove, ‘The execution of the earl of Desmond, 1468’, JKAHS, 8 (1975), 11–27; John Ashdown-Hill and Annette Carson, ‘The execution of the earl of Desmond’, The Ricardian, 15 (2005), 1–15. The latter article is stimulating in the ideas it presents, but the authors seem to have written without the benefit of Cosgrove’s judicious appraisal of some of the same evidence or knowledge of the ‘Carew fragment’ (Bodl., University College Collection MS 103, f. 53r–v), a fragmentary annalistic compilation used by Cosgrove and subsequently published in Brian Ó Cuív, ‘A fragment of Irish annals’, Celtica, 14 (1981), 83–104. Both Cosgrove and Ó Cuív had the benefit of a transcript and translation of the Carew fragment made by Professor E.G. Quin. The tale receives a further tentative endorsement in Gerald O’Carroll, The earls of Desmond: the rise and fall of a Munster lordship (Limerick, 2013), p. 33 n. 16. 12 Charles ross, Edward IV (New Haven and London, 1974), p. 92; and for reactions to the marriage, see Hannes Kleineke, Edward IV (London and New York, 2009), pp 81–3.

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case, Desmond was almost certainly unavailable to pay her the insult. By midSeptember the earl was already returning to Ireland, bearing the tokens of Edward IV’s high favour and ready to resume the office as chief governor. Even if the queen’s role in plotting the demise of Desmond is an unalloyed myth, the tale is in one respect suggestive. The narrative being retailed at court in the time of Henry VIII turns on the idea that Thomas of Desmond was an intimate of Edward IV. This detail is significant. As we shall see, there is in fact circumstantial evidence that Thomas of Desmond spent some time in England as a child, though in the household of the countess of Ormond rather than the future king. But the reality of a Desmond connection with the English political scene stands in contrast to the prevailing view that, for good or ill, the fifteenth century was for the earldom of Desmond a period of withdrawal and acculturation.13 Orpen set the tone just over a century ago when he scotched the tale of the wicked queen. ‘We need not travel outside of Ireland to discover what led to the earl’s ruin’, he wrote: ‘A century had elapsed since a Desmond had been chief governor, and meantime the earls of Desmond had waxed Irish.’14 Another school of thought accepted the premise of growing regional autarky but invested the development with a positive significance. As Edmund Curtis put it in an influential interpretation: ‘Thus did another province go over to the NormanIrish order, and Ireland entered on a new age.’15 In the pages that follow, I seek to deepen our understanding of what happened in 1468 by worrying at some of the knottier tangles of evidence from the previous half-century. The political and social developments in the earldom, especially during the second quarter of the fifteenth century, were of the first importance to the story of the growing political and martial power of the Geraldines more generally. Under the sixth earl – James fitz Gerald (‘the Usurper’), father of the Thomas of Desmond who was executed in 1468 – the earldom entered a phase of territorial expansion, cultural vitality and relative stability in regional politics. Notwithstanding his turbulent-sounding soubriquet, James the Usurper maintained relatively harmonious relations with the government of Henry VI and his ministers – no mean feat given the faction-fighting that consumed the 13 See, e.g., the remark (consigned to a footnote) by A.J. Otway-ruthven that after 1400 ‘Desmond was now really beyond the control of the Dublin government’ (Otway-ruthven, Med. Ire., p. 342 n. 9) and, in consequence, the earldom scarcely merits another mention in her narrative. Steven Ellis has commented that James the Usurper showed ‘little inclination in the affairs of state’ (‘Fitzgerald, Thomas, seventh earl of Desmond (1426?–1468)’, ODNB). 14 Orpen, ‘review of Henry F. Berry (ed.), Statute rolls of the parliament of Ireland, 1–12 Edward IV’, 343. T.J. Westropp explained the execution by reference to Desmond’s ‘strong Irish proclivities like his father’ (‘The Desmonds’ castle at Newcastle Oconyll, co. Limerick’, JRSAI, 39:1 (1909), 53). 15 Curtis, Med. Ire. (1st ed.), p. 337. Curtis was giving expression to a well-established view. See, for instance, Maurice Lenihan, Limerick: its history and antiquities, ecclesiastical, civil, and military, from the earliest ages […] (Dublin, 1884), p. 66 (‘the Geraldines, especially the Desmond branch, soon adopted all the peculiar habits of the natives’).

10. James (d. 1529)

8. James 9. Maurice B a c a c h (d. 1487) (d. 1520)

7. Thomas (ex. 1468)

DESMOND c o n t ’ d

Table 8.1: Earls of Desmond, Kildare and Ormond in the late Middle Ages.

12b. James (1534-41) de jure earl

Maurice (d. 1529)

11. Thomas (d. 1534)

John

Edmund

13. James (1536–58)

Theobald

6. John (d. 1477)

Margaret = Sir William Boleyn

Sir James of Leixlip (ex. 1537) Oliver (ex. 1537) Richard (ex. 1537) Sir John (ex. 1537) Walter (ex. 1537)

Thomas Bacach Prior of Kilmainham

(illeg.)

Butlers of Pottlesrath

Edmund mac Richard (d. 1464)

Margaret = 8a. Piers R u a d h (cr. earl of Ossory 1528)

James (d. 1487)

Thomas Talbot (deputy lieutenant of Ireland, 1418)

Richard, abp of Dublin (d. 1449)

1. John (d. 1453), 6th lord Talbot cr. earl of Shrewsbury 1442 cr. earl of Waterford 1446

Gilbert (d. 1418), 5th lord Talbot

Elizabeth Butler = 2. John (d. 1460) (see left) 2nd earl of Shrewsbury

Richard (d.1396) 4th lord Talbot

10. Thomas fitz Gerald (ex. 1537) = Frances, dau. of Sir Adrian Fortescue ‘Silken Thomas’

9. Gerald (d. 1534) = (1) Elizabeth Zouche (Gearóid Óg) (2) Lady Elizabeth Grey

Elizabeth St John (2) = 8. Gerald (d. 1513) = (1) Alison Eustace (Gearóid Mór)

Anne Boleyn = King HENRY VIII

8b. Sir Thomas Boleyn Earl of Wiltshire; cr. earl of Ormond 1528

Sir James St Leger = Anne

KILDARE c o n t ’ d

Richard

TALBOT/SHREWSBURY/WATERFORD Pernel Butler (d. 1369) = Gilbert (d.1387), 3rd lord Talbot

7. Thomas Elizabeth = John Talbot (d. 1515) (see right) 2nd earl of Shrewsbury

(illeg.) Sir James Ormond (d. 1497)

5. James V = Avice Stafford cr. earl of Wiltshire 1449 (ex. 1461)

Joan = 7. Thomas ‘fitz Maurice’ (d. 1478)

12a. John (1534–6) de facto earl

Gerald

3. James III Butler (d.1405) = Anne Welles (illeg.)

Thomas Butler (k. 1396 by Geraldines)

2. James II Butler (d.1382)

Elizabeth, heir of 5th earl of Kildare (2) = 4. James IV (d.1452) = (1) Joan Beauchamp (see left) ‘The White earl’ (d.1430)

Butlers of Cahir

James Gallda (d. 1448)

Katherine of Desmond

6. John C a m

Elizabeth = James 4th earl (see right) of Ormond

5. Gerald fitz Maurice (d. 1432)

KILDARE 4. Maurice fitz Thomas

6. James (d.1463) ‘The Usurper’

Eleanor Butler

Maurice (d.1401)

=

5. Thomas (d.1420) Expelled by uncle in 1411

4. John (d.1399)

3. Gerald (d.1398)

DESMOND

ORMOND/OSSORY 1. James I Butler (d.1338)

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royal administration at Dublin in the era of the Talbot–Ormond feud.16 The genealogies describe James as ‘a man who enlarged the earldom, and made conquests on many lands’.17 He achieved this not by retreating or withdrawing into his earldom so much as by vigorously brokering with the other power players in Irish politics and, when necessary, baring his teeth. What I am arguing against is the easy presumption that, under the Yorkist kings, the leadership of AngloIreland fell naturally to the Kildare Geraldines – an interpretation epitomized in the six-word title Otway-ruthven chose for the closing chapter of her History of medieval Ireland: ‘Yorkist Ireland: the dominance of Kildare’.18 In fact, the descent of Desmond was an accident. When Edward of York usurped the English throne, the future for the lordship of Ireland seemed to lie in a panGeraldine league with Desmond to the fore. It was pure historical contingency – in the form of a blow from the executioner’s axe – that passed the sole leadership of Anglo-Ireland to the earls of Kildare.

I

Our earliest record of James the Usurper dates from 1388. Gerald the rhymer (Gearóid Iarla), third earl of Desmond, sought and received from the royal administration a licence to send his son James to be fostered with Conchobhar Ó Briain (O’Brien) of Thomond.19 If the boy James was seven at the time of his fostering, his birth must have taken place c.1381.20 When James died approximately eighty-two years later in 1463, his obit in the annals of Loch Cé described him as ‘head of the Foreigners of the South, and the shrine of the hospitality and valour of the Geraldines [na nGeraltach]’.21 He had by then been the de facto leader of the Desmond Geraldines for over half a century and earl of Desmond since 1421. This long tenure provided the earldom of Desmond with the stability it required to achieve the expansion and coherence that is the striking feature of its development, especially in the second quarter of the fifteenth century. The ascent of Desmond under the three Lancastrian kings is all the more remarkable given the series of calamities with which the century opened. Gerald 16 See Peter Crooks, ‘James the Usurper and the origins of the Talbot–Ormond feud’, in Duffy, Princes, prelates & poets, pp 159–84; E.A.E. Matthew, ‘The governing of the Lancastrian lordship of Ireland in the time of James Butler, fourth earl of Ormond, c.1420– 52’ (PhD, Durham, 1994), part 2; Margaret Griffith, ‘The Talbot–Ormond struggle for control of the Anglo-Irish government, 1414–1447’, IHS, 2:8 (1941), 376–97. 17 Canon Hayman, ‘The Geraldines of Desmond’, JRSAI, 4th series, 5:41 (1880), 227 (quotation); ‘fer ro medaigh an iarlacht ocus do-righne gabaltus for il-tíribh’ (Séamus Pender (ed.), ‘The O Clery book of genealogies: 23 D 17 (r.I.A.)’, AH, 18 (1951), 174, §2138). 18 Otwayruthven, Med. Ire., p. 377. 19 CIrCLE, Patent roll 12 richard II, no. 88. 20 David Beresford, ‘Fitzgerald, James fitz Gerald (c.1380–1462)’, DIB. 21 ALC, ii, pp 164–7 (s.a. 1463.1). The other compilations merely note his title and death (AFM, 1463.3; AU, 1463.1; AC, 1463.8).

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the rhymer died in 1398 at the lowest point of his career. His son John, the fourth earl, drowned in the Suir in October 1399. The next brother Maurice, to whom the governance of the earldom appears to have been entrusted after John’s death, died of plague in 1401. The heir to the earldom was a boy, Thomas fitz John. In the years that followed, the young Earl Thomas became a ward of the king and spent time in the household of Thomas of Lancaster, son of Henry IV, then lieutenant of Ireland, receiving custody of his lands in 1407. Then in 1411 James fitz Gerald enters the picture as a real political actor when the annals report that he banished the young Earl Thomas from Ireland.22 Thomas fled to England to seek military assistance, returning to Ireland with a small company to reclaim the earldom in 1413.23 He was unsuccessful. His uncle took him captive and he remained a prisoner until being freed in 1417 by the king’s lieutenant of Ireland, Sir John Talbot, later earl of Shrewsbury and Waterford. The Butlers of Ormond – traditionally rivals of the Munster Geraldines – supported James in his usurpation and sought to thwart Sir John Talbot in his efforts to re-instate Earl Thomas in Desmond. The Talbot–Ormond feud, which was to dominate Anglo-Irish politics for the next three decades, had its origins in the internal politics of the Desmond earldom. Thomas of Desmond spent more time in Talbot’s company in 1418–19 and then left Ireland for France, where King Henry V – the victor of Agincourt – was sweeping all before him in Normandy and the pays de conquête. At this point, the government of Ireland came into the hands of James Butler, the White Earl of Ormond, who assumed office as the king’s lieutenant in April 1420. Ormond was positively disposed towards James of Desmond, despite the irregularity of the latter’s position as a usurper. On 10 December 1420 James – described as ‘James son of Gerald, the late earl of Desmond’ – received an appointment to a wide-ranging commission of the peace embracing Waterford, Cork, Limerick and the crosslands of Kerry.24 Ormond also authorized a payment to James of £100 in response to the latter’s petition that he had long retained many men-at-arms in resisting the malice of the Irish enemies and English rebels of Munster and Connacht.25 It must have been mid-December 1420 when the rumours reached Ireland that Earl Thomas of Desmond had died in Paris, where he was buried in the Dominican convent reputedly in the presence of Henry V himself.26 Upon learning of the death of Thomas in France, the administration moved with alacrity on Ormond’s instructions to complete a series of inquisitions post mortem into the estates of the Desmond earldom. The inquisitions were taken between 23 December 1420 and mid-January 1421 in the shires of Connacht, Kerry, Cork, Limerick, Waterford and Kildare.27 It is 22 AFM, 1411.8; AU, 1411.6; AC, 1411.16; ALC, 1411.15. 23 AFM, 1414.7; AU, 1414.4; AC, 1414.11. 24 CIrCLE, Patent roll 8 Hen. V, no. 18; robin Frame, ‘Commissions of the peace in Ireland, 1302–1461’, AH, 35 (1992), no. 23 (p. 10). 25 CIrCLE, Close roll 9 Hen. V, no. 28. 26 For the foregoing paragraph, see Crooks, ‘James the Usurper and the origins of the Talbot–Ormond feud’, in Duffy, Princes, prelates & poets. 27 COD, iii, no. 45.

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significant that the inquisitions were conducted into the lands that ‘John, late earl of Desmond, held on the day he died’. Thomas son of John, is mentioned, but nowhere is he styled as earl. Instead, the jurors at these inquisitions identified James fitz Gerald of Desmond as the next heir of his brother John, fourth earl of Desmond. This in effect regularized James’s offence in usurping the earldom in 1411. By April 1421, James was styling himself in a treaty with the FitzMaurices of Kerry as ‘the reverend lord James fitz Gerald, earl of Desmond, lord of the liberty of Kerry’.28 Still greater advancement was to follow. By an indenture of January 1422, Ormond appointed Desmond as ‘keeper, governor and supervisor’ of the Butler moiety of the barony of Inchiquin and the town of Youghal, co. Cork.29 Two months after this agreement, the community of county Limerick composed a testimonial for Ormond. It mentions both Ormond and Desmond and extols the virtues of their partnership. The authors report that Ormond ‘made war against the enemies and rebels of our lord the king in that land, in the most commendable manner, receiving great help from James of Desmond, the earl of Desmond … to the praise of God, the great honour of our lord the king [and] the comfort and relief of the loyal people of the land’.30 As a result of this détente between the Geraldines and Butlers in the south of Ireland, James the Usurper became more active in the affairs of the king’s lordship of Ireland than any of his three predecessors during the previous halfcentury. In 1422/3, James of Desmond prevented the ‘final destruction and conquest’ of county Meath, a region far removed from the normal interests of the Desmond earls. He brought a force reputedly some five thousand strong from Munster to Carbury, co. Kildare, where he laboured for thirteen days against the Uí Chonchobhair Failghe (O’Conor Faly) and the Berminghams who had risen in rebellion and were menacing the men of Meath.31 We do not have details of the composition of his army, but the figure of 5,000 is not altogether implausible. By the late fifteenth century, a government report on the size of Desmond’s army stated that he had 400 horsemen, eight battles of galloglass (gallóglaigh, that is professional warriors of Scottish descent, each ‘battle’ consisting of 80 men), one battle of crossbowmen and gunners, and some 3,000 kerne (ceatharnaigh, native Irish foot-soldiers) at his disposal – a total of perhaps

28 NLI, MS 4 [Harris], f. 217. The document is edited and collated with another transcript from the BL in K.W. Nicholls, ‘The FitzMaurices of Kerry’, JKAHS, 3 (1970), 38–42. 29 ‘custodem, gubernatorem et supervisorem’: NLI, D 1578 (=COD, iii, no. 51). Another copy is TNA (PrO), C 47/10/26/4, listed in James Hogan, ‘Miscellanea of the chancery, London’, AH, no. 1 (1930), 200. Ormond also appointed Desmond as his seneschal in these lands, and granted him all rents and profits accruing from them together with 240 acres of demesne land to be chosen by Desmond himself. 30 TNA (PrO), C 47/10/26/5 (translated in Griffiths, ‘Talbot–Ormond struggle’, p. 392). 31 NLI, [Harris] MS 4, f. 263 (whence CIrCLE, Patent roll 1 Hen., no. 124). See also AC, 1422.2, which reports a ‘great army was led by the Earl of Desmond, with a large following of Galls and Gaels, to help the Meath Galls’.

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4120 fighting men.32 James the Usurper was the first of the Geraldine earls to employ galloglass, specifically the Clann Síthigh (MacSheehys), who are thought to have migrated from Connacht to Munster when, c.1420, he married the daughter of Mac Uilliam Íochtar (of the Mayo Burkes), who brought with her a contingent of gallóglaigh.33 The favours that a grateful royal administration extended to Desmond on this occasion, and the commissions with which he was entrusted in the years following, confirm that he was not considered indelibly hostile to the interests of the colony of large. In August 1423, the Dublin government granted Desmond the office of constable of the royal castle at Limerick for life together with £10 annually from the city’s fee farm and 40 marks from the fishery. The grant was made in consideration of the ‘excessive losses’ that Desmond had sustained upon the king’s wars in Munster – the terms of the letters patent presumably reflecting the language of a petition presented to the justiciar and council.34 In 1425, Desmond received a further grant of 20 marks per year from the king’s fisheries at Limerick.35 The mayor and bailiffs of Limerick seem to have resented this grant to Desmond. Around January 1427, Desmond petitioned the justiciar and council again to the effect that his fee as constable of Limerick castle had not been paid by the mayor and bailiffs of the city. Ormond, then justiciar, ordered that £40 be paid to Desmond of the king’s gift and the exchequer issue rolls record that the full sum was paid.36 Meanwhile the mayor and commonalty of Limerick engaged in a manoeuvre to outflank Desmond by travelling to Westminster where they presented a petition claiming that Limerick castle, ‘situated on the banks of a great river in the city’, was at risk of falling into the hands of the king’s Irish enemies through the negligence of the keepers. ‘No man will keep the castle more earnestly and carefully than the people of the city’, they claimed, because ‘their lives, profit and loss of their goods and chattels depend 32 An early version of this tract, ‘A discruption [sic] of the Power of Irishemen’, has now been edited from Hatfield House Archives, Herefordshire, Cecil Papers MS 144, fo. 6v, ed. Christopher Maginn and Steven G. Ellis, The Tudor discovery of Ireland (Dublin, 2015), p. 83. The figures for the forces of the earl of Desmond are the same as those found in a briefer version of the same tract dateable to the reign of Elizabeth I (BL, Cotton MS Domitian A. XVIII, fos. 100–104, printed in Liam Price (ed.), ‘Armed forces of the Irish chiefs in the early 16th century’, JRSAI, 62 (1932), 203. For the date of this document, see Kenneth W. Nicholls in NHI, iii: early modern Ireland, 1534–1691, p. 32 n. 3; Nicholls, ‘Anglo-French Ireland and after’, Peritia, 1 (1982), 394 n. 1; Maginn and Ellis, Tudor discovery, pp 40–1. 33 Her death is recorded in AU, 1435.3. For the Clann Síthigh, see Hubert Gallwey, ‘The MacSheehys of Connello in county Limerick’, Ir. Geneal., 4:6 (1973), 564; Kenneth Nicholls, ‘Scottish mercenary kindreds in Ireland, 1250–1600’, in Seán Duffy (ed.), The world of the Galloglass: kings, warlords and warriors in Ireland and Scotland, 1200–1600 (Dublin, 2007), p. 102. By the sixteenth century, individual Mac Síthigh kinsmen had been settled with landed estates within the Desmond lordship. The evidence from the Desmond survey (1597–8) is discussed in Luke McInerney, ‘The galloglass of Thomond: Gallóglaigh Thuadhmhumhain’, NMAJ, 55 (2015), 28. 34 CIrCLE, Patent roll 1 Hen. VI, no. 61. 35 CIrCLE, Patent roll 3 Hen. VI, no. 26. He also received before 24 Mar. 1425 a grant of a mill in the town of Clonmel: CIrCLE, Patent roll 3 Hen. VI, no. 42. 36 CIrCLE, Close roll 5 Hen. VI, no. 57; Irish exchequer

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on the effective keeping of that castle’. The government of Henry VI acceded to the petition and granted the keeping of the castle to the petitioners for a period of ten years, providing they found sufficient surety for its safeguard before the treasurer and barons of the Irish exchequer.37 It may have been in compensation for his loss of Limerick castle that in 1429, Desmond received a further grant by letters patent of £100 in reward for his service against the king’s Irish enemies in Munster and Connacht in the company of the earl of Ormond.38 The bond between Desmond and Ormond was strengthened in 1429 – a year of high tension between the White Earl and his enemies in the Talbot faction39 – through a marriage alliance, under the terms of which Desmond’s infant son, the ill-fated Thomas, was to be wedded to Anne Butler, daughter of the White Earl. As dowry, Butler granted to Desmond the other half of the barony of Inchiquin. This brought the whole barony and the town of Youghal firmly under Desmond control. Until such time as the marriage could take place, Thomas was to be sent to ‘Johanna, countess of Ormond, to be kept under her governance’.40 As Elizabeth Matthew has noticed, this agreement raises the intriguing possibility that Thomas of Desmond was brought to England in the household of Ormond and his wife, Joan Beauchamp, who died there in 1430. The countess’s mother (and Ormond’s mother-in-law) was Joan Lady Bergavenny (d. 1435), one of the wealthiest dowagers in England with an annual income of £1510 at the time of her death. It is through the records of the Dublin government that we catch most of our glimpses of James the Usurper; but it is clear from the traces that survive of his own muniments that he was active in expanding his power in Cork and Limerick in this era. In 1430, Desmond acquired in tail male extensive demesne lands around Kilcolman, near the town of Buttevant, co. Cork, from William, son of Sir John Barry, Lord of Orrery (§1).41 In the following year, Desmond may have used his influence to win a murage charter for the burgesses of his town of Youghal.42 In 1439, robert son of Geoffrey Cogan, lord of Kerrycurrihy, payments, 1270–1446, ed. Philomena Connolly (Dublin, 1998), p. 556. 37 TNA, E 28/49/18, calendared in Handbook & calendar, p. 194; CPR 1422–9, p. 390. 38 CIrCLE, Patent roll 8 Hen. VI, no. 2. 39 One indication of how closely Desmond was involved in the politics of the lordship is that a friar in Desmond’s service was in attendance upon Ormond’s ally, Sir robert Sutton, lieutenant of Ireland 1428–9 (Matthew, ‘Governing of the Lancastrian lordship’, appendix 3:2, pp 576–7; discussed ibid., pp 243–4). 40 NLI, D 1624. There are two MSS under this number in NLI: Ormond’s portion of the original indenture and a sixteenth-century copy of the same document, which is calendared as COD, iii, no. 88. See Matthew, ‘Governing of the Lancastrian lordship’, p. 241. 41 Surrey History Centre (Woking), Midleton Papers, G145/M/38, item 95 (§1). The document is noted in Brian C. Donovan and David Edwards, ‘British sources for Irish history before 1485’, AH, 37 (1998), 215. 42 richard Caulfield (ed.), The council book of the corporation of Youghal […] (Guildford, 1878), p. xxviii. A.F. O’Brien has suggested, plausibly, that the grant was made at the instance of the earl of Desmond (O’Brien, ‘Medieval Youghal: the development of an Irish seaport trading town, c.1200 to c.1500’, Peritia, 5 (1986), 364 n. 62).

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conveyed his lands to Desmond.43 The grant included the principal Cogan manors of Rathcogan (now Charleville)44 and Beaver (Carrigaline) in the cantred of Kericuruby,45 as well as the remainder of the Cogan inheritance in county Cork, which (however notionally) embraced estates running in a band southwards from the border with Limerick to the western side of Cork harbour.46 The deed also included a claim to the Welsh manor of Cogan, thus bringing to an end an age-old link between the Cogans and their ancestral caput in Glamorgan.47 As Kenneth Nicholls has noted, the acquisition of the Cogan inheritance completed an arc of Geraldine holdings that now swung around the city of Cork. Moreover, the personalities who participated in the Cogan conveyance are indicative of Desmond’s close links with the city of Cork and its governing elite. The deeds were dated at Cork and state that the seal of the mayor of the city, John Murwach, was affixed to them because the Cogans’ seal was ‘unknown to many’.48 This same John Murwagh is listed in the Cork landgable roll (which dates from exactly this period) in connection with eight properties in the city.49 Cogan also appointed one James Gowles (that is, Gould) as his attorney to place Desmond in possession of his lands. James Gowles was presumably related to the William Gowllis, citizen of Cork, who is recorded as owning twelve houses in the city and who served as mayor in 1442–3.50 Thirty 43 Cal. Carew MSS, v, pp 362–3. The conveyance is given in abstract in Richard Cox, Hibernia Anglicana: or, The history of Ireland, from the conquest thereof by the English, to this present time […] (London, 1689–90), p. 157; and Francis H. Tuckey, The county and city of Cork remembrancer: or, Annals of the county and city of Cork (Cork, 1837), p. 37. The acquisition of the Cogan estates in co. Cork by Geoffrey, father of the grantor Robert Cogan, is traced in Paul MacCotter and Kenneth Nicholls, The pipe roll of Cloyne (Midleton, 1996), pp 198 n. 140, 219 n. 205, 222–3 n. 223. 44 The original place-name still survives in the civil parish of Rathgoggan, bar. Orrery and Kilmore, co. Cork. 45 Beauvoir, with its caput at Carrigaline, was the manor corresponding to the cantred of Kericuruhy (C39), originally known as the ‘cantred of the Ostmen’. In identifying cantreds, I have employed the standard spellings and alpha-numeric identifiers from the invaluable gazetteer by Paul MacCotter, Medieval Ireland: territorial, political and economic divisions (Dublin, 2008). 46 The lands mentioned include the manors of ‘Carrigrothan-more’ (Carrigrohane, bar. Cork), ‘Downdrinan’ (Castlemore near Crookstown, bar. Muskerry East), the ‘New-town of Monmore’ (the caput of the old Cogan lordship in the cantred of Muscrimyttyn), Shandon (corresponding to the cantred of Ocurblethan [C44]) and Douglas, and to possessions located inter alia in the cantreds of Muscridonegan (C41), Muscrimittyn (C42), Iflanlo (C33), and Kenalbek (C36). 47 For the Cogan lordship at its height, c.1300, see Nicholls, ‘Development of lordship’, 166–8; and for the link to their Welsh lands, Beth Hartland (‘English landholding in Ireland’, in TCE X (2005), p. 125 n. 35) although Hartland does not take into account that the Cogan entail (NLI, D 1962, calendared as COD, iii, no. 346), which contains many of the same place-names in corrupt form, has been identified as a forgery by MacCotter and Nicholls Pipe roll of Cloyne, pp 198–9; K.W. Nicholls, ‘Review of Welsh surnames by T.J. Morgan and Prys Morgan (Cardiff, 1985)’, Ir. Geneal., 7:3 (1988), 480). 48 Cal. Carew MSS, v, pp 362–3. In 1442, Desmond acquired the manor of Garth (Ballingarry, bar. Kinalea, co. Cork): Cal. Carew MSS, v, p. 397; and see Nicholls, ‘Development of lordship’, 209 n. 240, who notes that ‘Gale’ printed in the calendar is an error for ‘Garthe’ (Ballingarry, bar. Kinalea, co. Cork). 49 Evelyn Bolster (ed.), ‘A landgable roll of Cork city’, Collectanea, 13 (1970), 12, 14, 15, 17. 50 Bolster (ed.), ‘Landgable roll’, 10, 14, 15, 17; and for the mayoralty, see Mary Francis

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years after the Cogan conveyance, in 1468, it was the then mayor of Cork who proclaimed the earl of Desmond in the turbulent aftermath of the execution of Thomas of Desmond.51 If Cork was an area of notable expansion, the earl’s holdings elsewhere were consolidated and developed, notably in Limerick. We have a glimpse of the revenues he could command in the ‘rental of Connello’ (co. Limerick), datable to c.1452, which estimates Desmond’s income from free tenants and farmers plus the burgesses of Ardagh at a total of £119 6s., while the royal service (scutage) was valued at £22 12s., giving a total valuation of £141 18s.52

II

Expansion of political and social power is one major element in the ascent of Desmond. James the Usurper also contributed to the process Colm Lennon has recently dubbed, in connection with a later and better-evidenced era, the ‘making of the Geraldines’.53 Desmond did so by projecting his ‘sense of dynasty’ through literature and building works, as well as religious patronage. At Askeaton (co. Limerick) he founded the friary in 1420, perhaps in an effort to establish his shaky legitimacy by reigniting the Geraldine fervour for the mendicants discussed above by Brendan Smith.54 Over the next three decades, James commissioned extensive building works notably at Newcastle West and on the island site of Askeaton, where he developed the existing fabric of the castle into an impressive stone complex including a great hall and residential tower.55

Cusack, A history of the city and county of Cork (Dublin, 1875), p. 563. William Gowlis granted a messuage in the suburb of Cork to Edmund Terry in 1438 and, the next year, James Gowllis is mentioned acting in the capacity as attorney for a conveyance of land (r. Caulfield, ‘Chartae Tyrryanae relating to Cork and its vicinity’, The Topographer and Genealogist, 3 (1858), 110– 11). 51 Nicholls, ‘Development of lordship’, 190; Kenneth Nicholls, ‘Merchant families prosper’, Cork Examiner, 6 Mar. 1985; Ó Cuív, ‘Fragment of Irish annals’, 95, 99. 52 The ‘rental of Connello’ is printed in John Begley, The diocese of Limerick, ancient and medieval (Dublin, 1906), pp 323–33. Begley states that the ‘rental’ then survived in the Public record Office of Ireland (ibid., p. 4 n. 3). It was also consulted in MS by T.J. Westropp (‘The Desmonds’ castle at Newcastle Oconyll’, 52–3). The rental refers to the following areas: ‘Shened’ (Shanid), ‘Kyllyde’ (Killeedy), Corkoyth (Corcoide), O’Bathyn, the borough of Ardagh, Newcastle, ‘Villa roberti roth’ (near Newcastle West), ‘rathgalway’ (near Askeaton), ‘Moytawnagh’ (Mahoonagh), Innyskesty (Askeaton) and ‘Offargus’ (par. Clonagh and Kilscannell). 53 Colm Lennon, ‘The making of the Geraldines: the Kildare FitzGeralds and their early historians’, in Aspects of Irish aristocratic life, ch. 5. 54 AFM, 1420.1; Colmán Ó Clabaigh, The friars in Ireland, 1224–1540 (Dublin, 2012), p. 95. 55 Tom McNeill, Castles in Ireland: feudal power in a Gaelic world (London, 1997), pp 181–3; David Sweetman, The medieval castles of Ireland (Cork, 1999), pp 119–20; T.J. Westropp, ‘The principal ancient castles of the county of Limerick’, JRSAI, 37:1 (1907), 40; Westropp, ‘The Desmonds’ castle at Newcastle Oconyll’; Colm J. Donnelly, ‘Tower houses and late medieval secular settlement in county Limerick’, in Patrick J. Duffy, David Edwards and Elizabeth FitzPatrick (eds), Gaelic Ireland, c.1250–c.1650: land, lordship and settlement (Dublin, 2001), p. 327.

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The Geraldines had, of course, been in the making for some centuries. What was new to this era in the dynastic self-fashioning of the Desmond earls was their cosmopolitan outlook and embrace of the Geraldine connection in its widest possible sense through the elaboration of the family’s origin legend. These activities laid the groundwork for those image-conscious newcomers, the Great Earl (Gearóid Mór) and his son Gerald (Gearóid Óg), the ninth earl of Kildare.56 The most striking illustration of this was the attempt to link Geraldine history back to the city of Florence and thence to Troy.57 From the first half of the fifteenth century we have an authentic report attested by one of the Gherardini of Florence that in October 1413 one Maurice, a priest from the diocese of Ardfert, was passing through Florence: he claimed to be ‘of the same blood as the Gherardini of Florence’, and wished to be acquainted with some members of that house.58 This Maurice may presumably be identified with the ‘Maurice Fitzmoris’, precentor of Ardfert, who received a collation to the deanery of Ardfert on 20 January 1410. The letter of collation describes Maurice as being ‘by both parents of a race of barons and earls’, and it seems likely that he was a son of Maurice Óg FitzMaurice, lord of Kerry.59 Maurice was given an audience with senior members of the Gherardini. He informed them that three of their ancestors – Tommaso, Gherardo and Maurizio de’Gherardini – having left Florence because of civil discord (usciti di Firenze per le discordie civili), entered the service of the king of England at the time of his acquisition of Ireland, in which enterprise they acted with loyalty and great valour (con fede, e molto valore), gaining for themselves many lordships.60 Maurice further revealed that their descendants were still living and he supplied the names of the principal of Geraldine lords in Ireland. The names are accurate enough, but this does not, of course, prove that there was any truth to their descent from the exiled Florentine brothers of yore. rather, it suggests that through Maurice’s storytelling the contemporary leaders of the Geraldines in Ireland unwittingly lent 56 Colm Lennon, ‘The FitzGerald of Kildare and the building of a dynastic image, 1500– 1630’, in William Nolan and Thomas McGrath (eds), Kildare history and society (Dublin, 2006), pp 195–211. 57 See Byrne, below, pp 278–82; also Diarmaid Ó Catháin, ‘Some reflexes of Latin learning and of the renaissance in Ireland, c.1450–c.1600’, in Jason Harris and Keith C. Sidwell (eds), Making Ireland Roman: Irish neo-Latin writers and the republic of letters (Cork, 2009), pp 14–35. 58 The record is quoted in full in Eugenio Gamurrini, Istoriagenealogica delle famiglie nobile Toscane et Umbre, descritta dal Padre Don Eugenio Gamurrini, abbate Camnese […] (Florence, 1671), p. 111; trans. in Fitzgibbon, ‘Gherardini’, 247. 59 CPL 1404–15, pp 163–4; and for the identification, see Nicholls, ‘FitzMaurices of Kerry’, 35. Nicholls does not link this Maurice dean of Ardfert with the ‘Maurice’ who sought out the Gherardini of Florence in 1413, but the identification seems likely. The bishop of Ardfert in 1413 was Nicholas fitz Maurice, provided before 17 Sept. 1408, confirmed by John XXIII, 27 Jan. 1411 (NHI, ix, p. 292). He was ancestor of the knights of Kerry (Nicholls, ‘FitzMaurices of Kerry’, 37 n. 69). 60 The translation in Fitzgibbon, ‘Gherardini’, 247, omits the name of the second of the three brothers (Gherardo), referring only to Tommaso and Maurizio. This causes the narrative to appear somewhat incoherent, but the original Italian original clearly specifies the names of three brothers (Gamurrini, Istoria-genealogica, p. 111).

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their names to their supposed Italian progenitors. The living descendant of Gherardo, he tells was, was by remarkable coincidence another Gerald, the earl of Kildare (un’altro Gherardo Conte di Childaria), that is Gerald fitz Maurice (d. 1432), the fifth earl. The descendant of Tommasso was another Thomas, earl of Desmond (un’altro Tommaso Conte di Desmonde), that is Thomas fitz John (d. 1420), the fifth earl. And from the third brother, Maurizio – the namesake of Maurice, the narrator of this tale – descended five barons (cinque Baroni), first among whom was presumably the head of the family from which our Maurice was sprung and which bore the name of its supposed progenitor: FitzMaurice of Kerry. This was surely the final element in a narrative ploy by Maurice to add compelling detail and the lustre of nobility to the tale he was spinning the Gherardini. Perhaps the most remarkable aspect of this piece of myth-making was its success. Both in Ireland and in Italy there were people who found it useful to confide in the legend. Within thirty years the Florentines were seeking to make contact with their Geraldine cousins in Ireland. On 1 June 1440, a letter was dispatched from Florence by the then seventy-year-old humanist scholar and historian, Leonardo Bruni of Arezzo (1370–1444), chancellor of Florence (1435– 44). The letter has appeared in print previously, in Latin, in translation and in summary; but, as with so many aspects of Geraldine lore unearthed by the learned antiquaries of the Victorian age, its authenticity was open to doubt because the provenance of the text was not cited.61 The source is, however, impeccable (§2). The text survives in Florence in a manuscript register of Leonardo Bruni’s letters to various European rulers, one of whom was a ‘magnificent lord’ styled with pardonable inaccuracy as ‘James of the Gherardini, earl of Simonie’. The opens by informing Desmond that a rumour was current in Florence that the progenitors of the Irish Geraldines were Florentine by birth and so related to the Gherardini, one of the most ancient and illustrious noble houses in the Florentine republic. The opening conditional clause of the letter does not commit itself as to the truth of this rumour; but, in the next clause, Bruni throws caution to the wind and, with swelling rhetoric, he praises God that the Florentines have been spread across the world and that they rule in Ireland, the most remote of islands. The theme of common ancestry was a preliminary to the main purpose of the document. One Betto de’Gherardini was about to send to Ireland his twenty-three-year-old son Giovanni, who was to carry the letter with him as his introduction to Desmond. His credentials refer to his direct descent in the male line from the stock of the Gherardini. His personal appearance is described down to the cruciform scar on his forehead. 61 To take a recent example, Michael Potterton states, specifically in regard to the Bruni letter, that the ‘leads are somewhat tenuous’ for a Geraldine–Gherardini connection before the late fifteenth century (‘Introduction: the Fitzgeralds, Florence, St Fiachra and a few fragments’, in Thomas Herron and Michael Potterton (eds), Dublin and the Pale in the Renaissance, c.1540– 1660 (Dublin, 2011), p. 24 n. 19).

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What became of Giovanni and the letter he bore? Did he, in fact, reach Ireland and meet Desmond? Indeed, what was the purpose of his journey beyond reconnecting with his ‘Florentine’ cousins in Ireland? We have not previously been able to answer these questions, but a crucial piece of evidence has come to light in a petition endorsed with the date 2 March 144 that survives among the records of the English exchequer of receipt.62 The petitioner is none other than our James the Usurper, who describes himself as the king’s ‘humble subject and servant, James earl of Desmond, of your land of Ireland’ (votre humble suget et servaunt James counte de Dessemound de votre terre de Irlande). In the king’s response to the petition, directing the chancellor of England to draw up letters patent under the great seal, the language shifts in one significant detail. Here the earl is described as the king’s most beloved and trusty kinsman (nostre trescare et foial cousin Jaques countes de Dessemounde de notre terre dirlande). This reference to Desmond as the king’s kinsman is a new development and we must presume the initiative came from Desmond himself. The Butlers of Ormond – the traditional rivals of the Munster Geraldines – had revelled in presenting themselves as ‘kinsmen’ of the king ever since the marriage of Eleanor Bohun (a granddaughter of Edward I and his queen, Eleanor of Castile) to James first earl of Ormond. That marriage produced the second earl of Ormond, another James, whose daughter was named Eleanor in honour of her grandmother (Eleanor Bohun) and great-great-grandmother (Eleanor of Castile). This Eleanor Butler was, in fact, the mother of James the Usurper. What Desmond requests from the king is equally significant. The petition was submitted on behalf of one ‘John of the Geraldines’, described as a merchant of Florence in Italy and the kinsman and servant of the petitioner (F. Johan de Geraldyns merchaunt de Florence en Italie cousin et serviteur a nostre dis cousin). This ‘John of the Geraldines’ must be identical with Giovanni Betti de’Gherardini. Desmond requested a licence for Giovanni to be called ‘the king’s man’ for the term of his life, notwithstanding any statute or ordinance in England restricting the movement of aliens within the realm. The petition also sought a licence for John to buy and sell wool and other merchandize in the king’s lands of England, Ireland and Wales, and to bring them to Italy. The king acceded to the petition with the proviso that all customs be paid. This is a crucial piece of evidence. It affords us a tantalizing glimpse of the cosmopolitan nature of James the Usurper’s court and the outward-looking aspect of his policies as earl in the 1440s. It proves that Giovanni completed his journey to Ireland, that his letter of introduction setting out their common ancestry was well received by Desmond, that three years after he set out from Florence he was active in Desmond’s service and honoured as a kinsman. We may also reasonably infer that the earl perceived the financial benefit that could accrue to him by advancing the 62 TNA, E 28/71/12. The quotations in the following paragraph are from the original. A summary in English is available in Handbook & calendar, p. 207.

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enterprise of his Italian cousin in the wool trade, a mercantile connection that would link the earldom of Desmond with England and Wales, and thence to Italy. The petition may also have prompted the government of Henry VI to link Desmond with another enterprise because in 1443 we find a minute in the proceedings of the English privy council instructing the earl of Desmond, together with Lord Barry and others, to send men and supplies to Gascony for the defence of the king’s lordship there.63 This was an attempt to tap Desmond’s military power to bolster the English cause in the final phase of the Hundred Years War. From the later 1430s, the attention of the house of Lancaster was directed – however falteringly under the uncertain personal rule of Henry VI – towards the preservation of their remaining possessions in France. King Charles VII of France was resurgent, having retaken Paris in 1436 where, only fifteen years before, the exiled fifth earl of Desmond had died and been interred in 1421. A single set of interactions does not constitute pattern; but, as patchy as it is, the evidence from the later 1430s and 1440s is sufficient to suggest that the contacts Desmond made with the court of Henry VI in 1443 were not entirely exceptional. Six years earlier, on 16 March 1437, letters patent under the great seal of England were issued at Lambeth granting safe-conduct at the request of the earl of Desmond for 24 persons, ‘rebels or otherwise, to come to the presence of the king or of the council in England in the company of the said earl, mounted or on foot, and to return thence to Ireland, provided that they do not enter any fortified place of the king’s obedience except in the company of the said earl, and then only after showing their safe conduct’.64 From the autumn of 1436, Henry VI appears to have begun exercising the royal prerogative in person: his long minority was coming to an end, although the council did not seek to describe the king’s new powers formally until mid-November 1437.65 This would, then, have been an appropriate moment for the earl to present himself before his monarch – and the letters of safe-conduct were clearly written with the expectation that Desmond would be admitted to the king’s presence. The letters also reveal something of Desmond’s personal retinue. His men were not to ‘enter any fortified place of the king’s obedience except in the company of the said earl, and 63 PPC, v, p. 245. Thomas of Desmond, the future seventh earl, later married Ellice, daughter of Lord Barry of Buttevant (Ellis, ‘Fitzgerald, Thomas, seventh earl of Desmond’, ODNB). 64 English patent roll 15 Hen. VI (TNA, C 66/440, m. 43). This licence is the first enrolled letter on this membrane of the patent roll. The calendared version (CPR 1436–41, p. 17) gives this as ‘r. earl of Desmond’, but the first line is badly rubbed and this may be a misreading of the initial ‘J.’ for ‘Jacobus’. 65 The extent to which Henry VI was personally engaged in his own rule, as opposed to simply endorsing matters brought before him, has been debated. John L. Watts presents a persuasive case that minimizes the king’s own agency (Watts, Henry VI and the politics of kingship (Cambridge, 1997), esp. pp 133–4, 154–5); r.A. Griffiths has reemphasized his view that, by 1437, ‘Henry VI was ruling in fact as well as in name’ (Griffiths, ‘Henry VI (1421–71), king of England and lord of Ireland, and duke of Aquitaine’, ODNB). See also r.A. Griffiths, The reign of Henry VI (Stroud, 1981), pp 232–3; Bertram Wolfe, Henry VI (London, 1981), p. 87.

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then only after showing their safe-conducts’ – a precaution, presumably, deemed necessary by the Irish appearance of his retinue, which might have been sufficient to provoke hostilities in an age when ‘hibernicus’ and ‘inimicus’ were virtually synonymous. The letter, then, indicates the degree to which Desmond was set apart from the ‘English world’, even while it provides clear evidence of a continuing filament of communication between the Lancastrian kings and the most westerly point in their dominions. Two years after his petition on behalf of Giovanni de’Gherardini, the earl of Desmond received another notable mark of favour when letters patent were issued at Westminster on 11 August 1445 granting him a licence for life to be represented in Irish parliaments or great councils by a proctor of his own choosing whenever he was unable to attend in person (§3).66 A great deal of misinformation encrusted around this grant. Later earls of Desmond came to believe that the exemption was first granted by Edward IV, not Henry VI, as a concession following the betrayal of Earl Thomas at the Drogheda parliament of 1468. On 16 January 1541, the thirteenth earl, James fitz John, submitted to Henry VIII, and promised to attend parliament ‘from which the earls of Desmond have claimed exemption ever since the beheading, at Drogheda, of his grandfather, coming to a parliament there’.67 This story found its way thence into the myths concerning the wicked Elizabeth Wydeville.68 In modern scholarship, the letters of 1445 have been understood as marking ‘a further stage in [Desmond’s] divorce from the administration’.69 That may indeed be so; but we can also perceive the glass to be half full. The letters reveal Desmond successfully navigating the petitionary procedures at Westminster in pursuit of his interests. He was entering his sixty-fifth year in 1445 and, in Thomas of Desmond, he had an adult son and heir. It is not inconceivable that this is who he intended to nominate to represent him when he was summoned to parliament. The letters employ the language of proximity to the crown, the king referring to the petition he has received from ‘our beloved kinsman, James earl of Desmond in our land of Ireland’. A long expository sub-clause describes how the king has learned of the great labours that Desmond had sustained, and continued to sustain, in the preservation and safeguard the king’s title in ‘the four shires situated in the high country’ of Ireland, to wit Waterford, Cork, Limerick and Kerry, from the king’s Irish enemies and rebels, who were busying themselves daily upon the destruction, subversion and annihilation of the king’s lieges and 66 TNA, C66/460, m. 12, whence CPR 1441–6, p. 358. The Latin text is printed below, §3 (pp 257–8). 67 L&P papers, Hen. VIII, xvi: 1540–1, p. 224. 68 See, e.g., the petition of c.1541 (Cal. Carew MSS, 1575–88, p. cvii): ‘His Majesty, by his letters patent, gave liberty to the Earls of Desmond successively, to remain at home, and not at any time upon commandment to frequent the Deputy and Council.’ In the Book of Howth, Edward IV grants the earls of Desmond the privilege that they should ‘never be enforced to come to no Parliament to Dubling [sic] no more, nor no where else in Ireland, using themselves dutifully to God and to their Prince’ (Cal. Carew MSS, v, 187). 69 Art Cosgrove, ‘Ireland beyond the Pale, 1399–1460’, in NHI, ii, p. 582.

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of those counties. The most striking phrase in the document is the ‘four shires’.70 This was assuredly a deliberate word choice by Desmond and his agents who prepared the petition. The Dublin government had, on more than one occasion, acknowledged Desmond’s natural lordship in Munster by appointing him to wide-ranging commissions of the peace in precisely these counties;71 but the specific phrase ‘four shires’ was a rhetorical counterpoise to the ‘four obedient shires’ of Dublin, Meath, Kildare and Louth, which were becoming identified in political discourse at precisely this period as the loyal heartland of the English colony in Ireland that required special royal protection from the wilds beyond.72 In 1515, the same phrase (‘iiii shyres’) occurs in connection with Desmond in the first of Sir William Darcy’s articles presented to the English privy council, which describes the power of James earl of Desmond in counties Waterford, Cork, Kerry and Limerick.73 Desmond’s letters patent of 1445 were widely known, if wildly misunderstood, so it is possible that they provided Darcy with a useful piece of terminology. In Darcy’s usage, the phrase assumes a sinister aspect and James the Usurper is a corrupting influence – the ‘first man that ever put coyne and livery on the king’s subjects’ in the ‘four shires’ of Munster. Darcy then states that in the next generation Thomas of Desmond was the first person to impose the same ‘abominable order’ on the four obedient shires around Dublin. It was because of these impositions, says Darcy, that Desmond was executed – a version of events later repeated by Campion, for whom the Irish exactions provided just the excuse the wicked queen required to bring Desmond to his death.74 All this takes us some distance from the original context and content of 70 The words ‘four counties’ were omitted from the calendared version of these letters patent (CPR 1441–6, p. 358). 71 As recently as 1443 Desmond may have received an appointment (presumably under the great seal of Ireland) as ‘governor and custodian’ of counties Cork, Waterford, Limerick and Kerry. The only evidence we have for this grant is the authority of J.T. Gilbert, who is normally dependable, if frustratingly unspecific, in his sources. The phrasing he supplies – specifically the word ‘custodian’, which is normally now translated as keeper (L. custos) – suggests that this was in reality a commission of the peace whose competence embraced the main areas of Geraldine hegemony in south Munster (Gilbert, Viceroys, p. 336). A similar commission of the peace to James the Usurper is dated 10 Dec. 1420 and covers Waterford, Cork, Limerick and the crosslands of Kerry (Frame, ‘Commissions of the peace’, no. 23). 72 The emergence of the ‘four obedient shires’ is as an idea in political discourse is analyzed in Sparky Booker, ‘Gaelicisation and identity in the “four obedient shires” of Ireland, 1399–1534’ (PhD, University of Dublin, 2011), pp 16–19. 73 ‘Sir William Darcy’s Articles’, ed. Maginn and Ellis, Tudor discovery, pp 91–2. Darcy makes explicit the juxtaposition with the Pale that I have suggested is implicit in Desmond’s patent of 1445: the fourth of Darcy’s articles refers to the ‘iiii shyres ther whiche shoulde obeye the kynges lawes called Mythe, Lowthe, Dublyn and Kyldare’. Darcy’s articles are best known from the version calendared in Cal. Carew MSS, i, no. 2. Maginn and Ellis have discovered in the ‘Hatfield Compendium’ an earlier and more accurate version of the text with a further four articles, the last of which states that the imposition of coign and livery on the king’s subjects was made high treason by authority of the Irish parliament (Tudor discovery, p. 93). 74 Campion, Two bokes, ed. Vossen, p. 111: ‘Jeames, the father of this Thomas of Desmond … putt uppon the kinges subjectes within the counties of Waterford, Cork, Keary, and Lymirik

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the letters of 1445. What Desmond sought to do in the petition that brought forth the grant from the king was to offer a description of his regional ascendancy in the southwest of Ireland that would find favour with the king and his ministers. He did this by emphasizing his role in preserving and expanding the king’s dominion – rather as the earls of Kildare were to present themselves as the protectors of the ‘four obedient shires’ later in the fifteenth century.

III

James the Usurper did not, of course, have to wait until the sixteenth century to have his name blackened. The most familiar image we have of him from the documents of the 1440s is as the chief disturber of the king’s peace in Munster. Much of this negative reporting must be attributed to the breakdown in the relationship between Desmond and the White Earl of Ormond. Tensions were already discernible in 1441. At some point after 11 November 1441, the mayor and bailiffs of Waterford were instructed by writ to cause it to be proclaimed that Desmond should appear in person at a parliament to be held at Trim before Lionel Lord Welles.75 Welles was a kinsman and supporter of the White Earl, and his brother William Welles had been taken captive earlier in that year by the Geraldine prior of Kilmainham, Thomas FitzGerald. According to the writ, Desmond had committed various raids with banners displayed with a great army of the king’s rebels and enemies adhering to him in county Tipperary and elsewhere, to the king’s disinheritance. Then in 1444 Desmond launched a raid into Ormond country.76 A factor in this outbreak of violence may have been the marriage of Elizabeth, daughter of the White Earl, to the younger Sir John Talbot. The marriage was intended to solder the fractious families together after their decades-long feud. For Desmond, however, it was a breach of trust, because by the terms of their settlement of 1429 Elizabeth should have married a son of the earl of Desmond. This may have prompted Desmond to attack Ormond’s liberty of Tipperary. To counter this raid, Ormond brought an army to east Munster (presumably co. Waterford); but, according to the annals of the seventeenth-century antiquarian, Dubhaltach Mac Fhir Bhisigh, the army dared not proceed any deeper into Desmond’s territory – an indication of the latter’s regional hegemony by the mid-1440s. Instead the two earls made a year’s peace and ‘each party returned homewards’. Ormond, in fact, departed for England the Irishe impositions of quinio and lyvery.’ 75 Bodl., rawl. MS C 168, f. 110v. I am indebted to randolph Jones for bringing this record to my attention. The writ is calendared in Charles McNeill, ‘report on Manuscripts in the Bodleian Library, Oxford, I: rawlinson Manuscripts (Class C)’, AH, 2 (1931), 8; and an abstract in Latin is given in William D. Macray (ed.), Catalogi codicum manuscriptorum Bibliothecæ Bodleianæ partis quintæ fasciculus secundus, […] (Oxford, 1878), p. 80. 76 AMacFirbis, p. 205.

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where he would remain for some years. At Dublin on 3 May 1445, letters patent were issued in Desmond’s favour. The justiciar of Ireland was Archbishop richard Talbot of Dublin, who remained hostile to Ormond and the Butler family even after the official resolution of the feud through marriage in 1444. The letters attested by Talbot extended the king’s grace to Desmond by granting him a general pardon. The letters include a comprehensive list of the offences for which Desmond was pardoned of the king’s suit for treasons, felonies, trespasses and extortions as well as for adhering to the king’s enemies; for selling or giving to them horses, arms and victuals, whether in peace or war; for engaging with them in other forms of social interaction prohibited by the Statute of Kilkenny; and for coign and livery.77 Archbishop Talbot’s willingness to wash away the sins of Desmond’s past is a sure sign that the latter was becoming mixed up with the last rumblings of the Talbot–Ormond feud. This piece of contextualizing information assists us in making sense of two certificates sent in early 1447 to the lords of the king’s council in England by representatives of the communities of Tipperary and Kilkenny.78 There are two membranes of parchment, only one of which (§4.2) has a proper dating clause: the city of Kilkenny, 24 January 1447. Both certificates refer to the resilience of the counties in defending themselves at their own costs against the king’s Irish enemies and English rebels. They then claim that they had recently been the victims of an Irish-style chevauchée – a burning and pillaging expedition by James earl of Desmond in alliance with Mac Giolla Phádraig of Osraige (MacGillapatrick of Ossory), Ó Mórdha (O’More) of Laois and Domhnall riabhach Mac Murchadha (d. 1476). Their combined hosts, we are told, overrode the counties with banners displayed. In Tipperary, they burned, wasted and destroyed some twenty-two named towns. In Kilkenny – the text at this point begins to boil with apocalyptic fervour – Desmond and his allies destroyed seventy-six (unnamed) towns and sixteen churches, plundered goods of inestimable value, and did not spare women and children. Both certificates affirm that ‘since the conquest of our said sovereign’s land of Ireland to this day, the said counties never took such rebuke of any of our sovereign lord’s Irish enemies as they did by the said earl of Desmond’. The administrative historians H.G. richardson and G.O. Sayles reported this evidence about Desmond as the literal truth, but there are strong grounds for treating the texts with considerable scepticism.79 Palaeographical and orthographical variations between the Kilkenny and Tipperary petitions show that they were written by two different scribes: the most striking difference is the barred double-L used throughout the Tipperary petition (§4.1), but which does not feature in the Kilkenny text; 77 NAI, Ferguson Collection, vol. 3, f. 142. 78 TNA, E 101/248/15, printed in C.A. Empey, ‘The Butler lordship, 1185–1515’ (PhD, University of Dublin, 1970), appendix, pp xxxiii– xxxv; for discussion, see ibid., pp 273–5; Matthew, ‘Governing of the Lancastrian lordship’, p. 385. 79 Ir. parl., p. 165. They are followed in this by Otway-ruthven, Med. Ire., p. 376; Cosgrove, ‘Ireland beyond the Pale’, in NHI, ii, p. 583.

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another is the different spelling used for Irish (‘Irroys’, ‘Iryshe’). At sentence level, however, the dissimilarities between the texts fade. In large part they are identical in wording, especially in the opening and closing sections. Clearly these were not separate appeals to the council in England, but rather two parts of a single orchestrated effort: the representatives of the two counties supplied the details specific to their communities, subscribed their names and appended their seals.80 Of the two certificates, the Kilkenny text (§4.2) seems the more likely to have served as the exemplar. It is properly dated at Kilkenny, 24 January 1447 and is internally consistent. The Tipperary text (§4.1) has no date, which is very unorthodox. Moreover, a number of its interpolations are clumsy, for instance, the repeated references to the counties of Kilkenny and Tipperary in a certificate whose substantive details are specific to Tipperary. Another oddity of the Tipperary certificate is the mention of the three lords, the dukes of York and Buckingham and the earl of Ormond. These were the coparceners of the franchise of county Kilkenny; their inclusion is nonsensical in a text concerning Tipperary alone. From all this we may draw two conclusions. First, a high level of coordination was required to concoct these documents. Second, while there seems no reason to doubt that Desmond was involved in some form of raid in 1446, we must be very cautious about accepting at face value the claims about his total destruction of the counties. The certificates emanated from the heart of the Butler lordship in Ireland. They must, in part, have been designed to build or support the case for the return to Ireland of the White Earl of Ormond, who had been in England since 1444 and was then at one of the lowest moments in his career. They claimed to show that Ormond’s lordships in Ireland were at risk of total destruction, and that the chief governor (Archbishop Talbot) had defaulted in his duty to protect the king’s subjects. To achieve their full rhetorical effect it was necessary to paint James earl of Desmond in the blackest colours possible. But it is quite clear from events during the lieutenancy of richard duke of York, who arrived in Ireland as lieutenant in 1449, that Desmond was not considered beyond redemption. One tantalizing piece of evidence that has been much-quoted dates from October 1449. richard of York was then resident in Dublin, where his son George – the future ‘false fleeting purjur’d Clarence’ was born in Dublin castle. Following the birth, the earls of Desmond and Ormond stood together at the font as sponsors of the duke’s son. Modern scholarship has relied on the authority of J.T. Gilbert for this episode, but Gilbert himself frustratingly did not provide references to his source for the story.81 There is, in fact, more than one strand of evidence, and Gilbert appears to have woven them together. The birth of York’s son George is reported in the Annales formerly 80 The particular sections are marked below using the superscript symbol (). 81 Gilbert, Viceroys, p. 354. Following Gilbert, the episode is reported in Edmund Curtis, ‘richard, duke of York, as viceroy of Ireland, 1447–1460: with unpublished materials for his relations with the native chiefs’, in Crooks, Government, p. 246; Vincent Gorman, ‘richard, duke of York, and the development of an Irish faction’, PRIA, 85C (1985), 171 (where the reference to Gilbert,

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attributed to William Worcester (d. 1485x6), which report that the birth took place on 21 October 1449 in Dublin castle and that the child was baptized in St Saviour’s church – a reference to the Dominican priory north of the bridge that spanned the Liffey (natus est Dominus Georgius, sextus filius praedicti principis, xxI. die Octobris, apud castrum Debline in Hibernia, anno Domini m°. CCCCxLIx, & baptizatus in ecclesia Sancti Salvatoris).82 The textual history of this collection poses problems. As K.B. McFarlane has shown, many of the texts that Hearne used to create the Annales were once owned by Worcester, but others date from after Worcester’s death.83 In what may be an independent tradition, Edmund Campion also noted the birth of George in Dublin castle; Campion does not refer to St Saviour’s, but reports that ‘his godfathers at the fonte were the earles of Ormond and Desmond’, giving as his authority the ‘records of Christ Church’.84 Campion’s use of record sources was one of the more distinctive aspects of his historical work.85 He was a contemporary at Oxford of the Dubliner, Richard Stanihurst (d. 1618), whose father James (d. 1573) – sprung from a line of Dubliners who had careers in the Irish administration since the Viceroys, is given in error as p. 554), 172. 82 ‘Annales rerum Anglicarum’, in Thomas Hearne (ed.), Liber niger scaccarii […] (2 vols, London, 1774), ii, p. 526, trans. in J.A. Giles (ed.), Chronicles of the White Rose of York: a series of historical fragments, proclamations, letters and other contemporary documents relating to the reign of King Edward the Fourth (London, 1843), p. 214 n. See also Joseph Stevenson (ed.), Letters and papers illustrative of the wars of the English in France during the reign of Henry VI (RS, London, 1864), ii, p. 765. M.A. Hicks used the Annales as evidence for George’s birth and the sponsorship of Desmond and Ormond, but without noticing that the ‘annals’ do not mention the earls (Hicks, False, fleeting, perjur’d Clarence: George, duke of Clarence, 1449–78 (Harlow, 1980), pp 14, 227 n. 8). The episode is also reported in Ashdown-Hill and Carson, ‘Execution’, 72 n. 7; and John Ashdown-Hill, The third Plantagenet: George, duke of Clarence, Richard III’s brother (Stroud, 2014), pp 16–17. 83 Nicholas Orme, ‘Worcester, William (1415–1480x85)’, ODNB; K.B. McFarlane, ‘William Worcester: a preliminary survey’, Studies presented to Sir Hilary Jenkinson, ed. J.C. Davies (1957), pp 196–221; repr. in K.B. McFarlane, England in the fifteenth century: collected essays (1981), pp 199–224. 84 Campion, Two bokes, ed. Vossen, p. 108. I am grateful to Randolph Jones for bringing this to my attention. Campion is the source for Richard Stanihurst’s report of the same event in both the 1577 and 1587 editions of Holinshed’s Chronicles: ‘To this Richard Duke of Yorke and Ulster, then resident in Dublin, was borne within the Castell there his second sonne the Lord George, that was after Duke of Clarence; his Godfathers at the fontestone were the Earles of Ormond and Dismonde’ (Liam Miller and Eileen Power (eds), Holinshed’s Irish chronicle, 1577 (Dublin, 1979), p. 246). This part of the Irish section of Holinshed’s work seems to have been lifted straight from Campion, rather than rewritten by Richard Stanihurst who provided an original history of Ireland from the reign of Henry VIII onwards. See the analysis in Colm Lennon, ‘Ireland’, in The Oxford handbook of Holinshed’s Chronicles, ed. Paulina Kewes, Ian W. Archer and Felicity Heal (Oxford, 2012), ch. 39, esp. p. 667. 85 For Campion’s use of historical sources, see Colm Lennon, ‘Edmund Campion’s Histories of Ireland and reform in Tudor Ireland’, in Thomas M. McCoog (ed.), The reckoned expense: Edmund Campion and the early Jesuits. Essays in celebration of the first centenary of Campion Hall, Oxford (Woodbridge, 1996), ch. 4, esp. the comment at p. 69: ‘his research of original records is perhaps a facet of which Vossen [Campion’s modern editor] could have been more commendatory.’ For Vossen’s more grudging assessment, see Campion, Two bokes, ed. Vossen, pp 68–9.

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late fourteenth century – played host to Campion during his Irish sojourn. James Stanihurst granted Campion the use of his library and made introductions to those in Ireland who could provide access to state records.86 It is possible, then – perhaps even probable – that Campion’s version of events is true, his account being based on the records of Dublin that he consulted while in Ireland. There seems little reason for him to invent a tradition in which Desmond acts as godfather to York’s son. Nothing that we know of York’s lieutenancy from other sources contradicts the story. It is true that a note written by a member of York’s retinue appears to disparage Desmond by lumping him towards the end of a list of native Irish lords who formally submitted to York before Michaelmas (29 September) 1449; but this is rather thin as evidence that York himself counted Desmond as being one of the ‘wilde Irish’.87 Rather, Desmond and the other Anglo-Irish lords of Munster listed, including the White Knight, appear to have attended upon York in person, and their arrival from Munster attracted sufficient notice to be worth recording. The annals of the Four Masters inform us that when York arrived in Ireland, he was ‘received with great honour; and the Earls of Ireland went into his house’: the plural earls – iarladha Ereann do thecht ina theach – must refer to Desmond and Ormond, and it suggests they were treated with similar respect by the duke of York.88 Just over a fortnight later, a great council convened at Dublin on 17 October 1449: Desmond is mentioned in the proceedings, when his name appears at the head of a commission that was instructed to take the temporalities of the bishopric of Limerick into the king’s hands – an indication that the royal administration considered him a trustworthy agent of the crown.89 The timing makes it very likely that Desmond was indeed still in Dublin twelve days later when George was born in the castle. We are left, then, to interpret the significance and symbolism of the ceremony in St Saviour’s priory. Clearly the occasion served as an acknowledgement of the status of Desmond and Ormond as the two preeminent earls in Ireland; it may also have been an attempt to reconcile them if they were still hostile after the raids of 1444 and 1446. If so, the ploy was a success because in 1452 ‘the two earls’ fought together in county Limerick when they breached Owney castle, then in possession of Conchobhar Ó Maoilriain, during a campaign in which Desmond’s son Maurice was killed after his horse was wounded and he was caught by a pursuer.90 It is almost the last occasion on which either of these two earls, who dominated the political landscape for the previous four decades, appears in the historical record.

86 For the early Stanihursts, see Colm Lennon, Richard Stanihurst the Dubliner, 1547–1618 (Dublin, 1981), ch. 1. 87 BL, Cotton Titus B XI, pt 1, p. 40, ed. Curtis, ‘Richard, duke of York’, in Crooks, Government, p. 242. 88 AFm, 1449.10. 89 Stat. Hen. VI, pp 158–9. 90 macFirbis, p. 231.

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IV

The complexion of Anglo-Irish politics changed in the early 1450s with the deaths of the White Earl of Ormond (1452) and Sir John Talbot, earl of Shrewsbury (1453). For the Geraldines, too, this was a time of transition. James the Usurper, now in his seventies, fades into the background and his eldest son, Thomas of Desmond, emerges as the effective leader of the Munster Geraldines. And it was with the support of Thomas of Desmond that the Geraldine earldom of Kildare returned from oblivion by c.1456. Over twenty years earlier in 1432, Gerald fitz Maurice, fifth earl of Kildare, was an octogenarian and approaching his death with only a recently widowed daughter, Elizabeth, as heir to his estates. The title earl of Kildare could not, however, descend through a female because it had been created in tail male. The lands and the title were consequently at risk of being separated with the estates passing to Elizabeth as heiress and the earldom to the nearest male heir of a collateral line. In an attempt to prevent this, the ancient earl of Kildare agreed to the marriage of the heiress Elizabeth to the White Earl of Ormond in 1432.91 This was Ormond’s second marriage, and it brought him expanded influence in Leinster. Kildare died on 13 October 1432 and the inquisition post mortem states that his nearest heir was Elizabeth.92 From this date until the mid-1450s, the Kildare estates were in Butler hands. For 1453– 4 we have the records of the court rolls for Maynooth, whose manor court was being held in the name of James Butler, earl of Ormond and Wiltshire.93 It is shortly after this that we first hear of ‘Thomas fitz Morice of the Geraldynes’, who was then engaged in a struggle with the earl of Wiltshire to gain control of the manors of Maynooth and rathmore, co. Kildare.94 Thomas was the son of John Cam (‘the Lame’), nephew of the fifth earl, Gerald, who died in 1432,95 but he wore the patronymic ‘fitz Maurice’ as a badge for the remainder of his career in reference to his great-grandfather, the fourth earl, Maurice fitz Thomas (d. 1390). By 1454 Thomas was successful in gaining control of the Kildare estates and he was appointed as deputy of the duke of York, lieutenant of Ireland.96 Much of this background is well known. What I wish to bring to the fore in this closing section is that, with the re-emergence of the earldom of Kildare, we enter a period of enriched cooperation between the two Geraldine houses. 91 David Beresford, ‘FitzGerald, Gerald fitz Maurice (c.1350–1432), 5th earl of Kildare’, DIB. 92 COD, iii, no. 101. 93 Handbook & calendar, pp 238–41. On Maynooth, see raymond Gillespie, ‘The FitzGeralds and the manor of Maynooth’, in Aspects of Irish aristocratic life, ch. 2, esp. pp 40–1, where the manor as it existed c.1450 is reconstructed. 94 Ellis, Original letters, no. 39, p. 118; Gilbert, Facsimiles, iii, no. 41. 95 In the account of his arrest at Drogheda in 1468 (Ó Cuív, ‘Fragment of Irish annals’, p. 91), Thomas 7th earl of Kildare is described as ‘Iarla Cilli Dara, .i. Tomas mac Sean Caim’ (‘earl of Kildare, that is Thomas son of John Cam’). I am not convinced that John Cam ever achieved recognition as earl of Kildare, but that he claimed the title is likely and that he passed the claim to his son, certain. 96 Ellis, ‘Fitzgerald, Thomas, seventh earl of Kildare (d. 1478)’, ODNB; David Beresford, ‘FitzGerald, Thomas “fitz Morice”’ DIB.

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Desmond and Kildare were united, or rather reunited, through marriage when Thomas, now seventh earl of Kildare married Joan (d. 1486), daughter of James the Usurper. Their papal dispensation, dated 18 March 1455, styles him earl of Kildare and gives his name as ‘Thomas Fitzmorice de Geraldinis’ – a nice example of the Latinate form of Geraldine self-identification that is no less significant for being wholly typical at every level of the extended FitzGerald family.97 From this document we learn that the couple was then living in Dublin, and they had already married and consummated the union, whose issue, born c.1456, was Gerald (Gearóid Mór), the future eighth earl of Kildare. This Desmond–Kildare marriage alliance was a straw in the wind. The two Geraldines attainted for treason at Drogheda in 1468 – Thomas seventh earl of Desmond and Thomas seventh earl of Kildare – were brothers-in-law; and there is no doubt but that they had also been bound together as political allies for the previous decade. This is already apparent in one of the earliest references to Thomas of Desmond in a letter composed in Wexford around 1455, which recounts recent attacks on the county of Wexford and paints a bleak picture of the corruption in the heart of government.98 The letter states that Thomas of Desmond had attacked Wexford at the instigation of one Devereux, a local justice, in company with two Irish lords, Mac Giolla Phádraig and Domhnall riabhach Mac Murchadha. These alliances have received analysis elsewhere.99 What has been little remarked on is the next passage, which accuses Devereux of corruptly encouraging Thomas of Desmond to be at Dublin at a council meeting to be held before Thomas ‘fitz Moryse’ (that is, the earl of Kildare), the deputy lieutenant. At that meeting, Kildare is said to have granted Thomas of Desmond £40 from the king’s fee-farm of Limerick and Cork. Moreover, Kildare was reputedly on the point of sending Devereux with a message to the king in England to seek a confirmation (presumably under the great seal of England) of the grant. While on that mission, the messenger was to petition the king to appoint Thomas of Desmond not as ‘lord deputy’ but as a fully fledged king’s lieutenant. The charge is important because it shows that a full eight years before Thomas of Desmond was finally appointed as deputy lieutenant – in the aftermath of his victory at the battle of Piltown – there were already rumours flying that he had the makings of a chief governor. Moreover, even if the specific accusations are entirely unfounded, the letter is still powerful evidence of the perceived strength of the alliance between the two Geraldine leaders. Throughout the latter half of the 1450s, the earl of Kildare was deputy to richard of York as lieutenant of Ireland. When in 1459, York fled to Ireland it appears that he received support not only from Kildare, but also the Desmond 97 CPL 1455–64, pp 262–3. 98 Edmund Curtis, ‘richard, duke of York, as viceroy of Ireland, 1447–1460’, in Crooks, Government, pp 253–4. Curtis also calendared the document in COD, iii, no. 190. 99 Emmett O’Byrne, War, politics and the Irish of Leinster, 1156–1606 (Dublin 2002), p. 132.

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Geraldines, possibly in the form of the shipping that brought his army back to England.100 York left Kildare as deputy lieutenant when he departed again for England in the autumn of 1460, and Kildare was elected as justiciar after York’s lieutenancy lapsed with his death at the battle of Wakefield (30 December 1460) and, again, in 1461 in the name of Edward IV after news of the Yorkist usurpation had reached Ireland.101 The defeat of the Butlers at the battle of Piltown brought Thomas of Desmond into high favour with Edward IV. News of the victory reached Westminster within a few weeks. On 2 August 1462, the king made a life grant to Thomas of Desmond in which he calls Thomas his ‘kinsman’ and styles him earl of Desmond. This implication that James the Usurper was already dead is incorrect (he probably passed away early in 1463), but it is an indication of where leadership of the Desmond Geraldines was understood now to lie. From Edward IV, Thomas of Desmond received grants from the Yorkist estates in Ireland, which had now come to the crown, including the office of seneschal of Connacht and ‘all other lordships belonging to the king’s earldom of March [sic] in Ireland, with wages of 100 marks yearly from the revenues of the liberty of Meath’.102 He also received a separate life grant of the constableship of Limerick castle.103 Then, on 1 April 1463, Desmond was appointed as deputy of the Dublin-born George duke of Clarence, lieutenant of Ireland.104 A separate writ from the king to Desmond personally refers to the earl’s service to richard of York and in defeating the Butler insurrection the previous year, and expresses in no uncertain terms (‘not doubting but holding for certain’) the king’s confidence in his ability to govern and defend the land with his undoubted wisdom, equity and justice. The king encouraged Desmond to stamp out ‘that damnable extortion commonly called coyne and liveree’; and to rule with the advice of roland fitz Eustace, now Lord Portlester, who had served the king’s father well as deputy lieutenant.105 Having assumed office as deputy lieutenant, Desmond set about furthering the interests of the Geraldines. So much is clear from the record of his first parliament, held at Wexford in November 1463. Its first substantive act was to excuse Thomas earl of Kildare of having committed any misdeed two-and-a-half years earlier when he was elected as justiciar in the name of Edward IV after news had reached Ireland about the ‘deposition of King Henry VI, late king of England in fact and not in right’.106 The danger was that the election could be deemed to have accroached the royal prerogative to dispose for the governance of the lordship of Ireland. The Geraldines were leaving nothing to chance in this game of dynastic roulette. The parliament also passed an act of resumption that specifically named the two Geraldine earls as being exempt from its effects. Nor 100 P.A. Johnson, Duke Richard of York, 1411–1460 (Oxford, 1991), p. 200 n. 25. Desmond’s service to York in 1459–60 is a theme of several documents of the early reign of Edward IV, e.g. Stat. Edw. IV, pt 1, p. 182. 101 CIrCLE, Patent roll 1 Edw. IV, no. 1. 102 CPR 1461– 7, p. 196. 103 Ibid. 104 Ibid., p. 270. 105 TNA, E 28/89/28, calendared in Handbook & calendar, pp 212–13. 106 Stat. Edw. IV, pt 1, pp 42–3.

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was Thomas of Desmond above the feathering of his own nest. The parliament granted him a string of absentee land-holdings to be held at a term of sixty years and without the obligation to render any account: they included the castle and town of Carlow, the town of New ross, and the castle and town of Dungarvan.107 On 25 January 1464, Desmond was at Limerick where he attested letters under the Irish seal appointing the earl of Kildare to the office of chancellor of Ireland for life.108 The Geraldines now held the two most important offices in the Irish administration. Appointments to the office of chancellor of Ireland were almost always reserved to the crown. For Desmond to make a life grant of the office – and to his kinsman, the earl of Kildare – was a doubly audacious act. By this stage, Desmond’s deputyship was proving controversial. In the summer of 1464, he travelled to England to appear before Edward IV bearing a testimonial from the Irish parliament, which once again reminded the king of the earl’s services ‘as well to your highness as to the right noble and famous prince, your father of blessed memory [richard of York], whom God rest’ and his defeat of the ‘great rebel John of Ormond’ (John, later sixth earl of Ormond).109 During his absence from Ireland, Kildare acted as Desmond’s deputy in the chief governorship of Ireland.110 Desmond returned from the king in honour in September having been granted a handsome annuity of £100 for life guaranteed on a clutch of royal manors in the liberty of Trim.111 On 19 November 1464, Kildare and his countess, Joan of Desmond, were present at the dedication of the Franciscan church at Adare, co. Limerick. The record of their foundation was read out to the friars every Friday and its description of the benefactors shows how the two branches of the one family were becoming entwined: ‘Thomas, earl of Kildare, and his wife Joan, daughter of James earl of Desmond’.112 The following year Desmond, Kildare and their respective wives are listed first in the foundation charter of the chantry at Dunsany.113 Then, late in 1467, Sir John Tiptoft, earl of Worcester, landed in Ireland, superseding Desmond as deputy lieutenant. The most detailed narrative of the ensuing events is a fragment of annals in Irish from the collection of Sir George Carew.114 The Carew fragment relates that in February 1468 Desmond met 107 Ibid., pp 54–9. 108 CIrCLE, Patent roll 3 Edw. IV, no. 5. 109 Stat. Edw. IV, pt 1, pp 184–7 (CIrCLE, Patent roll 3 Edw. IV, no. 6), reproduced in Isobel D. Thornley, England under the Yorkists, 1460–1485: illustrated from contemporary sources (London, 1921), pp 253–5. The original statute roll is reproduced in facsimile in Gilbert, Facsimiles, iii, no. 48. 110 He was attesting as deputy on 12 July at Maynooth (CIrCLE, Patent roll 4 Edw. IV, no. 9). 111 CPR 1461–7, p. 340 (letters patent dated 25 Aug. 1464). The manors in question were Trim, rathwire, Kildalkey, ratoath, Belgard and Fore, co. Meath. 112 The document is translated in full, and analyzed, in Ó Clabaigh, Friars in Ireland, pp 96–7. 113 CIrCLE, Patent roll 5 Edw. IV, no. 6; Stat. Edw. IV, pt 1, pp 322–30; Thomas J. Westropp, ‘The churches of Dunsany and Skreen, co. Meath’, JRSAI, 4:3 (1894), 222–31. 114 Ó Cuív, ‘Fragment of Irish annals’, 83–104. Ó Cuív demonstrates that the fragment is a composite work probably of Carew’s own time drawing upon historical materials of both English and Irish provenance. It does not, therefore, represent an independent native annalistic tradition.

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Tiptoft at Naas and was treated with honour. They then travelled together to Drogheda, where parliament convened on 4 February at the Dominican friary. There Tiptoft arrested and attainted both the Geraldine earls. A representative of the house of York momentarily seemed intent on extinguishing the Geraldines altogether. What happened next set the two main branches of the family on separate paths of historical development: the descent of Desmond, the ascent of Kildare. From Friday until Monday (12–15 February), Desmond was held in captivity at Drogheda in daily fear of his life.115 The Carew fragment reports: ‘Then that splendid, generous, wise and powerful lord was beheaded without just cause. Pity and distress filled all Ireland and every place from rome westwards in which these tidings were heard.’ After the shock came the reaction. Garret (d. 1486) of Decies, the dead earl’s brother, unleashed the power of Desmond – his army was said to include 20,000 galloglass and 2,400 horsemen, a figure that is grossly inflated but suggests it was a truly formidable host – laying waste to the marches of Meath and Kildare.116 Amid the confusion, Kildare escaped from custody in the city of Dublin with the aid of Lord Portlester, the treasurer, and slipped back to his estates. There he rallied his affinity, ‘so they with such fellowship as they could make went in to the said Garret to aid and support him’.117 Kildare was soon pardoned by Tiptoft on condition that he use his influence to settle the disturbances (‘to make the Irishmen of Leinster to be at peace, according to his power’).118 Within two years, Kildare was himself chief governor.119 The preconditions for the ‘ascendancy’ for which the Kildare earls were to become famous were slotting into place.120

V

There was, however, nothing preordained about the emergence of the earls of Kildare as the premier aristocrats in Anglo-Irish politics by the closing decades 115 This dating follows the calendar for leap years in C.r. Cheney (ed.), A handbook of dates for students of British history, rev. Michael Jones (rHS guides and handbooks, 4: Cambridge, 2000), p. 208. The date of Desmond’s execution is given in some sources as 14 Feb. Ó Cuív demonstrates that this may not be an error if, for instance, 14 Feb. was considered to be the intercalary day and counted twice, leaving 28 days in Feb. despite the leap year (‘Fragment of Irish annals’, 90). A different date is given in TCD, MS 842, f. 89: ‘The death of Thomas earl of Desmond at Drogheda. The six and twentieth of February 1467 , the said earl was put to death at Drogheda by John earl of Worcester, lord lieutenant of Ireland.’ This date is not possible because parliament was adjourned on Tuesday [sic] 22 Feb. 1468 (Stat. Ire. Edw. IV, pt 1, pp 428–9). 116 TNA, SC 1/58/50, partially reproduced in Thornley, England under the Yorkists, pp 256–7. The passage concerning the army reads: ‘Irishe enemyes called Galloglaghes to the nombre of xxm and horsemen to the nombre of xxciiii’. The most recent discussion of these events is Steven Ellis, Defending English ground: war and peace in Meath and Northumberland, 1460–1542 (Oxford, 2015), p. 68. 117 TNA, SC 1/58/50. 118 Stat. Edw. IV, pt 1, pp 586–7. 119 NHI, ix, p. 478. 120 On the Kildare ascendancy, see most recently Mary Ann Lyons, ‘The Kildare ascendancy,’ in Aspects of Irish aristocratic life, ch. 3.

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of the fifteenth century. On the contrary, the Desmond earls had been the dynamic force among the Geraldines for the previous half-century. By the later 1450s, with the emergence of Thomas of Desmond and his alliance with his brother-in-law Thomas fitz Maurice, earl of Kildare, the Geraldines were fast becoming a potent and integrated aristocratic connection; but this was a vertiginous ascent. For richard of York, the Geraldines were a power to be harnessed in pursuit of the throne; for the ministers of Edward IV, concerned with enforcing a strict obedience to the rightful dynasty, the strength of the Geraldines was a source of disquiet, their ostentatious promotion of dynastic interests over the wishes of the monarch unacceptable.121 In February 1468, Tiptoft – Edward IV’s enforcer and the butcher of England – held the fate of the Geraldines in the balance. Desmond fell victim to the topsy-turvy world of courtly intrigue, dynastic paranoia and summary blood justice that characterized the early reign of Edward IV. Only the furious reaction of the Geraldines to this judicial murder saved Thomas, seventh earl of Kildare. His great-grandson and namesake, Silken Thomas, was not to be so lucky.122

APPENDIX

8.1:

I L LU S T r AT I V E D O C U M E N T S C O N C E r N I N G T H E

E A r L D O M O F D E S M O N D I N T H E F I F T E E N T H C E N T U rY

These documents concerning the earldom of Desmond between 1430 and 1468 appear below in chronological order of their contents. They form a miscellaneous collection. Document 1 is an English translation of a Latin original dated 1430: the translation was undertaken in London in 1847 and is now preserved among the Midleton Papers, Surrey History Centre (Woking). Document 3 (Latin) is taken from the English patent roll for 23 Henry VI (part 2). The original engrossed letters patent issued under the great seal of England to which this enrolment corresponds no longer survive: they would have been transmitted to Ireland and preserved among the muniments of the earldom of Desmond until that archive was destroyed in the later sixteenth century.123 The two membranes of document 4 (Middle Hiberno-English) were written in Kilkenny and Tipperary in January 1447 and transmitted to England: they now survive in series E 101 (Exchequer Accounts Various) in the National Archives of the United Kingdom (Kew).124 Document 5 is an extract from the 121 For the changing conceptions of political authority in England, see John L. Watts, ‘“Commonweal” and “Commonwealth”: England’s monarchical republic in the making, c.1450-c.1530’, in A. Gamberini, J-P. Genet and A. Zorzi (eds), The languages of political society (rome, 2011), pp 147–63. 122 McCorristine, Revolt. I am grateful to Steven Ellis, Áine Foley and randolph Jones for their assistance in preparing this chapter. 123 On the destruction of the Desmond archive, see McCormack, Desmond, p. 20. 124 An edition of these membranes was prepared by C.A. Empey (‘The Butler lordship’, appendix, pp xxxiii– xxxv). The new edition below seeks to convey a fuller sense of the palaeographical features of the manuscripts and it differs in some of its readings.

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Irish statute of roll of 7 Edward IV. The original roll perished in the flames of 1922. Fortunately, in 1914 the text was published in record type in the Public record Office of Ireland series of early statutes. I have expanded the French abbreviations of the crucial section concerning the attainder of the two Geraldine earls, and provided a new translation. The most remarkable document in this miscellany is no. 2, a registered copy of the letter sent to Ireland with Giovanni Betti de Gherardini in 1440. It appears in the manuscript register (Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale di Firenze, MS Panc. 148) of letters sent by Leonardo Bruni to various rulers between 12 February 1435 and 16 February 1444.125 This text first came to the attention of Irish historians through the antiquarian activities of Charles William FitzGerald (d. 1887), marquess of Kildare and subsequently fourth duke of Leinster. A translation of the letter was communicated to the marquess in Ireland and appears at fos 10–12 of a notebook among the Dukes of Leinster MSS (in private possession) containing miscellaneous details of early family history: the first section is entitled, ‘An account of the Gherardini of Florence, translated from a copy of some family papers received from Sigr. Gherardini of Florence, in 1843.’126 This would appear to be one of the ‘Gherardini Papers, MS.’ cited by the marquess in his family history first published in 1857.127 Canon C.P. Meehan published sections of these same manuscript notebooks (‘copied from papers in possession of his Grace the Duke of Leinster’), including the letter of 1440, as an appendix to his translation of Dominic O’Daly’s account of the ‘rise, increase and exit’ of the earls of Desmond.128 The edition printed below has been prepared afresh from the Florence manuscript. Editorial conventions Explanatory comments on the MS structure, foliation etc. are enclosed in angled brackets, i.e., . Superscript is used for superior letters in the MS. Ellipses (…) indicate lacunae or damaged passages. A vertical bar (|) indicates the end of a line in the MS. Italics indicate words or letters supplied editorially. 125 The contents of this MS are listed briefly in James Hankins, Reportorium Brunianum: a critical guide to the writings of Leonardo Bruni, i: handlist of manuscripts (rome, 1997), p. 66, no. 907. For a brief description of its contents, see Brian Jeffrey Maxson, The humanist world of Renaissance Florence (Cambridge, 2014), p. 228 n. A section of Latin from the opening of the letter is quoted in Paolo Viti, Leonardo Bruni e Firenze: studi sulle lettere pubbliche e private (rome, 1992), pp 203–4; and in Paolo Viti (ed.), Opere letterarie e politiche di Leonardo Bruni (Turin, 1996), p. 40. 126 I am grateful to Maurice Fitzgerald, ninth duke of Leinster, for allowing me to examine that manuscript and to Dr Colette Jordan for entrusting me with its care for a few days in Sept. 2013. 127 Fitzgerald, Earls of Kildare (2nd ed., 1858), p. 2 n. Several notebooks containing historical research survive among the Leinster papers. Of these, the second in the sequence contains the alleged descent of the Irish Geraldines from the Gherardini of Tuscany (NLI, MS 48,173). 128 Dominic O’Daly, The Geraldines, earls of Desmond, and the persecution of the Irish Catholics, trans. C.P. Meehan (Dublin, 1847), pp 123– 6 (quotation at p. 123); revised ed. published as The rise, increase, and exit of the Geraldines, earls of Desmond, and persecution after their fall, trans. C.P. Meehan (2nd ed., Dublin and

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In document 2, I expand all Latin suspensions and contractions using italics; in document 3, where the abbreviations are not of interest, I have expanded the Latin silently. Document 2 uses the Tironian note (7) and the ampersand (&) to represent ‘et’: both are reproduced below. In document 5 (Law French) miniscule i and u have been standardized where they are used for consonantal j and v. In document 4, the + sign indicates the crossed Tironian note representing ‘and’ in the texts. I show this and other features of document 4 (for instance, the barred double-L, which appears to be a flourish rather than a mark of suspension) because the palaeographical and orthographical differences between the two membranes are of such interest. The letters ȝ and þ are reproduced where they appear in the original MS. Some modifications have been made to word-division: hyphens have been added to words written separately but which are now considered as single (e.g., one-to for ‘unto’); where ‘þesaid’ (i.e., ‘the said’) appears as single, I have made two words (‘þe said’). The symbol (), which appears only in document 4, has been included editorially to assist textual analysis: it encloses those sections of the text that are specific to Kilkenny or Tipperary, rather than the sections common to both membranes of the document. 1. Translation (1847) of conveyance to James, SIXTH EARL OF DESMOND. Dated at Buttevant (co. Cork), 20 September [1430] 9 Henry VI. Surrey History Centre (Woking), Midleton Papers, G145/M/38, item 95. 20 Sept. 9 Hen. 6, 1430 Deed from William the son of Sir John Barry, Lord of Orrery, to James the son of Gerald, earl of d’Esmond,129 granting certain lands etc. in Kylcolman etc. in tail male. Translation. robinson and Barlow, Essex Street, Strand. Know ye present and to come that I, William, the son of Sir John Barry knight, Lord of Orrery, have given and granted and by this my present deed indented and tallied have confirmed to James, the son of Gerald, earl of d’Esmond, all my demesne lands and tenements, rents and services, with all their appurtenances in Kylcolman and rossath near Bocomam ,130 London, 1878). O’Daly’s version is reproduced in Ó Catháin, ‘Some reflexes of Latin learning’, pp 29–31. In 1865, J.T. Gilbert published his own translation (Gilbert, Viceroys, pp 335–6). It is this translation that is noted in Fitzgibbon, ‘Gherardini’, 249 n. 1, where the author states in error that the intended recipient was the earl of Kildare. In fact, there was a vacancy in the earldom of Kildare in 1440. The Latin text also appears in Gustavo Uzielli, La leggenda dei tre Valdelsani, conquistatori dell’Irlanda, 2nd ed. (Florence, 1908), pp 84–5. 129 Sic, passim. 130 Kilcolman, now represented by the townland of Kilcolman West, bar.

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reserving the commons of turbary in the same land and tenements to my heirs and assigns to my manor of Botoma to the prior and convent of the priory of Saint Thomas the Martyr near Botomam and their successors and burgesses and their men and successors there dwelling, together with a way of going to and returning from also for drying and carrying the same as hath been shewn and perambulated to the same James by certain metes and bounds. To have and to hold the aforesaid demesne lands and tenements, rents and services, with their appurtenances, to the aforesaid James and the heirs male of his body lawfully issuing of me and my heirs. The aforesaid James and the heirs male of his body lawfully issuing rendering therefore yearly to me, my heirs and assigns, three shillings and four-pence of silver at the feasts of Easter and Michaelmas by equal portions and to the chief lords of that fee the services thereof due and right accustomed. And if it shall happen the aforesaid James be wanting and die without heirs male of his body lawfully issuing, then I will that the aforesaid demesne lands and tenements, rents and services, with their appurtenances for ever shall revert to me, my heirs and assigns. And I, truly, the aforesaid William, my heirs and assigns will forever warrant and defend against all men the aforesaid demesne lands, rents and services with all their appurtenances to the aforesaid James and the heirs male of his body, lawfully issuing, as is aforesaid. In witness whereof to this part of the indenture the seal of the aforesaid Lord James, earl of d’Esmond, is affixed. Dated at Botoman, the twentieth day of September in the ninth year of the reign of King Henry the Sixth. Place of the seal, but the seal itself is torn off.131 Translated from the original deed by Charles Devon, 26 Queen Square, Bloomsbury, February 1847.

Fermoy, co. Cork, approximately three miles northeast of Buttevant; and ‘rossath’ representing the neighbouring townlands of rossagh West and rossagh East and rossaghroe, bar. Fermoy, co. Cork. On rossagh, see also K.W. Nicholls, ‘Some place-names from The Red Book of the Earls of Kildare’, Dinnseanchas, 3 (1968–9), 35 and esp. 62. A fifteenth-century tower house on the site of Kilcolman castle may date from the time of Desmond’s acquisition. The castle has achieved some fame because it became the property of Edmund Spenser in 1589: David Newman Johnson, ‘Kilcolman castle’, in A.C. Hamilton (ed.), The Spenser encyclopedia (Toronto, 1990), pp 417–22; Eric Klingelhofer, Castles and colonists: an archaeology of Elizabethan Ireland (Manchester, 2010), esp. ch. 5 (‘The archaeology of Kilcolman castle’). 131 This comment, descriptive of the original deed of conveyance, appears at the close of the translation within a rudimentary pictogram in ink. The pictogram, if accurate, shows that the wax seal (no longer extant in 1847) had been impressed onto a sealtag, but it is not clear if this was really a pendant tag or (as would be more normal in a deed of this sort) an integral tag stripped from and remaining attached to the main parchment.

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2. LETTERS OF RECOMMENDATION on behalf of Giovanni Betti de Gherardini to JAMES, SIXTH EARL OF DESMOND. Given at Florence (Italy), 1 June 1440. Florence, Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale, MS Panciatichi 148, fos 130– 130v.

Domino Jacobo de gherardinis comiti Simonie | Magnifice domine amice karissime. Si vera est assertio que de | vobis circumfertur scilicet vestros progenitores fuisse ab |origine florentinos ex familia nobilissima ac vetustissima gherardinorum que una ex prestantissimis 7 precipuis familiis nostre civitatis existit gaudemus nos quidem immense | ac nobis ipsis gratulamur quod cives nostri non solum in apulia & in grecia & ungharia magnas dominationes habuerunt verum etiam132 | in hibernia que est ultima insularum per vos 7 vestros florentini | dominantur. O magnam gloriam nostre civitatis o singu-|larem benivolentiam dei erga populum nostrum ex quo tot | proceres totque dominationes fuerint per universum orbem terrarum | diffusi. Profecto gratie domino deo nostro habende & agende | sunt per tot tantisque benefitijs in civitatem nostram collatis. Nos igitur magnifice domine licet longis regionibus distemus | tamen benivolentia & caritate proximi sumus. Offerimus | omnia vobis cum promptitudine animorum. Ad presens | autem proficiscitur ad vos nobilis adolescens Johannes betti | de gherardinis lator presentium quem pater mittit ad | recognoscendum parentelam & cognationem vestram. De | quo vobis fidem facimus per presentes literas nostras quod iste Johannes | qui proficiscatur ad vos 7 pater eius bettus qui illum mittit | sunt ex tirpe & familia gherardinorum per lineam mascu-|linam 7 directam a patre & avo & pro avo ex ipsa fami-|lia descendentes. Quem quidem adolescentem vobis plu-|rimum recommendamus. Et quia iter est longum et distan-|tia magna ne quid suspitionis aut erroris possit contingere | signa et habitum ipsius Johannis latoris presentium scribemus. | Est enim etatis viginti trium annorum magnus supra | mediocrem staturam facie honesta ac boni coloris habetque | cicatricem quasi cruciatam in dextro cornu frontis & super dorso | sinistre manus cicatricem ab igne. Valete magnifice | domine & anobis cuncta expectetis que a civibus et beni-|volis debent expectari. Datum florentie die primo Junii MCCCXL. (To Sir James of the Gherardini, earl of Desmond. Magnificent lord and dearest friend. If the claim that has been reported concerning you be true – to wit, that your progenitors were Florentines in origin, descended from the most noble and most ancient family of the Gherardini, one of the most excellent and preeminent families of our city – we rejoice and 132 In MS, an ampersand under a macron.

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congratulate ourselves exceedingly that our citizens have not only acquired great dominions in Apulia, in Greece and in Hungary, but also that truly through you and yours the Florentines rule in Ireland, which is the most distant of islands. Oh! great the glory of our city; oh! singular the benevolence of God towards our people, from whom so many nobles and dominions are scattered through the whole world. Assuredly we are bound to give thanks to our lord God for so many and such great benefits conferred on our city. Therefore, magnificent lord, though we be separated by great distances, yet in point of goodwill and love we are close. We present all things to you with ready spirits. Now, at this moment a noble youth is setting out to you: Giovanni Betti de Gherardini, the bearer of these presents , whom his father sends to acknowledge your kinship and common ancestry. Concerning this, we assure you by these our present letters that this Giovanni, who is about to set out to you, and Betto his father who sends him, are from the stock and family of the Gherardini, descending from that family by the direct male line by his father and grandfather and great-grandfather. We greatly recommend this youth to you. And because the journey is long and the distance great, lest any suspicion or error should arise, we describe the marks and appearance of this Giovanni, bearer of these . He is twenty-three years old, above middling height, with a respectable countenance and a good appearance, and he has a scar like a cross on the right side of his forehead and, upon his back on the left-hand side, a scar by fire. Farewell magnificent lord, and expect from us everything that ought to be expected by citizens and well-wishers. Given at Florence on the first day of June, 1440.) 3. LETTERS PATENT under the great seal of England in favour of JAMES, DESMOND. Westminster, 11 August 1445. TNA (PRO), C66/460 (patent roll 23 Henry VI, part 2), m. 12.133

SIXTH EARL OF

Pro Jacobo comite Dessemonie rex omnibus ad quos etc. salutem. Sciatis quod ex parte carissimi consanguinei nostri Jacobi comitis Dessemonie in terra nostra Hibernie intelleximus quod ~134 | intellectis et bene pensatis tam magnis laboribus penis et diligenciis quas prefatus consanguineus noster circa conservacionem et custodiam | iuris tituli nostrorum quattuor comitatuum videlicet Waterford’ Corke Lymeryk et Kery in alta patria terre predicte situat’ ac populi comitatuum illorum de ligeancia | nostra ab hibernicis inimicis nostris et rebellibus ad destruccionem subversionem et 133 The calendared version of these letters patent (CPR 1441–6, p. 358) omits a number of important phrases, which I have included below in a new calendar (which is rendered in the third-person singular, rather than the plural of majesty used in the Latin original). 134 The tilde at the end of line 1, and another at line 7, indicate the marks in the MS enclosing the long expository sub-clause.

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adnichillacionem populi et comitatuum predictorum indies se satagentibus | perantea fecit et adhuc facere non desistit quam magna distancia que inter comitatus predictos ac partes et loca in quibus parliamenta et magna | concilia terre nostre predicte ante hec tempora teneri et custodiri consueverunt ac propter magnam potenciam inimicorum nostrorum qui magnam | partem patriarum predictaram inhabitarunt ~ predictus consanguineus noster ad parliamenta et consilia huiusmodi absque maximo periculo et perturbacione | suis pacifice transire non valeat. Unde nobis humiliter supplicavit ut sibi de gratia nostra speciali impartiri dignaremur. Nos premissorum consideracione | de gratia nostra speciali ac de avisamento consilii nostri licenciam dedimus prefato consanguineo nostro quod ipse pro termino vite sue ad huiusmodi tempora | quibus ipse parliamentis et magnis consiliis nostris in terra nostra predicta infuturum tenend’ in propria persona sua bene et commode adesse nequeat | per autenticum procuratorem et sufficientem ad ea omnia et singula que dictus consanguineus noster facere valeat licet personalem presenciam | ipsius consanguinei nostri requirant faciend’ et dicend’ comparere poterit. Et ulterius de uberiori gratia nostra et avisamento predicto licenciam | dedimus prefato consanguineo nostro quod ipse terras et redditus qui de nobis tenentur in capite per quodcumque servicium fuerint infra terram nostram predictam | de tenentibus nostris eiusdem terre nostre perquirere poterit habendum et tenendum sibi imperpetuum absque impeticionem nostri vel heredum seu successorum nostrorum | vel alicuius officiarorum seu ministrorum suorum infuturum. In cuius etc. Teste rege apud Westm’, xj die augusti. Per breve de sigillo et de data etc. ( For James earl of Desmond. The king to all those to whom these letters patent shall come, greetings. Know that, on behalf of his beloved kinsman, James, earl of Desmond in his land of Ireland, the king has learned that his kinsman is unable to travel in peace to parliaments and council in Ireland without great danger and disturbance to himself. The king has learned and has considered well the great labours, pains and industry that his kinsman has devoted hitherto and continues to devote still to the preservation and safeguard of the king’s lawful title in his four shires situated in the high country of the said land , to wit Waterford, Cork, Limerick and Kerry, and that of the people of those shires who are of the king’s allegiance, against the king’s enemies and rebels daily busying themselves upon the destruction, subversion and annihilation of the said people and shires; and also the great distance between those shires and the regions and locations in which parliaments and great councils of the land [of Ireland] have customarily been held and kept before this time, and the great power of the king’s enemies

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who inhabit a great part of that [high] country. The earl has pleaded humbly to the king that he might deign to make him a grant of his special grace. Having considered the premises, by the king’s special grace and by advice of his council, LICENCE to the king’s said kinsman for the term of his life – whenever in future he is unable well and profitably to be present in his own person at the king’s parliaments and great councils to be held in future the land [of Ireland] – that he may appear by authentic and sufficient proctor to act and speak in all and singular matters, unless these require the personal presence of the earl. And furthermore, of the king’s more abundant grace and by the advice of his council, LICENCE to his said kinsman that he may acquire lands and rents held of the king in chief by any service within Ireland from the king’s tenants by any service, to have and to hold to him forever without impediment from the king or his heirs or successors, or any of their officers or ministers in future. In witness whereof the king has caused these, his letters patent, to be made. Attested by the king at Westminster, 11 August. By writ of the privy seal and date etc.) 4. COMMUNITIES OF COUNTIES KILKENNY AND TIPPERARY TO THE KING’S COUNCIL in England. First membrane (§4.1), undated. Second membrane (§4.2), dated at Kilkenny, 24 Jan. 1447. TNA (PRO), E 101/248/15.

ryghte reverend Wourthy + wyrschypfull lordes, lordes spirituell + temperall of oure soferayn’ liege lorde his consayll in Englond, wee humbly + lowly with | all maner of reverence that wee canne other may one-to yow mekeley recommaund’ and like yow to wytte þat wee have certefyet as trew liege men scholde do oure moste excellent | myghty + oure soferayn lorde that the countees of Kylkeny + Typerar’ have withstaund’ oure sofferayn lorde his Irroys ennemys + englis rebell on hare owyn’ proper costes this many | wynteres withoute ony coste other helpe of oure sufferayn’ lord’ his lieutenantz beyng yn thys oure sofferayn’ lord his laund of Irlaund for þe tym lityll other noghte and þe sayde | countees toke never rebuke of oure sofferayn lord his Irroys ennemys gretely unto now late that þe Erle of Desmound,135 þe wyche scholde be oure said’ sufferayn lorde his trew liege | man as hit ys to suppose with his oste came yn to þe bordures of þe said’ countees + sette ynto hym Mcgyllepatrik of Ossery136 with his oste, Omorth’ of Leys137 with his oste, Dow-|nyll rebagh138 135 James, sixth earl of Desmond. 136 Mac Giolla Phádraig of Osraige (MacGillapatrick of Ossory). 137 Ó Mórdha (O’More) of Laois. 138 Domhnall riabhach Mac Murchadha (d. 1476), soon-to-be king of Leinster (c.1455), after the resignation in his favour of his uncle Donnchadh (Kenneth Nicholls, ‘The Kavanaghs, 1400–1700’, Ir. Geneal., 5:4 (1977), 436–7;

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with his oste, and ther þe said’ Erle + thay wyth baneres displayet came yn-to þe said’ countees + overryde them brand, wastyt, + destruet and brante this many townys | thay bien’ to-say in þe countee Typerar’ the church of þe ffreghane139 brante was, þe towne of Cowlenowre,140 Stowyneston,141 Wadyneston,142 Gragecurre,143 Scadaneston,144 Pypertoneston,145 Boylagh,146 | Moyglas,147 Lismoryhertagh,148 Mogawre, Correballe,149 Mileston,150 Crowgha,151 þe Garre,152 Lysnebroke,153 Moylassan, Glangoyll,154 Godredeston, þe rowan,155 ffowkeston,156 + Mogorban,157 + many oþer townys | more women + childryn brent to þe fynall destruccioun of oure sufferayn lord his liege people of þe forsayd countees to þe fynall hurte and hyndring’ of all þe lordes spirituell of þe | sayde countees and to the full grete hurte of oure right wyrschepfull + wourthy lords oure lorde Duke of Yorke,158 oure lorde duke of Bochyngham159 + oure lorde þe erle of | Ormound’160 for sethyn þe conqueste of this oure said’ suffreyn’ his laund of Irlaund to þis day þe said’ countees toke never suche rebuke of none of oure sufferayn lorde his Irrois en-|nemys as they dude by þe said Erle of Desmound’ and þe said’ Erle after þe destruyng’ of þe said’ countees contydyd161 þe said’ Irroys ennemys in-to thar owyn contrees. Beseching yow | lowly with all oure hole hertys at þe reverence of god to styrre oure-saide sofferayn lord’ to ordeyn for us his poer liege peple gracious helpe + remedy + þat yee wolde sterr ouresaid | soferayn lorde to do suche correccioun here-yn at this tyme that hit may be yn ensample to all others yn tyme to come to do suche offence. In faith + yn tesmoyaunce of all thus oure saide  | wrytyng wee John erchebushop’ of Casshell,162 Davy deane + chapitere of Casshell, Patrik abbote of Inchelownagh,163 fferalde abbate of þe Holy Croyce,164 Philip abbot of NHI, ix, p. 149). 139 Frehans (Na Fraocháin), bar. Iffa and Offa West, co. Tipperary. 140 Coolanure (Cúil an Iúir), bar. Middlethird, co. Tipperary. 141 Stonestown, bar. Ormond Lower, co. Tipperary. 142 Woodinstown, bar. Middlethird, co. Tipperary. 143 (?)Graigue, par. Killenaule, bar. Slievardagh, co. Tipperary. 144 Scaddanstown, i.e., St Johnstown, bar. Middlethird, co. Tipperary. 145 Peppardstown, bar. Middlethird, co. Tipperary. 146 Buolick, bar. Slievardagh, co. Tipperary. 147 Moglass (Maigh Ghlas), bar. Slievardagh, co. Tipperary. 148 Lismortagh (Lios Murchertaigh), par. Cooleagh, bar. Middlethird, co. Tipperary. 149 Corbally, par. Drangan, bar. Middlethird, co. Tipperary. 150 Now represented by the townlands of Milltown More and Milltown Beg, bar. Middlethird, co. Tipperary. 151 Crohane, bar. Slievardagh, co. Tipperary. 152 Garthe (i.e., Ballingarry), bar. Slievardagh, co. Tipperary. 153 Lisnamrock (Lios na mBroc), bar. Slievardagh, co. Tipperary. 154 Glengoole, bar. Slievardagh, co. Tipperary. 155 roan, par. Killenaule, bar. Slievardagh, co. Tipperary. 156 Foulkstown, bar. Middlethird, co. Tipperary. 157 Magorban (Maigh gCorbáin), bar. Middlethird, co. Tipperary. 158 richard duke of York (d. 1460), lord of one third of the liberty of Kilkenny. 159 Humphrey Stafford, first duke of Buckingham (d. 1460), lord of one third of the liberty of Kilkenny. 160 James Butler, fourth earl (White Earl) of Ormond (d. 1452). 161 i.e., ‘conducted’. 162 John Cantwell, archbishop of Cashel, 1442–51/2 (NHI, ix, p. 291). 163 Inishloughnaght abbey (Cistercian): see Gwynn & Hadcock, MRHI, p. 135. 164 Holycross abbey (Cistercian): ibid., p. 134.

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Kylcowle,165 | Denys abbote of þe rocke of Cassell,166 William prior of þe Cath,167 Patrike suffrayn + þe comines of Clomell,168 Thomas portreve and comines of Casshell,169 Olyver portreve + comynes of ffithard,170 Thomas | portreve and comynes of the Carryke171 putteth our sealys.

ryght worthy wyrschypfulle and reverent lordes spirituel and temperele of oure sufferayne lordes his consayle yn Englond, wee humbly and lowly wyth alle maner’ of reverence that we can or may us to yowe mekeley recomaunde | and lyke yow to wytte that we haven certefyet as trew liege men shold to oure moste excellent myghty and oure sufferayne liege lorde whowe that the countee of Kylkeny have wythstande oure sufferayne lorde his Irysch ene-|myse and english rebelles on harre propre costes these many wyntres with-out any help or coste of our’ sufferayne lorde hys lutenantes there beynge for the tym lytel or noght. And the sayde | counte toke never rebuke of | our sufferayne lorde hys Irysh enemyse gretely un-to now late þat the erle of desmound that shold be our sufferayne lorde his trewe liege | man as hit ys to suppose with his hoste came yn to the bordures of þe seyde | Counte and sette yn to hym makylphatrike of Osserye with his hoste, Omore of Leyesh with his hoste, Downyll reath with his hoste, and there the sayde erle and they with baneres dysplayede comen yn to the sayde counte and | over rydde hyt, brande, wasted and destruede sixty and syxtene of townes and brande and brake xvj chyrches and rebede hem of har’ catel and godes that may noght be nombrede and toke dyverse presoners and many men slayne to the | ffynale destructioun of our sufferayne lord his liege peple of the forsayde counte and lyke to be the 172 dysmayle to all the lords spirituelle with-yn the sayde counte and yn especyal to full myche hurt of oure right wyrshypfulle lordes our lorde duke of Yorke, our lorde duke of Bokyngham, and our lord erle of Ormond. For sethen the conquest of our sayde sufferayne lorde hys lande of Irlande to thys day the saide counte toke never | suche rebuke of none of our saide soverayne lord hys Irysh enemyse as they dyd by the saide erle of Dessemound the whyche after the destruynge of the sayde counte condyted the sayde Iryshe enemys yn-to har’ contrees. Wherefor | we humbly and lowly beseche ȝow at the reverence of godd to styrre our moste excellent myghty and our sufferayne liege lord here upon to ordeyne to us his trewe liege peple gracyous helpe and remedye. And that ye wode styrre our sayde sufferayne 165 Kilcooly abbey (Cistercian): ibid., p. 137. 166 Cashel, Hore abbey (Cistercian): ibid., p. 129. 167 Cahir priory (Augustinian canons): ibid., p. 162. 168 Clonmel, co. Tipperary. 169 Cashel, co. Tipperary. 170 Fethard, co. Tipperary. 171 Carrick-on-Suir, co. Tipperary. 172 MS damaged where the membrane has been folded.

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lord to do suche correccion here yn at thys tyme that hit may stande yn ensample to all otheres here after to do agaynes hym suche offence. And truely oure ryght wurshipfull and worthy lords | these offences that the erle of dessemound dud upon the sayde counte was done a lytell av-oure173 ryght wyrshipfull lord oure lord of Shrewesbery, oure sufferayne lord his lutenaunt of hys pour land of Irland came into | the saide land,174 the whyche lutenant hath ryght wele borne hym ryd, rebuked + chastysyed many of oure soverayne lord hys Irysh enemys sethen his comys175 yn to his sayde land of Irland. Ffor by the faithe that we owen to | almyghty god and to oure sufferayne lord, thys sayde land stode never yn oure dayes yn so hevy a-plyte as hit stode yn our saide sufferayne lord his lutenant hys comys yn to the sayde land. And now blessed be oure | lord he hit put myche of oure sufferayne lord hys land yn reste and ese. In fayth and testymonye of all thys oure saide wrytynge, wee Thomas, byshope of Kylkenye,176 Davy abbot of Jerypont,177 Nycholas abbot | of Duffe,178 Thomas pryoure of Kenllis,179 John pryoure of seynt Jones by Kylkenye,180 robert pryoure of Inysteyek,181 John Whytsyde soverayne and the comynes of Iristoun of Kylkenye,182 John Archebol soverayn + the comynes of the toun of Callan, | Nycholas fitz Henry portrefe and the comynes of þe toun of Thomastoun,183 Davy Whyte portrefe and the comynes of the toun of Knoktoffre184 have putte our sealys. Wryt at Kylkeny xxiiij day of Januar’ in the ȝere of | our saide gracyous and moste excellent lord his reignyng xxv.

5. ATTAINDER of the earls of Desmond and Kildare (1468). Irish statute roll, 7–8 Edward IV [original destroyed in 1922].185 Statuta Ordinanciones et Acta in parliamento predicto apud Drogehda die Jovis proxime post festum Purificacionis beate Marie virginis anno predicto coram prefato deputato186 tento edita in hec verba. 173 i.e., ‘afore’. 174 This provides a terminus ad quem of 18 Oct. 1446 for the events described. This is the date Sir John Talbot, earl of Shrewsbury, assumed office in Ireland as lieutenant (Matthew, ‘Governing of the Lancastrian lordship’, p. 489). 175 i.e., ‘coming’. 176 Thomas Barry, bishop of Ossory, 1427–60 (NHI, ix, p. 318). 177 Jerpoint abbey (Cistercian): Gwynn & Hadcock, MRHI, p. 136. 178 Duiske (Graiguenamanagh) abbey (Cistercian): ibid., p. 133. 179 Kells-in-Ossory priory (Augustinian canons): ibid., p. 181. 180 St John’s priory, Kilkenny city. 181 Inistioge abbey (Augustinian canons): ibid., pp 179–80. 182 Irishtown of Kilkenny, borough. 183 Thomastown, co. Kilkenny. 184 Knocktopher, co. Kilkenny. 185 Statute [Ire.], 7 Edw. IV [1468], c. 17 (Stat. Edw. IV, pt 1, pp 464–7). 186 John Tiptoft, earl of Worcester, deputy of George, duke of Clarence, lieutenant of Ireland.

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Item, al requisicioun des communes: Que pur diversez causes horribles treisones et felonies purpensez et faitz par Thomas Count de Desmond et Thomas Count de kildar’ et Edward Plunket Esquier sibien en alieaunce, fosterage et alterage ove les irrois Enemies le roy come in donaunce a eaux chivalx et herneis et armour et supportauntez eaux envers lez foialx subjectes le roy, quele est notoriement et outrement conue et fait contrarie as leies du roy et les laudables estatutes dicest terres dirland.187 Sur qe les premisses considerez Ordeine est et enacte par auctorite du dit parliament qe ils et chescun de eaux soient ajugez et demez traitours et atteinctes de treisoun et forfaitent touts lour biens terres tenements rentes servicez et chateux qe ils et chescun de eaux ount ou ascun aultre parsoun a lour use ou al use de ascun de eaux et par mesme lauctorite qe si ascun aultre parsoun ou parsouns qe ount biens ou chateux de ascun de eaux ou conisent lou lour biens sount ne veignent par deins xiiij jours apres cest dit parliament dissolve et facent pleine notice al honourable seigneur Johan Count de Worcestre depute lieutenaunt dicest dit terre dirland laou les ditz biens sount et qeux isount qe adonqes ils et chescun de eaux soient ajugez et demez felouns atteinctez Savaunt a chescun aultre soun loiall droit et title. (Statutes, ordinances and acts in the parliament held before the said deputy at Drogheda on Thursday next after the feast of the Purification of the Blessed Virgin Mary in that year , published in these words: Also, at the request of the commons, as to the various heinous causes, treasons and felonies plotted and committed by Thomas earl of Desmond and Thomas earl of Kildare, and Edward Plunket esquire – both [for engaging in] alliance, fosterage and alterage with the king’s Irish enemies, and for giving to them horses, harness and arms, and supporting them against the king’s faithful subjects, which is notorious and openly known, and committed against the king’s laws and the praiseworthy statutes of this land of Ireland: concerning this, having considered the premises, it is ordained and enacted by authority of that parliament that they and each of them should be adjudged and deemed traitors, and be attainted of treason and should forfeit all their goods, lands, tenements, services and castles that they and each of have, or which any other person or persons have to their use or to the use of any of them. And, by the same authority, if any other person or persons, who has goods or castles of any of them or who knows where their goods are, should fail to come within 14 days after this parliament dissolves to give full notice to the honourable Sir John earl of Worcester, deputy lieutenant of this land of Ireland, as to where those goods are and whose they are, that then they and each of them may be adjudged and deemed attainted felons; saving to each of them his lawful right and title.) 187 Cf. second chapter of the Statute of Kilkenny (Statute [Ire.], 40 Edw. III [1366], c. 2), which concerns alliances by marriage, gossipred, fostering, concubinage etc., and the giving or selling of horses and armour to the Irish (Stat. John–Hen. V, pp 432–3).

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The Geraldines and Gaelic culture

K AT H A R I N E S I M M S

The romantic nineteenth- and early twentieth-century writers discussed elsewhere in this volume cited the Geraldines as prime examples of Anglo-Irish magnates who became ‘more Irish than the Irish themselves’.1 However, if one examines written evidence for Geraldine patronage of bardic poets, musicians and seanchaidhe (historians trained in the Irish language and traditions), it comes later than work composed for the families of Burgh and Bermingham, and relates almost exclusively to the various branches of the Desmond Geraldines. Richard de Burgh, conqueror of Connacht, seems to have received a bardic poem celebrating his coming of age in 1213,2 and his grandson, also Richard (d. 1326), the ‘Red Earl’ of Ulster, employed a personal bardic poet, who claimed to have shared his couch at feasts during times when he was resident in Ireland.3 The key to this cultural openness would seem to have been the early intermarriage of William de Burgh, the first of his name to come to Ireland, with a daughter of Domhnall Mór Ó Briain (O’Brien), king of Thomond, before the end of the twelfth century, so that the poet Muireadhach Ó Dálaigh addressed the entourage of their son Richard as ‘Gaelicized foreigners’ (a dhream gaoidhealta gallda).4 By contrast the Kildare and Offaly Geraldines did not engage in intermarriage with the families of Gaelic kings at this stage.5 John fitz Thomas of Desmond (d. 1261) was, however, reputed to have taken four concubines, the wives of four local chieftains in Munster: Ó Cinnéide, Ó Coinín,

1 The late origin of this expression is the subject of Art Cosgrove, ‘Hiberniores ipsis hibernis’, in Art Cosgrove and Donal McCartney (eds), Studies in Irish history presented to R. Dudley Edwards (Dublin, 1979), pp 1–14. See also Booker, below, p. 316. 2 Bergin, Irish bardic poetry, no. 20; see Katharine Simms, ‘Bards and barons: the Anglo-Irish aristocracy and the native culture’, in Robert Bartlett and Angus MacKay (eds), Medieval frontier societies (Oxford, 1989), pp 178–80; Katharine Simms, ‘Muireadhach Albanach Ó Dálaigh and the classical revolution’, in Ian Brown, Thomas Owen Clancy, Susan Manning and Murray Pittock (eds), The Edinburgh history of Scottish literature, i: from Columba to the Union (until 1707) (Edinburgh, 2006), p. 85. 3 ABM, no. 184, verse 18; see S.H. O’Grady and Robin Flower (eds), Catalogue of Irish manuscripts in the British Museum (3 vols, London, 1926 [repr. Dublin, 1992]), i, p. 338; Katharine Simms, ‘The poet as chieftain’s widow: bardic elegies’, in Donnchadh Ó Corráin, Liam Breatnach and Kim McCone (eds), Sages, saints and storytellers: Celtic studies in honour of Professor James Carney (Maynooth, 1989), p. 404 n. 35. 4 Bergin, Irish bardic poetry, no. 20, verse 1. 5 For intermarriage patterns in the late Middle Ages, see Booker, below, pp 293–301.

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Ó Coileáin and Ó Conchobhair.6 It is to his descendants, legitimate and illegitimate, that extant bardic poems are addressed.7 It is no mere accident of survival that the earliest such poem was A Ghearóid déana mo dháil (‘Oh Gearóid, plead my cause’),8 ostensibly addressed to the child Gerald fitz Maurice, later third earl of Desmond, but actually a plea for reconciliation with his father, Maurice fitz Thomas, the ‘rebellious’ first earl discussed by Robin Frame above, who is directly addressed in the last ten verses. The poet, Gofraidh Fionn Ó Dálaigh, was by far the most distinguished practitioner of the bardic art in the Ireland of his day, and author of at least two versified treatises on the composition of dán díreach or metrically perfect poetry.9 This poem to the young Gerald became a classic. The full text is preserved in three manuscripts of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and extracts were cited in the grammatical tracts used to instruct student poets.10 If the first earl of Desmond had actually cherished ambitions to become a kind of Anglo-Irish high-king of Ireland,11 he would naturally be expected to choose the pre-eminent Gofraidh as his court poet. However there was another side to the earl. In 1327 Arnold le Poer, seneschal of Kilkenny, had insultingly called Maurice fitz Thomas – soon-to-be created first earl of Desmond – a ‘Rymoure’,12 and his younger son, Gerald the third earl, became a prolific composer of Irish verse, later to be nicknamed Gerald ‘the rhymer’. In the poem A Ghearóid déana mo dháil, Gofraidh Fionn describes himself as the child’s ollamh, and in this context the term would seem to mean the boy’s teacher in the art of bardic poetry. We have thirty-nine poems in Irish ascribed to the adult earl Gerald. They are all composed in ógláchas, the loose metres employed by gentlemen amateurs. Gerald was not the only aristocratic amateur poet in fourteenth-century Munster. There is reason to think that his older contemporary, Diarmait Ó Briain, king of Thomond (d. 1364), was the author of two poems in ógláchas verse in praise of the river Shannon.13 On the other hand, the contents of Gerald the Rhymer’s poems imply that he had received quite a formal education in bardic lore, even if he had not applied 6 An Leabhar Muimhneach, maraon le suim aguisíní, ed. Tadhg Ó Donnchadha (Dublin [1940]), pp 286–7; Kenneth Nicholls stated that John fitz Thomas’s mother was Irish, though without naming her (Nicholls, Gaelic Ire., p. 191); see also MacCotter, above pp 182–5. 7 A list of bardic poems to Geraldine patrons is provided in the appendix below, pp 274–7. 8 Item §1 in appendix, below, p. 274. 9 Feada in ogoim aithnid dam (R.A. Breatnach (ed.), ‘A poem on rime in scholastic verse’, Éigse, 3 (1941), 37–51; and Madh fiafraigheach badh feasach (Lambert McKenna (ed.), ‘A poem by Gofraidh Fionn Ó Dálaigh’, in Séamus Pender (ed.), Féilsgríbhinn Tórna (Cork, 1947), pp 66–76)). 10 Damian McManus, ‘The Irish grammatical and syntactical tracts: a concordance of duplicated and identified citations’, Ériu, 48 (1997), 91. 11 On the plausibility of the charges levelled against the first earl of Desmond, see Frame, Eng. lordship, pp 180–1, 273–4; and Frame, above, pp 196–7. 12 CStM, ii, p. 364. 13 One of which survives (Bergin, Irish bardic poetry, no. 12). See Brian Ó Cuív, ‘The poetic contention about the River Shannon’, Ériu, 19 (1962), 90; and Katharine Simms, ‘Literacy and the Irish bards’, in Huw Pryce (ed.), Literacy in medieval Celtic societies (Cambridge, 1998), pp 249, 257 n. 90.

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himself very rigorously to his studies. He shows an encyclopaedic command of Irish myths and legends, including both the Ulster and Fenian cycles, and some of his own simple verses contain deliberate echoes of famous bardic odes that were given to student poets to memorize as models, for example Muireadhach Albanach Ó Dálaigh’s lament for his dead wife (‘My soul parted from me last night’)14 or the lament for King Aodh Ó Conchobhair (O’Conor) killed in a house-burning in 1356 (‘Repair ye the prince’s tunic’).15 Gofraidh Fionn’s poem ‘O Gearóid, plead my cause’ tells us that the master-poet was in danger of losing his employment with Earl Maurice as a result of having addressed a poem or poems to Irish patrons which could be interpreted as inciting them to rebellion, and we have the text of at least one such poem addressed by Gofraidh to Domhnall, son and eventual heir of the Mac Carthaigh Mór (McCarthy).16 However, the poet intimates that the post he is in danger of losing is not that of court poet to the earl, but ollamh to the young Gerald. It appears that he did not suffer a permanent estrangement from the house of Desmond, as he subsequently composed an elegant masterpiece to welcome the second earl, Gerald’s elder brother Maurice, on his return from England to take up his inheritance after the first earl’s death in 1356, addressing him as ‘Avelina’s son, slayer of the Gael’, and recommending him to complete the conquest of southwest Munster.17 Gofraidh Fionn’s contemporary and rival, the poet Maolmhuire Bacach Mág Raith addressed a poem to Amy, Gerald’s half-sister.18 In it the poet identifies her as the daughter of the earl of Desmond, whose mother was daughter of the Red Earl of Ulster, and pleads with her to forgive him for offending her, perhaps by complaining about the size of the reward he had received for an earlier poem, as this was the commonest point of disagreement between poet and patron in medieval Ireland.19 The poem is preserved in the Roche anthology in the Book of Fermoy,20 because Amy FitzGerald married David Roche ‘captain and lord of the Roches’,21 whose family were themselves patrons of Irish learning. It was no 14 M’anam do sgar riomsa a-raoir (Bergin, Irish bardic poetry, no. 22); compare Aislingthe do chonnacsa, in Mac Niocaill, ‘Duanaire’, no. 21. 15 Leasaighthear libh léine an ríogh, in Lambert McKenna (ed.), Aithdioghluim dána, 2 vols, text vol. i, trans. vol. ii (Dublin, 1939– 40), no. 3; cf. A léine mhic Dhiarmada, in Mac Niocaill, ‘Duanaire’, no. 27. 16 Lambert McKenna (ed. and trans.), ‘Historical poems of Gofraidh Fionn Ó Dálaigh, VI’, The Irish Monthly, 47:551 (May 1919), 283–6; Mac Cionaith, Dioghluim dána, no. 74 (text only). 17 Item §2 in appendix, below, p. 275. That Maurice second earl of Desmond, like Gerald the third earl, was a son by the first earl’s second wife Aveline FitzMaurice, rather than his first wife, Katherine Burgh, is confirmed by the proof of age (CIPM, x, no. 397; Inquisitions & extents, no. 324) which dates Maurice’s birth to 1336, whereas Katherine Burgh died in 1331: see Frame, Eng. lordship, pp 50–1 n. 141. 18 Item §3 in appendix, below, p. 275. 19 See Katharine Simms, ‘Bardic poems of apology and reconciliation’, in Liam Mac Amhlaigh and Brian Ó Curnáin (eds), Ilteangach, Ilseiftiúil: Féilsgríbhinn in ómós do Nicholas Williams: a festschrift in honour of Nicholas Williams (Dublin, 2012), pp 175–91. 20 RIA, MS 1134 (23 E 29), p. 146. For further discussion of the Book of Fermoy, see below, p. 269 n. 32. 21 The dispensation for their marriage was issued in May 1342 (CPL, iii, p. 87; Frame, Eng. lordship, p. 269).

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doubt because of this family link that the Roches’ Book of Fermoy also contains an anthology of most of the extant poems attributed to Gearóid Iarla (‘Earl Gerald’), apart from some of more doubtful authorship preserved in the early sixteenth-century Scottish Book of the Dean of Lismore.22 It is a fact that one of Gerald’s earlier poems,23 apparently pre-dating his defeat and capture at the battle of Monasternenagh in 1370, complains that he has just been satirized by the head of the Mág Raith school, either Maolmhuire Bacach Mág Raith or his son Tomás Mór, though it contains no direct evidence for a connection between his argument and his half-sister’s quarrel with Maolmhuire. Gerald’s own poems were interpreted by Robin Flower as having introduced to Irish literature themes from the amour courtois poetry of twelfth-century Provence.24 There are obvious chronological problems with the theory, although it received general acceptance for a time. The poems are too personal and informal to be seen as belonging to a romantic genre. Gerald writes about his political and military relations with his Irish allies and enemies, his religious convictions, his wife, the contemporary condemnation of Irish bardic poetry by the church, and about his affairs with a number of women (none of whom are portrayed in romantic vein as unattainable ideals). Flower’s view of Gerald’s verse was firmly dismissed by James Carney: ‘The approach is bardic, the ideas are bardic, but the metrical technique is amateur … Any theory of the influence of French verse upon the Irish will not rest easily upon the figure of Gearóid Iarla as revealed in his poems’.25 Carney’s verdict bears out the notion that Gofraidh Fionn Ó Dálaigh had a hand in Gerald’s literary formation. The link with Gofraidh Fionn was eventually broken at some point after Gerald succeeded to the earldom of Desmond in 1359. In Iongaibh thú orm, a Iarla (‘Be on thy guard against me, O Earl!’),26 Gofraidh Fionn, while still referring to himself as the earl’s ollamh and personal file or poet, complains that he is being treated like a complete stranger, as if he had never visited his house. The earl is sheltering in his household a lawless military man (díbheargach) who had raided the poet and even endangered his life, and he has refused to give judgment in the quarrel. It is significant that Gofraidh does not dare seriously to threaten the earl himself with satire, instead announcing that he will resign his post as court poet if his case is not heard, and he ends with a graceful compliment to Eleanor Butler, Gerald’s countess, ‘who does not oppress the men of art’.

22 G[earóid] Ó M[urchadha], ‘A Ughdar so Gearóid’, Éigse, 2:1 (1940), 64; Thomas M’Lauchlan (ed.), The dean of Lismore’s book: a selection of Gaelic poetry from a manuscript collection made […] at the beginning of the sixteenth century (Edinburgh, 1862), pp 105, 78; E.C. Quiggin (ed.), Poems from the Book of the dean of Lismore (Cambridge, 1937), pp 76–7, 82; Alexander Cameron (ed.), Reliquiae Celticae (2 vols, Inverness, 1892), i, pp 106–7, 109. 23 Mac Niocaill, ‘Duanaire’, no. 24. 24 Robin Flower, ‘Introduction’, in Tomás Ó Rathile [Thomas F. O’Rahillly] (ed.), Dánta grádha (2nd ed., Cork 1926), pp xii–xiii. 25 James Carney, ‘Literature in Irish’, in NHI, ii, p. 698. 26 Item §4 in appendix, below, p. 275.

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The next surviving poem addressed to an earl of Desmond comes from the late fifteenth century, and was the work of a bardic historian or seanchaidh rather than a praise-poet. This new interest in history marks a further step in the involvement of the Anglo-Irish nobility with the native culture, and once again the Geraldines were not first in the field. In 1462, during an episode in the Wars of the Roses, Gerald the Rhymer’s grandson, Thomas, shortly to succeed as the seventh (or ‘Great’) earl of Desmond, defeated John sixth earl of Ormond and captured Edmund mac Richard Butler at the battle of Piltown. As ransom, Edmund Butler handed over two important manuscripts, one of which is now known as ‘The Saltair of Mac Richard Butler’ (Bodleian Library, MS Laud Misc. 610);27 the other may well have been the fifteenth-century Irish manuscript now known as British Library, Additional MS 30,512.28 The latter contains a number of Irish poems in amateur metre ascribed to a Richard Butler, most likely Richard, the father of Edmund mac Richard Butler and brother of James the fourth (or ‘White Earl’) of Ormond.29 The verses are all on religious subjects, and it was consistent with both his interest in religion and in Irish culture that Richard placed his son Edmund in fosterage with the Irish archbishop of Cashel, Richard Ó hÉidigheáin (O’Hedigan). The more important of the two manuscripts, the Saltair of Mac Richard Butler, incorporates twelve folios of an earlier and lavishly illuminated manuscript commenced under the patronage of his uncle, the White Earl of Ormond, containing three texts in Middle Irish, their composition thus antedating the Anglo-Norman invasion. These were the ‘Martyrology of Óengus’; Acallam na Senórach (a twelfth-century frame-tale of the doings of Fionn and the Fianna); and a dinnshenchus text giving the origin and lore of Irish place-names.30 The rest of the manuscript, which was written for Edmund mac Richard himself in the years 1453–4, contains a miscellany of religious tracts translated into Irish, such as the Fall of Jerusalem, the Finding of the Holy Cross and so on. But the real core of the codex was a transcription, as the scribes claim, from the now-lost old book known as the ‘Saltair of Cashel’, reputedly dating back to the time of Brian Bóraime (d. 1014) and cited as a source in many other medieval anthologies of historical material.31 This section was filled with genealogies and place-name lore, all referring to the remote past, mostly relating to Munster well before Anglo-Normans set foot on the soil. A clue to the motives behind the antiquarianism of Edmund Butler might be found in the contemporary Book of Fermoy, compiled by David Roche, also on the eve of the battle of Piltown. In contrast to the Saltair of Mac Richard, the 27 Available to consult online at http://image.ox.ac.uk/. 28 Françoise Henry and Geneviève Marsh-Micheli, ‘Manuscripts and illuminations, 1169–1603’, in NHI, ii, p. 803; cf. Myles Dillon, ‘Laud Misc. 610’, Celtica, 5 (1960), 67. 29 Gearóid Mac Niocaill, ‘Dhá dhán le Risteard Buitléir’, Éigse, 9 (1958), 83–8. 30 Henry and Marsh Micheli, ‘Manuscripts and illuminations’, p. 802. 31 See Pádraig Ó Riain, ‘The psalter of Cashel: a provisional list of contents’, Éigse, 23 (1989), 107–30.

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Book of Fermoy is more easily seen as connected to the interests of the Roche family itself. In addition to a miscellany of Irish myths and sagas, Irish and foreign saints’ Lives, and some medical material, it contains an anthology of praise-poems on the Roches and lists their rights and dues and the boundaries of the territory of Fermoy. (It also contains, as mentioned earlier, the duanaire or poem-book of their relative, Earl Gerald the Rhymer.) The Roche poems refer to traditions of the mythological Mog Ruith, the druid-ancestor of Fermoy’s original inhabitants, the Fir Maige Féne.32 In this way the rulers of Fermoy are seeking to bolster their own prestige by reference to the antiquity of their territory and its traditions, just as the Butlers promoted the prestige and antiquity of the royal site of Cashel, which, although now an archiepiscopal see, had fallen under the temporal jurisdiction of the White Earl.33 Once the Saltair of Mac Richard Butler passed into the hands of Thomas, the ‘Great Earl’ of Desmond, he treasured it also. A marginal entry in Irish reads: ‘This is a prayer for the owner of this book, Thomas son of James son of Gerald.’34 An Irish prose tract on the history of the Geraldines claims the ‘Great Earl’ of Desmond ‘was erudite and knowledgeable in Latin, English and in old Irish writings’.35 The earl passed the Saltair on to his son Maurice, the ninth earl. On another page we read: ‘This is a prayer for Sighraidh [d. 1487] son of John son of Maoilín Mór Ua Maíl Chonaire who is restoring this book for Maurice son of Thomas Earl of Desmond, and he in Askeaton today at the beginning of May after subduing the south of Ireland both [foreigner] and Irish.’36 The process of restoring the manuscript was a delicate one. Another page has a marginal entry: ‘The writing above was bad before it was restored and it is bad now’. This is followed by a scribal apology: ‘This restoration of mine is not good. I am Torna Óg [d. 1532] son of Torna [Ó Maolchonaire]. I am on the Curragh on St Bridget’s Eve.’37 Sighraidh and his kinsman Tórna Óg Ó Maolchonaire were members of an established family of seanchaidhe in Roscommon, traditionally attached to the Ó Conchobhair kings of Connacht. As the Ó Conchobhair family in the fifteenth century split into three branches and diminished in power and wealth, their Ó Maolchonaire historians moved out from their homeland and sought patronage elsewhere, with the Bermingham family in Kildare, and with the Geraldines.38 The brother of Torna Óg, Maoílín mac Torna, died in 1519. His family annals, 32 ABM, nos. 249, 263. A detailed description of the contents of the ‘Book of Fermoy’ (RIA, MS 1134 [23 E 29]) is available at http://www.isos.dias.ie/. 33 C.A. Empey and Katharine Simms, ‘The ordinances of the White Earl and the problem of coign in the later Middle Ages’, PRIA, 75C (1975), 168, 185; Anne O’Sullivan and Pádraig Ó Riain (eds), Poems on marcher lords from a sixteenth-century Tipperary manuscript (London, 1987), p. 1 n. 2. 34 Myles Dillon, ‘Laud Misc. 610 (cont.)’, Celtica, 6 (1963), 142–3. 35 ‘Ba tigerna erghna eolach i Laitin, i mBerla, et i senscreptraibh Gaoidilge an Tomas sin’ (Pender, ‘O Clery genealogies’, 174). 36 Dillon, ‘Laud Misc. 610 (cont.)’, 136–7 (my square brackets: the manuscript has Gall, which Dillon translates as ‘Norman’). 37 Ibid., pp 138–9. 38 Simms, ‘Bards and barons’, pp 191–2.

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the Annals of Connacht, record him as ‘a man full of good fortune and wisdom; who had been chosen by the Fitz Geralds [Geraltaig] and the Galls from all the ollavs of Ireland; who used to get jewels and treasure from all of whom he sought them’.39 Torna was author of the poem to James fitz Thomas, eighth earl of Desmond, Cá mhéid ngabháil fuair Éire? (‘How many times has Ireland been conquered?’).40 Its contents amply explain why the Geraldines would have paid highly for his services. After recounting the six mythical invasions of Ireland after Noah’s Flood, by Cessair the granddaughter of Noah, Partholón, the Nemedians, the Firbolg, the Tuatha Dé Danann, and the Milesians, Torna concludes that the invasion of Maurice fitz Gerald in the twelfth century was the best of them all, and then he counts the generations of Geraldines who held ‘kingship’ over Ireland. He achieved this by the simple expedient of equating the authority of king’s lieutenant or deputy with ‘kingship of Ireland’ and fudging the distinction between the length of time a Geraldine ‘reigned’ as baron or earl and his short term in office as chief governor.41 Torna Óg’s marginal entry in the Saltair of Mac Richard in which he records re-inking its lettering while staying in the Curragh of Kildare may be connected to the fact that a list of books in the library of Gearóid Mór, the ‘Great Earl’ of Kildare, drawn up c.1500, includes a copy of the Saltair of Cashel, perhaps transcribed from the Saltair of Mac Richard while Torna was doing his restoration work on it. Thomas, the seventh earl of Kildare, married Joan, the daughter of James, sixth earl of Desmond, who became the mother of the Great Earl of Kildare. This may possibly explain the route by which the Kildare Geraldines were influenced by the literary tastes of the Desmonds. The Irish genealogical prose tract on the Geraldines also mentions that the death of Gearóid Mór’s first wife, Alison FitzEustace, was a loss to the poets of Ireland,42 implying perhaps that she was a generous patroness to the bards. The Kildare rental preserves two catalogues of the books in the earl’s library. The earlier list contains forty-nine titles altogether: twenty-three in Latin, nine in French, seven in English and twenty in Irish. The later list dates to 1526, the time of Gearóid Óg. As Aisling Byrne discusses below, this list names thirty-four Latin works, thirty-five in French and twenty-two in English.43 Significantly there are no Irish titles in this second list. Unless we assume the Irish books had all been got rid of in the meantime, it looks as if the new librarian did not know Irish and the ninth earl, who had been educated for much of his youth at the English court, could not read Irish. It seems, on the other hand, very probable that Gearóid Óg spoke Irish regularly to his servants, since there is reason to think that his son and heir, Silken Thomas, did so. He is credited with indirectly instigating the 39 AC, 1519.9. 40 Item §5 in appendix, below, p. 275. 41 See Pender, ‘O Clery genealogies’, 172: ‘fa ri is fa h-íarla i n-einfhecht’ (‘he was king and earl at the same time’), in relation to Thomas fitz James, the seventh (or ‘Great’) earl of Desmond. 42 Pender, ‘O Clery genealogies’, 176. 43 Crown surveys, pp 312–14, 355–6. See also Byrne, below, pp 283–90.

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death of Archbishop Alen with the words Beir uaim an bodach (‘Take the churl away’).44 The list of Irish books in the Kildare library probably dates to around 1500 or earlier, because it does not include a major medical work in Irish acquired by the earl in that year in exchange for twenty head of cattle.45 As in the case of the contents of the Book of Fermoy or the Saltair of Mac Richard Butler, a large proportion of the Irish texts are religious in content, mostly Lives of Irish and foreign saints. The Saltair of Cashel [38a] holds pride of place, and another book, described as ‘the begynnyng of the cronicles of Irland’ [40a] was probably a copy of Lebor Gabála (‘The book of the invasions of Ireland’), which is also found bound into the Book of Fermoy.46 There are two works on the deeds and death of Cú Chulainn, the mythical ‘hound of Ulster’ [48a, 49a], together with the tragic tale of the Children of Lir [54a], and the more cheerful Leighes Coise Céin, named as ‘The Leeching of Kene is Legg’ [55a]. There is also an Irish translation of Giraldus Cambrensis’s Expugnatio Hibernica [56a].47 It is worth noting that the library also contained an English translation of Cambrensis, presumably of the same text, since it is a work which has much to say about the Geraldines.48 After the death of the Great Earl of Kildare in 1513, there is no further indication of patronage of Irish professional poets or historians by the Kildare Geraldines. The only Irish poems to this branch of the family are by an aristocratic amateur, the love-poem or poems by Maghnus Ó Domhnaill (O’Donnell), lord of Tír Conaill, addressed to Eleanor, daughter of the Great Earl of Kildare and widow of the chief Domhnall Mac Carthaigh of Carbery.49 Ó Domhnaill’s poems are more obviously influenced by the concept of amour courtois than the earlier poems of Earl Gerald the Rhymer, although, by translating Maghnus’s address to the earl’s daughter as a full-blown Tudor sonnet,50 Robin Flower makes it sound a good deal 44 Richard Stanihurst, in Holinshed’s Irish chronicle, 1577, ed. Liam Miller and Eileen Power (Dublin, 1979), p. 269. 45 O’Grady and Flower, Catalogue, i, pp 220–1. 46 The item numbers provided in square brackets in the text refer to the numeration assigned to individual books in Aisling Byrne, ‘The earls of Kildare and their books at the end of the Middle Ages’, The Library: Transactions of the Bibliographical Society, 14:2 (2013), 142–53, where the list of Irish books appears at 151–3. 47 Identifications in Byrne, ‘The earls of Kildare and their books’, 151–3. I would, however, differ from her identification of ‘The Spech of Oyncheaghis’ [45a] as the Martyrology of Óengus Céli Dé, and opt instead for Agallamh na nÓinmide/Óinsige (‘The colloquy of fools’), an alternative title for a hagiographical text Imthechta na dá n-Óinbhide, ed. Walter J. Purton, ‘The parting of Comhdhan and Conall (Imthechta na dá n-Óinbhide)’, RC, 29 (1908), 219–21. 48 On the Middle Hiberno-English vernacular translations of the Expugnatio Hibernica, see now Caoimhe Whelan, ‘Translating Cambrensis: the history of the late-medieval “English conquest of Ireland”’ (PhD, University of Dublin, 2015); and, for Geraldine interest in the English translation, see Aisling Byrne, ‘Family, locality, and nationality: vernacular adaptations of the Expugnatio Hibernica in late medieval Ireland’, Medium Aevum, 82:1 (2013), 101–18, esp. 109; and Byrne, below, p. 284. 49 Maghnus Ó Domhnaill is credited as the author of a number of love poems (Ó Rathile, Dánta grádha, nos 49–53), but only one of these (no. 49) addresses Eleanor FitzGerald identifiably as ‘the earl’s daughter’. 50 Robin Flower, Poems and translations (London, 1931),

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more elaborate and pompous than the original. In any case, it does not appear that Lady Eleanor was moved by Maghnus’s poems. She eventually married Ó Domhnaill to win his military and diplomatic support for her half-brother Gerald, and separated from him when she felt that support was wavering.51 After the young Gerald’s restoration as eleventh earl of Kildare, there is no further indication of patronage for bards or seanchaidhe by the Kildare branch. Richard Stanihurst, who acted as tutor to the earl’s children at an early stage of his career,52 disclaimed any great knowledge of Irish saying his skill was ‘very simple therein’.53 By contrast a number of Irish-language poems and prose genealogies dealing with the Munster Geraldines survive from the later sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Of these, I would like to draw attention to three bardic poems connected to the Desmond rebellion in the 1570s, only very recently edited. Two are elegies on the executed leaders, James fitz Maurice FitzGerald (d. 1579); Gerald, fourteenth earl of Desmond (d. 1583); and his brother Sir John mac an Iarla FitzGerald (d. 1582).54 The earliest of the three poems is, however, particularly interesting because it is a eulogy of James fitz Maurice composed during the height of the rebellion and survives in a contemporary manuscript, National Library of Ireland, MS G 992 (the ‘Nugent Miscellany’). The poet was Domhnall mac Dáire, a prominent court poet to the Uí Bhriain. His poem Cia as sine cairt ar chrích Néill? (‘Who has the oldest charter to Niall’s land?’) begins by recalling Torna Ó Maolchonaire’s poem about the six mythical invasions of Ireland since the Flood, culminating in the Anglo-Norman invasion led by Maurice fitz Gerald.55 But then the Geraldine myth is taken further, because mac Dáire claims they take their title to rule Ireland not from the advent of the Anglo-Normans but from Partholón, the first man to settle Ireland after Noah’s flood, because Partholón, he says, was a Greek, as were the Nemedians, the Fir Bolg, the Tuatha Dé Danann and the Milesians, and the Geraldines are also of Greek descent. The poet continues: Among the … smooth-weaponed host from overseas, which race alone is not alien to Ireland but the FitzGeralds, the cream of foreign knights? … The land of Ireland should not be in bondage – I know well that Séamas will offer [up] his turn in the earldom of the land of Munster [in exchange for] pacification56 of the wild land of Conn … p. 141. 51 See Elizabeth McKenna, ‘Was there a political role for women in medieval Ireland? Lady Margaret Butler and Lady Eleanor MacCarthy’, in Christine Meek and Katharine Simms (eds), ‘The fragility of her sex’? Medieval Irishwomen in their European context (Dublin, 1996), pp 163–74. 52 Colm Lennon, Richard Stanihurst the Dubliner, 1547–1618 (Dublin, 1981), p. 35. 53 Stanihurst, in Holinshed’s Irish Chronicle, ed. Miller and Power, p. 15. 54 Items §§8–9 in appendix below, p. 276. 55 NLI, G 992, fo. 40r, ed. Eóghan Ó Raghallaigh, ‘Poems from the Nugent manuscript’ (PhD, University of Dublin, 2008), pp 122–36 and 231–47.

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Long ago a prophet foretold that there would come from the Greek tribe a foreigner who will rescue the Irish [and] release the race of Criomhthan from their great oppression. … said Séadna, ‘a noble Greek will come from the east across the sea’ … ‘From him will spring forth the tribe that will protect the land of Ireland … Fodla’s fair plain will be filled with [this] rightly heralded race … ‘The grassy land of Cashel’s plain will belong to … the earls; they will send the Dál gCais stepping from the territory of Munster across royal Limerick’s waters.’ ‘Goill will come from yonder land who will betray the earlier [Greek] Goill a spirited royal stock of firm deed, they will come from England.’ ‘The … land … will be left by them in a state of misery without honour for saints or sanctuaries …’ ‘Ireland’s smooth, bright surface will be turned into a sown(?) field by the English; there will be many stout stone dwellings around Fréamhann’s corn-filled plain.’ ‘Tell me, Séadna’, said Fionnchú of the swift miracles, ‘after the downfall of Ireland’s nobles, who will free her from the stern English troop?’ ‘The Greeks of the land of the Maigue river will proceed [with] an allied host by their side: the choicest of the noble Goill of Breagha’s Tara and the spirited noble descendants of Míl.’ ‘The furious host from the land of Conn and the warlike young warriors from London will [both] look to their fierce weapons [to see] which of them will overcome the other.’ ‘Tell me, O great prophet of Heaven, which of the two battle-troops will possess the land of Ireland as a result of this fight you foresee?’ ‘The land of Flann’, said Séadna of the pure psalms, ‘will be taken [lit. ‘had’] from that fierce zealous throng by her own fair Goill’. The overthrow of London’s host pleases me! ‘After the future fight over this bright pure land …, there will be a wall of English bones which [even] neighbouring herds cannot breach.’57 In Liag mo thuirse tásg mo ríogh (‘Gravestone [or ‘physician’ (Liaigh)] for my sorrow is the news of my king’s death’),58 Donnchadh an tSneachta Mág Raith, 56 For this sentence I am following the alternate translation Ó Raghallaigh offers in his accompanying notes. 57 Verses 10, 12, 16, 20–1, 23–7, 29–33. 58 Item §8 in appendix,

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who seems to have been the earl of Desmond’s own poet, takes up the tale that the Geraldines are not of English but of Greek descent. News of the death of the earl, whom he describes as his ‘king’, was the culmination of a series of sorrows, which numbs his pain at the earlier deaths of James fitz Maurice, John mac an Iarla and the other Gaels and Greeks. The head of John mac an Iarla, he says, is on display in Dublin; the earl’s head has been sent from Kerry to London. The implied contrast between the English of London and the ‘Greek’ Geraldines is even more marked in Truagh sin, a chinn mo chroidhe’ (‘Pitiful that, my dearest head’),59 an anonymous poem lamenting over Sir John mac an Iarla FitzGerald’s decapitated head in which his opponents are described as ‘Danes’, ‘the hard warrior-race of London’. His death at the hands of ‘black foreigners’ (dubhGhalluibh) is compared to that of Brian Bóraime at Clontarf, or that of Brian of the battle of Down in 1260, Seán an Díomais Ó Néill (Shane O’Neill the Proud), or his own ancestor, Thomas the ‘Great Earl’ of Desmond, who was beheaded at Drogheda by Saxons.60 ‘Danes’, the poet says, have killed uncountable numbers of Ireland’s noblest leaders. Apart from the fact that Danair or ‘Danes’ had by now become a general term of abuse for plundering foreigners, the poets in the late sixteenth century seem to be reaching back into literature generated by Viking invasions to resurrect the distinction between Fionnlochlannaigh (‘fair foreigners’) and Dubhlochlannaigh (‘black foreigners’). Once used by the annalists to distinguish between Norwegians and Danes, the words now served to differentiate between Old English or galloglass families,61 and the New English. It is noteworthy that none of the three poems invokes religious motives for the Desmond uprising. There is, on the other hand, clearly a well-established myth in evidence. The Geraldines were not claiming to be ‘more Irish than the Irish themselves’, but they were insisting they were not English and that they were entitled by right of conquest to rule all Ireland both Gael and Gall as earls and kings, and to defend its shores against the Saxons from London. In support of this idiosyncratic message, their patronage of the native Irish learned classes, the mythmakers, was indispensable.

APPENDIx

9. 1 :

I R I S H P O E M S T O G E R A L D I N E PAT RO N S ,

F O U RT E E N T H T O S E V E N T E E N T H C E N T U R I E S

§1. A Ghearóid déana mo dháil (‘Oh Gearóid, plead my cause’). To: Maurice fitz Thomas, first earl of Desmond (d. 1356) and his son Gerald (the future third earl of Desmond). below, p. 276. 59 Item §9 in appendix, below, p. 276. 60 For the execution of Thomas, seventh earl of Desmond, in 1468, see Crooks, above, pp 223–6, 250–1. 61 See Éireannaigh féin Fionnlochlannaigh, in Mac Cionaith, Dioghluim dána, no. 89, trans. Lambert McKenna, ‘Poem to the first earl of Antrim’, Irish Monthly, 48 (June 1920), 314–18.

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Poet: Gofraidh Fionn Ó Dálaigh. Text only: Láimhbheartach Mac Cionaith (ed.), Dioghluim Dána (Dublin 1938), no. 67. Text and trans: Lambert McKenna (ed.), ‘Historical Poems of Gofraidh Fionn Ó Dálaigh Ix’, Irish Monthly, 47 (Sept. 1919), 509–14. §2. Mór ár bhfearg riot a rí Saxon (‘Great is our anger against thee, O king of England’). To: Maurice fitz Maurice, second earl of Desmond (d. 1358). Poet: Gofraidh Fionn Ó Dálaigh. Text and trans: Bergin, Irish bardic poetry, no. 17. §3. Mise [a Aimi] ar h’inchaibh fein (‘O Amy, I am face to face with yourself ’). To: Amy, daughter of the first earl of Desmond, wife of David Roche lord of Fermoy. Poet: Maolmhuire Mac Craith. Text only: ABM, no. 335. §4. Iongaibh thu orm a Iarla (‘Be on thy guard against me, O Earl!’). To: Gerald, third earl of Desmond (d. 1398). Poet: Gofraidh Fionn Ó Dálaigh. Text only: Mac Cionaith, Dioghluim Dána, no. 101. Text and trans: Lambert McKenna, ‘Historical poems of Gofraidh Fionn Ó Dálaigh x’, Irish Monthly, 47 (Oct. 1919), 563–9. §5. Gá mhéid ngabáil fuair Éire (‘How many times was Ireland conquered?’). To: James fitz Thomas, eighth earl of Desmond (d. 1487). Poet: Torna Ó Maolchonaire. Text only: Pender, ‘O’Clery genealogies’, pp 169–72. §6. Croidhe so dá ghoid uainne (‘This heart is being stolen from us’). To: Eleanor, daughter of Gerald (Gearóid Mór), eighth earl of Kildare. Poet: Maghnus Ó Domhnaill. Text only: Ó Rathile, Dánta grádha, no. 49. §7. Cia as sine cairt ar chrích Néill (‘Who has the oldest charter to Niall’s land?’). To: James fitz Maurice FitzGerald of Desmond (d. 1579). Poet: Domhnall mac Dáire Mhic Bhruaideadha. Text only: Ó Raghallaigh, ‘Poems from the Nugent manuscript’, pp 122–36.

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§8. Liag mo thuirse tásg mo ríogh (‘Gravestone [or ‘physician’ (Liaigh)] for my sorrow is the news of my king’s death’). To: Elegy on Gerald fitz James FitzGerald, fourteenth earl of Desmond (d. 1583) and his kinsmen James fitz Maurice FitzGerald (d. 1579) and Sir John fitz James FitzGerald (d. 1582). Poet: Donnchadh an tSneachta Mac Craith. Text only: ABM, no. 299. §9. Truagh sin a chinn mo chroidhe (‘Pitiful that, my dearest head’). To: Elegy on Sir John fitz James FitzGerald of Desmond (d. 1582). Poet: anonymous. Text only: ABM, no. 484. §10. A hógaibh éirgheas fine (‘A family arises from its youths’). To: Sir Seaán mac Sir Éamuinn mic Thomáis mic Mhuiris Mheic Gearailt, Knight of Glin [or FitzMaurice] as a baby. Poet: Cúchonnacht Ó Dálaigh. Text only: ABM, no. 15 §11. Lá dá rabhas ar maidin go fánach (‘One morning as I was straying’). To: Seaán Óg Mac Gearailt, tighearna na nDéiseach (d. 1626). Poet: Geoffrey Keating. Text only: Eoin Cathmhaolach Mac Giolla Eáin [Rev. John MacErlean] (ed.), Dánta, amhráin is caointe Sheathrúin Céitinn (Dublin, 1900), pp 38–43. §12. Sgéal do sgapas [sic in MS: read ‘sgapadh’] fán mBanbha mbraenaigh (‘A tale that was spread around dewy Ireland’). To: Elegy on Seaán [?Mac Gearailt]. Poet: Geoffrey Keating. Unpublished: RIA MS 236 [B/vi/1], fo. 194b. §13. Fada ó chéile gasraidh Ghréag (‘Far from each other are the Grecian warriors’). To: Elegy for Gearóid, Seaán and Séamus Meic Gearailt [seventeenth century?]. Poet: anonymous. Text only: ABM, no. 227. §14. A Bháis ar mharbhuis Muiris? (‘O Death, hast thou slain Maurice?’). To: Elegy for Maurice son of William FitzGerald (son of the Knight of Kerry).

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Poet: Diarmait (mac Muiris) Ó Dálaigh. Text only: Pádraig Ó Duinnín (ed.), Dánta Phiarais Feiritéir (Dublin, 1903), no. 1a. §15. Bean chaite cheardcha an ghaisgidh (‘The forge of chivalry is a harsh wife’). To: Elegy for Maurice son of William FitzGerald (son of the Knight of Kerry) [mid-seventeenth century]. Poet: Muiris Óg Ó Gearáin. Text only: ABM, no. 62. §16. Soirbh bhur dtoisg a Thriath Siúire (‘Auspicious your errand, O chief of the Siur’). To: Éamonn Butler and Aibhilín FitzGerald (daughter of the fourteenth earl of Desmond). Poet: Eoin Ó Conmhuighe. Text only: Poems on the Butlers, no. 12. §17. Atchíu néall neamhdha ós an raon (‘I see a heavenly cloud above the pair’). To: Aibhilín FitzGerald, daughter of Gerald, fourteenth earl of Desmond. Poet: Eoin Ó Conmhuighe. Text only: Poems on the Butlers, no. 13. §18. Buan an raith seo ar rígh Cluana (‘Lasting this guarantee for the king of Cloyne’) To: Muiris (mac Dáibhi Dhuibh) Mac Gearailt (d. c.1630). Poet: Conchobhar Ó Dálaigh Cairbreach. Text only: ABM, no. 76. §19. Is baile mar a ainm Áras (‘Arras is a place that resembles its name’ [recalling Irish ár, ‘slaughter’]). To: Elegy on Éamonn Ó Duibhidhir, Piers son of Richard Butler and James FitzGerald [killed at the battle of Arras, 1654]. Poet: anonymous. Text and trans: Dáibhí Ó Cróinín (ed.), ‘Dán Árais, 1654’, in Duffy, Princes, prelates & poets, pp 552–60.

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In 1507, one of the most intriguing and frequently cited of Geraldine documents was sent to Italy by Gearóid Mór, the eighth (or ‘Great’) earl of Kildare. Kildare’s letter to the Gherardini family of Florence seems to have been a response to missives from Italy relating to the perceived connection between the two families. It offers a window into how the Geraldines imagined their history at this juncture. The earl writes: Know then that my predecessors and ancestors passed from France into England, where they lived for a short time, and in the year 1140 [sic] came into this Island of Ireland, in which by the power of their sword they obtained many possessions and performed great feats of arms, and have up to the present day increased and multiplied into divers branches and Families.1 Kildare goes on to describe the extent of his own possessions and political power and that of the earl of Desmond, before asking for further information from the Gherardini concerning the European branches of the family. We do not lack sources attesting this perceived connection between Ireland and Florence in this period. The story told, with minor variations, across various accounts is of three brothers of Florentine extraction – Tommaso, Maurizio and Gherardo – who travelled to Ireland with Henry II and took the leading role in its conquest. Depending on the source, these three or an antecedent of theirs fled from Florence into France because of political unrest, and travelled from there to England, before settling in Ireland. As with many such myths of origin, the accuracy of the account mattered less than its symbolic and romantic attraction. The root of the connection was most probably the coincidence between the names of these three brothers and those of well-attested early Geraldine settlers in Ireland: Maurice, the son of Nest and Gerald of Windsor,2 and his sons Thomas and Gerald. This claim of a link between the two families has been 1 Fitzgibbon, ‘Gherardini’, 248. The key medieval references to a connection between the Gherardini and the Irish Geraldines were first collected by Eugenio Gamurrini in his Historia genealogica delle famiglie nobili Toscane e Umbrie (Florence, 1673), pp 111–38. Fitzgibbon ‘Gherardini’, 246–64 translates this material into English. 2 For the latter, see Duffy above, pp 21–52.

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considered spurious by most modern scholars.3 Recent work has begun to remedy the long-standing neglect of Ireland’s links to renaissance Europe and investigations of the Geraldines have been among the most fruitful sources of evidence for such connections.4 Although the Geraldines’ links to Italy have been well attested, the precise nature of their interest in this link in the late Middle Ages has sometimes been overlooked. The focus on the Italian renaissance context has also, perhaps, obscured the extent to which the family cultivated a ‘court culture’ comparable on many levels to other lords across northwest Europe in this period. It is by no means clear whether the claim that the Gherardini and the Irish Geraldines were related originated in Ireland or in Florence. It is, however, worth stressing that, in terms of the relative power of the two families in the late Middle Ages, the Gherardini had more reason to pursue the connection than the Geraldines. The long lineage of the Gherardini and their famous connection to the subject of the Mona Lisa can give a rather distorted impression of the relative importance of the family in Florence by the early sixteenth century. Though the Gherardini were one of the city’s older families, the family’s power and wealth had dwindled considerably by this point.5 The earliest surviving references to the Gherardini–Geraldine connection are from the beginning of fifteenth century. Antonio d’Ottaviano di Rossellino Gherardini describes how an Irish bishop travelling through Florence in 1413 in the company of a priest named ‘Maurice’ told of the family’s connection.6 Thereafter there are further references. One Antonio di Giovanni Manni, in Ireland on business in the early fifteenth century, recounted how he met the earl of Kildare who apprised him of the connection between the families.7 The connection is also described in Leonardo Bruni’s letter of introduction dated 1440, written on behalf of a member of the Gherardini family travelling to Ireland.8 Four decades later, in writing his commentary on Dante’s Divina comedia, Cristoforo Landino mentions the earls of Kildare and Desmond and notes that they descended from three Gherardini brothers. Ugolino Verino also makes reference to the two families’ connection in De illustratione urbis Florentiae (1512).9 In 1516, Ludovico 3 See, e.g., Round, ‘Origin I’; and Duffy, above, p. 22. 4 Significant examples that focus on the Geraldines include: Michael Potterton, ‘Introduction: the FitzGeralds, Florence, St Fiachra and a few fragments’, in Michael Potterton and Thomas Herron (eds), Dublin and the Pale in the renaissance (Dublin, 2011), pp 19–50; Diarmaid Ó Catháin, ‘Some reflexes of Latin learning and of the renaissance in Ireland, c.1450–c.1600’, in Jason Harris and Keith C. Sidwell (eds), Making Ireland Roman: Irish neo-Latin writers and the republic of letters (Cork, 2009), pp 14–37; and Colm Lennon, ‘The FitzGeralds of Kildare and the building of a dynastic image, 1500–1630’, in William Nolan and Thomas McGrath (eds), Kildare history and society (Dublin, 2006), pp 195–211. 5 On the Gherardini’s decline, see Christiane Klapisch-Zuber, Retour à la cité: les magnats de Florence, 1340–1440 (Paris, 2006). 6 Ó Catháin, ‘Some reflexes’, p. 29; and see Crooks, above, pp 236–7. 7 Fitzgibbon, ‘Gherardini’, 247. 8 Discussed by Peter Crooks, above, pp 237–9; Ó Catháin, ‘Some reflexes’, pp 29–31. 9 Fitzgibbon, ‘Gherardini’, 247–9.

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Ariosto devoted a stanza of the Orlando furioso to the Kildare and Desmond branches of the families.10 Historians of late-medieval Ireland have found this material very compelling because it offers evidence of a rare link between Ireland and the heart of the Italian renaissance. It is, however, possible to let the glamour of the Florentine connection obscure some facets of the Geraldines’ contemporary interest in their Italian connections. Though the proponents of the connection on the Florentine side were interested in the extent to which links to a powerful Irish family could bolster Gherardini prestige within Florence, close attention to the terms of the earl’s 1507 letter reveal a different emphasis. The earl’s letter is relatively unusual in articulating the connection from the Irish perspective, rather than the Florentine one, and it is striking that, after the initial address to the Gherardini, Florence itself is never mentioned again in the letter. Rather, the earl expresses an interest in discovering what members of the family still dwell in France and ‘what members of our Family dwell in the Roman country’.11 In the early modern Italian translation of the letter that survives, this is rendered as ‘chi della nostra famiglia abita nel paese Romano’.12 This reference to Rome merits further comment. The fact that the original, presumably Latin, text of this letter seems to have disappeared limits our considerations of what precise term might have been translated as [il] paese Romano, but it is clear that the term cannot refer to an area much greater than the region around Rome. Diarmaid Ó Catháin has stressed how firmly the Geraldines’ origin-myth was linked to the Trojan foundation of Rome. He cites Dominic O’Daly’s mid-seventeenth century account of the earls of Desmond – Initium, incrementum, et exitus familiæ Geraldinorum, Desmoniæ comitum13 – in which O’Daly traces the origins of the family back to Troy and states that Aeneas granted the site of Florence to an ancestor of the Geraldines: At a certain time in the land of Hetruria grew a most flourishing vine of Troy, and from Florence ‘its branches stretched forth unto the sea and its boughs unto the river’ [Ps. 79]. So from the river Arno and the Mediterranean sea, that noble and ancient Geraldine offshoot advanced beyond the Irish Sea to the northern shores of Ireland.14 It appears that the Great Earl of Kildare may have been less interested in the cultural capital that could accrue from a connection to renaissance Florence, than in the time-honoured prestige that an origin in Rome could bring. It is 10 Fitzgerald, Earls of Kildare, p. 67. 11 Fitzgibbon, ‘Gherardini’, 247–9. 12 Ibid., at p. 248. 13 Dominicus O’Daly, Initium, incrementum, et exitus familiæ Geraldinorum, Desmoniæ comitum, palatinorum Kyerriæ in Hibernia, ac persecutionis hæreticorum descriptio (Lisbon, 1655), pp 1–2. 14 Ó Catháin, ‘Some reflexes’, pp 28–9; the translation is from Dominic O’Daly, The rise, increase, and exit of the Geraldines, earls of Desmond, and persecution after their fall, trans. C.P. Meehan (2nd ed., Dublin and London, 1878), pp 33–4.

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possible that Kildare was picking up on the fact that Florence typically traced its own origins to Rome, a piece of information that might very well have been contained in the now-lost letter to which he was responding.15 The imagined movement of the family from Italy, through France, to Britain and then to Ireland constitutes a sort of dynastic translatio imperii. It taps into a set of ideas that had considerable cultural resonance in the period and beyond. In Britain, a not entirely dissimilar story was told about the first settling of Britain and this pseudohistory was given its most influential form in Geoffrey of Monmouth’s Historia regum Britannie. It would certainly have been well known to the earls. In the traditional version of the story, Brutus, a descendant of Aeneas, is banished and wanders with companions in Gaul, before settling in Britain where he encounters and defeats a population of giants, founds London and rules for many years before bequeathing the island to his three sons and dividing it among them. Key to the attraction and success of this myth of origin is its integration of the remote British past into wider European mythologies, particularly that of Rome and by extension Troy, and its emphasis on the close historical links between the otherwise remote insular world and the Continent. Echoes of the Brutus story are discernible in the geographic scope and core motifs of the Geraldine foundation myth. The banished ancestors leave Italy and travel to France and from thence to Britain, before taking part in the conquest of Ireland and dividing it among the three of them. Evidence for an ultimate origin in Rome, rather than Florence, would make the parallels particularly neat. The Geraldines were not the only dynasts to co-opt national mythological and historical models for their own ends. English magnates, such as the Stanleys and the Percys (both of whom occupied positions of power on the northern English frontier, which bear comparison with the situation of the Geraldines in Ireland) also drew on similar material in charting the histories of their families in the late Middle Ages.16 The Great Earl’s interest in his family’s potential Roman roots highlights the problems that can arise from focusing too narrowly on the tantalizing connections of the Geraldines to renaissance Florence. The connections are certainly important, but the focus on Florence has, perhaps, obscured come of the other contemporary cultural currents by which the family might have been influenced. Particular points of omission are the extent to which the Geraldines may have been influenced by French fashions and by another cultural powerhouse of late medieval Europe, that of the Burgundian territories. The 15 For an analysis of Florentine perspectives on their connection to ancient Rome, see Nicolai Rubinstein, ‘The beginnings of political thought in Florence: a study in mediaeval historiography’, Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, 5 (1942), 198–227. 16 For further comment, see Aisling Byrne and Victoria Flood, ‘The romance of the Stanleys: regional and national imaginings in the Percy Folio’, Viator, 46 (2015), 1–24. An extensive analysis of the points of comparison between the Irish contexts and frontiers within Britain, particularly as it pertains to magnate power, is Ellis, Tudor frontiers.

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Geraldines, as has been well attested, stood at the heart of a complex web of foreign social, cultural and economic connections.17 The influence of the extraordinary cultural flourishing of the court at Burgundy, in particular, and throughout the Low Countries, in general, from the mid-fifteenth century onwards should not be discounted in any exploration of court culture in late medieval Ireland. This northern efflorescence had, it is generally acknowledged, a substantial impact in England and this seems the likeliest route by which fashions and ideas associated with this milieu might have reached the Geraldines in Ireland.18 Just as Malcolm Vale has argued that English court culture should be seen as part of, rather than in isolation from, this north-western European context,19 it is possible to see the westernmost expression of this world in late medieval Ireland. The destruction and dispersal of Geraldine properties in the political upheavals of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries means our sense of the court culture of the Geraldines is, with a few notable exceptions, limited to contemporary written accounts. The surviving sources are rather more complete for the Kildare branch of the family than for the Desmond branch in this period. We know that the earls of Kildare had an annual income of over £2,000, placing them far ahead of other Irish magnates and among the ten wealthiest nobles in Britain or Ireland at the time.20 The material luxury and wealth of the centre of Geraldine power at Maynooth is noted in Richard Stanihurst’s section of Holinshed’s Chronicles, where he describes Maynooth castle when it was captured in 1535 in these terms: Great and rich was the spoile, such store of beddes, so many goodly hangings, so riche a Wardrob, such braue furniture, as truely it was accompted for housholde stuffe and vtensiles, one of the richest Earle his houses, vnder the Crowne of Englande.21 The long lists of expensive plate included in late medieval inventories from Maynooth and the few Geraldine artefacts that survive from this time 17 The well-developed political links between the major branches of the family and the Continent in the years before 1534 have been well documented by Micheál Ó Siochrú, ‘Foreign involvement in the revolt of Silken Thomas, 1534–5’, PRIA, 96C (1996), 49–66; economic and social links are summarized in Ó Catháin, ‘Some reflexes’, pp 16–17. 18 Malcolm Vale supplies an overview of the courtly culture of this northwest Europe context, in War and chivalry: warfare and aristocratic culture in England, France and Burgundy at the end of the Middle Ages (London, 1981). For the Burgundian court as a model for Europe in general in this period, see Werner Paravicini, ‘The court of the dukes of Burgundy: a model for Europe?’, in Ronald G. Asch and Adolf M. Birke (eds), Princes, patronage and the nobility: the court at the beginning of the modern age (Oxford, 1991), pp 69–102. 19 Malcolm Vale, The princely court: medieval courts and culture in north-west Europe, 1270–1380 (Oxford, 2001), p. 3. 20 M.A. Lyons, Gearóid Óg, ninth earl of Kildare (Dundalk, 1998), p. 22. See also Ellis, below, p. 338. 21 Holinshed’s Irish chronicle, ed. Liam Miller and Eileen Power (Dublin, 1979), p. 278.

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demonstrate that this description was not mere hyperbole on Stanihurst’s part.22 The surviving artefacts include the so-called council table and a portrait of Gerald (Gearóid Óg), ninth earl of Kildare, as well as a couple of books from the library. The stone council table dates from around 1533 and is constructed and ornamented along contemporary fashionable lines, displaying ‘capable renaissance ornament’.23 The portrait of the ninth earl hung until recently at Carton House, and the Bodleian Library holds what appears to be an early copy. The painting was once ascribed to Hans Holbein, and, although that attribution now seems like wishful thinking, it reflects the very fashionable style of the work, which owes much to the strain of renaissance painting that came to England from the Low Countries.24 Taste of a similar sort is witnessed in the record we have of the music of the Netherlandish composer, Joannes Prioris, being sung at Maynooth in 1535.25 Evidence particularly in line with Stanihurst’s report of Maynooth’s sumptuousness comes in the form of the surviving books. The manuscript known as the Kildare rental (British Library, MS Harley 3756) contains two inventories of the books owned by the earls.26 The item described as ‘Psalterium deauratum in pergameno’ [19a] is almost certainly to be equated with the manuscript known as the ‘Hours of William Porter’ or the ‘Kildare Hours’ (now New York, Pierpont Morgan Library, MS M.105). The manuscript is littered with notes, particularly obits, relating to the earls of Kildare.27 This is one of only two extant books that can be identified with items in the Kildare library inventories.28 The other is the sole manuscript witness to Thomas Gray’s Scalacronica [35], which is now Cambridge, Corpus Christi College, MS 133. The Scalacronica manuscript is a handsome volume that probably came into the earls’ hands at the very end of the fourteenth century.29 Its ornamented initials 22 Crown surveys, pp 237–357. 23 Knight of Glin, Irish furniture (Dublin, 1978), pp 3–4. 24 Lennon, ‘Dynastic image’, p. 205. 25 Lennon, ‘Dynastic image’, p. 200. 26 The inventories are printed in Crown surveys, pp 312–14, 355–6. Item numbers given in square brackets in the text refer to the numeration assigned to individual books in my edition and analysis of the Kildare booklists: Aisling Byrne, ‘The earls of Kildare and their books at the end of the Middle Ages’, The Library: Transactions of the Bibliographical Society, 14:2 (2013), 142–53. 27 The notes are transcribed in M.R. James, Catalogue of manuscripts and early printed books from the libraries of William Morris, Richard Bennett, Bertram fourth earl of Ashburnham, and other sources (London, 1906), pp 139–45. 28 The manuscript now known as BL, MS Egerton 89, a copy of the Irish translation of Bernard of Gordon’s Lilium medicinae, written in 1482, was certainly in the hands of the earls of Kildare in this period (see Standish Hayes O’Grady and Robin Flower (eds), Catalogue of Irish manuscripts in the British Museum, rev. Myles Dillon, 3 vols (London, 1926–53), i, pp 220–1). However, it does not appear in the booklists in the Kildare rental and may have been acquired after the date at which the first inventory of books was made and subsequently left the family’s possession before the second list of books was compiled about three decades later (see Byrne, ‘Earls of Kildare and their books’, 135–6). 29 Byrne, ‘Earls of Kildare and their books’, 131–2; see also, Richard James Moll, Before Malory: reading Arthur in later medieval England (London, 2003), p. 36. The text has been published from this manuscript in Andy King (ed.), Sir Thomas Gray: Scalacronica, 1272–1363 (Woodbridge, 2005).

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are of very fine quality, but the visual impact of the book of hours is of another order entirely. It is an exquisite piece of work, a deluxe manuscript representing the very top end of early fifteenth-century French illumination. The earls of Kildare were not the manuscript’s first owners. It appears to have been made for the English soldier Sir William Porter, presumably during his time in France after the siege of Rouen (1418–19). Porter’s arms and motto (‘Aultre ne veul mes’) are incorporated into the decoration at several points in the manuscript. The book was written and illuminated in Rouen c.1420–5 and seventy-nine miniatures have survived to the present day. It represents the sort of sophisticated French production for which English nobles fighting in France developed a taste during the Hundred Years War. The surviving illuminations have been identified as the work of the celebrated Fastolf master (fl. c.1420–60) a relatively prolific and influential artist. A good number of manuscripts have been attributed to this illuminator who seems to have worked first in France and then to have travelled to England in the 1440s.30 It is unclear how the manuscript passed from his family to the earls of Kildare. The natural route for such personal manuscripts as books of hours to move between families was via intermarriage, but there is no obvious connection between Porter’s family and the Kildare Geraldines. Porter died childless in 1436 and was survived by his widow Agnes until 1461. She remarried to Sir William Standon, but this marriage was also childless and her heir was her nephew, Sir William Charlton. There does not appear to be any obvious connection between any of these families and the Kildares. The most likely explanation is that Kildare purchased the book, probably at some point after Porter’s death. Analysis of the books itemized in the Kildare rental gives us our most comprehensive snapshot of the earls of Kildare’s cultural interests as the Middle Ages drew to a close. Although so many books no longer survive, we can get a reasonably full picture of the sorts of works in the family’s possession from close analysis of the two inventories. There are distinctively local interests in evidence, particularly in the list of Irish books, which include a good deal of material relating to Irish history [38a, 40a]. Historical material of dynastic import also features, most notably in the three works by Giraldus Cambrensis (Gerald of Wales). These appear to be the Topographia Hibernie in Latin [31] and Middle English and Irish translations of the Expugnatio Hibernica [76, 56a] – a text of particular relevance to dynastic self-fashioning, offering as it does a highly eulogistic account of Geraldine involvement in the twelfth-century conquest of Ireland.31 However, the great bulk of the collection bears close comparison with 30 Martha Driver, ‘“Me fault faire”: French makers of manuscripts for English patrons’, in Jocelyn Wogan-Browne et al. (eds), Language and culture in medieval Britain: the French of England, c.1100–c.1500 (York, 2009), pp 420–43. 31 I argue that these translations were disseminated (and, perhaps, also made) in the period of the Kildare ascendency, in Aisling Byrne, ‘Family, locality and nationality: vernacular adaptations of the Expugnatio Hibernica from late medieval Ireland’, Medium Aevum, 82 (2013), 101–18. The paleographical evidence

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the sorts of texts that were collected and read by educated nobility across Britain and northwest Europe in this period, including many of the texts most typically associated with courts, both royal and noble, in the Burgundian sphere of influence. This sort of literature combined a valorization of classical figures and classical texts, with a deep reverence for the cult of chivalry and the idea of crusading. It was highly didactic, where ‘ideas derived from Greek and Roman history merged with medieval precedents to form a corpus of writing concerned essentially with questions of individual reputation’.32 Favoured genres included history, romance, biography and manuals of conduct and chivalry. This was the world described most famously by Johan Huizinga in his highly influential work, The waning of the Middle Ages (1919). This cultural sphere cannot be described merely as Francophone, since it encompassed areas that spoke other languages, such as Flemish, but its apparent impact in Ireland is most immediately visible in the titles of numerous French-language books in the earls’ library. Some of these may have been purchased in, or imported from, France, and others may have been acquired in England. English court culture was very influenced by developments across the channel in this period. The marriage of Margaret of York and Charles the Bold of Burgundy constituted the high point of relations between these regions and the connection was furthered in the course of Edward IV’s exile in the Low Countries in the early 1470s.33 Many of the works printed by William Caxton, one-time secretary to Margaret of York, are translations of works produced at, or popular in, the Burgundian court.34 Other English prints are marketed in didactic terms characteristic of that milieu: for instance, Caxton’s prologue to Malory’s Morte Darthur (the text of which may have been in the library at Maynooth)35 holds the narrative up as a template for chivalrous, noble living. A work particularly characteristic of this fashionable literature is Raoul Lefèvre’s Le recueil des histories de Troyes. Lefèvre was chaplain to Philip the Good of Burgundy and completed the work in 1464. It became the first book printed in English, when Caxton produced a translated edition in Bruges around 1474. The work combines classical material with the attitudes of chivalric romance and the earls seem to have acquired a copy at some point after 1500 [56]. Another work in the Geraldines’ library that was closely associated with the Burgundian context in this period is Jean Lemaire de Belges, Les illustrations de Gaule et singularitez de Troye [38]. The work addresses primarily ‘Burgundian themes’ and uses the Trojan narrative to authorize the Burgundian royal line.36 Courtly reading in this period and in this milieu often had a classical flavour, and places all the surviving manuscripts in this period (see further, Byrne, ‘Family, locality and nationality’, 108–13). 32Vale, War and chivalry, p. 15. 33 Ibid., p. 14 34 Diane Bornstein, ‘William Caxton’s chivalric romances and the Burgundian renaissance in England’, English Studies, 57 (1976), 1–10. 35 Byrne, ‘Earls of Kildare and their books’, 149. 36 Marian Rothstein, ‘Jean LeMaire de Belges’ Illustrations de Gaule et singularitez de Troyes: politics and unity’, Bibliothèque d’Humanisme et Renaissance, 52 (1990), 596.

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the Kildare lists bear close comparison to the favoured reading material of Burgundian nobility in this period. As might be expected, the overlap with the fashionable court literature of northwest Europe is particularly noticeable among the French books. Honoré Bouvet’s L’arbre des batailles [42] is a dialogue on war and the laws of war, which draws on authorities such as Bartolo da Sassoferrato and Vegetius, and which stresses the duties and virtues proper to knights and commanders. Composed in the late fourteenth century, L’arbre des batailles attained particular popularity among royalty and nobles in the fifteenth century and a copy was in the hands of the earls of Kildare by 1498 at the latest. An expression of the same sorts of chivalric ideals can be found in Alain Chartier’s Le brevaire des nobles [47] a widely read set of poems about the virtues associated with noblesse. The copy owned by the earls was bound with two more straightforwardly devotional treatises, illustrating the often very permeable boundary between the ideals of chivalry and the purview of religious belief in this period. A further piece of fashionable chivalric writing owned by the earls is Le songe du vergier [55]. This dream vision was composed in the 1370s and treats the relationship between secular and spiritual government in the form of a dialogue between a knight and a cleric. Among the English works we have a translation of another book which was highly popular in northwest European court circles, Christine de Pizan’s Faits d’armes et de chevalrie [75; 35a] The interest in didactic chivalric works in northwest European courts in this period dovetails with the growth in interest in literature concerning the crusades. Crusading literature had always been popular, but it seems to have enjoyed a particular vogue in the decades around the fall of Constantinople in 1453. Numerous texts in the Geraldine library reflect broadly crusading interests, including Les illustrations de Gaule et singularitez de Troye, which combines interest in classical antiquity with the promotion of the crusades. Pierre Gringore’s La piteuse complainte que fait la terre sainte [40] is addressed to Christian princes, prelates and lords and personifies the Holy Land as a captured woman. In more narrative vein, the romance Ogier le danois [41] and the English text ambiguously dubbed ‘Charlemayn’ [80] belong to the Charlemagne cycle of narratives, which were frequently seen as proto-crusading texts in this period. The item referred to in the Kildare rental as ‘The sege of Jerusalem’ [78] may also fit within this category, possibly referring to the account of the crusader Godfrey of Bouillon printed by Caxton in 1481. The library at Maynooth also contained Guillaume Caoursin’s account of the 1480 siege of Rhodes [87]. This text was translated into English by John Kay and probably had particular significance for the earls since the Geraldines had close links to the knights hospitaller throughout the Middle Ages and two sons of Gerald (Gearóid Mór), the eighth earl, became hospitaller knights.37 37 Gregory O’Malley, The knights hospitaller of the English langue, 1460–1565 (Oxford, 2005), pp 239–55; Mary Ann Lyons, ‘Sidelights on the Kildare ascendancy: a survey of Geraldine

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Historical writing played a central role in the literary world of the Burgundian court and its imitators. Particularly popular were chivalric chronicles that might provide historical models for noble behaviour. Prominent examples that were acquired by the earls of Kildare include the chronicles written by Jean Froissart [36] and Enguerrand de Monstrelet [37]. The sorts of accounts of Roman history and pseudo-history that one would expect in a library of a noble in this period and which would have fuelled the earls’ interest in their possible Roman origins are all present. The booklists mention Titus Livy’s Historiae Romanae decades, there are versions of Caesar’s Commentarii de bello Gallico in Latin and in French, two Latin copies of Virgil, one with glosses [8] and one with four commentaries [11], and an English translation of The Aeneid [79], probably, from the form of the title, Caxton’s version printed in 1490. Is there any evidence of an interest in Florence in the book collection? The text with the most obvious link to that city is Antoninus of Florence’s Chronicon. This long and sprawling text by one of fifteenth-century Florence’s most influential figures, presented history as a series of examples of righteous living. The Chronicon is a relatively conventional assemblage of standard sources, though its final parts incorporate material from contemporary Florentine writers, such as Poggio Bracciolini and Leonardo Bruni. However, attributing Geraldine ownership of this work to their Florentine connections would be somewhat rash. Antoninus’s work was popular across Europe and made it to Ireland at an early point. Irish translations of sections of another of his works, the Confessionale, appear in the mid-fifteenth century and the library list of the Youghal Franciscan friary includes a copy of that work.38 It has been observed that various books in the Kildare library reflect contemporary humanist trends.39 These books span the two booklists and were clearly collected in the time of both the eighth and ninth earls. However, it is worth noting that the strand of humanist writing that is best represented is not that of Italy, but that of northern Europe. Prominent examples include Thomas More’s Utopia [28] and Bernard André’s works [29]. The French book entitled ‘Encheridion’ [57] is almost certainly a translation of Erasmus’s Enchiridion militis christini. Another humanist writer mentioned in both library lists is Jacob Locher [9]. This item may be the Stultifera navis, but it might, as John L. Flood has observed, also to refer to Johann Grüninger’s 1498 edition of Horace which opens with verses ‘Ad Lectores’ headed ‘Jacobi Locher philomusi poete laureati Epigramma’.40 In either event, Locher was certainly influenced by Italian involvement in the church, c.1470–c.1520’, Archiv. Hib., 48 (1994), 73–87, at 84. 38 Salvador Ryan, ‘Windows on late medieval devotional practice: Máire Ní Mháille’s “Book of piety” (1513) and the world behind the texts’, in Rachel Moss, Colmán Ó Clabaigh and Salvador Ryan (eds), Art and devotion in late medieval Ireland (Dublin, 2006), pp 1–15, at pp 4–5. 39 Ó Catháin, ‘Latin learning’, pp 25–6; Potterton, ‘Introduction’, pp 26–7. 40 Personal correspondence with the author. In Byrne, ‘Earls of Kildare and their books’, I suggest that the entry in the library catalogue refers to the Stulifera navis, but Professor Flood’s

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humanism, but having spent most of his career in the German lands was not part of its mainstream. The Italian names that appear in the booklist do not always illustrate a direct connection to southern Europe, and sometimes the texts seem more likely to have been acquired because of connections to England. For instance, Cornelio Vitelli’s works appear in the list from the 1490s and the 1531 list [10]. The appearance of Vitelli in the Kildare collection at this early juncture may owe less to the earls’ connections to Italy than to the fact that he was among the earliest prominent humanists to have been active in England. Vitelli spent most of his career in his native Italy, but in 1485 was made praelector of New College, Oxford where he stayed for two years before moving to positions at Louvain and then Paris. He appears to have returned to London around 1490 in search of royal patronage. He is known to have been in Oxford until 1492, and thereafter seems to have returned to Italy.41 Vitelli’s time in England pre-dates the arrival of Gearóid Óg there in 1496. However, Vitelli was certainly close to Bernard André, who may have tutored the young Gearóid, during his time at court.42 Lorenzo Valla’s work (probably Elegantiae linguae Latinae [32]) and Ambrogio Calepino’s dictionary [24] connect the earls’ humanist reading more directly with the Italian context; both were popular linguistic reference works across Europe. The survival of the two lists gives us a very clear sense of a book collection in a state of rapid enrichment and expansion across a span of about thirty years or so. I have argued elsewhere that the two surviving booklists date from before 1500 and from 1531 respectively. Professor Flood’s suggestion that there is a 1498 edition of Horace among the books in the earlier list would allow the dating of the compilation of that inventory to be narrowed to between 1498 and 1500. There has been a tendency among historians to draw too neat a contrast between the cultural attitudes of the eighth earl and those of his son. Gearóid Mór has typically been cast as a hands-on military man, intent on building up his political powerbase and with less time for the finer things in life than his humanistically orientated, English-educated son. However, the interests expressed in his letter to the Gherardini would seem to suggest otherwise, as might the items in the first of the library inventories, which seem to record books that were largely acquired in his lifetime. The library’s core of chivalric manuals and books of military theory seems to have been in place in the time of the eighth earl. At least fifty items seem to have been added to the library between the dates of the two inventories, but given the first booklist was probably drawn up before 1500, a good number of these could also have been acquired by the eighth earl before his death in 1513.43 identification seems more compelling. 41 J.B. Trapp, ‘Vitelli, Cornelio (d. in or before 1554), humanist scholar’, ODNB. 42 Byrne, ‘Earls of Kildare and their books’, 139. 43 There are 56 entries in the earlier list and 91 in the later list. It is worth noting, however, that the true number of books in the collection by 1531 is likely to have been closer to 110, since the longer list leaves the page designated for the Irish-language books blank, presumably in anticipation

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Not all items in the library lists can have been printed in England, but a significant number of texts available from London booksellers at this time were printed on the Continent.44 In some cases the likely publisher is known to have produced material for the English market. Antoine Vérard, who is almost certainly the publisher of the French version of Boethius titled Le grant Boece [67], and, perhaps, of several other items in the earls’ lists, exported extensively into England and was particularly popular in court circles. Indeed, he printed an English-language version of the Shepherds’ calendar (which appears in an unidentified edition as item 81 in the Kildare booklists) for export to England in 1503. Of course, it is not impossible that some of the items in the library might have been obtained directly from continental Europe. The ninth earl went to France at least once, when he attended Henry VIII at the Field of the Cloth of Gold.45 We have little evidence for the reading material of the earls of Desmond in this period, apart from the Irish-language material treated by Katharine Simms elsewhere in this volume.46 Absence of evidence is, of course, not evidence of absence, and the threads connecting us to court life in late medieval Ireland can be remarkably slender. If the Kildare rental had not survived, there would have been about as much evidence of the extent and range of the Kildare branch’s reading in four languages as there is of Desmond reading patterns. Furthermore, although the range and number of items kept at Maynooth may have been unique, the reading interests displayed in these lists are not entirely uncharacteristic of Ireland in this period. Given how rare clear evidence of book ownership is, and how frequently books circulating in Ireland returned to England in the modern period, the firmest evidence we have of this interest is the number of Irish translations of such material that survive from this period.47 Many of these are from English language exemplars, such as the Irish versions of Guy of Warwick and Bevis of Hampton, but there are also some from French and Latin. For instance, the Irish translation of the Quest of the Holy Grail is most likely to have been made from French. The Irish version of Fierabras appears to be translated from a Latin version and the Irish translation of the Travels of Marco Polo seems to be from Francesco Pipino’s Latin version. There of a survey of books in that language that was never completed. We may safely add the 19 Irish books listed in the 1490s to the 1531 list and others may also have been acquired in the intervening period. 44 As Paul Needham observes, ‘[although] no quantitative estimates have as yet been made […] through the end of the fifteenth century, and well beyond, a printed book purchased in Britain would just as easily bear a continental imprint as a domestic one’ (Needham, ‘The customs rolls as documents for the printed-book trade in England’, in Lotte Hellinga and J.B. Trapp (eds), The Cambridge history of the book in Britain, iii: 1400– 1557 (Cambridge, 1999), pp 148–9. 45 J.S. Brewer (ed.), Letters and papers, foreign and domestic, of the reign of Henry VIII, iii, part 1: 1519–21 (London, 1867), pp 238–46. 46 See above, pp 264–70. 47 On the translation of non-native material in medieval Ireland generally, see Nessa Ní Shéaghdha, ‘Translations and adaptations into Irish’, Celtica, 16 (1984), 107–24. There is also a brief account of medieval translating activities in Michael Cronin, Translating

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is also an Irish translation of Raoul Lefèvre’s work discussed above, made from Caxton’s English version, the Recuyell of the historyes of Troye. This translation brings us back once more to the Geraldines, not to the earls of Kildare or Desmond, in this instance, but to a cadet branch of the family, the Geraldines of Allen.48 The Irish versions of Guy of Warwick and Bevis of Hampton and Caxton’s Recuyell all survive uniquely in TCD, MS 1298, a late fifteenth-century manuscript. Marginalia in this codex provide strong evidence that the works were translated for the Geraldines of Allen at their castle in Kilmeage, co. Kildare.49 Though members of this family appear to have had many dealings with the earls of Kildare in the period, they were very much small players on the Irish scene. Despite this, they clearly did not need to have recourse to the earls’ library to produce their own reading material. None of the three texts unique to this manuscript are mentioned in the earls’ library lists, even the Recuyell is translated from a copy of the English printed edition, not from Raoul Lefèvre’s French original, which was owned at Maynooth. However, these texts do reflect similar fashionable tastes to those in evidence in the Kildare inventories. Guy of Warwick and Bevis of Hampton are chivalric romances with a crusading emphasis and the Recuyell’s treatment of themes popular in courtly circles across northwest Europe has been discussed above. That chivalric reading material reflecting similar tastes was in the hands of both the earls of Kildare and this relatively insignificant branch of the Geraldine may give some hint as to the extent to which texts fashionable in England and in France and the Low Countries were popular and available in Ireland in this period. Much of what has been written about the Geraldines’ complex familial identity focuses on their ambiguous position in relation to Irish and English politics, society and culture, an idea famously expressed in the speech that Gerald of Wales puts into the mouth of his uncle, Maurice fitz Gerald, at the siege of Dublin (1171): ut sicut Hibernicis Angli, sic et Anglis Hibernici simus (‘just as we are English to the Irish, likewise to the English we are Irish’).50 However, the family also imagined their history and contemporary noble identity in terms that were more broadly European in scope. The most eye-catching manifestation of this is their connection to contemporary Florence, but they were also very interested in extending this connection to Italy into the past and mapping a Romano-Trojan origin-myth for themselves of the sort cultivated by nations and dynasties across medieval Europe. This Geraldine myth of origin has a geographic sweep that would be hard to rival, with the family moving from an ultimate origin in Troy, through Italy to France and from Britain to Ireland. The breadth of the geographical context through which the Geraldines traced their Ireland: translation, languages, culture (Cork, 1996). 48 The only sustained examination of the history of this family to date is Kenneth Nicholls, ‘The Geraldines of Allen’, Ir. Geneal., 4 (1968–73), 93–108, 194–200. 49 For an analysis of the ownership evidence, see Byrne, ‘Family, locality and nationality’, 111–13. 50 Giraldus, Expug. Hib., pp 80–1.

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history is mirrored in the far-reaching scope of their cultural connections at the end of the Middle Ages. The surviving evidence of their wider interests, particularly their reading interests, in this period associates them with a thriving court culture shared across large areas of northwest Europe. Numerous texts that were particularly fashionable at this time were read at Maynooth and the chivalric, classical and didactic preoccupations of contemporary courtly circles are reflected throughout the reading material described in the Kildare rental. The similarity between the reading tastes of the Geraldines and those of other nobles in the Burgundian sphere of influence suggests that the trends set in motion by the cultural efflorescence of that court at the end of the Middle Ages spread further west than we have previously assumed.

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The Geraldines and the Irish: intermarriage, ecclesiastical patronage and status

S PA R K Y B O O K E R

The Geraldines, like many of the long-established colonial families of medieval Ireland, did not remain aloof from the Irish people or culture that surrounded them. The Geraldines of Desmond and, to a lesser extent, of Kildare engaged with Irish literary culture, commissioning Irish-language manuscripts, acting as patrons for bardic poets, and even in some cases writing bardic poetry themselves, as Katharine Simms discusses above.1 By the later Middle Ages, many Geraldines spoke Irish as well as English, and adopted Irish methods of sociopolitical interaction, such as the feasts known as ‘cuddies’ (from Ir. cuid oidhche) and the giving and receiving of tuarastal and slánuigheacht as clients and patrons.2 Fifteenth- and sixteenth-century earls of Kildare and Desmond formed extensive networks of Irish allies through marriage and fosterage, as well as entering into purely political/military alliances with the Irish. These connections made them much more powerful and effective, but led to accusations like that of Patrick Finglas (d. 1537), baron of the Irish exchequer, who wrote that ‘neither the Geraldines of Munster nor of Leinster nor the Butlers have duly obeyed the King’s laws, but continually allied themselves with Irishmen’.3 Insults such as this may have been exaggerated by opponents of Geraldine leaders to discredit them, but they were not groundless. This chapter explores the strategies the Geraldines employed in their dealings with the Irish and assesses the extent to which being in the Geraldine orbit might have benefited Irish people. As Professor Ellis has noted, there were conflicting forces shaping this relationship: on the one hand, the Geraldines weighed the anti-Irish feeling common in England and in the colony; on the other the practical necessity of cooperation with their Irish neighbours.4 Three different 1 See Simms, above, pp 265–7. 2 Tuarastal was a gift given by lords to their clients to formalize their relationship. In the case of the earls, it often took the form of a horse or military accoutrements. Slánuigheacht was the protection from injury, oppressions, or prosecution given by a lord to his clients (Crown surveys, pp 319–51; Nicholls, Gaelic Ire., pp 37–8, 47–9; Sparky Booker, ‘Gaelicisation and identity in the “four obedient shires” of Ireland, 1399–1534’ (PhD, University of Dublin, 2012), pp 239, 241; Simms, Kings, pp 178, 173). 3 Patrick Finglas, ‘Decay of Ireland’, in Cal. Carew MSS, i, p. 3; Patrick Finglas, ‘Breviate of Ireland’, in Harris, Hibernica, p. 84. Lyons contends that the Breviate was written in 1534, while Ellis has argued that it was written c.1528 (Mary Ann Lyons, ‘Patrick Finglas (d. 1537)’, ODNB; Ellis, Ire. in the age of the Tudors, p. 29). 4 See Ellis, below, pp 339–40.

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elements of the relationship between the Geraldines and the Irish in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries are examined here for what they reveal about how this great dynasty balanced the tensions between English, Irish, and colonial interests: intermarriage, ecclesiastical patronage and the status of Irish tenants in Geraldine areas.

I N T E R M A R R I AG E

There was extensive intermarriage between the Irish and the Geraldines, despite prohibitions enacted against the practice by the Irish parliament. There is evidence that these prohibitions were occasionally enforced, but enforcement was inconsistent and most cases of intermarriage seem to have prompted no censure from the colonial administration.5 There is, however, evidence to suggest that some Geraldine branches may have imposed limits on intermarriage. In the fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries, the earls of Kildare were much less likely to marry off their eldest sons to Irish people than their daughters and younger sons, and no earl of Kildare married an Irishwoman himself, even though the eighth earl gave his sister and three daughters in marriage to Irish chiefs in order to consolidate alliances with them.6 He also married his third eldest son, Oliver of Belagh (d. 1536/7), to Meadhbh, daughter of Ó Conchobhair Failghe (O’Conor Faly), whose territory neighboured the core Kildare lands.7 This marriage reflected and furthered Kildare’s growing links with the Uí Chonchobhair Failghe and his increasing power in the midlands in the 1510s and 1520s.8 The Uí Chonchobhair continued to be important allies, and the ninth earl married his daughter Mary to Brian Ó Conchobair Failghe sometime between 1523 and 1526.9 By 1532 he had matched another of his daughters to 5 Nevertheless Eleanor FitzGerald, sister of the eighth earl of Kildare, was careful to secure grants of English law for her husband and children when she married Conn Ó Néill c.1480, suggesting that she was aware of the legal difficulties that intermarriage could present (Stat. Edw. IV, pt 1, p. 87; Sparky Booker, ‘Intermarriage in fifteenth-century Ireland: the English and Irish in the “four obedient shires”’, PRIA, 113C (2013), 230–7). 6 These marriages included matches with Art Óg Ó Néill, who became Ó Néill in 1513, and Mac Carthaigh Riabhach, lord of Carbury (Steven Ellis, ‘Fitzgerald, Gerald, eighth earl of Kildare (1456?– 1513)’, ODNB). 7 K.W. Nicholls, ‘The descendants of Oliver FitzGerald of Belagh’, Ir. Geneal., 4:1 (1968), 2–8. Oliver’s immediate descendants had almost exclusively Irish spouses, many from the Ó Fearghail family of the north midlands. Oliver’s heir, Thomas, married a woman named Katharine Shane, who was probably also an Ó Fearghail with an anglicized name, ‘MacShane’ being a surname used by the family (Edward MacLysaght, The surnames of Ireland (4th ed., Dublin, 1997), p. 268). 8 Their cooperative relationship with the Uí Chonchobhair in these decades is attested in the Kildare rental, which records tenancy agreements between Kildare and Ó Conchobhair leaders as well as the names of many members of this branch of the Uí Chonchobhair who were given horses as tuarastal by the ninth earl (Crown surveys, pp 270, 324, 330, 338). 9 Fiona Fitzsimons, ‘The lordship of the O’Connor Faly, 1520–1570’, in William Nolan and Timothy O’Neill (eds), Offaly history and society (Dublin, 1998), pp 207–8, 210–11.

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Ferganainm Ó Cearbhaill (O’Carroll), son of Maolruanaidh Ó Cearbhaill of Ely, and supported his son-in-law’s bid for leadership of the Uí Chearbhaill, perhaps in an effort to check his rival Ormond’s close ties to leading branches of this Irish south midlands family.10 Ferganainm and close members of his family received horses from the ninth earl in the 1520s, and Ferganainm was given seven horses in 1530, an unusually large number perhaps explained by his marriage to the earl’s daughter.11 Even in some notoriously gaelicized cadet branches of the family, such as the Geraldines of Allen, there seems to have been a tendency for the male members of the leading line – especially the eldest, legitimate son – to avoid marrying the Irish, while other members of the family, particularly women, did so frequently. Kenneth Nicholls has traced the genealogies of the Geraldines of Allen, who were probably descended from Robert, son of John Williamson FitzGerald, and their relations in Ballyteig.12 Leading male members of the Allen line married women from the colonial community including Robert himself; his son Gerrot and grandson Bartholomew; his great-grandson, Richard fitz Maurice (fl. 1464); Richard’s son, Maurice fitz Richard (fl. 1513); and grandson, Philip fitz Maurice, while Richard’s daughter and Maurice’s great-granddaughter married Irishmen.13 An illegitimate branch, descended from Robert fitz John’s natural children, shows a tendency of women and illegitimate lines to intermarry with the Irish, as four of his granddaughters and great-granddaughters in this line had Irish husbands.14 Similarly, illegitimate sons, who were often included in genealogies, seem to have been more likely than legitimate sons to marry Irishwomen, though the small sample size makes drawing any definitive conclusions precarious.15 The Ballyteig line began with the marriage of another Philip fitz Maurice, who was probably a younger son, and an Irishwoman named Elizabeth, daughter of Ó Duinn (O’Dunne) or Ó Domhnaill (O’Donnell), in the mid-fifteenth century, but Philip’s eldest son, grandson, and great-grandson all married women of English descent.16 There is limited evidence that some legitimate sons had concubinage relationships with Irishwomen, but did not marry them.17 10 Timothy Venning, ‘The O’Carrolls of Offaly: their relations with the Dublin authorities in the sixteenth century’, in Nolan and O’Neill (eds), Offaly history and society, pp 181–9; AFM, v, p. 1409. 11 Crown surveys, pp 320, 325, 329, 342, 347. 12 The Geraldines of Allen were probably a branch of the Desmond Geraldines, but lived in Kildare (K.W. Nicholls, ‘Geraldines of Allen’, Ir. Geneal., 4:1 (1968), 93–4). 13 Nicholls, ‘Geraldines of Allen’, 94– 102. 14 Ibid.; Emmett O’Byrne, ‘O’Connor Faly (Ó Conchobhair Failghe), Brian’, DIB. 15 Shane fitz Robert of Barnacrow had a natural son James who married a daughter of Conchobhar O’Spellan (Ó Spealáin?) (K.W. Nicholls, ‘The Geraldines of Allen (continued)’, Ir. Geneal., 4:3 (1970), 200). 16 Philip fitz Maurice’s eldest male descendants married women from the Keating or FitzGerald families. His great-great-grandson Edmond did break the pattern and marry an Irishwoman named Sadhbh daughter of Ó Ruairc (Nicholls, ‘Geraldines of Allen’, 97–9). 17 Maurice fitz Richard of Allen had a concubine of the Ó Mórdha family and his natural son from this relationship, Richard, had a concubine called ‘Margar ny Beghan’. The latter’s failure to marry, however, was almost certainly related to the

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This avoidance of intermarriage in leading lines may, in some cases, have been influenced by a desire to ensure that legitimate heirs were not half-Irish. Having a father of English descent seems usually to have been sufficient to ensure uncontested English legal status, and yet more subtle social penalties or disabilities may have resulted for children with Irish mothers who wished to become leading members of the colonial community.18 Whether this avoidance of Irish wives in the leading, legitimate line and proliferation of intermarriage among other family members was a conscious, consistent strategy is uncertain and it was not characteristic of every branch within the Geraldine lineage.19 It is, nevertheless, notable, and is also discernible to some extent in the marital patterns of the earls of Ormond,20 as well as the Darcys of Platten,21 and the Dillons.22 In the leading Desmond line, the situation was somewhat more complex: latemedieval earls of Desmond married their daughters, sisters, nephews and younger sons to the Irish, but they also married Irishwomen themselves (table 11.1).23 The succession to the title was confused and insecure in 1530s, and four sons of Thomas the seventh earl inherited in succession.24 This ensured that any pattern of avoidance of Irish wives by the earls would have been disrupted. For example, one of the late-medieval earls of Desmond who had an Irish wife, fact that Margery was already married and Richard was a hospitaller rather than any ethnic consideration. Pierse, son of John fitz Richard of Ballyteig (fl. 1569), also had an Irish concubine, Katherine daughter of Ó Ruairc (Nicholls, ‘Geraldines of Allen’, 95, 99). 18 ooker, ‘Intermarriage in fifteenth-century Ireland’, 236–7. 19 Even some Kildare Geraldines, like the branch in Carrickmore, did have eldest sons who married Irishwomen, as Robert fitz Gerrot married ‘Gillis’ (Giolla Íosa) daughter of Ó Díomusaigh (O’Dempsey), and his eldest son Shane married ‘Rex’ daughter of Ó Ruairc. This branch was, however, not closely related to the main branch by the sixteenth century when these marriages occurred (Nicholls, ‘Geraldines of Allen (continued)’, 198–9). 20 No earl of Ormond took an Irish wife, but Piers Ruadh, who claimed the earldom after 1515, was the son of James Butler of Pottlesrath and Sadhbh, daughter of Mac Murchadha Caomhánach (David Finnegan, ‘Piers Butler, first earl of Ossory and eighth earl of Ormond (b. in or after 1467, d. 1539)’, ODNB). Later in the sixteenth century, Donnchadh Ó Briain, nephew of the second earl of Thomond, married a sister of James ninth earl of Ormond (McCormack, Desmond, p. 82). 21 The Darcy men only married English women in the leading line, but William Darcy married his daughter to Aodh Dubh Ó Domhnaill in 1520, when Ó Domhnaill submitted to the crown, but managed to have the marriage annulled when Ó Domhnaill reneged on his submission (Stephen B. Barnewall, ‘Darcy of Platten, co. Meath’, Ir. Geneal., 6:4 (1983), 403–22; Brendan Bradshaw, The Irish constitutional revolution of the sixteenth century (Cambridge, 1979), pp 41, 67). 22 Liam Cox, ‘The Dillon lords of Kilkenny west: part one’, Ríocht na Midhe, 11 (2000), 71–4; Liam Cox, ‘Dillon lords of Kilkenny west, part two’, Ríocht na Midhe, 12 (2001), 87; Gerard Dillon, ‘Cnoc Diolún’, Ir. Geneal., 2:12 (1955), 364-5. 23 Maurice Bacach, ninth earl of Desmond, married his daughter Ellice to an Ó Briain, and she became mother of Toirdhealbhach Ó Briain (fl. 1550), half-brother of the second earl of Thomond (McCormack, Desmond, p. 82). 24 The legitimacy of the marriage of Maurice, son of the eleventh earl, was challenged on grounds of consanguinity, and this called into question the legitimacy of his son, James fitz Maurice (McCormack, ‘Internecine warfare’, 497–512; Anthony McCormack, ‘Fitzgerald, James fitz Maurice, de jure twelfth earl of Desmond (d. 1540)’, ODNB; McCormack, ‘Fitzgerald, James fitz John, thirteenth earl of Desmond (d. 1558)’, ODNB).

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Thomas fitz Thomas, eleventh earl of Desmond, probably married Gille, sister of Cormac Óg Láidir Mac Carthaigh, lord of Muskerry, when he did not expect to inherit the earldom. He did not become earl until he was 75, and at this point, Gille was dead and he had remarried, this time choosing Katherine, daughter of John FitzGerald, lord of the Decies.25 Additionally, McCormack has argued that during the succession disputes of the first half of the sixteenth century, claimants to the earldom neglected long-term planning for the earldom and the Desmond line and instead focused narrowly on their own short-term ambitions.26 This may have included abandoning any strategy of marrying English women in favour of more immediate strategic gains through marriage with the Irish. For John fitz Thomas, de facto twelfth earl of Desmond, who contended for the earldom against his grandnephew James fitz Maurice, the support of his Irish in-laws was key to the success of his bid for the title.27 He may have married Mór, daughter of Donnchadh Ó Briain (O’Brien) of Carrigogunnell, co. Limerick, lord of Pobblebrien, with the ambition of becoming earl, and counting on the important military support her family could offer in Munster. This may also have been the case for the marriage of his rival, James fitz Maurice, who married Mary (d. 1548), daughter of his grandfather’s stalwart ally and brotherin-law Cormac Óg Láidir Mac Carthaigh (Mac Carthy), sometime before 1535. James became the de jure earl of Desmond on his grandfather’s death in 1534 but he had been his grandfather’s designated heir since 1529. Mac Carthaigh’s influence and manpower in south-western Munster, just south of the Desmond heartland, must have been key in the decision of James (and his grandfather) to contract this marriage.28 This was only one of several marital alliances between the Mic Charthaigh and the Geraldines of Munster.29 These marital alliances 25 Anthony McCormack, ‘Thomas FitzGerald’, DIB; idem, ‘Internecine warfare and the decline of the house of Desmond, c.1510–c.1541’, IHS, 30:120 (1997), 500–1. Gille seems to have been rewarded with a plot of land from the earl of Kildare c.1505 after her marriage to Thomas (‘Rental book’, ed. Hore, 7 (1862–3), 111). 26 McCormack, ‘Internecine warfare’, 498. 27 A letter from Fokes (Thomas Foxe) to Cromwell on the 22 Mar. 1536 alleged that ‘Sir John off Dessemond hase in his possession and governawnce almoste the hole contrey belongyng to the Erledome, by the ayde off the Obrenes, and other grete lordes; whiche is greate pite that he schulde rule so moche’ (italics added). AFM suggest that James, de jure twelfth earl, was too intimidated by the power of Ó Briain to engage in battle with John in 1516 (McCormack, ‘Internecine warfare’, 499; SP Hen. VIII, ii, p. 308; AFM, v, pp 1335–7). 28 There is reason to suspect that his grandfather helped to broker the marriage, as Cormac Óg was an ally of the eleventh earl’s, and James, though we do not know his birthdate, was probably a very young man when he was married and may have relied on his grandfather’s experience to determine his choice of bride (Nicholls, Gaelic Ire., pp 193–4). 29 The eleventh earl’s first wife was Cormac Óg’s sister, and Cormac himself was the son of Mary, daughter of Edmund FitzMaurice, ninth lord of Kerry, relatives of the Desmond Geraldines. Another of FitzMaurice’s daughters married into a different leading Mac Carthaigh branch when she wed Cormac Ladhrach Mac Carthaigh Mór, and a mid-sixteenth century lord of Kerry married Cormac Ladhrach’s great-grandaugher Catherine (S.T. McCarthy, ‘The Clann Carthaigh (continued)’, Kerry Archaeological Magazine, 2:10 (1913), 57–9; Nicholls, Gaelic Ire., p. 194; AFM, v, p. 1779).

(1)

Ellen, dau. Lord Roche (2)

(1)

Gille, sis. Cormac Óg Láidir Katherine Fitzgerald

13. James = (1536–58)

12a. John = Mór, dau. Donnchadh Ó Briain (1534–6) de facto earl

(2)

Joan, dau. of Maurice Roche Mór, dau. Maolruanaidh Ó Cearbhaill (3) Katherine, dau. Piers Butler (4) Eveleen, dau. Domhnall Mac Carthaigh Mór

(1)

12b. James = Mary, dau. Cormac Óg (1534–41) Laidhir Mac Carthaigh de jure earl

Maurice = Joan, dau. John FitzMaurice d.1529 Fitzgibbon

11. Thomas = (1529–34)

10. James = dau. Toirdhealbhach (1520–9) Ó Briain

Honor, dau. (2) = 9. Maurice = John FitzGibbon (1487–1520)

Numbers refer to the sequence of succession to the earldom of Desmond

8. James = Margaret, (1468–87) dau. Tadhg Ó Briain

7. Thomas = Ellice, dau. William Barry (ex. 1468)

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Table 11.1: Some marriage alliances among the Geraldine earls of Desmond.

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supported and reinforced military ones, as is apparent in the description of the marital links and corresponding Irish allies of James fitz Maurice and John fitz Thomas in the Annals of the Four Masters in 1516.30 James fitz John, thirteenth earl of Desmond, married Mór, daughter of Maolruanaidh Ó Cearbhaill lord of Ely, before 1533, and thus before his father seized the earldom and made him heir.31 He was, however, earl when in 1553 he married his fourth wife, daughter of Domhnall Mac Carthaigh Mór, his powerful neighbour to the southwest.32 It appears that keeping his line English by descent was not his primary aim when making marital choices, either before or after he became earl. By the time of his fourth marriage, however, he had at least two male heirs, Gerald and John, from his marriage with Mór Ní Chearbhaill, and thus the maternal descent of his later children with the daughter of Mac Carthaigh Mór may have been even less of a consideration. Like other earls in this difficult period for the Desmond Geraldines, the thirteenth earl prioritized immediate strategic considerations when choosing wives, and provided himself with Irish in-laws who were locally powerful. This was despite the fact that, once he had secured his position within Munster, he brought the Desmond Geraldines out of their relative isolation and back into closer relations with the English crown.33 The primacy of local concerns was apparent in the marital choices of two other earls of Desmond – James fitz Thomas, the eighth earl, and James fitz Maurice, the tenth – both of whom married Irishwomen in full knowledge that they were next in line to inherit the earldom. James, eighth earl of Desmond, was the eldest son of the ‘great earl’ executed by Sir John Tiptoft in 1468, so it was apparent from James’s birth that he was the heir to the earldom. The tenth earl was the heir of Thomas’s second son, Maurice ninth earl of Desmond, but because the eighth earl was assassinated without issue before James fitz Maurice’s birth, it was always clear that the latter was next in line to inherit.34 Interestingly, these two men both married women from the dominant line in the Ó Briain family, the Desmonds’ neighbours to the north. The eighth earl married Margaret, daughter of Tadhg an Chomhaid Ó Briain of Thomond, and the tenth married a daughter of Toirdhealbhach Ó Briain (d. 1525), nephew of Tadhg and bishop of Killaloe.35 As we have seen, James fitz Thomas, the de facto twelfth earl, 30 McCarthy, ‘Clann Carthaigh’, 57–9; AFM, v, pp 1335–7. 31 Mór was the sister of the ninth earl of Kildare’s son-in-law, Ferganainm, so both major Geraldine branches were connected by marriage to the Uí Chearbhaill. 32 His fourth wife Eveleen was given an obit in the AFM when she died in 1560 and was described as ‘charitable, humane, friendly and pious’ (AFM, v, p. 1577). 33 This refocusing on the English world did have limits; he declined a chance for his son to be raised at the English court, unlike his Ormond contemporary, so the personal connections between Desmond earls and the English court remained relatively weak (McCormack, Desmond, pp 24, 93). 34 James was assassinated through the machinations of his own brother, John (David Beresford, ‘James fitz Thomas FitzGerald’, DIB). 35 The logic of this choice is obscure, because Tadhg was dead by 1466, before James was born, and a daughter of Conchobhar Mór, who was chief of the Uí Bhriain

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also married an Ó Briain, of the Pobblebrian branch. The Uí Bhriain were among the most powerful Irish neighbours of the Desmond Geraldines, and the earls never managed to dominate them effectively, so allying with them through marriage was necessary instead.36 According to later legends, Thomas, the fifth earl, also married an Irishwoman, Katherine, daughter of Mac Cormaic, one of his tenants, before his banishment in 1411. This story may have been invented, either at the time or later, to provide some justification for the actions of James ‘the Usurper’ (later recognized as sixth earl of Desmond) in expelling his nephew Thomas from the earldom. If it were true, Thomas could have been accused not only of marrying an Irishwoman but, just as importantly, of marrying a non-noble woman who could bring nothing in the way of wealth, significant allies, or influence to the marriage. This would have been unlikely to secure him supporters from within his own family. If there is any truth to the legend, it is clear that this marriage would not have fit with any family strategy or pragmatic consideration, as it would have been a poor match by any practical reckoning. In any event, Thomas was deposed by his uncle, and died an exile in France in 1420.37 The earls of Desmond who married women from the settler community were usually in a more stable position than those who married Irishwomen. James ‘the Usurper’ did not marry until he had been recognized as sixth earl in 1420 upon his nephew’s death, and by that point he had been de facto earl for several years. He chose as his bride Mary, daughter of Uilleag Burke, lord of Clanrickard. Her family was significantly gaelicized, and a powerful force in local Connacht politics, but their status as ‘English’ by descent was never questioned.38 James, who had one of the longest and most secure tenures of any Desmond earl of this period, sought to negotiate a marriage between his son Thomas, later the seventh earl, and the daughter of the earl of Ormond. She would have been a valuable marriage partner, and her union with Thomas might have helped to cement the alliance between Desmond and Ormond that was maintained for much of the first half of the fifteenth century.39 The proposed Ormond–Desmond marriage until 1496, would have made more sense. Perhaps Conchobhar did not have a suitable daughter, and James’s wife would have been his niece, so perhaps that would have been a strong enough link to make the match worthwhile (David Beresford, ‘James fitz Maurice FitzGerald’, ‘James fitz Thomas FitzGerald’, DIB; FitzGerald, Geraldines, pp 310–11). 36 This was also the family that fostered James, son of the third earl in 1388, so familial connections between Desmond and the Uí Bhriain were long-standing, although they never succeeded in creating a durable alliance between the two dynasties (Keith Waters, ‘The earls of Desmond and the Irish of south-western Munster’, Journal of Medieval History, 32:1 (2006), 66). 37 Otway-Ruthven, Med. Ire., pp 352–3; CP, iv, pp 245–6; FitzGerald, Geraldines, pp 310–11. 38 David Beresford, ‘James fitz Gerald FitzGerald’, DIB; Nicholls, Gaelic Ire., pp 175–7. See John Davies’s assessment of the Burkes’ cultural assimilation by the early seventeenth century; he nonetheless classed them as English and as ‘noble’ (Sir John Davies, A discovery of the true causes why Ireland was never entirely subdued (1612), ed. John Barry (Dublin, 1969), p. 182). 39 Peter Crooks, ‘James the Usurper of Desmond and the origins of the Talbot–Ormond feud’, in Duffy, Princes, prelates & poets, pp 173–8.

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fell through c.1444 when Ormond married his daughter to John Talbot instead, but Thomas eventually married another high-born woman from the settler community, Ellice, daughter of Lord Barry of Buttevant.40 The attempted match with Ormond’s daughter and marriage with Ellice Barry may indicate that the sixth earl saw women from the colonial community as more desirable marital partners, presumably in part because of the connections they offered to their elite settler families, but also perhaps because he was aware that intermarriage was frowned upon by some segments of the colonial community and most of the English community of England. As David Edwards discusses below, the position of the fourteenth earl of Desmond, Gerald fitz James, at the time he inherited the earldom in 1558, was probably more stable than any of his predecessors since 1468.41 Perhaps in light of this relative security, Gerald was able to focus on making alliances within the settler community, including with the most powerful nobleman in Ireland after the fall of the Kildares, the earl of Ormond, rather than having to court Irish families who were locally powerful in Munster. He married first Joan FitzGerald, widow of the ninth earl of Ormond and mother of the tenth earl, and then Eleanor Butler, daughter of Edmund baron of Dunboyne.42 Like several of the marital alliances already mentioned, his were not entirely successful, as he engaged in a feud with the tenth earl of Ormond, his stepson, for much of his life.43 Overall, although there was much intermarriage between the Irish and the Geraldines, it was not indiscriminate. The marriages of women in the family, as well as younger and illegitimate sons, were used to forge alliances with the Irish, while males in line to inherit tended to choose English or settler brides.44 The greater pressures on the Desmond earls from the Irish living around them, as well as the internecine strife within their house, may account for the fact that the Desmond earls broke from the pattern so often. The Kildare earls also had closer links with the crown for much of this period, meaning that the eighth and ninth earls of Kildare could secure English brides with valuable dowries and family connections.45 Moreover, connections between the Kildare earls and England46 may have further discouraged thoughts of an Irish wife, who might be a liability when trying to secure crown favour and defend themselves from accusations of ‘degeneracy’.47 40 Beresford, ‘James fitz Gerald FitzGerald’, DIB; Nicholls, Gaelic Ire., pp 194–5. 41 McCormack, Desmond, p. 24. 42 For Joan FitzGerald, see McCormack, Desmond, pp 94–5. 43 McCormack, Desmond, pp 88–108. 44 Ellis, Tudor frontiers, p. 136. 45 McCormack has highlighted the alienation of the Desmonds from the crown (McCormack, Desmond, pp 58–74). 46 Of course, there were Desmond earls who had Irish wives, like Thomas the fifth earl and James fitz Maurice the twelfth, who also spent time at court and had close links to the English crown but they were directly under threat from family rivals to the earldom, and needed to prioritize their bid for the title over longer-term aims (Elizabeth Matthew, ‘The governing of the Lancastrian lordship of Ireland in the time of James Butler, fourth earl of Ormond, c.1420–1452’ (PhD, University of Durham, 1994), p. 273; Anthony McCormack, ‘James fitz Maurice Fitzgerald’, ODNB). 47 For the examples of such attacks see the

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We cannot know what considerations prompted each marital choice of every leading Geraldine, but it seems that ethnicity may have in some cases trumped more immediate, practical concerns that would have urged marriages with Irishwomen. Ellis has suggested that the lower status of women in Irish society may have made Irishwomen less valuable partners.48 They were unlikely to be wealthy heiresses since they were excluded from inheritance in many instances, as lands belonging to the kin-group could not be passed through women.49 Additionally, the earls may have been keen to avoid the stigma of Irish blood, which was growing in the colonial community in the later Middle Ages, by keeping the ruling line English on both paternal and maternal sides.50 If this were indeed the case, it would reinforce the impression that Geraldine aspirations, both for the Kildare and to some extent the Desmond branch, were oriented towards the English and colonial world, despite the immense importance of their Irish allies for maintaining and increasing their power within Ireland.

E C C L E S I A S T I C A L PAT RO N AG E

Another type of relationship between the Geraldines and the Irish, and one that was not so confined to the Irish elite, was formed by ecclesiastical patronage. This section focuses on benefices in the diocese of Limerick that were in the gift of each of the Geraldine earls, and benefices and advowsons in the dioceses of Kildare and Dublin in the gift of the earls of Kildare.51 Analysis of the earl of Kildare’s advowsons is particularly revealing, since his patterns of patronage ‘Presentment of David Sutton for Kildare county in 1534’, in Herbert Hore and James Graves (eds), The social state of south east Ireland in the sixteenth century (Dublin, 1870), pp 160–1; Finglas, ‘Decay of Ireland’, p. 3; William Darcy, ‘Decay of Ireland’, in Cal. Carew MSS, i, pp 7–8. For dramatizations of the eighth and ninth earls defending themselves from these charges, see Sparky Booker, ‘The knight’s tale’, in Sparky Booker and Cherie N. Peters (eds), Tales of medieval Dublin (Dublin, 2014), pp 143–4; Cal. Carew MSS, vi, pp 179–80. 48 Ellis, Tudor frontiers, p. 136. 49 They could inherit their father’s personal lands (Nicholls, Gaelic Ire., p. 68; Donnchadh Ó Corráin, ‘Women and the law in early Ireland’, in Mary O’Dowd and Sabine Wichert (eds), Chattel, servant or citizen: women’s status in church, state and society (Belfast, 1995), p. 53). 50 Booker, ‘Gaelicisation and identity’, pp 282–4. 51 For Limerick, the records of a procuration of 1418 in the diocese are preserved in the Black Book of Limerick and these record the benefices in the gift of both earls in the diocese at that juncture. The earl of Kildare’s advowsons in Limerick, including Effin, Ballingaddy, Dromen, Adare, Croom, Athlacca, Chapel Russell and Derrygealane, are also recorded in his rental: Revd John Begley, The diocese of Limerick ancient and medieval (Dublin, 1906), pp 241–313; Crown surveys, pp 277–8. Desmond had the rights to Narraghmore and the number of other benefices in other western Munster diocese such as Ardfert and Cloyne. In the archdiocese of Dublin by the early sixteenth century the earl of Kildare had rights to Yagoe and Maynooth, while in the diocese of Kildare they presented the parsonage and vicarages of Geashill, Rathangan, Donadea, Norragh, and Harristown, and the parsonage of Thomastown, vicarage of Lye, rectory of Ballybracken, and every second presentation of Decimore and Dunmurry (Crown surveys, pp 277–8; Mary Ann Lyons, Church and society in county Kildare, c.1470–1547

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within Kildare and Dublin, in the so-called ‘four obedient shires’ can be compared to those in Limerick. The papal registers provide the names of many holders of these benefices, and while such information does not survive for each and every provision, there is enough evidence to track overall trends.52 Extended disputes raged over benefices, and other bodies sometimes claimed the right to present (the papacy for example, if the previous incumbent died in Rome or if the position remained vacant for a certain period). Therefore the right to presentation did not always ensure that the earls’ chosen candidate secured the benefice, and many technical issues could disqualify candidates.53 Nevertheless, there are in the papal records many references to the involvement of the patrons and their consent, and the influence of the earls on the ground was considerable so it is likely that most of the clerics who held benefices in the Geraldine gift were chosen, or at least approved, by the earls. An examination of the holders of benefices in the Geraldine gift between c.1400 and c.1540 can reveal a great deal about which Irish clerics benefited from the earls’ patronage. The period from 1432 to 1456 must be excepted in the case of many of the Kildare benefices, because the fourth earl of Ormond exercised control over most, though not all, Kildare lands and over the presentations associated with them in those years from the death of his father-in-law, the fifth earl of Kildare, until his own death in 1452. The fifth earl’s great-nephew, Thomas, did not take control of his ancestral lands until 1456, so for four years those benefices were in the crown’s gift.54 The geographical distribution of benefices to which the earls presented Irish clerics reveals a great deal about the limits of their patronage. There were intermittent attempts to exclude Irish clerics from benefices in the colony, and though they were never entirely successful, it is apparent that in some areas of particularly dense English settlement and firm colonial control, particularly in the archdiocese of Dublin, fewer Irish clerics held benefices.55 The Geraldine earls seem to have respected this pattern. Though they had many Irish allies and associates that they might have wanted to reward with presentations to benefices, they did not intrude them into areas where English clerics were the norm. This is in spite of the fact that overall, and particularly in Limerick benefices, the (Dublin, 2000), pp 79–80). 52 The relevant volumes for this period are CPL, vols v–xv. 53 These included illegitimacy, failure to be promoted into higher orders, holding other incompatible benefices, and a variety of violent or sexual sins; each of these could be surmounted if the candidate secured a papal dispensation, but if not, they could each be a stumbling block in attempting to be formally recognized in a given ecclesiastical position (Archivum Sacrae Poenitentiariae Apostolicae, Registra Matrimonialium et Diversorum, vol. ii (bis), fos 62r, 90r, 161v, 165, 176r, 244v). Illegitimacy was very common among Irish clerics in particular (Michael Haren, ‘Social structures of the Irish church: a new source in papal penitentiary dispensations for illegitimacy’, in Ludwig Schmugge (ed.), Illegitimität im Spätmittelalter (Munich, 1994), pp 207–26). 54 Matthew, ‘Governing of the Lancastrian lordship of Ireland’, pp 254–6. 55 Sparky Booker, ‘Irish clergy and the diocesan church in the “four obedient shires” of Ireland, 1399–1534’, IHS, 154 (2014), 202–3, 208–9.

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majority of clerics they presented were Irish. Perhaps they feared that appointments of Irish clerics in the heart of the colony would be challenged by local people or members of the colonial administration.56 This circumspection lies in contrast to the practice of the archbishops of Armagh, whose administrations were much more willing to appoint Irish clerics to positions in English areas in Louth than the Kildare earls were in Dublin and parts of Kildare.57 Consequently, while there were Irish clerics in the heart of the colony, they do not seem to have been particularly encouraged by the Geraldines. Although the earls presumably used their advowsons strategically to reward allies, they did so with reference to local conditions. One of the benefices that demonstrates the propensity of the earls of Kildare to appoint English clerics to benefices in English areas is their prebend of Yagoe or Yagoestown (Donaghmore). This is located just west of Ballymore Eustace, in the most English north-easterly corner of Kildare. The prebendary was a canon of St Patrick’s cathedral and probably at least partly resident in Dublin, and those prebendaries whose names are recorded in the Fasti of St Patrick’s cathedral from 1401 to 1534 were all of English descent.58 In the prebend of Maynooth, which also provided a canon for St Patrick’s cathedral and was in Kildare’s gift, the seven known prebendaries from 1398 to 1534 were likewise from the colonial community.59 These prebendaries, like those of Yagoe, probably would have resided near the cathedral in Dublin, while drawing the revenues from their prebend in Maynooth. It appears that the earls’ patronage of Irish clerics did not usually extend to benefices within the four shires or later Pale boundary.60 Their patronage of Irish clerics was, therefore, in some ways limited – not only geographically, but also perhaps economically, because many of the most valuable livings were located in the Pale.61 The values of the first fruits paid for 56 This would have been a greater worry during periods when the administration was not headed by Kildare or Desmond, as it was for much of this period. 57 Booker, ‘Irish clergy and the diocesan church’, 195–200. 58 Raymond Gillespie, ‘Reform and decay, 1500–1598’, in John Crawford and Raymond Gillespie (eds), St Patrick’s cathedral Dublin: a history (Dublin, 2009), pp 153–4; Hugh Jackson Lawlor, The Fasti of St Patrick’s, Dublin (Dundalk, 1930), pp 184–5. 59 Fasti, pp 128–9; Reg. Alen, p. 71. A curious entry from 1401 suggests that the crown administration awarded the prebend of Maynooth to Anthony de St Quintin, but it is not clear why the crown would have been controlling its provision at this point since the fifth earl was in possession of his lands and on good relations with the crown and his family had had the right to presentation since the prebend was created in 1248 (Fasti, p. 127). Perhaps the chancery record is a confirmation of Kildare’s award if the prebend was contested or awarded by the papacy (or one of the papacies during this time of schism within the church) to another candidate (CIRCLE, Patent roll 3 Hen., no. 29). 60 For detailed explication of the four shires region and its relationship to the later Pale, see Booker, ‘Irish clergy and the diocesan church’, 179–84. 61 Other prebends like Swords and Clonmethan in the diocese of Dublin were very valuable, as is evident in both the Valor and the fifteenth-century annates: Clonmethan was £28 6s. 8d. in the Valor and 36 marks in 1465, while Swords was worth £32 14s. in the Valor and the very high value of 300 marks in the annates in 1418 (Valor beneficiorum

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Croom, Adare and Athlacca, some of Kildare’s more valuable benefices in Limerick, indicate that although they were, in Irish terms, decent livings, they were not nearly as valuable as the rich prebends of Maynooth and Yagoe. The first fruits were a fee paid to the papacy upon taking up a new benefice and they were set at the yearly income of that living: Maynooth was worth £23 2s. 3d. annually, while Yagoe was valued at £10 16s. 8d. Adare’s fruits were set at £5 5s., Croom’s at IR£3 and Athlacca’s at IR£2.62 These comparisons are suggestive, but imprecise, as the Limerick benefices were valued in 1629/30, while the Dublin livings were valued some ninety years earlier in 1538–9. Additionally, the Limerick churches were more valuable in the fifteenth century than they were in the early seventeenth, given the devastation of Munster in the late sixteenth century.63 The evidence for Croom demonstrates that it dropped in value, as Croom’s first fruits stood at IR£3 or roughly £2 (3 marks) when valued in the fifth year of Charles I’s reign, but they were much higher, at 20 marks (£13 6s. 8d.), in 1432 and 1441, 20 marks when combined with the parish church of Adare in 1487, and 20 marks in 1488. Croom’s first fruits combined with those of Adare priory were described as being under (but presumably close to) 70 marks in 1506.64 Croom’s highest known valuation was, therefore, under Maynooth’s value in 1538–9 but above that of Yago; howver, the value of Dublin benefices may also have changed significantly. Adare and Croom were both in the gift of the earls of Kildare, and so it makes sense that they were sometimes held by the same cleric who paid first fruits for them together.65 It was relatively common to hold two benefices from one earl: Mahoonagh and Rathcahill, which were in Desmond’s gift, were jointly granted to a number of fifteenth-century Irish clerics, while Geashill and Rathangan, in Kildare’s gift, were both held by a cleric named Richard Ohywelayn (Ó Faoláin?) in 1427.66 Desmond’s benefice of Rathcahill’s first fruits were only 2 Irish pounds or 3 marks in 1629–30, but they were set at 24 marks in 1471, so like Kildare’s ecclesiasticorum in Hibernia: or the first-fruits of all the ecclesiastical benefices in the Kingdom of Ireland, as taxed in the king’s books […] (Dublin, 1741), p. 9; Ambrose Coleman (ed.), ‘Obligationes pro annatis diocesis Dublinensis 1421–1520’, Archiv. Hib., 2 (1913), 6, 19–20). 62 Valor, pp 9, 16. All values are given in sterling unless ‘Irish’ is specified. Irish pounds were valued, according to Steven Ellis’s estimate, at roughly 15 Irish to 10 English (Steven Ellis, ‘Economic problems of the church: why the reformation failed in Ireland’, Journal of Ecclesiastical History, 41:2 (1990), 249). 63 The value of Maynooth may also have dropped as Laraghbryan (another name for Maynooth prebend) was described as formerly worth 20 marks, but declining in productivity in 1533: Newport White, ‘The Reportorium Viride of John Alen, archbishop of Dublin, 1533’, AH, 10 (1941), 216–17; Reg. Alen, pp 68, 277. 64 Michael Moloney and M.A. Costello (eds), ‘Obligationes pro annatis diocesis Limiricensis, 1421–1519’, Archiv. Hib., 10 (1943), 113–14, 115–16, 147–8, 159. The first fruits are described in marks sterling, suggesting they were reckoned in the annates in English pounds. 65 Begley, Diocese of Limerick, p. 308. Pluralities were common in Ireland, and an economic necessity in regions with low-value benefices (Bruce Campbell, ‘Benchmarking medieval economic development: England, Wales, Scotland and Ireland, c.1290’, Economic History Review, 61:4 (2008), 902; Henry Jefferies, The Irish church and the Tudor reformations (Dublin, 2010), p. 33). 66 Begley, Diocese of Limerick, pp 302, 305; ‘Obligationes … Limiricensis’, 126, 138; CPL, vii, p. 484; ‘Obligationes … Dublinensis’, 43–5.

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Limerick benefices, they seem to have declined in value in the early modern period.67 Altogether, we should not trust the rather paltry values given for Limerick benefices in the Valor, as in the later Middle Ages they were significantly higher, but there is no evidence that they ever approached the very high values of some benefices in the Pale.68 Apart from limiting their patronage of Irish clerics to less valuable benefices outside the Pale, there were other ways in which the earls were mindful of local conditions when they presented candidates to benefices. Many of the Irish clerics they awarded with benefices had surnames associated with the region of the benefice in question. It is likely that they were local men. There were a great many Irish clerics in Geraldine benefices in the diocese of Kildare and many in the diocese of Limerick, but there is little evidence of the transfer of personnel between the two. That is to say there are few surnames shared by clerics in both areas, and it was rare that individual clerics were granted benefices in both areas.69 In fact, particular surnames were often associated just with a single benefice. In some cases the patrons may have chosen men from local hereditary clerical families that had long-standing associations with particular churches.70 For example, John Omaena (Ó Maonaigh?), who was the rector of Geashill in the diocese of Kildare in 1485, was the son of Thady Omaena (Tadhg Ó Maonaigh?), who held the rectory from 1443 into the 1460s.71 There were also multiple vicars of Rathangan in western Kildare from the ‘Oheelayn’ (Ó hAoileáin/Ó Faoláin?) family, and there were a number of clerics called Ó hÍcidhe (O’Hickey) who succeeded each other to the vicarage of Adare in Limerick.72 The case of the Oheelayn family in Rathangan supports the idea that the earls of Kildare did not often challenge the status quo with their 67 Valor, p. 16; ‘Obligationes … Limiricensis’, 126. 68 They were valuable by Irish standards, though Irish benefices were poor compared to those in England, and also to averages in Scotland and Wales (Campbell, ‘Benchmarking medieval economic development’, 902; Henry Jefferies, ‘The role of the laity in the parishes of Armagh inter Anglicos’, 1518– 1553’, Archiv. Hib., 52 (1998), 75; Ellis, ‘Economic problems of the church’, 248). 69 The Ó Faolain/Ó hAoileáin family discussed below may be one of the few exceptions to this, as members of the family held Kildare benefices in both cos Kildare and Limerick. The Stak family in Munster seems to have benefited from Desmond patronage across the neighbouring dioceses of Limerick and Ardfert (J. O’Connell and M.A. Costello (eds), ‘Obligationes pro annatis diocesis Ardfertensis’, Archiv. Hib., 21 (1958), 40–1; CPL, x, pp 456–7). 70 Clerical lineages where ecclesiastical positions were passed from father to son or uncle to nephew were common in Gaelic areas but also existed in the colony. In fact, the Geraldines themselves had clerical lineages: Katherine Walsh, ‘The clerical estate in later medieval Ireland: alien settlement or element of conciliation’, in Settlement & society, p. 366; Katharine Simms, ‘Frontiers in the Irish church: regional and cultural’, in Colony & frontier, pp 178–80; Paul MacCotter, ‘The Geraldine clerical lineages of Imokilly and Sir John FitzEdmund of Cloyne’, in David Edwards (ed.), Regions and rulers in Ireland, 1100–1650: essays for Kenneth Nicholls (Dublin, 2004), pp 54–77. 71 ‘Obligationes … Dublinenesis’, 56–7, 65; CPL, xiv, pp 84–5. 72 Two men named Dermot Ihiki (Diarmait Ó hÍcidhe) contested control of the benefice and sought to discredit one another to the papacy: such disputes were common in clerical lineages, and the dispensations for both men for being sons of priests suggest that one or both of their

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presentation choices. The earls technically had the right to present at Rathangan for most of this period, but they did not have the power in the area to actually to exercise this right in the first half of the fifteenth century.73 In recognition of this, An Calbhach Mór Ó Conchobhair Failghe, the local Irish lord who did exercise control of the area, was granted special permission by the pope to present candidates. He did so in 1427, 1438 and c.1443 and his chosen candidates included John and Maurice Oheelayn.74 However after the seventh earl of Kildare defeated Conn Ó Conchobhair Failghe in 1459 and began to assert himself over the Uí Chonchobhair, regaining the patronage of Rathangan, the earls continued to present Oheelayn candidates, and ‘Malachy Ohealayn’ became rector of Rathangan in 1476.75 Ó Conchobair also appointed ‘Thady Omanaidh’ to Rathangan; this may be the Thady Omaena who also held Geashill, co. Offaly, in 1443. It is likely that Ó Conchobhair controlled Geashill as well before 1459, so Kildare’s appointment of John Omaena, Thady’s son, in 1485, may be another instance in which he did not disrupt the pattern of patronage established by Ó Conchobhair.76 Incidentally, Rathangan was by the sixteenth century one of Kildare’s more valuable benefices, as it was valued at IR£12 6s. 8d. Irish (roughly £8 4s. 5d. sterling) during the reign of Henry VIII.77 Nonetheless, the earls did not always just accept established local candidates; they sometimes used their patronage more strategically. In 1488, the earl of Kildare presented Theodoric or Tadhg Ó Briain as rector of Croom, co. Limerick.78 Croom was one of the oldest FitzGerald family holdings, and its significance to them is clear from their battle cry ‘Crom Abú (Cromabo)’.79 Tadhg’s presentation to this important family seat and site of a Geraldine castle occurred despite the fact that he was only fifteen years old – and he replaced a Geraldine, ‘Gerald[us] Geraldi de Geraldinis’ in the rectory.80 Tadhg was described as ‘of royal blood’, suggesting that he was a member of the leading branch of the Uí Bhriain of Thomond, those powerful and troublesome neighbours of the Desmond Geraldines. As mentioned above, the eighth and tenth earls of Desmond married women from this family, and it seems that fathers may have held Adare (CPL, x, p. 280). 73 In the period from 1432–52, the earl of Ormond, who nominally had control of Rathangan, did not present candidates either. Rathangan had been a Kildare manor since at least 1328, when it was listed alongside Kildare, Maynooth, Lea (co. Laois), Geashill, Rathmore, Rathbride and Kilcork as possession of Thomas fitz John, the second earl of Kildare (Red bk Kildare, pp 108–10). 74 The other candidates were Alan O Crumuaelly and Thady Omanaidh (CPL, vii, p. 484; CPL, viii, pp 122, 660; CPL, ix, pp 330–1). 75 NHI, ii, p. 572; T.F. Tout, revised by Steven Ellis, ‘Thomas FitzGerald, seventh earl of Kildare’, ODNB; CPL, xiii.ii, p. 509. 76 CPL, ix, pp 330–1, 399. 77 Valor, p. 10. 78 CPL, xv, p. 113; ‘Obligationes … Limiricensis’, 147–8. 79 This means ‘Up Croom’ (Quinn, ‘Bills and statutes’, 94; David Greene, ‘The Irish war-cry’, Ériu, 22 (1971), 167–73; Fergus Kelly, ‘Onomatopoeic interjections in early Irish’, Celtica, 25 (2007), 88–107). 80 Very young men holding benefices were not unheard of, though they required the support of powerful local family or allies to do so. A thirteen-year-old, Richard fitz John fitz Maurice FitzGerald, was awarded several benefices in 1493 and an eleven-year-old Geraldine received the prebend of Kilmodonock in 1480 (MacCotter, ‘The Geraldine clerical

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Geraldine efforts to ally with them were particularly intense in this period, which may explain the presentation of this fifteen-year-old cleric to Croom in 1488.81 This presentation suggests that the earls of Desmond and Kildare may have sometimes cooperated and furthered one another’s strategic aims when awarding patronage. In this case, Kildare may have been contributing to Desmond’s efforts to ally with the Uí Bhriain, although he had his own reasons for wanting their support since he also had extensive lands in Munster. It is possible that Tadhg was the same ‘Thady Obren’ who contested the right to the priorship of the Augustinian house of St Mary the Virgin and Edward, king and martyr, in Limerick in 1487; this priorship was also in Kildare’s gift, but we do not know if Kildare supported Ó Briain or one of the other three contenders in the dispute. If he did not support Ó Briain’s bid in 1487, perhaps Croom was intended to make up for this slight.82 Patronage may have been used as a diplomatic tool. It could also be used to reward members of the earls’ households or retinues. Dermot Yhiki (Diarmait Ó hÍcidhe), chaplain of the earl of Desmond, was presented to the vicarage of Adare c.1447, when it was, in theory, controlled by the earl of Ormond.83 Given that Ormond and Desmond were hostile to one another from about 1444 to 1449, this presentation of a benefice to Desmond’s chaplain is surprising. Adare is included on the list of lands owned by the earl of Kildare when he died in 1432, and in the royal writ summarizing the inquisition, it and his other lands were transferred to Ormond.84 However, Adare was near the Desmond heartlands and remote from Ormond’s powerbase in Tipperary and Kilkenny (and, as lieutenant, Dublin), and it may be that it remained effectively in Geraldine control. There is no further record of Adare in the Ormond deeds after 1432, which supports the idea that Ormond may not have actually been exercising authority there, unlike the Kildare manor of Maynooth, which we know he was administering directly.85 The possibility that Ormond was not effectively in control of some of Kildare’s Limerick lands is relevant when looking at the presentation of Cornelius Olongsygh (Ó Loingsigh) as rector of Croom in 1441, as it would indicate that Ó Loingsigh may have been a Geraldine candidate rather than a Butler one.86 This would make sense in light of the fact that Ó Loingsigh had one other piece of business with the papal curia in 1441: he acted as a pledge for Philip de Geraldinis for the rectory of Killeedy. That is lineages of Imokilly’, pp 57–9). 81 There was no lasting peace between the Geraldines and Uí Bhriain and by the following year Maurice, tenth earl of Desmond, raided Ó Briain country. Uí Bhriain hostilities with both the Desmond and Kildare Geraldines continued into early sixteenth century (Waters, ‘The earls of Desmond and the Irish’, 66). 82 CPL, xiv, pp 199–201. Kildare initially appointed Eustace Artur to the priorship, but we do not know when, and there is no reason to assume that he would have necessarily stood by this choice when the priorship became disputed. 83 CPL, x, p. 280. 84 COD, iii, pp 83–9. 85 Matthew, ‘The governing of the Lancastrian lordship of Ireland’, pp 254–6, 441; Elizabeth Matthew, ‘James Butler, fourth earl of Ormond’, ODNB. 86 ‘Obligationes … Limiricensis’, 109, 115–16. Croom had also been granted to Ormond on Kildare’s death in 1432 (COD, iii, pp 83–9).

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to say, he pledged to pay the first fruits of the rectory to the curia so that it would approve Philip’s appointment.87 An example of a similar arrangement dates from 1471, when Maurice Ydonurt (Ó Donndubhartaigh?) was presented to Mahoonagh and Rathcahill, both in the gift of the Desmond earls, and in the same year acted as a pledge for ‘Geradd[us] Gerildi Micmicscrayn’ for the fruits due from the archdeaconry of Limerick.88 Like Philip, Gerald was presumably a Geraldine, although he appears with an odd name form: the exact relationship between these men and the earls is uncertain. Philip Yronayn (Ó Rónáin), who was presented to Dromin and Athlacca (both in Kildare’s gift) in 1475, pledged himself for the vicarage of Clonagh for ‘David Johannis de Geraldinis’ (David son of John of the Geraldines) and for the chancellorship of Limerick on behalf of Thomas ‘de Geraldinis’ in the following year.89 These favours to Geraldines follow directly after presentation to Geraldine benefices, and it seems likely that the two were related, and that Irish clerics assisted members of the Geraldine family in exchange for Geraldine benefices. The evidence suggests that the earls sometimes cooperated with one another in matters of patronage and rewarded the same clerics. The presentation of Diarmait Ó hÍcidhe, chaplain of the earl of Desmond, to the vicarage of Adare, discussed above, may be an example of this cooperation. Cornelius Ohymur (Ó hÍomhair) was presented to the rectory of Croom in 1432, to which Kildare had the right of presentation, and he also held Killeedy, site of a long-held Desmond manor and over which the earl of Desmond may have exercised some control, until c.1441.90 In 1458 John Omurrehech (Ó Muircheartaigh?) was the vicar of Mahoonagh, a Desmond benefice, and also held a benefice in Ballingaddy which was controlled by Kildare by the early sixteenth century, and may have been so at this earlier stage.91 In 1450, John Stak, an English cleric, held the parsonage of Effin in Limerick, nominally in the gift of the earl of Ormond at this point, but probably, like other Limerick benefices discussed above, actually controlled by the Geraldines. At the same time Stak held Croagh, also in Limerick, which was in Desmond’s gift.92 The cooperation that seems to have characterized Kildare and Desmond patronage is another indication of the enduring coherence of the 87 ‘Obligationes … Limiricensis’, 116. Pledging on behalf of others was common, and some clerics pledged for several different men in a single year. 88 ‘Obligationes … Limiricensis’, 126–7. Mooney and Costello suggest Dunworth or Ó Donndubhartaigh for Ydonurt; and they suggest Mac Seaáin or Mac Síothcháin as the patronymic given to ‘Geradd[us] Gerildi Micmicscrayn’ (ibid., 126 n. 56, 127 n. 58). The extensive use of true patronymics and of the name Gerald in myriad forms to signal the wider lineage was characteristic of Geraldine naming in this period. 89 ‘Obligationes … Limiricensis’, pp 131–4. 90 The process of gaining papal approval may have been in train before Kildare’s death in this year (CPL, viii, pp 423, 450; ‘Annatis Limericensis’, 113–14, 116). 91 CPL, xi, p. 350; ‘Rental book’, ed. Hore, 8 (1866), 518. The sound of this is similar to Ó Muireadhaigh, but Ó Muircheartaigh, from which the modern Moriarty comes, would make more sense geographically (MacLysaght, Surnames, pp 221, 230). 92 CPL, x, pp 369–70, 453–4; ‘Rental book’, ed. Hore, 518. 93 This was unlike, for example, the ecclesiastical province of Armagh, where the

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Geraldines as an extended family group, a remarkable fact that several other contributors have stressed. Thus Geraldine patronage could benefit Irish clerics, and they presented many Irish men to benefices in their gift. As ecclesiastical patrons, however, the earls were conservative in their appointments, and did not intrude Irish clerics in largely English areas, nor supplant local clerical families, and they sometimes expected diplomatic payoffs or favours in return for their patronage. Thus their patronage of Irish clerics was limited and came with conditions that could be financially onerous, like pledging the value of the first fruits of a benefice for a member of the wider Geraldine family. Additionally, though the earls of Kildare and Desmond may sometimes have cooperated in terms of their patronage and jointly had a wide sphere of influence across the south and east of Ireland, this seemingly did not foster the movement of clerics across this area.93 Overall, while being in the Geraldine orbit provided opportunities for advancement and economic reward through Geraldine ecclesiastical patronage, the opportunities were carefully controlled, and did not circumvent the disadvantages that Irish clerics could suffer in the colony.

S TAT U S

The final aspect of the relationship between the Irish and the Geraldines examined here is the status of Irish tenants in the Geraldine orbit, which included lands actually owned by the earls, but was probably broader than this, as the influence of each earl in his locality was considerable.94 There were a great many Irish tenants on lands controlled by the earls, and, in keeping with trends across the colony as a whole, their number was on the rise in the second half of the fifteenth century.95 This segment of the population is notoriously difficult to study, and unlike the elites with whom the Geraldines contracted marriage alliances, there is little extant information about individual tenants. However, there are a few things to consider that might shed light on how living in areas of Geraldine control may have affected the status of non-elite Irish people. They may have been at less of a legal disadvantage than in some other areas of the colony, as those who lived the earls’ manors could plead at seigniorial courts like machinery of archbishop’s administration moved clerics throughout the province, from Irish areas to largely English ones. 94 Simms and Empey have highlighted the breadth of Ormond’s control in his home territory and note that the crosslands of Tipperary and Kilkenny, which were technically not within his ‘patria’, sent representatives to his seigniorial assembly regardless. The position of the Desmond and Kildare earls would have been similar (C.A. Empey and Katharine Simms, ‘The ordinances of the White Earl and the problem of coign in the later Middle Ages’, PRIA, 75:C8 (1975), 168). 95 Ellis has tracked this rise on the Kildare manor of Maynooth (Ellis, Tudor frontiers, p. 130); Booker, ‘Gaelicisation and identity’ (PhD), pp 47–54.

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that convened at Maynooth in 1453–4.96 This court had many Irish plaintiffs and defendants, and it is clear that they were participating fully in the legal life of the manor. This was not the case in the courts of the colonial administration, where the Irish were not able to plead unless they inherited denizen status or purchased an expensive grant of English law.97 Seigniorial courts were not limited to Geraldine lands, and other magnates like the earls of Ormond oversaw similar courts in which the Irish could plead. Nevertheless, where such courts existed, they provided an avenue for the Irish to engage in the legal system that was absent in other part of the colony. Additionally, the earls of Desmond and Kildare may have, like the earl of Ormond, incorporated some elements of Irish law and custom into their courts and the administration of their lands.98 This could be seen as a benefit for the Irish, who may have been more familiar with that law and custom, and could be spared the corporal punishments that were more often a feature of common law than traditional Irish law.99 However, it also could be a double-edged sword if it was true that Kildare ‘used two lawes, our prince’s lawes and brehens lawes, which he thought most beneficiall, as the case did require’.100 This highlights the danger of living in the orbit of the Geraldines, especially when they were at their most powerful. In many ways their Irish tenants would have been at their mercy, since there would have been few avenues of recourse for them beyond the earls. Their tenants may have been financially disadvantaged as they would have had to support the much hated exaction of coign and livery to support the earls’ military activities, as well as other forms of maintenance.101 It is difficult to know how these various factors, the pros and cons of Geraldine tenancy, balanced, and the discussion of them is necessarily quite general. One way to get more direct evidence about the position of the Irish within the Geraldine orbit was is to compare the social status of Irish people on their lands to those elsewhere in the colony. Did the Geraldine earls provide opportunities for Irish tenants, either deliberately, or otherwise, that might have been absent elsewhere and thus enable them to climb the social ladder? 96 Handbook & calendar, pp 238–41: The court session in 1453 was actually presided over by the seneschal of James Butler fifth earl of Ormond, not the earl of Kildare, who had not yet regained control over the manor, but these courts persisted under the Kildares and their seneschals when they regained Maynooth shortly after. The courts of the liberty of Kildare had been functioning since the early decades of its existence (A.J. Otway-Ruthven, ‘The medieval county of Kildare’, IHS, 11:43 (1959), 190). 97 Geoffrey Hand, ‘The status of the native Irish in the lordship of Ireland, 1272–1331’, Ir. Jurist, n.s., 1 (1966), 93–115; A.J. Otway-Ruthven, ‘The native Irish and English law in medieval Ireland’, IHS, 7:25 (1950), 1– 16 (repr. in Crooks, Government). 98 Empey and Simms, ‘Ordinances of the White Earl’, 161–87; Waters, ‘The earls of Desmond and the Irish’, p. 59; McCormack, Desmond, p. 41. 99 Brendan Smith, ‘Keeping the peace’, in Lydon, Law and disorder, pp 63–5; Gearóid Mac Niocaill, ‘The interaction of laws’, in Lydon, Eng. in med. Ire., pp 105–17. 100 Hore and Graves, Southern and eastern counties, p. 162. 101 Booker, ‘Gaelicisation and identity’, pp 232– 45; Katharine Simms, ‘Guesting and feasting in Gaelic Ireland’, JRSAI, 108 (1978), 67–100.

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In order to do this, I am going to focus in on a single source, the jury lists for the extents of ecclesiastical lands made at the disillusion of the monasteries in 1540–1 (see appendix below).102 Jurors were described as ‘true and lawful men of the neighbourhood’, and most of them were well-established men from the local area who could be trusted to know the value of the lands being surveyed.103 Crown officials also served on some of the juries, but they comprised a small percentage of the total jurors.104 Jurors were not always from the exact townland or settlement being assessed, though some jurors usually were, but they were generally from the region of the county under assessment.105 That is to say, men from the south or west or east of county Kildare served on juries in those areas, and the inquisitions were usually convened at one of the largest towns or population centres in the region.106 Jurors’ names were listed in a rough order of prominence in the local community, with the highest-status people first, tailing off towards the end with ‘and others’ describing those who were not sufficiently eminent to have their names recorded.107 Thus, the number of Irish names that appear on these jury lists and their relative place in those lists can shed some light on the social status of the Irish within the Geraldine orbit and outside of it. The Kildare house had, of course, fallen after their failed rebellion in 1534 so at the time of the extents they were no longer in control of their estates, which were not returned to the eleventh earl until the early 1550s.108 However, there is no reason to expect that there was dramatic or wholesale population shift in the six years between Silken Thomas’s rebellion and the extents, and, as already noted, the jurors were largely long-established local men. Accordingly, the jury lists can provide a snapshot of the prominent tenants in each area not only in 1540 but in 102 Extents Ir. mon. possessions. The survey of ecclesiastical lands was conducted several years earlier in England, and the survey was conducted by local gentry and officials. The personnel in Ireland seems to have been similar (Roger Lockyer (ed.), Tudor and Stuart Britain (3rd ed., Harlow, 2005), p. 72). 103 William Nolan, ‘Kildare from documents of conquest: the monastic extents 1540 and the civil survey 1654–1656’, in William Nolan and Thomas McGrath (eds), Kildare history and society (Dublin, 2006), p. 235. Christopher Brooks has argued that established, ‘older tenants’ and the ‘local elite’ staffed the juries of manorial courts in England and the composition of these juries for the assessment of ecclesiastical land were comprised mainly of the same segment of society (C.W. Brooks, Law, politics and society in early modern England (Cambridge, 2008), p. 254). 104 Nolan, ‘Kildare from documents of conquest’, p. 234. 105 Jurors are often described as ‘of ’ the settlement being assessed, ‘of ’ the settlement where the monastic house that owned the lands was located, or ‘of ’ the settlement where the inquisition was convened, all of which were usually located in the same part of the county. 106 For the location of townlands and settlements in medieval Kildare, see Otway-Ruthven, ‘The medieval county of Kildare’, map. 107 This is clear when you examine which names come first in the lists – they are often, though not always, local lords or members of the dominant local families. For example, Edmund Eustace was the first juror mentioned in Ballymore, while Oliver Nugent and other members of the Nugent family often headed jury lists from areas in co. Westmeath. Richard Ledwych, sovereign (mayor) of Kells, was the second juror named on two jury lists, while former priors and abbots also often appear early in the lists (Extents Ir. mon. possessions, pp 259, 262, 264, 269, 270). 108 David Finnegan, ‘Gerald Fitzgerald, eleventh earl of Kildare’, ODNB.

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the preceding decades. This examination will focus on medieval county Kildare, as it was the heartland of Kildare control, and can be usefully compared to Meath, its neighbour within the four obedient shires. Few extents survive for western Munster, and there is thus little information on the juries on Desmond’s lands and Kildare’s Limerick lands; the few Limerick juries listed were convened in and assessing lands in Limerick city. The juries from county Kildare ranged in size from four to nineteen named individuals and their ethnicity is determined by examining their names (appendices 11.1 and 11.2).109 Some of the jurors who are recorded in the extents were drawn from districts where there were Kildare manors or holdings, like Leixlip, Maynooth, Straffan and Castledermot, and many of them would have been Kildare tenants.110 Others served on juries in areas that were under the control, at least nominally, of other resident lords, like Tuburrogan, which seems to have been located near Ballymore Eustace, seat of Eustace family, and Carbury, seat of the Berminghams.111 Kildare holdings did not have consistently higher proportions of Irish jurors. The extent for Straffan has a relatively low 29% Irish jurors, while Leixlip had 33%. Irish jurors appear late in the lists, in low-status positions, in the Leixlip jury, while in Straffan, one of the Irish jurors is second last in the list, while the other is second. Castledermot, in the south of the county, had 50% Irish jurors, which is not particularly high for south Kildare. The presence of a major Kildare manor or castle does not seem to have made much difference to the status of the Irish in the region as revealed by their prevalence and position in jury lists. Perhaps we should not expect it to, as all of the locations surveyed fell within the liberty of Kildare once it was re-established by 1514, and were subject to the earl’s court, and even before this, the earl’s influence and landholdings across the county were considerable.112 109 Assessing ethnicity from names only is in many ways problematic, but there is no other evidence available in most cases. For a justification and explanation of this method, see Booker, ‘Intermarriage in fifteenth-century Ireland’, 225–8. The medieval shire of Kildare was larger than the modern county: it included some parts of co. Wicklow, which did not exist in 1533, and these are included in these appendices. 110 The length of the earl’s tenure and size of his land holdings in each of these areas varied: Maynooth and Straffan were well-established, large Kildare manors. Leixlip was granted to the eighth earl by Henry VII, and the ninth earl had a manor in Castledermot and there is a late fifteenth-century Geraldine castle there (Lyons, Church and society, pp 21, 28, 29; A.J. Otway-Ruthven, ‘Knight’s fees in Kildare, Leix, and Offaly’, JRSAI, 91:2 (1961), 165–6). 111 Carbury was increasingly under the sway of the earls of Kildare from 1483 onward, as they accrued more and more land in the area. By 1519, the earl’s justices convened a session of his court at Carbury castle (Crown surveys, p. 292; Lyons, Church and society, p. 39). 112 The liberty was abolished in 1345 and not reestablished until 1514, but the Kildare Geraldines increased their lands and influence in Kildare throughout the fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries (Lyons, Church and society, pp 44–6; Otway-Ruthven, ‘Medieval county of Kildare’, pp 197–8.) By the mid-sixteenth century, the earls were collecting revenues from lands in Athy, Dunmanoge, Castle Reban, Grangeclare and Connell, among many other areas of Kildare, although these were not among their long-held lands outlined in 1432 (COD, iii, pp 83–9; Crown surveys, pp 152, 165, 223, 233, 238–9, 240, 288–9, 290, 292, 293–302).

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The distinction within the county that does seem to have made some difference to the status of the Irish was whether the settlement was within the Pale or not.113 Those locations within the Pale, in the northeast of the county, generally had a lower proportion of Irish jurors than those outside it – between 18% and 56%. Juries for areas outside the Pale to the south and west had higher percentages of Irish jurors overall, with many well over 50% and several as high as Blackrath, Grangeclare and Connell in the 80th percentile. Juries outside the Pale were also, oddly, the only ones with no Irish jurors at all, as in Athy, Dunmanoge and Castle Reban. These are among the smallest jury lists, however, with only five or six named individuals. It is possible that full jury lists would reveal Irish names in lower-status positions near the end of the list. Alternatively, it could be that in particularly unsettled areas of the county the administration was less likely to trust Irish jurors: that these areas were under threat from the Irish is suggested by the fact that two of these juries with no named Irish jurors noted the destruction by the Irish and consequent impoverishment of the lands they were assessing.114 The names of Irish jurors are interspersed throughout lists from outside the Pale, appearing near the beginning, middle and the end of the lists, and very frequently in the second position, though never in the first.115 In lists of juries from within the Pale, Irish names often appear in lower-status positions near the end of the lists, as at Naas, Clane, and Leixlip. Kill and Kilteel, however, have almost half Irish jurors and their names are first, second and third in the list, even though both settlements are on the Pale border in that most English northeastern corner of Kildare.116 This reminds us that the Pale boundary was extremely permeable, and areas on each side of it had much in common; the overall trend in Kildare, however, is that there were higher percentages and higher-status Irish jurors in areas outside the Pale. As a point of comparison for Kildare, medieval county Meath was largely outside Geraldine control, although the eighth earl did increase the family holdings in the county.117 However, the Kildares did not have the same level of 113 The Pale’s borders are difficult to delineate precisely and they changed over time. I have adjudged areas in or out of the Pale using the 1488 description of the ‘maghery’, and 1494–5 and 1515 descriptions of the Pale. These descriptions vary slightly, but most settlements discussed here were either inside or outside the region in all three cases (Reg. Alen, p. 250; Agnes Conway, Henry VII’s relations with Scotland and Ireland, 1485–1498 (New York, 1972), p. 127; Stat. Ric. III–Hen. VIII, p. 93; SP Hen. VIII, iii, no. 2, p. 22). K.W. Nicholl’s map of the area, depicting the 1488 boundaries and later descriptions, appears in NHI, ix, p. 44. 114 Extents Ir. mon. possessions, pp 37, 172. 115 This may be because the first person named seems often to have been the resident lord or largest local landowner, while the second seems to have been a cleric, many of whom were Irish. For the mobility of Irish clerics in Kildare, see Booker, ‘Irish clergy and the diocesan church’, 179–209. 116 The Kildares were the most powerful family in the region of Kill, but the Aylmers and Eustaces also were based in this region. The earls held Castletown and had a castle and mill in Kildrought (Celbridge), neighbouring Kill (Lyons, Church and society, pp 22–3; COD, iii, pp 119–22). 117 The earls held lands in some of the areas assessed in Meath, and at least one of the Meath jurors was a

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legal and administrative control over Meath generally as they were able to exercise in Kildare. Meath, like Kildare, had a high Irish tenant population and juries from Meath show that similar trends prevailed in both medieval counties (appendices 11.3 and 11.4).118 The highest percentages of Irish jurors are recorded in extents for areas outside or on the edges of the Pale, like Kilmainhamwood and nearby Kilmainhanbeg, Fore, Clonard, Mullingar, Ardnurcher and Tristernagh, all of which had at least half Irish jurors.119 Three juries from outside the Pale in Meath had no named Irish jurors, but two of these were small jury lists with only one or two names. The other, Ballilig, had seven named jurors. This settlement is in the barony of Moyfenrath and north of Clonard, just on the border of modern co. Westmeath and on the outer area of English Meath in the Middle Ages. The jurors came from Knock and Laracor, far from Ballinlig and in the core of the county. As with some of the outlying, unsettled areas of Kildare, perhaps the administrators for these particular extents did not trust local men or were not able to enlist their help for the assessments. For the extents of settlements inside the Pale in Meath, there are ten, mostly short, jury lists with no Irish jurors, and the remaining Pale lists average between 20% and 40% Irish jurors. Overall, the numbers are slightly lower than in Kildare. That said, there are a few higher outliers, including Navan at 43% Irish jurors, Stagreenan near Drogheda at 100% and a jury list from Trim at 44/56%. The Trim percentage is unexpected, given that four other jury lists from Trim and Newtown Trim have lower percentages in the 20th and 30th percentile. The jury list with the highest percentage of Irish jurors is the smallest list for Trim, with only 9 names, while the others have 19, 15, 16, and 11, so perhaps the percentage is skewed by the smaller sample size. In the Navan list, the Irish names that appear are relatively anglicized, suggesting that the Irish jurors were of long tenure in the area. The Stagreenan jury contained only three individuals, all of whom were Irish. It may be foolish to assume too much on the basis of such a small jury, but given that the other Drogheda jury named had only 8% Irish jurors, this jury list may indicate that Stagrennan was an Irish suburb of the former Kildare tenant. Donald Hoblegan from Kildalkey, about 8km south of Girley, was paying 24s. annually there when the earl of Kildare’s former lands were surveyed in 1540–1. This reminds us that the earls of Kildare also had tenants in Meath who served as jurors (Crown surveys, p. 123). 118 Many of the areas that lay in the western part of the medieval shire of Meath fall into modern co. Westmeath (SP Hen. VIII, p. 499; Michael Potterton, Medieval Trim: history and archaeology (Dublin, 2005), p. 116; Steven Ellis, ‘Region and frontier in the English state: the English far north, 1296–1603’, in Steven Ellis and Raingard Eßer with Jean-François Berdah and Miloš Řeznik (eds), Frontiers, regions and identities in Europe (Pisa, 2009), pp 65–7). 119 Three different inquisitions survive for Fore and the surrounding areas and two have no Irish jurors, while one has 58%. The two with no named Irish jurors, however, only have two jurors named overall, and thus are not as representative as the larger jury lists. Similarly, in Mullingar one jury list containing only two named individuals has no Irish names on it, while a longer list had 82% Irish jurors. Granard, with 100% Irish jurors, but only two named jurors overall, must be treated carefully for similar

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town. The jurors named, Patrick McBryne (Mac Braoin), Owen Ocor (Eoghan Ó Corra), and Owen Okerwill (Eoghan Ó Cearbhaill), all have relatively unanglicized names, in that they preserve their Irish O and Mac patronymics and two have the Irish first name Eoghan.120 It is not surprising that Drogheda attracted Irish migrants as it was a locus of economic opportunity and trade, and that these new arrivals may have, like many migrant communities, settled close to one another.121 Outside the Pale in Meath, the percentage of Irish jurors ranged from 0% to 100%, but the extremes were recorded for very small jury lists that are most easily skewed. For most areas with sizable jury lists, there were 50–60% Irish jurors, which is close to the Kildare percentages though there were no juries in the 70th and only one jury in the 80th percentile. As in the northeast of Kildare, there was in the Pale in Meath a tendency for Irish jurors to appear later in the list. This is particularly striking at Dunboyne, Dardistown, Newtown Trim, and Girley, but this tendency was only that, and some lists, like those for Odder and Bective, do have Irish people in the early positions. Overall the composition of jury lists in Kildare and Meath is similar. Both have significant numbers of Irish jurors, although Kildare’s numbers are slightly higher, and in both counties settlements in the Pale had lower percentages than those on the marches. Irish jurors were slightly more likely to appear early in jury lists (and therefore in higher-status positions) in extents of lands outside the Pale, though, interestingly, many of the Irish jurors from Kildare and Meath who are named first served on juries within the Pale.122 Largely, the differences in the composition of juries relates to their location and proximity to the core of the colony rather than their position as Geraldine manors. This indicates that other political, demographic and geographic considerations dictated more about social structure and mobility than whether one was a tenant within the Geraldine orbit – in fact that seems to have made little difference. It could be argued that the slightly higher number of Irish jurors across county Kildare as a whole is linked to the Kildare Geraldines and the effects of opportunities that they offered to Irish tenants; this is possible, but the overall numbers and trends suggest that if any such effect existed, it was relatively slight. * * * reasons. 120 Extents Ir. mon. possessions, p. 223. 121 Purcell has noted the high numbers of Irish tenants in the suburbs of Dublin and links between marginalized groups and suburbs can be found across Britain (Emer Purcell, ‘The city and the suburb: medieval Dublin and Oxmantown’, in Seán Duffy (ed.), Medieval Dublin VI (Dublin, 2005), pp 205–6, 216; David Ditchburn, Scotland and Europe: the medieval kingdom and its contacts with Christendom, 1214– 1560 (East Linton, 2000), p. 245; Derek Keene, ‘Suburban growth’, in Richard Holt and Gervase Rosser (eds), The English medieval town (London, 1990), pp 97–119). 122 In several cases, the Irishmen who appeared in the first position were the former priors of religious houses being assessed, so they were natural people to ask, and also commanded some social status by virtue of their (former) ecclesiastical positions: Extents Ir. mon. possessions, pp 264, 280.

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One of the long-standing narratives about the Geraldines is that they became, in the famous misquoting of Spenser, ‘more Irish than the Irish themselves’, integrating into Irish society, and becoming increasingly distanced from England and English society.123 As many chapters in this volume show, this view requires modification because the relationship between the Geraldines and the Irish was much more nuanced. The insights into the relationships between the Geraldine earls of Kildare and Desmond and the Irish provided by examinations of intermarriage, patronage and jury lists demonstrate the extent to which the much celebrated closeness and connection between the Geraldines and the Irish were limited. While being an Irish relative, ally or tenant of the Geraldines might have offered some advantages, these do not appear to have been as great as one might expect and they were tempered by an awareness on the part of the earls of the prejudices and expectations within English and colonial society. The Geraldines were perfectly willing to have Irish allies, associates and family members, but they controlled these interactions closely and prioritized English and colonial opinion. Further detailed analysis of these relationships between the Geraldines and the Irish, perhaps using some of the approaches outlined above, can shed more light on that great family’s impact on their Irish neighbours, and modify the vision of the Geraldines as growing ever more distant from English society, while increasingly integrated with their Irish allies and associates.

APPENDICES

1 1 . 1– 4 :

I R I S H J U RO R S I N T H E E x T E N T S O F I R I S H

M O NA S T I C P O S S E S S I O N S,

1540–1:

C O U N T I E S K I L DA R E A N D M E AT H

The appendices below present information extracted from the jury lists recorded for the extents of monastic possessions, including the location or locations being assessed; the total number of named jurors (keeping in mind that many jurors were not named); and the number, percentage and ordinal position within the jury list of the Irish jurors named. The accompanying notes identify the main unit of settlement being assessed (i.e., barony, vill, manor, abbey) where that information is included in the extent. The notes also list the names of the Irish jurors with the name-forms rendered as they appear in extents.124

123 Spenser’s words were: ‘for the most parte of them [the Old English] are degenerated and growen almost meare Irishe; yea, and more malicious to the Englishe than the very Irishe themselves’ (Edmund Spenser, A view of the present state of Ireland, ed. Richard Bear (Corvallis, 1997), CELT, http://www.ucc.ie/celt/published/E500000-001/index.html). See Curtis for this view of the Geraldines: Curtis, Med. Ire. (1st ed.), pp 320–1, 385–412. 124 These barony and county locations were determined using White’s own identifications and the ‘Placenames Database of Ireland’, accessed at www.logainm.ie.

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The boundaries of the medieval shires and modern counties differ. It is the medieval boundaries that are used here as the study area, which thus includes locations in modern cos. Carlow and Wicklow that fell into medieval county Kildare, and areas in modern cos. Westmeath and Longford that were part of medieval county Meath. Assessing whether lands were inside or outside the Pale is more difficult. I use the descriptions of the Pale boundary from 1488, 1494–5 and 1515, as well as the renderings by K.W. Nicholls to determine the line of the ‘maghery’ and ‘Pale’ (which were similar in extent though not identical).125 Most settlements considered here lay clearly inside or outside all of the boundaries considered, but for a number (like Tipperkevin) we cannot be certain. In these few cases, I have included them as within the Pale. Important posts on Pale border, like Kells, Kilteel and Clane, were directly on the Pale border, but certainly were considered within the Pale, and were, in fact, key strategic outposts. Another difficulty is determining which jurors were English and which were Irish. I use the first names and surnames of the Irish jurors to determine ethnicity. While I am confident about the vast majority of attributions, identification is not an exact science.126 Surnames that seem to me to be equally likely to be Irish or English are not counted as Irish (including names that are common in the extents, like Duff, and occupational and descriptive surnames like Clerk), so it is likely that any inaccuracy in the percentages tends towards lower percentages of Irish jurors than there were in reality. When viewing the percentages, it is important to remember that the lower the overall number of named jurors in a jury list, the less representative that list is. Consequently, many of extremes with 0% Irish jurors, or 100%, are from small jury lists of between one and three people. They are included in order to be comprehensive, and also because they shed light on ways juries were assembled, but readers must keep their size in mind when assessing them.

125 Reg. Alen, p. 250; Agnes Conway, Henry VII’s relations with Scotland and Ireland, 1485– 1498 (New York, 1972), p. 127; Stat. Ric. III–Hen. VIII, p. 93; SP Hen. VIII, iii, no. 2, p. 22. K.W. Nicholls’s map of the area, depicting the 1488 boundaries and later descriptions appears in NHI, ix, p. 44. 126 This element of uncertainty is the main justification for reproducing in the notes the names of those jurors I have identified as being Irish. Surnames that preserve the ‘O’ and ‘Mac’ prefixed are easy to securely identify, as are most named with an anglicized Irish surname and an Irish first name. The English did take Irish names, but this was relatively uncommon. For naming, see Sparky Booker, ‘Ashamed of their very English names? Identity and the use of Irish names by the English of late medieval Ireland’, in Gabriela Signori and Christof Rolker (eds), Umstrittene Zugehörigkeit(en). Spätmittelalterliche Praktiken der Namengebung im europäischen Vergleich (Konstanz, 2010), pp 131–48.

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Sparky Booker Appendix 11.1: Locations in county Kildare within the Pale boundary127 Total named jurors

Irish jurors

% Irish jurors

Naas128

8

2

25%

7, 8

Straffan129

7

2

29%

2, 6

Clane130

6

2

33%

5, 6

Naas131

6

2

33%

5, 6

Naas132

6

2

33%

5, 6

Leixlip133

9

3

33%

6, 8, 9

Punchestown134

9

4

44%

2, 6, 7, 9

Kill135

13

6

46%

1, 2, 3, 5, 6, 11

Kilteel136

13

6

46%

1, 2, 3, 5, 6, 11

New Abbey/ Kilcullen137

13

7

54%

2, 6, 7, 9, 10, 11, 13

Tipperkevin138

16

9

56%

2, 5, 7, 8– 9, 11–12, 14–15

Location

Ordinal position of Irish jurors

127 Unless otherwise stated, page references given in square brackets in the notes below refer to the pagination in Extents Ir. mon. possessions. 128 Naas, bar. Naas North. Irish jurors: John Kelly and Patrick McCostykyen [pp 154–5]. 129 Rectory of Straffan, bar. Salt North. Extent was made at Naas. Irish jurors: Thomas Owrerk and Peter Beghan [pp 61–2]. 130Vill of Clane, bar. Clane. Extent was made in Naas. Irish jurors: Donald Kelly and Carbrin Rewly [pp 164-5]. 131 Naas, bar. Naas North. Irish jurors: as above [p. 165]. 132 Naas, bar. Naas North. Irish jurors: as above [p. 166]. 133 Vill of Leixlip, bar. Salt North. Extent made at Maynooth. Irish jurors: John Sheill, Thady Walloghan and Thady Lanan [p. 22]. 134Vill of Punchestown, bar. Naas South. Extent made at Ballycullane. Irish jurors: Thady Duff, Cornelius O Gegwen, John Macmores and Malaghlin Okyrovan [p. 259]. 135 Manor of Kill, bar. Salt South. Irish jurors: John Roddie, Donald Laghnan, Thomas O’Ferrell, Milmor Broghan, Patrick Kelly and John Colman [p. 39]. 136 Kilteel, bar. Salt South. The extent had the same jurors as that of Kill [p. 91]. 137 House of New Abbey, bar. Naas South. Extent made at Ballycullane. Irish jurors: Thady Duff, Cornelius Ogegwen, John McMorys, Hugh McShane, John O Nolan, Molmure McOghtaoh and Malaghlyn Okyrovan [p. 173]. 138 Rectory of Tubber (Tipperkevin), bar. Naas South. Extent made at Ballymore. This was on the Pale boundary in the east of Kildare near Wicklow and it may have suffered from the depredations of the Irish of the Wicklow mountains as it was described as ‘almost devastated’ and could not be assessed. The jurors were the same as for Talbotstown, which was some 30km to the south, but also in the foothills of Wicklow mountains. Irish jurors: Laughlyn Odempcy, Ferald Ogalso, Thady Oherthen, Patrick McRychard, Mortagh O Noolan, Laughlyn Odewe, Patrick Ocullon, Patrick McKylcryst and Dermot McDonagh [p. 77].

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Appendix 11.2: Locations in county Kildare outside the Pale boundary Total named jurors

Irish jurors

% Irish jurors

Castle Reban139

5

0

0%

n/a

Dunmanoge and others (co. Carlow)140

6

0

0%

n/a

Athy141

5

0

0%

n/a

Tuburrogan142

4

1

25%

4

Ardristan143

12

3

25%

10–12

18

7

39%

10–14, 16, 17

5

2

40%

2, 5

12

6

50%

3, 5, 7–10

Castledermot147

12

6

50%

3, 5, 7–10

Castledermot148

12

6

50%

3, 5, 7–10

149

12

6

50%

3, 5, 7–10

16

9

56%

2, 5, 7, 8– 9, 11–12, 14–15

Kildare151

9

5

56%

2, 4, 6, 7, 9

152

9

5

56%

2, 4, 6, 7, 9

Location

144

Aghade

Carbury

145

Ballycullen/Kilkea

Castledermot Talbotstown

Kildare

150

146

Ordinal position of Irish jurors

139 Rectory of Castle Reban (Churchtown), bar. Narragh and Reban West. Extent made at Kilkea [pp 22–3]. 140 Rectories of Dunmanoge and Ballaghmoone, bar. Kilkea and Moone, Straboe, bar. Rathvilly, co. Carlow and Rathmore and Moycon (?). Extent made at Kilkea. This jury assessed lands in the south of county Kildare and nearby in neighbouring Carlow and Laois that were within the medieval county of Kildare [pp 37–8]. 141 Vill of Athy, bar. Narragh and Reban West. Extent made at Kilkea [p. 172]. 142 Vill of Toberogan, bar. Kilcullen. The extent was made at Ballycullane. Irish juror: Fernand McEyhoghoo [p. 22]. 143 Rectory of Ardristan (Rathvilly), bar. Rathvilly, co. Carlow. Extent made at Kilkea. Irish jurors: Denis Helan, Dermot Olyen, John McMynnougrrough [p. 61]. 144 Vill of Aghade, bar. Forth, co. Carlow. Extent made at Kilkea. Irish jurors: Denis Helan, Dermot Olyen, John McMynnougrrough, David Moyly, Maurice Odoren, Donald OConnor and Donald Obeagan [p. 71]. 145 Rectory of Carbury, bar. Carbury. Irish jurors: Donald O Doyn and John Coffey [p. 161]. 146 Ballycullan, bar. Narragh and Reban East and Kilkea, bar. Kilkea and Moone. Irish jurors: John Kelly, Donald Odoren, Maurice McMurrough, Patrick McJames, Donald O Garran and Gyllenenowe O Conowe [p. 123]. 147 Vill of Castledermot, bar. Kilkea and Moone. Extent made at Kilkea. Irish jurors: as above [p. 156]. 148 Castledermot, bar. Kilkea and Moone. Extent made at Kilkea. Irish jurors: as above [pp 168–9]. 149 Castledermot, bar. Kilkea and Moone. Extent made at Kilkea. Irish jurors: as above [p. 170]. 150 Vill of Kilbelyd, bar. Talbotstown lower, co. Wicklow. Extent made at Ballymore. Irish jurors: Laughlyn Odempcy, Ferald Ogalso, Thady Oherthen, Patrick McRychard, Mortagh O Noolan, Laughlyn Odewe, Patrick Ocullon, Patrick McKylcryst and Dermot McDonagh [p. 63]. 151 Vill of Kildare, bar. Offaly East. Irish jurors: Dermot McThomas, William Dempsey, Patrick Dempsey, Maurice O Lynan and Charles Olabor [p. 163]. 152 House of Friars minor, Kildare, bar. Offaly East. Irish jurors: as above [pp 166–7].

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Appendix 11.2: Locations in county Kildare outside the Pale boundary (continued) Total named jurors

Irish jurors

% Irish jurors

Kildare153

9

5

56%

Tully154

19

11/12

58–63%

Cloncurry155

5

3

60%

2, 4, 5

Cloncurry156

10

6

60%

2–6, 8

Kilbeg157

14

9

64%

3, 4, 6, 7, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13

Clonshanbo158

7

5

71%

2–4, 6–7

Blackrath159

5

4

80%

2–5

Grangeclare160

15

12

80%

2–5, 7–14

Connell161

16

14

88%

2–6, 8–16

Location

Ordinal position of Irish jurors 2, 4, 6, 7, 9 3–10, 12, 13, 15, 16

153 Carmelite house of Kildare, bar. Offaly East. Irish jurors: as above [pp 167–8]. 154 Vill of Tully, bar. Offaly East. Extent made at Kildare. Irish jurors: Dermot McThomas, Thady Becan, Malachy McDonaghoo, Dermot McDavy, Patrick Dempsy, Dermot Negar’, Thady McCormyk, Rory Carroll, Cormack Broo, Dermot Otrury, Thomas Omulbryde and perhaps Maurice Ballowe, who has an Irish nickname as his surname [pp 96–7]. 155 Carmelite house at Cloncurry, bar. Offaly East. Extent made at Dunfierth. Irish jurors: Donald Odoyn, John Coffye and Arthur Oconor [p. 172]. 156 Rectory of Cloncurry, bar. Offaly East. Extent made at Carbury. Irish jurors: Maurice O Doghirtie, Laghlin O Molone, John O Molone, Edmund O Derge, Carmelius Kelly, Donald O Doyn [p. 37]. 157 Preceptory of hospitallers at Killybegs, bar. Clane. Extent made at Connell. Irish jurors: Rory Odonne, Melaghlyn McWarde, Mulmor O Beghaman, Maurice O Donne, William McMurgh, Conor of Bowlane, Maurice Ougholaghyn, Cornelius O Molamida and Thady O Bowlane [pp 91–2]. 158 Rectory of Clonshanbo, bar. Ikeathy and Oughterany. This was between Kilcock and Clane, both Pale border points, but to the west, and most likely not within the boundary. Extent made at Clane. Irish jurors: Maurice Odoghurtye, Laughlin Omelone, John Omelone, Cormack Kelly and Charles McDowly [p. 95]. 159Vill of Blackrath, bar. Narragh and Reban east. Extent made at Kildare. Irish jurors: Hugh Dempsie, Charles McCrossan, Hugh O Shaghnys and Donald O Bryne [p. 43]. 160 Grangeclare, bar. Offaly East. Extent made at Kildare. Irish jurors: Hugh Dempcy, Charles McCrossan, Hugh OShaghnys, Cornelius Oconolan, James Omorey, Thady McDermott, Doll’ McCothoran, Gerald Omorey, Thady McShan, Donald Obryn, Thomas Ocaman and Patrick McKeryght [p. 62]. 161 Priory of Connall, bar. Connell. Irish jurors: John Omoony, David O Celleman, Ferrold Gryffen, John O Beaghan, Donald McGylderwey, Thomas Rorik, Dermot Ovrerke, Maurice Honyes, Donald O Kelly, William McNully, Edmund O Noolan, David McNully, Maurice O Beaghan and Patrick O Donne [p. 157].

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Appendix 11.3: Locations in county Meath within the Pale boundary Total named Jurors

Irish jurors

% Irish jurors

Skreen162

12

0

0%

n/a

Skreen163

4

0

0%

n/a

2

0

0%

n/a

Duleek

7

0

0%

n/a

Dunboyne166

2

0

0%

n/a

1

0

0%

n/a

9

0

0%

n/a

4

0

0%

n/a

170

2

0

0%

n/a

171

Location

Rathregan

164

165

Knightstown

167

Moyglare/Knockmark

168

‘Belgrecourte’169 Kells

Ordinal position of Irish jurors

2

0

0%

n/a

Ballymagarvey172

3

0

0%

n/a

Heathtown/ Hammondstown/ Rathcarstown173

17

1

6%

6

Trim/Greenoge/Dunboyne174

14

1/2

7/14%

4, 5

Rathbeggan175

9

1/2

11/22%

6, 8

8

1/2

13/25%

5, 8

Kilnew/Hammondstown

6

1

17%

3

Carberrystown/Kilteel178

11

2

18%

10, 11

179

19

4

21%

11, 16–17, 19

Slane

Ratoath

176 177

Dardistown

162Vill and Rectory of Skreen, bar. Skreen. The juror Patrick Clynch may have been Irish, but it is entirely possible that he was English [p. 17]. 163 Augustinian house at Skreen, bar. Skreen. Patrick Clynch also served on this jury [p. 306]. 164 Rectory of Rathregan, bar. Ratoath. Extent made at Ardbraccan [p. 296]. 165 Barony of Duleek [p. 19]. 166 Vill of Dunboyne, bar. Dunboyne [p. 21]. 167Vill of Knightstown, bar. Morgallion. Extent made at Ardbraccan [p. 21]. 168 Rectories of ‘Moyclare’ (Moyglare, bar. Deece Upper?) and Knockmark, bar. Deece Lower. Extent made at Dunboyne [p. 36]. 169 Manor of Belgrecourt (Belgree?), bar. Dunboyne. Extent made at Dunboyne [p. 257]. 170 St Mary’s abbey, Kells (and other lands held by abbey of Kells far to the west in ‘OReli’s country’ and ‘Glassenys country’. Extent at Ardbraccan [p. 262]. 171 Franciscan house at Slane, bar. Slane Upper [p. 313]. 172 Parish church of Ballymagarvey, bar. Duleek. Extent made at Trim [pp 273–4]. 173 Vills of Heathtown, Hammondstown and Rathcarstown, bar. Duleek Upper. Extent made at Duleek. Irish juror: Brian Byrne, described as ‘gentleman’ here alongside other gentry of the area [p. 105]. 174 Vills of Trim, Greenoge, bar. Ratoath, Dunboyne, bar. Dunboyne, and Knockmark, bar. Deece Lower. Extent made at Ratoath. Irish jurors: Edmund Colgon and John Neele (probably) [p. 115]. 175 Manor of Rathbeggan, bar. Ratoath. Extent made at Ratoath. Irish jurors: Nicholas Hely and John Neale [p. 175]. 176 Barony of Ratoath. Irish jurors: Brian Orody and Thomas Foran [p. 20]. 177 Vills of Kilnew and Hammondstown, bar. Duleek Upper. Extent made at Ardcath. Irish juror: Henry Birne [p. 51]. 178Vill of Carberrystown, bar. Moyfenrath Lwr; vill of Kilteel, bar. Deece Lower. Extent made at Rathmullen. Irish jurors: Donald O Toole and Cormac Hykye [p. 174]. 179 Dardistown, bar. Dunboyne. Extent made

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Appendix 11.3: Locations in county Meath within the Pale boundary (continued) Total named Jurors

Irish jurors

% Irish jurors

19

4

21%

19

4/5

21/26%

9

2

22%

4, 8

Ratoath/Greenoge

12

3

25%

5, 8, 10

Dunlough/Knockamore184

8

2

25%

4, 7

Newtown Trim185

15

4

27%

8–9, 11, 13

15

5/6

27/33%

1, 6–8, 15

Lismullen

14

4

29%

1, 7, 12–13

Bective188

23

7/8

30/35%

3–4, 9–11, 16–17, 23

19

6/7

32/37%

7, 11–13, 17–19

6

2

33%

3, 6

Kells

3

1

33%

1

Girley192

13

5

38%

8–12

Location Loughsallagh180 Dunboyne/Moymet181 182

Ratoath/ Donaghmore 183

186

Odder

187

Newtown Trim189 190

Johnstown 191

Ordinal position of Irish jurors 11, 16–17, 19 8, 11, 17–18, 20

at Dunboyne. Irish jurors: Edmund Colgan, Donald Brady, Robert and James Fynne (probably) [p. 60]. 180 Vill of Loughsallagh, bar. Dunboyne. Extent made at Dunboyne. Irish jurors: Edmund Colgan, Donald Brady, Robert and James Fynne (probably) [p. 76]. 181 Rectories of Dunboyne, bar. Dunboyne and Moymet, bar. Navan Upper. Irish jurors: Robert Fyne, Edmund Colgon, Donald Brady, James Fynne and perhaps Simon Dun [p. 288]. 182 Manors of Grangende (Ratoath) and Donaghmore, bar. Ratoath. Extent made at Ratoath. Irish jurors: Brian O’Roddy and Richard Connyll [p. 32]. 183 Greenoge and barony of Ratoath. Extent made at Ratoath. Irish jurors: Brian Roddy, Thomas Foran and Richard Connyll [pp 60–1]. 184Vills of Dunlough, bar. Navan Upper and Knockamore, bar. Navan Lower(?). Extent made at Ardmulchan. Irish jurors: Donald Omulrean and Thomas Bradye [p. 71]. 185 Vill of Newtown Trim, bar. Moyfenrath Lower. Extent made at Trim. Irish jurors: Rory Rayly, Patrick McHenry, Patrick Donnyng and John Offynie [p. 299]. 186 Vill of Odder, bar. Skreen. Extent made at Skreen. Irish jurors: Edmund Rygan, David Moony, Peter Rygan, John Flynne, Hugh Flenne and perhaps Thomas Bane [p. 260]. 187 Manor of Lismullen, bar. Skreen. Extent made at Skreen. Irish jurors: John Brady, Dermot Kenan, Neill More and Patrick Donell [p. 255]. 188 Vill of Bective, bar. Navan Upper. Irish jurors: Moragh Spellan, Walter Cregan, Laughlin Kennyn, John McCormyok, Richard Cregan, Peter Cougan, Nicholas Roo and perhaps Walter Morry [p. 267]. 189 Vill of Newtown, bar. Moyfenrath Lower. Extent made at Trim. Irish jurors: Patrick Donnyng, Rory Rayly, Patrick McHenry, John Offyny, Walter Hogan, John McCormack and Walter Morry [pp 292–6]. 190 Johnstown, bar. Duleek. Extent made at Ardcath. Irish jurors: Walter Conner and Henry Byrne (conceivably Carrogh, the surname of two jurors, is Carrach, but it may be Carew, so they are not included) [p. 60]. 191 Kells, bar. Kells Upper .This extent was made at Ardbraccan because of a plague at Kells. Irish juror: Cornelius Duff [p. 264]. 192 Rectory of Girley, bar. Kells Upper. Irish jurors: Charles O Brynne, Edmund McDonagh, Donald Hoblegan, Maurice O Donne and Cornelius McGrath [p. 60].

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The Geraldines and the Irish

323

Appendix 11.3: Locations in county Meath within the Pale boundary (continued) Total named Jurors

Irish jurors

% Irish jurors

Trim193

16

6/7

38/44%

Navan194

14

6

43%

6, 7, 9, 11–13

Navan195

14

6

43%

6, 7, 9, 11–13

Trim196

11

5

45%

6–7, 9, 11

Trim197

9

4/5

44/56%

4–5, 7–9

Stagreenan198

3

3

100%

Location

Ordinal position of Irish jurors 6–7, 9, 11, 13–14, 16

1, 2, 3

Appendix 11.4: Locations in county Meath outside the Pale boundary Total Named Jurors

Irish jurors

% Irish jurors

Ballinlig199

7

0

0%

n/a

Dysart/Fore200

2

0

0%

n/a

Collinstown201

2

0

0%

n/a

Lochsewdy202

1

0

0%

n/a

Location

Ordinal position of Irish jurors

193 Trim, bar. Moyfenrath Lower. Irish jurors: John Donnaghan, Walter Carrell, Richard Garren, William Carnagh, Robert Hagan, Timothy Omean and Richard Donagh (possibly also Brian Rey) [pp 302–6]. 194 Vill of Navan, bar. Navan Lower. Irish jurors: Dermot Coner, Feraldus Ban, Patrick Kelly, Magnus Duff, William Betagh and Robert Colgan [p. 59]. For the Betagh family of Meath and its ethnic origin, see Booker, ‘Gaelicisation and identity’, p. 181; Stat. Ric. III–Hen.VIII, p. 121; Stat. Hen. VI, p. 441. 195 Vill of Navan, bar. Navan Lower. Irish jurors: Dermot Coner, Feraldus Ban, Patrick Kelly, Magnus Duff, William Betagh and Robert Colgan [p. 250]. 196 Trim, bar. Moyfenrath Lower. Irish jurors: Thomas Carmyk, Laghlin Glynnam, Hugh McCarno, Thomas Kynyde and William Keran [pp 307– 8]. 197 Trim, bar. Moyfenrath Lower. Irish jurors: Thomas Carmyk, Laghlin Glynnam, Hugh McCarde, William Keran and perhaps Hugh Dygnam (Ó Duibhgeannáin?) [p. 308]. 198 Vill of Stagreenan, bar. Duleek lower. Irish jurors: Patrick McBryne, Owen Ocor and Owen Okerwill [p. 233]. This extent was made in co. Louth for these lands on outskirts of the Meath side of Drogheda. The two boroughs of Drogheda were incorporated and granted the status of a county in 1412, so the town of Drogheda is not included in the appendix above and other extents from the area usually have no Irish jurors, though one long list has 8% Irish jurors [pp 239, 242, 244, 246, 247–8, 279]. On Drogheda, see Chiara Buldorini, ‘Drogheda as a case study of Anglo-Norman town foundation in Ireland, 1194–1412’ (PhD, University of Dublin, 2010). 199 Vill of Ballinlig, bar. Moyfenrath Upper. Extent made at Rathmullen (bar. Moyfenrath Upper) [p. 20]. 200 Vills of Ballyconnor and Dysart, bar. Delvin. Extent made at Fore [p. 21]. 201 Collinstown, bar. Fore, co. Westmeath. Extent made at Fore [p. 261]. 202 Priory of Lochsewdy, bar. Rathconrath, co. Westmeath. Extent made at Tristernagh. Like Granard, this did not have the usual inquisition because of the fear of the

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Appendix 11.4: Locations in county Meath outside the Pale boundary (continued) Total Named Jurors

Irish jurors

% Irish jurors

Mullingar203

2

0

0%

n/a

Ardnurcher204

6

3

50%

1, 4, 6

Ballyboggan205

12

6

50%

2, 5–8, 10

Kilmainhamwood206

14

8

57%

3–5, 10–14

Kilmainhanbeg207

12

7

58%

5–12

Fore208

12

7

58%

5–8, 10–12

Clonard209

18

11

61%

2, 5–8, 10, 13–16, 18

Tristernagh210

13

8

62%

2–3, 6–10, 13

Mullingar211

11

9

82%

1–2, 4, 6–11

2

2

100%

1–2

Location

212

Granard

Ordinal position of Irish jurors

Irish and it relied solely on the testimony of Thomas Tuyt, the former prior [p. 284]. 203 Mullingar, bar. Moyashel and Magheradernon, co. Westmeath [pp 290–2]. 204 Rectory of Ardnurcher, bar. Moycashel, co. Westmeath. Extent made at Mullingar. Irish jurors: Nicholas Cassy, Donald O Mulkeren and John Connor [p. 162]. 205Vill of Ballyboggan, bar. Moyfenrath Upper. Extent made at Carbury. Irish jurors: Donald O Doyn, John Coffy, Henry O Comher, John Flyne, Walter O Hennersse and Arthur O Conor [pp 311–13]. 206 Vill of Kilmainhamwood, bar. Kells Lower. Extent made at Slane. Irish jurors: Migell Carolan, Donald Omulledy, Magonius Offay, Donald Omulrean, Nicholas Omulphadryk, Charles Omulphadryk, William Magourt and Owen Okeralan [pp 110–11]. 207 Vill of Kilmainhanbeg, bar. Kells Upper. Extent made at Athboy. Irish jurors: William Brady, John Ogoyn, John Rely, Hugh McCollyn, John Oculran, Dermot McGylecalghyll and John McMahon [pp 111–15]. 208Vill of Fore, bar. Fore, co. Westmeath. Irish jurors: Gillore Noe, Simon Casse, Brian McHogan, Denis McObegleyne, Hugh O Slenan, Thomas McCockean and Noah McWard [pp 270–1]. 209 Monastary of Clonard, bar. Moyfenrath Upper. Extent made at Carbury. Irish jurors: Donald O Doyn, John Coffy, Henry O Comher, John Flyne, Walter O Hennersse, Arthur O Conor, John O Gwyll, Owen McAgan, Charles O Mulkyn, William McMorys and Thomas Ohoene [pp 309–10]. 210 Vill of Tristernagh, bar. Moygoish, co. Westmeath. Irish jurors: Denis Odonell, Dermot Lenagh, Malachy Daley, Patrick McCarnyk, Maurice McKenrat, Christin Ohein, Donagh Odonan and Thady Mascalley [p. 276]. 211 Mullingar, bar. Moyashel and Magheradernon, co. Westmeath. Irish jurors: Nicholas Cassy, Philip Brenan, Donald Omulkeran, John Connor, Thady Oheggen, Donald Omulkeran, Carbery Ocleman, Donald Omulveyn and Patrick Ohenvy [p. 286]. 212 Abbey of Granard, bar. Granard, co. Longford. Extent made at Tristernagh. Irish jurors: Richard O’Ferrall and Thady McGylleno (abbot and prior of the abbey). They were asked to assess the lands because the assessors ‘did not venture to approach nearer for fear of the Irish’ [p. 280].

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The Great Earl of Kildare (1456–1513) and the creation of the English Pale

S T E V E N G. E L L I S

While watering his horse in the Greese river near Kilkea, co. Kildare, the lord deputy, Gerald FitzGerald (Gearóid Mór), the eighth or ‘Great Earl’ of Kildare, was shot and wounded by one of the Uí Mhórdha (O’Mores) as he prepared to renew his assault on Leap castle in Ó Cearbhaill (O’Carroll) country.1 He retired to the town of Kildare where, after lingering a few days, he died on 3 September 1513. The mayor and citizens of Dublin, bringing up reinforcements to join him at Athy, turned back on hearing the news. The earl’s body was brought to Dublin and buried in the chapel he had built two years earlier on the north side of the altar in Christ Church cathedral.2 The eulogies of the earl’s career which followed were fulsome. The Annals of Ulster recorded that ‘in power, fame and estimation, he exceeded all the Gaill, conquered more territory from the Gaedhil, built more castles for the Gaill, razed more castles of the Gaedhil, kept better justice and law, and gave most of his own substance to the men of Ireland’. Writing from a very different perspective in the heart of the English Pale, the earl’s servant and exchequer clerk, Philip Flattisbury of Johnstown near Naas, co. Kildare, offered a similar verdict: as the king’s governor for thirty-three years (actually, just over thirty years), Kildare had exceeded all previous governors in overthrowing the Irish enemies, razing to the ground their castles and towers, and reducing them to the king’s peace. He had also ‘in different parts rebuilt many towns long since destroyed by the Irish, replenishing them with tenants and dwellings, and he had constructed and built diverse castles, bridges and other fortresses on the frontiers of the Irish’, ‘to the great profit and defence of the English’.3 Within a generation, the earl’s exploits were the stuff of legends: crowning Lambert Simnel as king of England, hanging Captain Garth’s son, resisting Sir Edward Poynings and other deputies, until Henry VII had eventually appointed him deputy and given him his cousin in marriage. Sir Gerald Shaneson told the earl’s second son bluntly in 1528 that the earl’s success had been based on resistance to the Tudors, not loyalty, and that he would be 1 BL, Add. MS 4791, fo. 135v; AU, iii, p. 507; Fitzgerald, Earls of Kildare (3rd ed.), i, pp 68–9. 2 BL, Add. MSS 4787, fo. 252v, 4791, fo. 135v; Steven G. Ellis, ‘Fitzgerald, Gerald, eighth earl of Kildare (1456?–1513)’, ODNB; AC, 1513.8. 3 BL, Add. MS 4787, fo. 252v; AU, iii,

325

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Steven G. Ellis more esteemed in Irelande to take parte against the kinge. For what haddest thou have been, if thy fader had not doon so? What was he sett by, until he crowned a kinge here; toke Garthe, the kingis capitayne, prisoner, hanged his son; resisted Ponengis and all deputies; kylled them of Dublin upon Oxmantowne Greene; wold suffer no man to rule here for the kinge but himself ? Than the kinge regarded him, made him deputie, and married thy moder to him. Orellis thou shouldest never have had foote of land, where now thow maiest despende 400 markis by yere or above.4

In modern times, Kildare’s career as a medieval governor of Ireland was also deemed sufficiently significant (and well-documented) as to merit a scholarly biography, in the form of Donough Bryan’s 1933 account.5 This was well into the modern era of professional history, and Bryan’s biography reflected in some measure the influence and research of his mentor, Edmund Curtis, then Erasmus Smith’s professor of history at Trinity, who also devoted the last chapter of his influential History of mediaeval Ireland (first published in 1923) to the earl’s career. That these accounts were influenced by contemporary concerns comes as no surprise. In the immediate aftermath of partition and civil war, the need was to create for the Irish Free State what we should now call ‘a usable past’. Curtis portrayed Kildare as ‘the first representative man of the mixed race, the typical Anglo-Irishman’ who, if he had wanted, ‘could have swept England’s petty forces out of Ireland and made himself a King’. He was, allegedly, ‘the first “Uncrowned King of Ireland”’, a champion of ‘aristocratic Home Rule’ for the inexorably ‘dwindling’ English Pale.6 Bryan added that the Great Earl ‘never treated the Gael as an inferior race’ and ‘did not rule Ireland in the interests of England … but in the interests of himself … and therefore as it happened in the interests of Ireland, for his hegemony was Irish’.7 In essence, the approach sought to portray Kildare’s rule of native and settler and clashes with the crown as in some sense a precursor of the Irish Free State; but this was to overlook some very striking discontinuities. In the 1920s, in the aftermath of partition, what in 1500 had been a distant, frontier region of the English monarchy, the English Pale, was now the core region of an Irish Free State that loudly trumpeted its nationalist, republican and Gaelic pedigree; while north of this frontier lay Northern Ireland, now unionist, British and loyalist, but once Ireland’s most Gaelic province. Bryan and Curtis had focused on aspects of the earl’s career that were important for the future – his appeal to both Gaedhil and Gaill and the origins of an Irish identity – but had rather lost sight of the wider contemporary context of his rule. p. 507. 4 SP Hen. VIII, ii, p. 175. 5 Bryan, Great Earl. 6 Curtis, Med. Ire. (2nd ed.), pp 337, 338, 342, 353, 359, 362, 363. Peter Crooks offers a convincing reappraisal of Curtis’s scholarship and nationalism in ‘The Lecky professors’, in Crooks, Government, pp 25–36. See also James Lydon, ‘Historical revisit: Edmund Curtis, A history of medieval Ireland (1923, 1938)’, pp 535–48, which also notices Bryan’s biography (p. 538). 7 Bryan, Great Earl, pp

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The earl’s rule may be divided into essentially three aspects: his long career as governor of Ireland (including relations with the English community in Ireland, defence and estate management); his dealings with the Irish and the Gaelic world beyond; and his relations with the English crown and the community of the realm. The Great Earl was one of a dozen or so nobles in Yorkist and early Tudor times who are now described as ruling magnates because of the particular combination of private resources and public office that they wielded in the territories of the English crown. The key to the earl’s success was his exceptional ability to exploit the opportunities that public office and private resources afforded him. His principal recommendation to the crown – given Ireland’s low priority within the English orbit – was a substantial landed base in the lordship’s core region, plus income and residence here, so as to be able to organize its rule and defence economically through the deployment of his affinity and manraed (the men he could call on for military service).8 It was, indeed, the earl’s good fortune that, for much of the time, he was the only magnate who could meet these criteria during a period of dynastic struggle, known as the Wars of the Roses, which left the crown in a relatively weak position in its dealings with the nobility. Dynastically, the earl’s family loyalties were to the house of York. Following Henry VI’s recognition of the earldom in 1454, Kildare’s father, Thomas FitzGerald, had served as deputy to Richard duke of York, the king’s lieutenant, throughout the later 1450s, later entering the service of his son, King Edward IV.9 Earl Thomas had trimmed during the brief readeption of Henry VI, but Edward IV reappointed him deputy-lieutenant. Earl Thomas’s heir, Lord Gerald, was in December 1472 entrusted with the command of twenty-four spearmen for the defence of the four shires, and on the death of his father in March 1478, the young Earl Gerald was elected justiciar by the Irish council to supply the vacancy.10 Edward’s appointment as deputy-lieutenant a few months later of Henry Lord Grey of Ruthin, a courtier and rank outsider in English Ireland, was seen to challenge the earl’s position as the leading magnate in the four shires: it provoked Earl Gerald into a characteristic demonstration of Kildare power of the sort that was to punctuate his relationship with successive kings. Earl Gerald’s supporters in the administration withheld recognition of the new governor, whose commission was deemed invalid on a technicality. Grey subsequently secured confirmation from the king and a parliament in Ireland, which annulled the legislation of a parliament convened by Kildare. Yet Grey was reluctant to continue without the support of the lordship’s leading family 262, 263. 8 The family’s landed possessions, as they existed just after the death of the Great Earl, are described in the ninth earl’s rental book, now BL, Harl. MS 3756 (printed in Crown surveys, pp 232–357). 9 Ellis, Tudor frontiers, pp 112–15. 10 Parliament roll, 12 & 13 Edw. IV, c. 60 (Stat. Edw. IV, pt 2, pp 130–6); S.G. Ellis, Ireland in the age of the Tudors, 1447–1603: English expansion and the end of Gaelic rule (London, 1998), pp 68–70, 76.

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and retired to England. Subsequently, King Edward summoned to court the leading lords and officials and dictated a settlement, which saw Kildare given charge as deputy-lieutenant of a more broadly based administration, with detailed instructions for the maintenance of good rule and the king’s interests.11 The earl’s government generally preserved the spirit, if not the letter, of this settlement until King Edward’s death. Even at this early date, there are indications of the earl’s later dominance, as when in 1483 he convened a parliament at Limerick.12 Within months of this, however, renewed political instability in England – following Richard of Gloucester’s deposition of his young nephew, Edward V – threatened to undermine Kildare’s position as the Yorkist connection broke up. Initially, the earl profited from the crown’s renewed weakness: Geraldine influence on the Irish council was strengthened, and Kildare’s brother, Thomas FitzGerald, was intruded as chancellor against King Richard’s wishes. By summer 1485, however, with the threat looming in England of invasion by the pretender, Henry Tudor, Kildare took steps to protect his position in the event of a change of regime: he had parliament pass legislation confirming in their offices for life the seven principal ministers who would elect the justiciar, or temporary governor, to serve on news of the crown’s demise. Fully two months after the battle of Bosworth and Henry Tudor’s accession, Kildare was still keeping parliament in Richard III’s name. But by March 1486 the earl had been appointed deputy to Henry VII’s uncle, Jasper Tudor, duke of Bedford, and was summoned to court.13 In earlier phases of the Wars of the Roses, a common strategy employed by both sides had been to capture peripheral regions – both as a strategic bridgehead and a recruiting ground for an invading army. In Ireland, the Yorkists had succeeded in this in 1460, but the Lancastrians had fared less well in 1462. Since then, English peers had shown a growing reluctance to become closely involved in the dynastic struggle and risk attainder, but Kildare’s Yorkist pedigree made Ireland an obvious target and, as the king’s deputy, the earl could not stand idly by. Initially, no doubt, anything other than outright resistance on Kildare’s part to Henry VII’s shaky regime would have been tolerated; but the earl asked a high price for his support. Sending a councillor to excuse his absence, he asked for the deputyship for nine or ten years, an annual salary of IR£1000, and a safe conduct to court signed by some of the nobles. Perhaps noting that Thomas Butler, seventh earl of Ormond, was a leading councillor under Henry Tudor, he also married his daughter, Margaret, to Sir Piers Butler, head of the family’s Polestown branch. Henry VII replied that such a safe conduct would be inconsistent with his honour, but he sent royal letters of protection, promised to accede to his requests, and added that, despite the earl’s 11 Ellis, Ireland in the age of the Tudors, pp 76–9. 12 Stat. Ric. III–Hen. VIII, pp 22–5, 339– 40; Quinn, ‘Bills and statutes’, pp 132–6. 13 Statute roll, 2–3 Ric. III, c. 8 (Stat. Ric. III– Hen. VIII, pp 60–3); Ellis, Ireland in the age of the Tudors, pp 82–3.

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previous activities and associations, he would ‘as benignly, tenderly and largely take him into the favour of his grace as ever did King Edward IV’.14 Such promises, of course, depended on the regime’s survival: Thomas Lord Dacre, having ‘raised all the north country’ for King Richard at Bosworth, was immediately entrusted by Henry Tudor with the west marches and served as ruling magnate there for the next forty years,15 but Earl Gerald was much slower to support the Tudor regime. The first rising against Tudor rule, organized by Lord Lovell from King Richard’s favourite northern residence, Middleham, was soon followed in Ireland by Lambert Simnel’s impersonation of Edward IV’s nephew, Edward earl of Warwick. Initially, Kildare’s brother, Thomas FitzGerald, handled the plot: it had come to Henry’s ears by early February 1487, when his council discussed it and then had the real earl of Warwick paraded through London. In early May, two thousand German mercenaries led by Martin Swartz landed in Dublin, along with Lord Lovell and the earl of Lincoln, King Richard III’s last lieutenant of Ireland. On 27 May, Simnel was crowned ‘Edward VI’, king of England and Ireland, in Christ Church cathedral, and the courts were kept in his name.16 Kildare, now promoted lieutenant, convened a parliament that confirmed King Edward’s title and attainted Thomas and William Butler of treason in adhering to Henry Tudor.17 Nobles and ministers were afterwards anxious to disclaim responsibility, but active opposition to the coup d’état was seemingly slight. Waterford held out for a time, but messengers sent to remonstrate with Kildare were hanged on Hoggen Green on the earl’s orders. Meanwhile, for the impending invasion of England Kildare was recruiting troops – four thousand Irish kerne, reputedly, under his brother’s command, but few bills or bows. The expedition landed near Furness in Lancashire on 4 June, crossed the Pennines and moved rapidly south to Stoke by Newark, where on 16 June ‘was Martin Swartz field given’. ‘The Irish men did as well as any naked men could do’, so observed laconically the Book of Howth, but without armour they were no match for Henry’s army, and their slaughter unnerved the others. Kildare’s brother was also killed in the three-hour battle.18 Kildare held out in Ireland for a few months longer, but was eventually pardoned along with thirty14 James Gairdner (ed.), Letters and papers illustrative of the reigns of Richard III and Henry VII, 2 vols (London, 1861–3), i, pp 91–3; Ellis, Ireland in the age of the Tudors, p. 84. 15 Keith Dockray, ‘The political legacy of Richard III’, in R.A. Griffiths and James Sherborne (eds), Kings and nobles in the later Middle Ages: a tribute to Charles Ross (Gloucester, 1986), p. 206 (quotation); Ellis, Tudor frontiers and noble power, ch. 5. 16 Randolph Jones has recently presented evidence that the conventional date of 24 May 1487 for the Dublin coronation should be revised in favour of 27 May: Jones, ‘A revised date for the Dublin coronation of “Edward VI”?’, Ricardian Bulletin: Magazine of the Richard III Society (June 2009), 42–4. 17 Sean Cunningham, Henry VII (London, 2007), pp 52–5; Matthew Bennett, Lambert Simnel and the battle of Stoke (Gloucester, 1987); Ellis, Ireland in the age of the Tudors, pp 84–5. 18 P.A. Haigh, The military campaigns of the Wars of the Roses (Stroud, 1995), ch. 19; Ellis, Ireland in the age of the Tudors, pp 84–5; BL, Add. MS 4791, fo. 135 (quotation); Cal.

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two leading lords and officials. The settlement was negotiated in summer 1488 by Sir Richard Edgecombe, but Edgecombe failed to extract anything more than oaths of allegiance from the deputy and council. Rather than be bound for their future conduct, they threatened to ‘become Irish every of them’.19 Kildare also evaded a summons to court in 1490, alleging that he could not be spared from the defence of the land. When, in 1491–2, he was implicated in the activities of another Yorkist pretender, Perkin Warbeck, who landed in Cork and attracted support from the earl of Desmond, Kildare’s cousin, Henry VII responded more energetically, despatching Ormond’s illegitimate brother, Sir James, with two hundred men to hold the Butler lordship between the two Geraldine earls. Then, after Warbeck’s departure for France, he dismissed Kildare and his closest supporters from office.20 It was four years before Kildare recovered the deputyship. Initially, Henry attempted to build up the Butlers as a counterweight but this stoked the old Geraldine–Butler feud. ‘The harvest following’, so the Dublin chronicle recorded, ‘James of Ormond came downe to this country wth a great host of Irish men & camped in Thomascourt wood & then began great mischief betweene ye earle of Kildare … & the Butlers’. Summer 1493 saw further feuding in Dublin where ‘was the slaughter given on Oxmanton greene’, with two citizens and a former mayor killed by Kildare’s supporters.21 Kildare also withdrew his support from the English of Meath who found that ‘as soon as the earl abandoned them, they were universally plundered and burned from every quarter by the Irish’.22 The last thing Henry Tudor wanted, amidst these Yorkist plots, was to encourage a return to the old feuds and factions of the 1450s that had eventually undermined Henry VI’s crown; and in the autumn Kildare and the leading nobles and officials were bound over for their good conduct, the earl in one thousand marks, and summoned to court. The king eventually appointed Sir Edward Poynings as deputy, with 653 men, to hold Ireland against Warbeck. Kildare actively supported the deputy, encouraging Ulster chiefs to submit; but in February 1495, after his secret communications with the chiefs were revealed, he was arrested on charges of plotting against the deputy, attainted by the Irish parliament, and sent to court. Led by his brother James, who seized Carlow castle, Geraldines rose in rebellion, while Desmond rallied support for Warbeck in Munster. Poynings laid siege to Carlow castle, then broke Warbeck’s siege of Waterford and, with Ireland quiet at last, sailed for England.23 To wrest the initiative in Ireland had cost the king £23,000 altogether since 1491. His priority had been to prevent another Yorkist takeover, particularly of Carew MSS, v, p. 189 (quotation). 19 ‘The voyage of Sir Richard Edgecomb into Ireland in the year 1488’, in Harris, Hibernica, i, pp 29–38 (quotation at p. 32); CPR 1485–1494, p. 227. 20 Ian Arthurson, The Perkin Warbeck conspiracy, 1491–1499 (Stroud, 1994), pp 46–9; Ellis, Ireland in the age of the Tudors, pp 86–7. 21 BL, Add. MS 4791, fo. 135. 22 AFM, iv, pp 1197–9. 23 S.G. Ellis, ‘Henry VII and Ireland, 1491–1496’, in Lydon, Eng. & Ire., pp 237– 54, esp. 242–3; Arthurson, Perkin Warbeck conspiracy, pp 104–5, 114–15.

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the core region of English rule around Dublin. Poynings had certainly been given the money and men needed for this, but the cost to the king – running at c.£7000 a year, beyond the usual Irish revenues – was prohibitive, except perhaps in an emergency. Leading Pale landowners had also been tried as governors – Archbishop Walter Fitzsimons, Viscount Gormanston and now Lord Delvin – but they had clearly lacked the manraed to maintain control. By 1496, Henry had taken the measure of the Great Earl. He did not believe Kildare was plotting against him; and even before Poynings’s recall, Kildare’s attainder in the Irish parliament had been reversed in the English parliament.24 Hence the king’s pragmatic – if perhaps apocryphal – response during investigations of Kildare’s conduct before the king’s council: the bishop of Meath had exclaimed that ‘all Ireland cannot rule yonder gentleman’. Famously, the king had answered: ‘then he is meet to rule all Ireland’.25 Kildare was married to the king’s cousin and a formal investigation of his contacts with Ulster chiefs also cleared him of treason. Before the king’s council in August 1496, he swore to uphold Poynings’ law, to surrender rebels and traitors on request, and to forget old quarrels with the Butlers. He was then reappointed deputy on exceptionally generous terms, although Henry kept his son and heir at court as a pledge for his conduct.26 Kildare’s later years as deputy witnessed a period of comparative peace, prosperity and strong government in the lordship. Warbeck again landed at Cork in 1497, but attracted little support. The extended horizons of royal government are apparent from the fact that Kildare now spent more of his time on military expeditions far into Gaelic parts. He made progresses through outlying shires and cities that seldom saw the king’s deputy, visiting Carrickfergus in 1503, Galway in 1504 and Limerick in 1510. The series of expeditions he now organized against Ó Briain (O’Brien) of Thomond reflected the extended horizons of English rule, precipitating in 1504 the largest engagement of the period, at Knockdoe near Galway, in which the Pale levies of English bills and bows with Kildare’s Gaelic allies and clients defeated the forces of Ó Briain and Uilleag (Ulick) Fionn Burke of Clanrickard in a rare pitched battle. The king rewarded the earl for his victory by election to the Order of the Garter. In 1503, Kildare had paid what proved to be his last visit to court for his son’s marriage, after which Lord Gerald returned to Ireland with his father as treasurer.27 According to custom, Kildare was elected justiciar by the council on Henry VII’s death. Henry VIII summoned him to court, but accepted his excuses and reappointed him deputy. Now in his mid-fifties, the earl still campaigned vigorously, but not always successfully. In 1510, he led another expedition against 24 Ellis, Ireland in the age of the Tudors, pp 89–96. 25 Cal. Carew MSS, vi, p. 180. 26 Ellis, Ireland in the age of the Tudors, pp 96–7. 27 S.G. Ellis, ‘An English gentleman and his community: Sir William Darcy of Platten’, in Vincent P. Carey and Ute Lotz-Heumann (eds), Taking sides? Colonial and confessional mentalités in early modern Ireland: essays in honour of Karl S. Bottigheimer (Dublin, 2003), pp 31–2; AU, iii, pp 469, 471; Ellis, Ireland in the age of the Tudors, pp 99–101, 104.

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Ó Briain, breaking down his bridge over the Shannon, but he also suffered heavy losses. The year after, he was wounded while campaigning in the midlands and cancelled a trip to court. In 1512, he captured Belfast and Larne castles and hosted into Connacht; and on his death in 1513 he was preparing to renew his assault on Leap castle in Ó Cearbhaill country.28 There is a very different tone to the earl’s government from 1496 onwards, compared with the earlier period. His home base was now unchallenged, and he also enjoyed the king’s confidence. Paradoxically, what the earl’s various clashes with Henry VII and his officials since 1485 had in fact revealed was the dominance of Kildare’s position in ‘the four obedient shires’ around Dublin. Building on previous initiatives by his father, the Great Earl had used his authority as governor since 1478 to reorganize his landed estates and, more specifically, to build up the English Pale as a defensive frontier. The English Pale was indeed the Great Earl’s principal achievement but largely forgotten legacy as governor and military commander. The term itself was coined in 1494–5 by Sir Edward Poynings and his retinue, following their redeployment from the English Pale at Calais (first described as a ‘pale’ in 1493). It was not aspirational: it reflected the reality of the region’s international frontier, with defended marches and a fortified border line. The term also constituted a value judgment on the English character of the region behind this frontier, traditionally called ‘the four obedient shires’.29 Kildare clearly bore a heavy responsibility for building up the region’s defences. Its local defence force, the Brotherhood of Arms of St George, was the creation of his father, in 1474; and Earl Gerald became its chief captain in 1479.30 In 1488 the earl presided over the parliament that passed the ‘Act of marches and maghery’, proscribing coign and livery throughout the English Pale, except in the marches (as delineated by the act), if imposed by landowners on their own tenants.31 The military arrangements to which the act gave rise were further consolidated by legislation ‘for thencreasinge of Englishe manners and condicions’ promoted by Kildare and the council in the 1499 parliament. It required those with land ‘within the precincte of the English Pale’ to ride in a saddle in the English manner and not to use Irish weapons.32 The term ‘English Pale’ thus rapidly replaced ‘the four obedient shires’ as the region’s preferred description. The resultant military arrangements are described around twenty years later. Upon proclamation of a hosting against the Irish, each landowner in the Pale maghery was to send a longbowman for each £20 of annual income; and ‘no Englishman[n] dwelling wythin maughre grou[n]de’ was to bring a spear unless he also brought a longbow. By contrast, ‘everie gentleman dwelling in any marches’ was to send a 28 AC, 1510.10, 1512.6, 1512.8; AU, iii, pp 493, 495, 499, 501; Ellis, Ireland in the age of the Tudors, pp 101, 113. 29 Ellis, ‘An English gentleman’, pp 22–5. 30 Parliament roll, 19 & 20 Edw. IV, cc 24, 27 (Stat. Edw. IV, pt 2, pp 734–7, 740–6). 31 Reg. Alen, p. 250; NLI, MS 2507, fo. 57v; Quinn, ‘Bills and statutes’, p. 84. 32 Quinn, ‘Bills and statutes’, pp 96, 101; CPR 1494–1509, pp 128–9.

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MOYFENRATH FARBILL

Ratoath

RATOATH

Portlester

M

E

Boyne

A

T

H DEECE

NE OY B N DU

Leixlip Maynooth IKEATHY & OUGHTERANY Kildrought Donadea SALT

Cloncurry

CARBURY

Lucan

NEWCASTLE

Carbury Clane Oughterard

CLANE

Castlewarden

Liffey Geashill

Naas

K

I L

D

A

R E

Lackagh

I

Lea

NAAS

N

OFFALY

Rethmore

CONNELL

Rathangan

Kilcullen Bridge

Morett

Ballymore Eustace

L

Kildare

TALBOTSTOWN

B

KILCULLEN Barrow

NORRAGH

U

Hollywood

Norragh

LEIX

D

REBAN Athy

IMAAL

Kilkea

SLIEVEMARGY

KILKEA DUNLOST Castledermot

Baltinglas Rathvilly Clonmore RATHVILLY

Carlow

CARLOW CA R L OW Leighlinbridge Approximate frontier with Gaelic Ireland

Kildare manor

County boundaries

under Kildare influence

Barony boundaries (conjectural)

KILDARE KILKEA

LEIX

Gaelic lordships Principal Kildare Castles

Counties Baronies

Pale maghery

River

12.1 County Kildare in the era of the Great Earl.

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horseman for each ten marks of annual income; and all the marcher gentry were to quarter kerne on their marchlands.33 The distinction in terms of militia service between marches and maghery was thus very clear. These military arrangements also shaped the administration and defence of the earl’s own landed estates in the Pale. The landed patrimony of the Leinster Geraldines had been modest, chiefly estates in the Kildare marches which were also strategically important for their proximity to the king’s highway running south through the Barrow valley, plus a secondary cluster of lands in Limerick. It is hard to assess Kildare’s precise role in building up the Pale. In general, this effort was collective and cumulative; but as regards the Great Earl’s personal contribution, the rental book of his son Gerald (Gearóid Óg), the ninth earl, begun in 1518, probably reflected the political situation as it stood towards the end of his career.34 Some of the earl’s estates, such as his principal manor of Maynooth, or Celbridge close by, were situated in the Pale maghery; but in Kildare the maghery comprised only a narrow corridor of land bordering co. Dublin in the east and running south through the two large baronies of Salt and Naas as far as Kilcullen bridge.35 In the far west of Kildare, the earl had recovered from the Irish much of his ancestral manors of Rathangan, Lea and Morett.36 His salient achievement here was the enlargement of two baronies in the eastern marches, Carbury and Offaly, as the midland Irish were pushed back beyond the Boyne and Barrow rivers. A tower was built at Lackagh, the earl’s principal castle at Kildare was strengthened in 1484, and the town there received a charter of incorporation as a borough in 1515.37 But the earl also tried to promote tillage in districts that were politically more stable. Thus, the subsidy assessments for Carbury and Offaly (based on land under tillage) rose appreciably in this period, from sixteen ploughlands in 1481 to 22½ ploughlands by 1520 and 26¾ ploughlands by 1533. In the manor of Rathangan, recovered from Ó Conchobhair Failghe (O’Conor Faly), the earl had 500 acres mainly of wheat and oats in the township itself, plus a watermill, and another 365 acres arable in five surrounding townships, all protected by a stone castle.38 The mill was set to farm for 240 pecks of wheat and malt yearly in 33 Patrick Finglas, baron, ‘A Breviate of the gettyng of Ireland and of the decaye of the same’. The version I am using here is from the Marquess of Salisbury’s MSS, Hatfield House, CP144, fos 1–15v (at fos 11v–12). There is an inaccurate printed copy in Harris, Hibernica, 39–52. For instance, the Compendium of Documents which includes the copy of the Breviate refers both to ‘the English Pale’ and also ‘the four shires’ in different parts of the compendium, but the preference of the one term over the other also provides an indication as to the possible authorship of these different sections. The parts that may plausibly be attributed to Sir William Darcy usually refer to ‘the four shires’, whereas the parts which, in all likelihood, are of a slightly later date speak of ‘the English Pale’. 34 BL, Harl. MS 3756 (printed in Crown surveys, pp 232–357). 35 For this and the following, see map 12.1. 36 Ellis, Tudor frontiers, pp 111, 114, 120, 124, 129, 134. 37 Red bk Kildare, no. 196; Statute roll, 1 Ric. III, cc 4, 18 (Stat. Ric. III–Hen. VIII, pp 2–5, 28–9); Ellis, Tudor frontiers, pp 111, 115, 121–2, 131. 38 Crown surveys, pp 156–60, 290; Ellis, Tudor frontiers, pp 110–14, 129; Cal. inq. co. Dublin, p. 128. For the subsidy assessments, see BL, Royal MS 18C, XIV, fo. 107v;

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1518; and given the earl’s custom of allowing his miller the seventh peck of corn brought to the mill, this implied a considerable acreage of land under tillage in the district. Rathangan was still described as lying on the confines of the English country in 1540, but clearly this was a successful investment.39 Ultimately less successful were the earl’s efforts to consolidate his control of the Barrow valley a little further south. Lea manor, defended by an old stone castle, lay west of the Barrow between the Uí Mhórdha (O’Mores) of Laoighis and the Uí Chonchobhair Failghe, but by 1540 only 40 acres of arable land were occupied and 375 acres arable there had long been waste ‘through the daily depredations and extortions of the aforesaid wild Irish’. Further south again, the manor of Morett included 96 acres of land sown with wheat and oats, and was protected from raids of the wild Irish by an old ruinous castle, but a further 144 acres had been destroyed by Ó Conchobhair Failghe in a raid the previous May and now lay waste. Thus, although the recovery of Lea and Morett had extended the barony of Offaly west of the Barrow, essentially they remained military outposts for the defence of the English parts further east. It is significant, however, that the earl should even attempt to convert the land there to tillage.40 A century later, the river Barrow marked the barony’s western border with what had by then become King’s County. In some districts, the focus was more on the fortification of key river-crossings and highways. The town of Kilcullen, for instance, lay ‘on the frontiers of the march near adjoining to the king’s Irish enemies’: a tower was built there in 1456, followed by a castle at Kilcullen bridge in 1468 to protect the river-crossing. Then, in 1478, a local levy was authorized by Kildare’s first parliament to wall the towns of Kilcullen and Calverstown nearby, which constituted ‘a great safeguard for all Englishmen’. By then, Kilcullen barony was securely within the Pale, so that when the boundary between march and maghery was fixed in the late fifteenth century, Kilcullen bridge, where the river Liffey crossed the barony’s northern tip, marked the southern boundary of the Pale maghery.41 Another key crossing was over the Barrow at Athy, where the earl had erected a castle over the eastern end of the bridge. The earl’s tenants around Athy and other townships of his manor of Woodstock owed renders of grain and a range of labour services (plough-days, cart-days, weeding-days and hock-days). Athy received a charter of incorporation as a borough in 1515, and was also the chief base from which the earl coordinated the labour services owed by his tenants in the south Kildare–Carlow region, including the ‘quarters’ of Kilkea, Carlow and Rathvilly.42 The earl’s control of these southern marches was consolidated by a statute of 1483 that vested in the earl all waste lands between Calverstown and TNA, E 101/248, no. 21; SP 65/1, no. 2. 39 Crown surveys, pp 157, 247, 249, 278, 290. 40 Crown surveys, pp 160–1, 171–2, 287–8; Ellis, Tudor frontiers, pp 111, 120. 41 Parliament rolls, 35 Hen. VI, c. 16 (Stat. Hen. VI, pp 456–7); 7 & 8 Edw. IV, c. 66 (Stat. Edw. IV, pt 1, pp 608–11); 18 Edw. IV, cc 18, 19 (Stat. Edw. IV, pt 2, pp 612–15). 42 Crown surveys, pp 152–4, 278; Red bk Kildare, no. 197.

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Leighlinbridge, unless their owners reoccupied them within six years.43 In south Kildare too, the earl also built an imposing castle at Castledermot in 1485 to defend his lands there and to facilitate the recovery of wastelands in north Carlow. Large parts of the earl’s manors of Kilkea and Castledermot were given over to tillage. The castle at Kilkea was sited not far from the river Barrow, which divided the manor from the borders of Laoighis and the Uí Mhórdha; and in 1540 the township there had forty-one tenants with 585 acres of wheat and oats, a watermill and thirty cottagers working on the demesne land; and in fourteen surrounding townships there were a further 844 acres arable; but over 1600 acres of arable in eighteen townships were largely waste, mostly because no one would take the holdings for fear of the Irish nearby.44 Further south again, Leighlin castle was recovered in 1480 as also the manors of Rathvilly and Clonmore, co. Carlow. Ordinances drafted around 1519 noted that this was ‘a parte of the countie Catherlaghe wch therle [the earl] of Kyldare dyde conquere on Irishemen, and but latelye inhabited’.45 Subsequently, these parts of Carlow were also integrated into the arrangements for the Pale’s defence with the requirement that at every hosting the gentry of Kildare and Carlow were to quarter 120 kerne on their estates for defence.46 Towards the end of his career, blessed with a growing family and an expanded range of interests, the eighth earl settled many of the Leinster marchlands he recovered from the Irish on his younger sons. Oliver received lands in Westmeath and Annaly that were eventually worth IR£38 a year. In the south Dublin marches, James was originally granted the manors of Holywood and Threecastles with other lands in the same district worth IR£45 a year, with remainder to Oliver.47 Richard had a grant of the manors of Powerscourt, Fassaghroe and Crevaghe, with other lands in Fercullen recovered from the Uí Thuathail (O’Tooles), with a stipulation that, if he died without a male heir, his brother, Walter, who held other lands nearby in the Dublin–Kildare marches, might have these manors in exchange for his own lands.48 The initial impact of the earl’s activities here may be discerned around Powerscourt where, in the late 1490s, Kildare ejected the Uí Thuathail from some of their ancestral estates in Fercullen and introduced English tenants, building ‘the Newcastle in ffercolm’ for their defence. This may well in turn explain the ostensibly surprising increase in tillage there. Rathdown barony lay predominantly in the south Dublin marches and its southern uplands were in any case unsuitable for tillage because of the steep slopes and high altitude, but its subsidy assessment nonetheless rose from 12 ploughlands in 1479 to 20 ploughlands by 1502.49 43 Quinn, ‘Bills and statutes’, pp 132–4. 44 Crown surveys, pp 161–71, 173–4; Ellis, Tudor frontiers, p. 119. 45 Hatfield House MSS, CP144, fo. 6; Crown surveys, pp 175–7; Ellis, Tudor frontiers, pp 119–20, 133. 46 Hatfield House MSS, CP144, fo. 12 (Harris, Hibernica, p. 46). 47 Cal. inq. co. Dublin, p. 106; Crown surveys, pp 203–11, 250; TNA, SP 65/1, no. 2. 48 TNA, SP 65/1, no. 2; Cal. inq. co. Dublin, pp 66, 68, 401. 49 Memoranda roll, 22 Hen. VII, m. 28d (NAI, RC 8/43, p. 201); Christopher Maginn, ‘Civilizing’ Gaelic Leinster: the

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Finally, there was the Leixlip inheritance which was specifically entailed to the eighth earl’s sons by his second wife, Elizabeth St John, the king’s cousin. This included the manors of Cooley, Carlingford and Omeath, Greencastle and Mourne in Louth and Ulster, worth IR£64 a year by the 1530s. Characteristically, the Great Earl also tried to promote tillage in Cooley barony (now Lower Dundalk). Encouraged by strong government and the unwonted peace, land was converted to tillage on some scale there soon after 1500. The barony was then assessed at 12¼ ploughlands (representing 9.7 per cent of the land under tillage), and in the year 1501–2, no less than £7 13s. 4d. was actually collected in subsidy from the barony. Yet this experiment also underlines the precarious character of tillage in the marches: the Cooley peninsula lay in an isolated valley ‘on the frontier of the marches’, ‘cut off from the rest of the county by high mountains and wooded passes as well as by the arm of the sea flowing backwards and forwards’, and so very vulnerable to Irish raids. By 1520, the assessment had been reduced to seven ploughlands, and the subsidy was all in arrears. In the aftermath of rebellion in 1534–5, Cooley lay totally waste.50 Even so, the Great Earl’s overall success in building up the English Pale as a fortified frontier region may be gauged from the increased subsidy assessments based on ploughlands of cultivated land in each barony within the Pale. These reflected the increasing political stability of the region, since crops were easily burned and destroyed in Irish raids, whereas cattle could be moved out of harm’s way. The evidence is partial but telling: in 1479 the overall assessment for the lay baronies of the four shires (excluding crosslands and clergy) was 673 ploughlands; by 1502 it had risen to 715 ploughlands. Shire by shire, the Dublin assessment had increased from 159 to 180 ploughlands, Kildare from 118 to 130 ploughlands, and Meath from 276 to 299 ploughlands, while Louth had suffered a small reduction from 120 to 105¾ ploughlands. In addition, the 1502 extent also gives a breakdown of the assessments for crosslands and the clergy: Louth 6½ ploughlands, Kildare 30 ploughlands, Dublin 80 ploughlands, and Meath 40¾ ploughlands, in toto 157¼ ploughlands.51 This meant an overall assessment of 872 ploughlands that represented over 260,000 statute acres under tillage, so highlighting the region’s unique position in the intensive exploitation of tillage for a commercial market. extension of Tudor rule in the O’Byrne and O’Toole lordships (Dublin, 2003), pp 28–9, 103; Ellis, Tudor frontiers, p. 121; BL, Royal MS 18C, XIV, fo. 105v; TCD, MS 594, fo. 19v. 50 RCH, 196a, no. 75; NLI, MS 761, p. 328; TNA, E 101/248, no. 21, SP 65/1, no. 2; Crown surveys, pp 75–7. There was no mention of Cooley when subsidy collectors were appointed for the traditional four baronies in Louth in 1499–1500: Memoranda roll, 15 Hen. VII, mm 2, 17d (NAI, RC 8/43, pp 164–4, 187). But it appeared as a separate barony both in Sir William Darcy’s returns as receiver-general in 1501–2 and in the assessment of c.1502: NLI, MS 761, pp 328–32; TCD, MS 594, fo. 20. In Michaelmas term 1508, Nicholas White was appointed subsidy collector for Cooley: Memoranda roll, 24 Henry VII, m. 5d (NAI, RC 8/43, p. 275). 51 BL, Royal MS 18C, XIV, fos 105–105v, 107v; TCD, MS 594, fos 18v–20. By 1520 the assessment of ploughlands throughout the Pale was little changed overall from the position in

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On his death, the Great Earl was easily the richest lord in Ireland. His landed income was perhaps IR£1800 a year, of which about forty per cent still came from estates in Kildare. He had also built up a large rental in Meath, notably in the western marches, and had significant holdings too in Carlow and east Ulster.52 These estates were accumulated in a variety of ways. Kildare’s first wife, Alison (d. 1495), daughter and co-heir of another major Kildare landowner, Roland FitzEustace, Lord Portlester, had brought him the reversion of the strategic border manor of Portlester. Lands worth over IR£300 a year came to the earl and his family by direct royal grant. The dowry of his second wife, Elizabeth St John, included lands in England and Ireland worth IR£200; and a further royal grant followed in 1503 when his son and heir, Lord Gerald, married Elizabeth Zouche.53 Financially, these grants were lucrative, but more important strategically were the extensive marchlands the earl acquired, in Carlow, Wexford, western Meath, and south Dublin. Some were nominally crown lands, but in reality the earl acquired them as ‘swordland’ by expropriating Irish clans: but the Irish peasants who actually worked the land were probably often retained as the earl’s tenants and ‘sworn English’ (that is, they took the oath of allegiance as English subjects). The earl regularized his common-law title to them either by acts of parliament, or purchase or, after 1496, by virtue of a clause in his commission as deputy granting him any crown lands he could recover from the Irish.54 The evidence suggests that the main period of territorial expansion had been under the Great Earl, even though much of the work in developing these borderlands fell to the ninth earl who was known as ‘the gretest improver of his landis in this land’.55 The military muscle behind this English revival lay in the combination of public office and private resources that characterized the earl’s long spell as governor. Kildare organized the Pale’s southern defences around his major castles at Rathangan, Kildare, Athy, and Portlester (from where the labour services owed by his tenants were coordinated), plus Maynooth, Lea, Kilkea, Castledermot, Rathvilly and Powerscourt. Most of these castles were either built or strengthened during this period.56 As governor, the earl also gradually built up a standing force of about three hundred kerne, galloglass and horsemen who were regularly quartered on his own tenants in the marches. It was probably also the Great Earl who began to create rent-free holdings for the maintenance of his 1502, with a total of 718 ploughlands now due. This reflected further increases in Louth (109½ ploughlands) and Meath (330 ploughlands) but falls in Dublin (171¾ ploughlands) and Kildare (106¾ ploughlands): TNA, E 101/248, no. 21. 52 This estimate of the Great Earl’s landed income in 1513 is based on figures for the ninth earl’s landed income twenty years later (IR£1585), plus the Leixlip inheritance (IR£323) which, following the Great Earl’s death, passed to the children of his second marriage: see Ellis, Tudor frontiers, pp 123–5, 133. 53 Ellis, Tudor frontiers, pp 116–18. 54 See, for instance, Crown surveys, pp 123–9, 175–7, 208–13, 297–301, 307–8; TNA, SP 65/1, no. 2. For commissions as deputy with a clause granting any lands recovered from the Irish, see CPR 1494–1509, p. 62; L&P Hen. VIII, i (2nd ed.), no. 632 (item 22). 55 SP Hen. VIII, ii, p. 300. 56 Crown surveys, p. 278; Ellis,

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horsemen (for instance, on his manors of Rathangan, Kildare and Kilkea) and to shift the burden of his kerne and galloglass onto neighbouring Irishmen.57 As Sparky Booker has discussed earlier in this volume, marriage alliances with prominent Irish lords also helped to strengthen the earl’s affinity and stabilize the defence of the marches. His sister Eleanor married Conn Ó Néill, king of Tír Eóghain (O’Neill of Tyrone, r. 1483–93). Most unusually, Conn was denizened as an Englishman.58 Of his six daughters from his first marriage, Alice married Ó Néill’s son, Art Óg Ó Néill, who succeeded his father as chief; Eleanor married Domhnall Mac Carthaigh Riabhach (MacCarthy Reagh), chief of Carbery; and Joan married Maol Ruanaidh Ó Cearbhaill of Éile (O’Carroll of Ely).59 The earl’s sons by his second marriage mostly married into the lordship’s other leading families, although Oliver married Meadhbh, daughter of Cathaoir Ó Conchobhair Failghe. This preference for Irish sons-in-law rather than daughters-in-law probably reflects the lower status of women in Irish society.60 Kildare’s control of the marches was also consolidated by agreements with the border chieftaincies of the Irishry. A separate section of the ninth earl’s rental entitled ‘Th’erll of Kyldaris duties upon Irishmen’ listed the annual tributes (or black rents) levied by the earl, ostensibly for the earl’s defending them. Altogether, twenty-four chieftaincies were listed, including every significant chief and a host of weaker ones in a wide arc around the Pale.61 In most cases these tributes must have reflected agreements made with the Great Earl and simply renewed by the ninth earl. Kildare’s duties on Irishmen were won and maintained by the continuous campaigning that characterized the earl’s rule. And in some lordships, such as those of Mág Eochagáin (MacGeoghegan) and Ó Fearghaill (O’Farrell) in the midlands, the exaction of tribute was turning into the establishment of lordship as the earl bought up lands held in pledge.62 From an Irish perspective, Kildare’s dealings with the weak and divided chieftaincies bordering his lordship differed little from the relations between a Gaelic overlord and his uiríghthe, or vassal-chiefs. It was indeed in the earl’s interests to cultivate this impression since, despite repeated requests by the English of Ireland, in 1474, 1494 and 1506, the king proved unwilling to make available the resources to complete the conquest of Ireland. Thus, the Great Earl spoke and wrote in Irish, as occasion demanded, and his court included a Gaelic entourage, with a judge, physician, poets and other captains, household servants and receivers.63 To modern eyes, all this might seem somewhat strange: the earl’s familiarity with the Irish chiefs, clans, customs and culture beyond the frontiers of the Tudor frontiers, pp 131–2. 57 Crown surveys, pp 152, 157–8, 162, 168, 276; SP Hen. VIII, ii, 503; Ellis, Tudor frontiers, pp 128–30. 58 Parliament roll, 19 & 20 Edw. IV, c. 41 (Stat. Edw. IV, pt 2, 786–7); Ellis, Tudor frontiers, p. 135. 59 Bryan, Great Earl, pp 91–2; Ellis, Tudor frontiers, pp 135–6. 60 Fitzgerald, Earls of Kildare, i, pp 78–9; Ellis, Tudor frontiers, pp 135–6. 61 Crown surveys, pp 264–77. 62 Crown surveys, pp 270–5. 63 Crown surveys, pp 232–357 passim. For petitions to the king for conquest, see Ellis, Ireland in the age of the Tudors, pp 73, 89–90, 111–12.

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English Pale, his marriage alliances, his acceptance of Irish tenants and troops, and his cultivation of a court with a Gaelic tinge to it – in short, the Irishness of this the king’s English subject and viceroy. Acculturation was of the essence of a medieval march, and multiple languages, laws and custom came naturally to medieval monarchs. It was the English preoccupation with uniformity and the rhetoric of difference (‘English civility’ versus ‘Irish savagery’) that was out of step with the times; but this was no consolation to a marcher lord and magnate like Kildare, forced to operate according to English conventions in a totally different environment. He was English because, by law, that was what all free subjects of the English king were. He defended the king’s loyal English lieges in the land of peace, the English Pale, from Irish enemies in the land of war beyond: in the name of St George, he conquered their land and razed their castles. Some of them he even swore English – that is, he granted them a charter of English liberty and freedom from Irish servitude, because to be English was to be civil and free. Irishness was equated with servitude and savagery.64 For a ruling magnate of the English crown, all this was simply a given: it went with the office. Only very occasionally did the earl betray his uneasy familiarity with the Irish ‘other’, as in 1492 when one of the Uí Chonchobhair was killed by the earl’s retainers, ‘on account of a stroke of a pole he gave the earl in playing’.65 The Great Earl’s genius was that he was able to maintain this difficult, uneasy balance between a set of conventions backed by an official rhetoric and the realities of frontier life.

64 S.G. Ellis, ‘Building the English state: from barbarism to civilization’, in Daniel Brauer, Iwan d’Aprile, Günther Lottes and Concha Roldán (eds), New perspectives on global history (Hanover, 2012), pp 197–207; S.G. Ellis, ‘Citizenship in the English state in Renaissance times’, in S.G. Ellis, Gudmundur Halfdánarson and A.K. Isaacs (eds), Citizenship in historical perspective (Pisa, 2006), pp 85–95. 65 AU, iii, p. 359.

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DAV I D E DWA R D S

On 16 November 1573, Garret FitzGerald (d. 1583), fourteenth earl of Desmond, stole away from Dublin, leaving the capital without the permission of Sir William Fitzwilliam, the English viceroy.1 Previously, ‘about a fortnight’ before, he had been placed in the custody of the new mayor, Christopher Fagan,2 who had allowed him to ‘go abroad’ in the city twice each day, provided he returned ‘at noon and [at] night’. According to a later account, one day the earl told Fagan he was off to go hunting at Grangegorman (within the franchises), ‘to divert himself ’, and not to expect his return till nightfall. Then, with just a few companions attending him, Desmond simply walked out of the city gates, and kept going. He never reached Grangegorman, but somewhere along the road turned southwest.3 The powerful nobleman was headed home, on foot, for Munster. As he moved through west co. Dublin his allies stirred. Approaching the frontier separating the English Pale from the embattled Gaedhealtacht beyond, the earl was met with horses by the dissidents Ruaidhrí Óg Ó Mórdha (Rory Oge O’More) and Piers Grace, who just weeks earlier had been out in rebellion.4 They escorted him through the borderlands of co. Kildare deep into what remained of Gaelic Laoighis, picking their way through the dense forest and bogland, keeping out of sight of patrols from the adjacent English plantation. Somewhere in the midst of this Gaelic ‘fastness’ Desmond rested up, and was received and feasted by four hundred of the Uí Mhórdha (O’Mores) assembled in arms, ready, it was supposed, for another rebellion.5 He did not linger among them. Having been joined by his secretary, Muiris Ó Síodhacháin (Maurice Sheehan),6 and two unnamed ‘Irish horsemen’, the earl pressed on, entering Tipperary, where he followed the river Suir southwest to his castle of Bealadrohid.7 His wife, the Countess Eleanor, was waiting to join him there with 1 Cal. SP Ire., 1571–1575, ed. Mary O’Dowd (IMC, Dublin, 2000), nos 748, 935. 2 CARD, ii, 83. 3 James Ware, ‘Annals of the reign of Queen Elizabeth’, in James Ware, The antiquities and history of Ireland (Dublin, 1705), p. 17; Cal. SP Ire., 1571–5, no. 1009.1. For the city franchises, see Colm Lennon, The lords of Dublin in the age of reformation (Dublin, 1989), pp 26–8. 4 Cal. SP Ire., 1571–5, no. 741. 5 Ibid., no. 752. 6 For Sheehan’s importance to Desmond, see McCormack, Desmond, p. 45. 7 His Bealadrohid holdings, including the castle, later passed to Ormond. The estate in the Cross of Tipperary contained 1,000

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fresh horses and many more attendants. At this point his escape became a procession. On reaching Lough Gur, co. Limerick, where he owned another castle, he was greeted by an assembly of local landowners gathered at the ancient Gaelic inauguration site that stood close by;8 with great ceremony he removed the clothes he had worn since leaving Dublin, his ‘English apparel’, and ‘put on Irish raiment’. Thus restored to his natural state, an Irish lord of a large and sprawling territory, he set about reasserting his authority in his earldom. After a week or ten days, by 27 November, it was reported that Geraldine troops had taken possession of the forts of Castlemartyr, co. Cork, Kenry, co. Limerick, and Castlemaine, co. Kerry, expelling the crown garrisons of all three.9 News of the earl’s escape caused alarm in government: ‘I fear a great and large conspiracy’, the viceroy, Fitzwilliam, stated in a letter to Whitehall.10 Desmond was a shameless conspirator, stated another: ‘There is none that have attempted anything [against the crown] but is wholly ruled by the earl’.11 By New Year 1574, rumour had taken the place of hard intelligence: Desmond was combined with the lords of Connacht and Thomond; he had been promised reinforcements out of Scotland; he hoped for aid from Spain.12 The rumours were fed by fear. The earl’s return to Munster was considered to pose a serious challenge to English dominion in the very place it was most exposed to continental interference, Ireland’s south-western Atlantic coastline. Desmond’s alleged support for Catholicism was equally concerning. Having met with the acting governor of his lordship, the religious firebrand James fitz Maurice FitzGerald, it was soon after believed that Earl Garret had given sanctuary to the Catholic bishop of Limerick, Hugh Lacey, an ageing prelate who had been forced to resign his bishopric two years earlier – during Desmond’s absence – to enable the government impose a Protestant on the diocese.13 According to English sources, by Christmastime the mass was ‘commonly said’ in the earl’s chief house at Askeaton;14 the later Gaelic annalists went further, claiming Desmond facilitated a more general reorganization of religious affairs. Besides restoring Bishop Lacey and other Catholic clergy, the earl ‘re-established … the law of the Pope’:15 defiance indeed.

I

At first glance this all seems very familiar. Here we have a great Geraldine lord doing what the Geraldines are most renowned for doing during the sixteenth plantation acres (COD, vi, no. 65). 8 The site probably contained a throne-shaped rock, traditionally known as a ‘lord’s chair’ (Elizabeth FitzPatrick, Royal inauguration in Gaelic Ireland, c.1100–1600 (Woodbridge, 2004), p. 167). 9 Cal. SP Ire., 1571–5, no. 760.3, 760.4, 760.6. 10 Ibid., no. 749. 11 Ibid., nos 760.3, 801.1. 12 Ibid., no. 758. 13 Henry A. Jefferies, The Irish church and the Tudor reformations (Dublin, 2010), p. 128. 14 Cal. SP Ire., 1571–5, no. 758. 15 Jefferies, Irish church, p. 183; AFM, 1573.

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century – rebelling. In numerous television and radio programmes, in magazine and newspaper articles, and in published general overviews of Irish history, this is how the Geraldines of the Tudor era are usually noticed: out in arms against English authority, attacking government strongholds, asserting their traditional rights to power and status by force, and, of course, defending Catholicism.16 And while one might question such a rigid ‘popular’ perception of a major Irish aristocratic lineage, it should be observed that it is not so very different from how the Geraldines have been presented in general accounts of early modern Ireland written by senior academic scholars, in which the Geraldine lords mostly feature when they rebel.17 Geraldine rebellions belong to the very core of the historical narrative of the sixteenth century. They provide no less than five of the great episodes of Irish resistance to Tudor government policy, each of which (ending invariably in bloody defeat) marked decisive moments in what is known as the Tudor conquest: in Leinster, the Kildare revolt of 1534–5; its geographically more widespread sequel, the Geraldine League of 1538–9; and in Munster the James fitz Maurice rebellions of 1569–73 and 1579, and their sequel, the catastrophic Desmond rebellion of 1579–83.18 There were, besides, other Geraldine rebellions which have been mostly forgotten: for instance, the first Kildare revolt, in 1528, until recently overlooked because the ninth earl of Kildare and his brother stayed aloof, leaving the action to their kinsmen and allies serving as proxies;19 a minor rebellion that involved junior FitzGeralds based in the south Leinster borderlands in 1547;20 or, further ahead, the Súgán Earl of Desmond’s revolt in 1598, usually viewed as a sideshow in the national rebel confederacy led 16 For the latest and widely disseminated version of this interpretation, see Marcus Tanner, Ireland’s holy wars: the struggle for a nation’s soul, 1500–2000 (London, 2001), pp 98–9. 17 Grenfell Morton, Elizabethan Ireland (London, 1971); G.A. Hayes-McCoy, ‘The royal supremacy and ecclesiastical revolution, 1534–47’, ‘Conciliation, coercion and the Protestant reformation, 1547–71’, and ‘The completion of the Tudor conquest and the advance of the counter reformation, 1571–1603’, all in T.W. Moody, F.X. Martin and F.J. Byrne (eds), A new history of Ireland, iii: early modern Ireland, 1534–1691 (Oxford, 1976), pp 39–68, 69–93, 94– 141; Nicholas Canny, From reformation to restoration: Ireland, 1534–1660 (Dublin, 1987); Ellis, Ire. in the age of the Tudors; S.J. Connolly, Divided island: Ireland, 1460–1630 (Oxford, 2007). 18 The historiography is quite extensive. Among the main contributions are Laurence McCorristine, The revolt of Silken Thomas: a challenge to Henry VIII (Dublin, 1987); Micheál Ó Siochrú, ‘Foreign involvement in the revolt of Silken Thomas, 1534–5’, PRIA, 96C (1996), 49–66; Steven G. Ellis, ‘The Kildare rebellion and the early Henrician reformation’, Historical Journal, 19:4 (1976), 807–30; Philip Wilson, The beginnings of modern Ireland (Dublin and London, 1914), ch. 4; Brendan Bradshaw, The Irish constitutional revolution of the sixteenth century (Cambridge, 1979), pp 136–8, 172–85; C.R. Sasso, ‘The Desmond rebellions, 1569– 73 and 1579–83’ (PhD, Loyola University Chicago, 1978); Ciaran Brady, ‘Faction and the origins of the Desmond rebellion of 1579’, IHS, 22:88 (1980), 289–312; McCormack, Desmond, chs 6, 8–10. 19 Fiona Fitzsimons, ‘Cardinal Wolsey, the native affinities, and the failure of reform in Henrician Ireland’, in David Edwards (ed.), Regions and rulers in Ireland, 1100–1650: essays for Kenneth Nicholls (Dublin, 2004), pp 112–16. 20 Christopher Maginn, ‘Civilizing’ Gaelic Leinster: the extension of Tudor rule in the O’Byrne and O’Toole lordships

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by Aodh Ó Néill (Hugh O’Neill), earl of Tyrone.21 Suffice it to say, then, that the antics of the earl of Desmond in 1573–4 seem like further confirmation of the central place of rebellion in Geraldine history, and of the Geraldines in the series of rebellions, large and small, that left such an indelible imprint on Ireland’s history from midway through the reign of Henry VIII until the last years of Elizabeth I. However, closer inspection of the earl of Desmond’s behaviour after November 1573 reveals a very different and more complex situation. First consider the notion of his having had a strong religious motivation for his actions, or what one historian has recently dubbed his ‘belligerent displays of commitment to Catholicism’.22 Actually, in the surviving state papers this never goes beyond an allegation, propounded by crown officers known to have been hostile to his return to Munster and who stood to lose out if it proceeded unchecked.23 Moreover, the Gaelic annalists’ later claim that Desmond ordered the restitution of full papal authority over the church inside his territories needs to be balanced against contemporary evidence recording two conflicting developments: first, the sustained and demonstrable support for CounterReformation Catholicism in the region by James fitz Maurice, the acting governor of the earl’s lordship during his absence, who seems to have worked closely with the papal nuncio David Wolfe in extending Rome’s influence before Wolfe’s departure to Spain in October 1573; and, second, Earl Garret’s personal pledge to Queen Elizabeth, prior to his return, that he would uphold Protestantism (‘true religion’) in Munster, support all bishops, ministers and preachers appointed by her, and suppress the jurisdiction claimed by the pope as a ‘foreign potentate’ over the Irish church.24 If the hostile government observers and approving Gaelic annalists were correct, then Desmond deliberately misled the queen. It is not unthinkable that he might have done so: except that the danger of being caught in so great a lie was truly enormous. Before returning to Ireland early in 1573, Desmond had been in England for over five years, since December 1567, negotiating his way from being a ‘maximum-security prisoner’ in the Tower of London to being out on parole, close to the royal court, as the queen and her ministers pondered his (Dublin, 2005), pp 87–8. 21 Ellis, Ireland in the Age of the Tudors, pp 340, 346–9. 22 Jefferies, Irish church, pp 183–4. 23 Nicholas Walsh, Desmond’s chief accuser, was an Hiberno-English client of Desmond’s hereditary enemies the Butlers of Ormond. He had profited considerably from the introduction of the lord presidency in Munster since 1571, attaining high office in the province, something Desmond was bound to challenge (Irish fiants, ii, Eliz. I, nos 1846, 2382). Another Hiberno-English accuser, Patrick Sherlock, was like Walsh an adherent of the Butlers. In 1569, he had advocated the forfeiture of all of Desmond’s lands and their redistribution among lesser, loyal Geraldines, and servitors such as himself (Sherlock’s book, 2 May 1569: TNA, SP 63/28/12). His influence had risen with Perrot’s presidency, under which he was encouraged to combat Geraldine power in cos Waterford and Tipperary (Irish fiants, ii, Eliz. I, nos 2162, 2408). 24 Cal. Carew MSS, 1515–74, no. 293. Morton (Elizabethan Ireland, pp 50–1) doubts Desmond’s sincerity, but otherwise leaves the

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future.25 During that time he had witnessed first-hand the toxic impact on royal government of the English Northern Rising of 1569. A Catholic aristocratic rebellion led by the earls of Northumberland and Westmorland, this had sparked the pope’s fateful decision to excommunicate Elizabeth I in 1570, and it prompted her, in retaliation, to sanction the immediate execution by martial law of over six hundred rebels in Durham and north Yorkshire, the imprisonment of hundreds more, and the forfeiture of large swathes of land worth many thousands of pounds per annum. More generally, it also compelled her to heed the urgings of her ministers to treat all Catholic lords and gentry with suspicion, as potential enemies, and in 1571 her government approved a raft of draconian anti-Catholic laws to be passed by the Westminster parliament.26 Before 1569 it had been relatively easy to equivocate on religious matters in Elizabeth’s dominions; after 1569 it was not. Desmond had found himself perilously exposed in this regard. In summer 1569, at the very time he was preparing to leave the Tower of London, news had reached Whitehall of the rebellion of James fitz Maurice in Munster. Taking advantage of Earl Garret’s absence, but purporting to act on his behalf, fitz Maurice had announced a holy war against Queen Elizabeth as a usurper and heretic, and sent envoys to Spain to solicit military aid against her from Philip II.27 Equally alarming, the following year fitz Maurice had hosted representatives of none other than the rebel earl of Westmorland, then living in exile in Scotland. The meeting occurred at an unknown location somewhere within Desmond’s territories, and after celebrating their mutual ‘friendship’, fitz Maurice and Westmorland’s agents proceeded to discuss a joint overture to Spain.28 When this failed to elicit a Spanish response, fitz Maurice turned his attention to the king of France. Meeting with a French agent at Dingle, he sent one of his sons to Brittany as a pledge for a proposed alliance against the English with Charles IX.29 Clearly if Elizabeth believed that fitz Maurice acted on Desmond’s behalf, the earl was done for; hence his avowal of support for Protestantism and his promise to combat ‘foreign’ (papal) religious agency in southern Ireland. Pressing for matter entirely unexplored. 25 Desmond and his brother Sir John FitzGerald remained prisoners in the Tower from December 1567 to Spring 1570, after which they were removed to a house in Southwark, a sort of open prison, under the care of Sir Warham St Leger (see Cal. SP Ire., 1568–71, ed. Bernadette Cunningham (IMC, Dublin 2009), nos 224, 232, 281, 508; ibid., 1571–5, no. 100). McCormack claims that the government virtually ignored them during these years, but the gradual improvement in their conditions suggests otherwise (McCormack, Desmond, p. 123). 26 K.J. Kesselring, The northern rebellion of 1569: faith, politics and protest in Elizabethan England (Basingstoke, 2007), pp 122–6, 129–31, 138–9, 141– 3; Adrian Morey, The Catholic subjects of Elizabeth I (London, 1978), ch. 4. 27 D.A. Binchy, ‘An Irish ambassador at the Spanish court, 1569–1574’, Studies, 10 (1921), 353–74, 573–84; William Palmer, The problem of Ireland in Tudor foreign policy, 1485–1603 (Woodbridge, 1994), pp 92–3. 28 Kesselring, Northern rebellion, p. 101; Binchy, ‘Irish ambassador’, 575–6. 29 Mary Ann Lyons, Franco–Irish relations, 1500–1610: politics, migration and trade (Woodbridge, 2003), pp 135–6.

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permission to return home in December 1571 the earl presented a three-page document in which he guaranteed, in its opening clause, ‘the setting forth of the Common Prayer and other divine services’ in Munster.30 The birth of his only son and heir James fitz Garret in London served to bind him to this promise. Early in 1573, as queen and council at last consented to Desmond’s return to Ireland, he arranged to leave the toddler behind, in the care of Robert Dudley, earl of Leicester, the queen’s favourite and one of the leading patrons of Protestantism in England. Not only would the little boy act as a hostage for his father’s behaviour, he would be raised in the world of the Elizabethan royal court as a Protestant.31 So much for the earl’s belligerent Catholicism. Next consider what is recorded of Earl Garret’s political positioning following his flight from Dublin on 16 November. Nearly a month later, on 13 December, surrounded by his most trusted supporters and advisers at Askeaton castle, co. Limerick, he signed no less than ten letters addressed to the queen, her privy council, and several of her chief ministers and courtiers in England. Owing to unsettled conditions and prolonged bad weather along the Munster coast the letters were not finally despatched to Bristol until sometime in January, and, according to an endorsement, did not reach the royal court until ‘February’.32 Two of the letters survive. One, to Lord Burghley, is very short, a mere note,33 but the other, to Queen Elizabeth, is nearly four pages long and makes a spirited case for the earl’s abiding loyalty. ‘I will during my life faithfully serve you’; ‘I and all that is mine shall be ready to be directed or disposed as it shall please you’; ‘I shall be … as conformable to yield to all good and civil order as any nobleman of my degree’.34 His letter to Elizabeth articulated clearly what Desmond had been implying in a number of earlier letters addressed to the viceroy:35 his belief that Fitzwilliam had conspired with the lord president of Munster, Sir John Perrot, ‘of purpose to seek my destruction’. ‘The fault of my leaving Dublin without licence may be imputed to the long delay of [the viceroy]’. No matter how many assurances the earl had offered to Fitzwilliam that he would honour his promises to the queen and the English privy council about commencing political and religious changes in his lordship, ‘these were refused’. For eight long months Desmond had been kept in restraint by Fitzwilliam in Dublin, all the while receiving messages from his servants and allies in Munster that Perrot was escalating measures against the personnel, customs and structures of his ancestral lordship. Without his consent – and, Desmond implied, in clear breach of his earlier agreement with the queen – Perrot had instructed the soldier John 30 Cal. SP Ire., 1571–5, no. 167. 31 Years later the adult James fitz Garret would forfeit popular support in Munster because of his attendance at a Protestant service in co. Limerick (Anthony McCormack, ‘James fitz Gerald FitzGerald, “The Tower Earl” (c.1570–1601)’, ODNB). 32 Cal. SP Ire., 1571–5, nos 759, 806. 33 Ibid., no. 770. 34 Ibid., no. 769. Fitzwilliam soon procured a copy of this letter: see Bodl., Carte MS 55, fo. 132. 35 Cal. SP Ire., 1571–5, nos 760.1, 774.5, 775.1.

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Herbert to take possession of all his customary rents in co. Kerry, thereby impoverishing him and his wife, Countess Eleanor. Likewise in the extensive territory of Connello, west co. Limerick: there Perrot had permitted Desmond’s half-brother, and his rival for the earldom, Sir Thomas of Desmond, to seize his rents and revenues, and effectively to begin annexing much of the area lying between the Mullaghareirk mountains and the Shannon estuary to his powerbase. The advancement of Sir Thomas has gone unremarked in the historiography, but it especially troubled Earl Garret. Ever since the earl’s departure to England in 1567 Sir Thomas had been emerging from the obscurity hitherto imposed on him. In a classic example of divide and rule, since commencing his presidency in 1571 Perrot had nurtured Sir Thomas’s ambitions, testing his loyalty,36 before granting him his first reward, an unnamed castle in co. Waterford belonging to the earl’s feudal client and ally James FitzGerald, possibly Strancally on the Blackwater.37 When Perrot suddenly left Munster and resigned the presidency in September 1573,38 his leaving brought Desmond scant relief. Prior to going Perrot had heard a petition in Cork in which Sir Thomas and his wife Eilis Power were charged with stealing a chest of documents that contained title deeds to parts of the Desmond estate. Desmond wailed that despite solid evidence proving their guilt, Perrot had not required them to make restitution to him, so that Sir Thomas and Lady Eilis were able to ‘convey away’ such lands and rights of his ‘as they thought good’. Completing his letter to the queen, Desmond emphasized the heavy burden of the ‘unlawful fines’, ‘bribes’, and ‘extortions’ that Perrot’s soldiers had inflicted on his tenants and followers, and pleaded that her majesty would replace Perrot with ‘a sincere man that will prefer the commonwealth of the realm than his own private gain’.39 Without a doubt Desmond exaggerated, and his stated concern for the burden borne by the ‘poor subjects’ of Munster at Perrot’s hands needs to be balanced against his obvious determination to impose his own taxes on them, something he and his forebears were long accustomed to doing, the right to which formed a key foundation of his lordship. But it is important not to miss the main point of the letter: far from being in rebellion against the crown, as his enemies insinuated, he insisted he had had no choice but to return to Munster without government licence because of the sustained hostility he received at the hands of the queen’s ministers in Ireland. By writing to Elizabeth (and many of her councillors besides) he wished it to be understood at Whitehall that he 36 Ibid., no. 41.2. 37 Ibid., no. 134. The ‘James FitzGerald’ referred to in the document was James fitz John fitz Garret FitzGerald, who held Strancally of Desmond by military service: St Leger’s certificate, Mar. 1580 (TNA, SP 63/72/7i). For the strategic importance of the castle see McCormack, Desmond, p. 52. 38 It has been claimed that Perrot left Munster ‘on the very day’ Desmond escaped from Dublin (Ellis, Ire. in the age of the Tudors, p. 301; Colm Lennon, Sixteenth century Ireland: the incomplete conquest (2nd ed., Dublin, 2005), p. 218), but this is incorrect: see Perrot’s letter to Fitzwilliam explaining his departure, written in England soon afterwards, on 30 Sept. 1573 (Bodl., Carte MS 56, fos 218–19). 39 Cal. SP Ire., 1571–5, no. 769.

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intended to solve his differences with the Fitzwilliam administration through hard negotiation, even brinkmanship, but not armed conflict.

II

Two documents written near this time supply some small, but significant, details concerning the despatch of the aforementioned packet of letters. Between them, they shed further light on Earl Garret’s political manoeuvring. In one, a list of all the letters he sent to England, it is noted that he had also sent a sealed letter to his ‘beloved brother James of Desmond’, who was then in London.40 Clearly James, who was the godson of the earl of Sussex,41 was at court to press Earl Garret’s case, something not previously noticed. His presence there had the added element of making him a second potential hostage to underscore the loyalty of his brother the earl. The second document was written about the time that Desmond’s packet of letters finally arrived at Whitehall. It records that while waiting for a boat to despatch the letters to England, Desmond’s servant Nicholas Roche had allowed ‘divers in Cork’ to read through the earl’s correspondence, including his letter to the queen. In fact, several of the letters had been left unsealed by the earl for this very purpose. Speaking with local merchants Roche even offered to present a selection of the letters to the Cork aldermen convened in their civic assembly the better to reassure them that Desmond had no intention of entering into a rebellion.42 Here we have an earl who was often portrayed in government circles as unsophisticated, ‘the brain-sick earl’,43 creating what scholars would nowadays describe as a ‘public sphere’ for his grievances,44 and doing so simultaneously in two kingdoms. Desmond knew that Fitzwilliam, Perrot, and other crown officers in southern Ireland would endeavour to present his every movement in Munster, and those of his kinsmen, in a poor light, as proof of his worst intentions. He had been trapped by such methods before, reacting rashly. Now would be different. Having spent five years in the Tower and the environs of the royal court the earl – and, no less important, those who counselled him – had learned the value of political communication as a carefully crafted performance. No matter how awkward, or contorted, his situation, it was simply a matter of keeping his balance. Provided that he could avoid a direct confrontation with the crown forces quartered around his territories, he and his advisers calculated that he just 40 Ibid., no. 759. 41 He had been christened James Sussex of Desmond in Limerick on 26 June 1558: Sussex’s Journey, 14 June to 24 July 1558 (TCD, MS 581, fos 80v–82v, which has the fullest version of the text; for the shorter Lambeth Library version see Cal. Carew MSS, 1515–1574, no. 215). 42 Cal. SP Ire., 1571–5, no. 835.7. 43 This point is stylishly laid bare in Brady, ‘Faction’, 298. 44 For an introduction to this subject, see Peter Lake and Steve Pincus (eds), The politics of the public sphere in early modern England (Manchester, 2007); for Ireland, see David Heffernan, ‘Tudor reform treatises and government policy in sixteenth-

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might succeed in making his escape from Dublin and open defiance of Fitzwilliam and Perrot appear acceptable to native loyalists in Munster such as the citizens of Cork and to Elizabeth and her ministers in England. For the moment his political gymnastics proved reasonably effective. The earliest indication of the queen’s opinion of Desmond’s behaviour was that she understood he had acted out of ‘simplicity’, ‘rather than … of malice or mind to rebel’.45 Indeed, his chief detractors in Munster, such as Nicholas Walsh, the chief justice, and Patrick Sherlock, the martial law enforcer, appear to have been caught off-guard by his overture to Whitehall and the politique articulacy with which he and his counsellors expressed his grievances. They had underestimated him. When Walsh, based in Cork, got his hands on the earl’s letter to the queen, he responded by writing hastily to Lord Burghley. The confidence so evident in Walsh’s previous correspondence is absent; the letter is nervous, an exercise in backside-covering. Walsh realized that Desmond was not only presenting the queen with a plausible case of official provocation, but, worse, was managing to parry and deflect the very allegations that he – Walsh – had made against him of inciting military action in Munster. Ever since the earl left Dublin Walsh had repeatedly portrayed him as plotting the overthrow of English government in southern Ireland, beginning with the seizure of the three castles of Kenry, Castlemartyr and Castlemaine.46 Desmond had easily refuted this. To paraphrase a Tipperary liberty official who had spoken with him at Kilfeakle: he had taken no castles. The inheritors of the land had taken them.47 The assailants at Kenry and Castlemartyr had been Edmund fitz David, one of the Geraldines of Glin, and John FitzGerald, the seneschal of Imokilly. The one was a client of Sir John Perrot who hoped to secure territory and local dominance over the Glin line before Desmond, on his return, was able to stop him;48 the other was an attainted rebel and close ally of James fitz Maurice whom Perrot had failed to bring to justice, and instead allowed to submit with fitz Maurice and to roam freely about the province.49 Apart from the queen, several of those at court to whom Desmond sent his remaining letters were often well-informed about Irish matters; the prospect that they might glimpse an alternative version of events in Munster, in which Desmond was as much sinned against as sinning, was disturbing. Desmond had only been sent back to Ireland after the earls of Sussex and Leicester, often rivals, had agreed he could be relied upon; in effect they had century Ireland’ (PhD, Cork, 2012), i, pp 139–53. 45 Her words to Edward FitzGerald, the courtier specially chosen to mediate with Desmond in Nov. 1573 (Cal. SP Ire., 1571–5, no. 840.1). 46 See above, nn 5, 9 and 11. 47 Cal. SP Ire., 1571–5, no. 774.8. 48 Fitz David had served Sir Humphrey Gilbert in 1569–70 (Irish fiants, ii, Eliz. I, no. 1463). He had been given charge of Glin castle, his ancestral seat, on Perrot’s departure (Cal. SP Ire., 1571–5, no. 760.3). For a valuable new history of the Glin lineage, see Anthony McCormack, ‘The knights of Glin in the long sixteenth century’, and also Kenneth Nicholls and Paul MacCotter, ‘Feudal warlords: the knights of Glyncorbry’, both in Tom Donovan (ed.), The knights of Glin: seven centuries of change (Limerick, 2009), pp 47–79, 81–107. 49 Cal. SP Ire., 1571–5, nos

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vouched for him.50 Both were recipients of sealed letters by Earl Garret. Thus Justice Walsh’s panicky letter: addressed to Burghley, who of Elizabeth’s main advisers trusted Desmond the least, it reiterated his earlier charges, shrilly insisting that fitz David and Imokilly had done Desmond’s bidding, whatever the earl might say to the contrary.51 Walsh carried on accusing in January 1574, partly because to have done otherwise would have meant conceding the inaccuracy of his earlier missives, but also, ironically, because he knew that Desmond was definitely guilty of seizing at least one crown outpost, at Castlemaine. Yet here too Walsh was to be outplayed. After reappearing in his territories about 20 November 1573,52 Desmond had waited nearly a week before leading a large force towards the castle, where troops commanded by John Herbert, the alleged thief of his Kerry rents, were gathered in a small garrison. The earl did not attack. Instead, he and his advisers created an elaborate ruse to give him what he desired – possession of the castle, but with deniability of responsibility for seizing it. Accordingly on Christmas Eve, ‘by treason of the porter’, the castle gates were opened to admit a local friar and thirty men while the guards were playing cards. Without a shot being fired the garrison was ‘expulsed’. The earl arrived to take possession the following day.53 He later said that he did so purely to secure the castle for the crown, Herbert’s ward having proven so unreliable! His confidence growing, Desmond also intimidated the garrison at Kilmallock, the government’s key stronghold in his territories,54 where a force of about 100 men were stationed under the command of Captain George Bourchier, brother of the earl of Bath.55 In December 1573, Desmond paraded his retainers through the neighbouring countryside; there was much activity in the ‘Great Wood’ of Kilmore; and it was soon reported that he had had dozens of ladders made for scaling the walls of the fort.56 In the event, however, no assault was attempted. Indeed, Captain Bourchier did not actually expect one. This was significant. Contradicting Justice Walsh’s reports, Bourchier wrote to Fitzwilliam to explain that though Desmond resented his presence in co. Limerick, and wanted him gone, he would not attack. The captain understood the earl’s show of force for something else – a staged performance. Conversing, the two men agreed to leave each other alone and to await developments in Whitehall and Dublin.57 In the meantime Desmond ensured Bourchier’s 454, 760.3. 50 Ibid., no. 167. McCormack emphasizes Desmond’s links to Leicester (McCormack, Desmond, p. 132), but the Sussex connection clearly mattered also. Besides his own letter to the earl, Desmond’s wife wrote to the countess of Sussex, not forgetting the affinity ties to Sussex of his brother James of Desmond (see above, n. 38). 51 Cal. SP Ire., 1571–5, no. 758. 52 AFM, 1573.9 says Desmond took three days and three nights to reach his outlying territories. 53 Cal. SP Ire., 1571–5, no. 806. 54 McCormack, Desmond, pp 15 (map), 34, 36. 55 In 1572, Bourchier’s company had been trimmed from 136 to 106 men (Cal. SP Ire., 1571–5, no. 247). This was still his complement in Apr. 1574 (ibid., no. 934.1). 56 Ibid., nos 774.7, 801.1, 802.1. 57 Ibid., no. 775.2.

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garrison remained isolated and short of supplies.58 It hardly constituted loyal behaviour, but it was not outright rebellion either. The earl maintained a low-intensity siege of Kilmallock for five months, until Saturday 8 May 1574, when suddenly he took the captain prisoner, perceiving Bourchier’s efforts to patrol the countryside of northeast Limerick as a serious breach of an earlier agreement.59 Unwilling to negotiate with Viceroy Fitzwilliam, who he suspected (correctly) of encouraging Bourchier to test his resolve, he held onto the captain until the beginning of July when the intervention of two senior noblemen, the earls of Essex and Kildare, persuaded him that he could push his luck no further.60 But the problem of how to deal with Fitzwilliam remained. For months Queen Elizabeth had offered her viceroy less than full support, unimpressed by his conduct, and hoping to avoid conflict with Desmond; but now her patience with the earl was finally exhausted. Desmond must be brought to heel, by force if necessary.61 Thus Fitzwilliam proclaimed the earl a traitor on 1 August and made ready to lead an expedition into Munster against him.62 Desmond blinked. With nothing more to be gained by resistance, and much to be lost, he accepted the game was up. In response his proclamation was cancelled.63 On 2 September 1574, before a large audience of provincial nobles and gentry specially gathered at St Finbarre’s cathedral in Cork, Desmond submitted to Fitzwilliam.64 Ten days later, ‘after morning prayer’, he repeated the performance at Limerick cathedral, publicly declaring his oath of allegiance to the Protestant queen, ‘taking the sacred Bible into his arms’ and adding to the ordinary words of the oath ‘a speech full of loyal emphasis to confirm his duty’.65 His willingness to submit should have surprised no-one. By September 1574, it was an open secret that Fitzwilliam was about to be replaced, and that one of the reasons this was so was because of his mishandling of a number of Irish lords, including Desmond.66 Earl Garret’s submission could not mask the fact that he had out out-manoeuvred his principal enemy. Fitzwilliam departed; Desmond stayed. 58 Ibid., nos 823, 955. 59 Ibid., no. 1033. 60 Ibid., no. 1043. 61 She had repeatedly disapproved the use of force against Desmond before the news of Bourchier’s capture: Knollys to Fitzwilliam, 27 Mar. 1574 (Bodl., Carte MS 56, fos 341–2); Mildmay to same, 2 May 1574 (ibid., fos 368–9). 62 Lord deputy and council to privy council, 29 July 1574 (ibid., fos 50r–51v); Cal. SP Ire., 1571–5, no. 1090.1. For Fitzwilliam’s expedition, which included a siege and massacre at Derrinlaur castle, co. Waterford, on 18–19 Aug., see Cal. SP Ire., 1571–5, no. 1088, and Herald Narbon’s unfinished journal of the campaign (TCD, MS 660, p. 19). 63 Queen’s instructions, 2 Aug. 1574 (Northamptonshire Record Office, F (M) C. 50). This is Fitzwilliam’s personal copy, which, unlike the version in the state papers, bears the date. See also Cal. SP Ire., 1571–5, no. 1090, and privy council’s instructions, 16 Aug. 1574 (Northamptonshire RO, F (M) C. 51). For a full listing of Fitzwilliam’s Irish correspondence among the Fitzwilliam of Milton MSS, see Brian Donovan and David Edwards, British sources for Irish history, 1485–1641: a guide to manuscripts in local, regional and specialised repositories in England, Scotland and Wales (IMC, Dublin, 1997), pp 195–8. 64 Cal. SP Ire., 1571–5, no. 1088.1. 65 Ibid., no. 1095. 66 Ciaran Brady, The chief governors: the rise and fall of reform government in Tudor Ireland, 1536–1588 (Cambridge, 1994), p. 144.

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The capriciousness of the earl’s behaviour was widely remarked in government correspondence. He had sent artful ‘painted letters’ to the queen and her council. His meaning had not been that of a good subject to her majesty, but a crafty conspirator. He had shown himself ‘obstinate’, ‘dilatory’, ‘a very unconstant man’. He had been ‘wicked’, toying with the government, ever on the brink of committing treason.67 For some, that he had actually stopped short of full rebellion was immaterial. Indeed, no less a figure than William Cecil, Lord Burghley, refused to recognize any such restraint on the earl’s part, in subsequent private memoranda referring to the events of 1573–4 as ‘this late rebellion with Desmond’ and ‘this last revolt of the earl of Desmond’.68 The earl of Sussex was of a like mind, offering a brief ‘Opinion’ of how the government should respond to ‘Desmond’s rebellion’.69 Accordingly, when Earl Garret did finally rise up in arms, in October 1579, the memory of his conduct five years earlier was recalled by numerous government spokesmen as though he had been continuously in a state of revolt. One implication of such comment, of course, was that somehow the 1579 rebellion was inevitable: after all, hadn’t the earl always been rebellious? Unwary reading of post-1579 government sources later prompted some historians to adopt a similar opinion of Desmond’s troubled career. For Grenfell Morton, author of an influential university textbook, the entire decade 1565–75 witnessed a ‘Desmond Rebellion in Munster’,70 and was followed by ‘a course of events’ between 1576 and 1579 ‘which could only end’ in the earl’s ‘next’ and final rebellion: inevitability again.71 Seventeenth-century Irish Catholic accounts of the Elizabethan wars support a very similar viewpoint. In these, invariably, the revolt of 1579 was presented as a prime example of ‘good’ Irish Catholic resistance to ‘bad’ English Protestant rule, instigated by the crusading zeal of James fitz Maurice, but carried on heroically by Earl Garret as the culmination of his supposedly long career of persistent rebelliousness. Thus O’Sullivan Beare, writing in exile in Madrid in the 1620s, presented Desmond to his readers as the noble head of ‘the truly brave family of the Munster Geraldines’, who late in the previous century had suffered imprisonment in the Tower of London for daring to present a ‘stout impediment to persecution’, and who, on release, had continued to impede 67 Cal. SP Ire., 1571–5, nos 818, 982, 1003, 1024. 68 Ibid., nos 1175, 1280. Ormond, in contrast, referred only to Desmond’s ‘stir’ (ibid., no. 1180). For a recent valuable discussion of the ‘Degrees’ as one of several Irish policy deliberations written by Burghley, see Christopher Maginn, William Cecil, Ireland, and the Tudor state (Oxford, 2013), pp 93–8. 69 Lord Chamberlain’s opinion, 21 Mar. 1574 (BL, Cotton MS Titus B XII, fos 45r–46r). 70 Morton, Elizabethan Ireland, ch. 5. 71 Ibid., p. 53. In fairness, the main documentary study of the Desmond earldom available to Morton also spoke of a ten-year-long rebellion: James Graves, ‘Unpublished Geraldine documents, no. 2: the earls of Desmond’, Royal Historical and Archaeological Association of Ireland [JRSAI], 3rd ser., i, pt 2 (1869), 523.

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Elizabeth’s heretical officers undaunted, to the point of martyrdom.72 Equally glowing was Dominic O’Daly: writing in Lisbon in the 1650s, he recalled Desmond as ever unable to bow down to English Protestant power. ‘Oh! Would to heaven all the nobles of Ireland had rallied to [his] banner. How glorious would not this nation be today?’73 Fortunately, the pioneering work of, first, Ciaran Brady and more recently Anthony McCormack has done much to show how misleading these ex post facto representations were. Trawling through the scores of documents in the state papers that record Desmond’s difficult relationship with the Elizabethan government, Brady and McCormack have shown that, far from being heavenbent on rebellion, the earl usually attempted to cooperate with the crown as best he could. Once he had protested his treatment by Fitzwilliam and Perrot, and reversed aspects of what he saw as their undue interference in his territories and diminution of his lordship rights, he appeared to be content from autumn 1574 to abide by the agreements he had previously reached with the queen and her ministers in London (in January 1573).74 As a Munster observer later put it, Desmond had emerged ‘very temperate, new born’ from the showdown, and had moved from ‘desperation and mistrust … to some hope and certainty’.75 His cooperation soon bore fruit. On 1 October 1574, the earl and his brother Sir John of Desmond were pardoned for all previous offences, able to embark upon a new era of government contact with the slate wiped clean.76 Desmond was permitted to retain his palatine status in the liberty of Kerry, an important concession. Besides the autonomy it afforded him within the Munster presidency, it ensured he maintained parity in the province with his customary rival the earl of Ormond, the lord of the liberty of Tipperary.77 Not that Desmond got everything he sought: the government insisted that he abandon his use of the private military tax known as coign and livery, and in 1578 his petition for restoration of Castlemaine was rejected. However, on this latter point the queen and privy council were mindful to let him down gently, first explaining the castle’s strategic value to the crown in the event of a foreign invasion, before granting him in compensation whatever abbey lands he desired in co. Kerry ‘to remain in fee farm to your lordship and your heirs male of your body’, forever.78 The land grant was accompanied by further reassurances of his high standing with the crown. Days before Christmas 1578 Queen Elizabeth wrote to him: ‘We 72 Philip O’Sullivan Beare, Ireland under Elizabeth: chapters towards a history of Ireland in the reign of Elizabeth, being a portion of the history of Catholic Ireland, ed. and trans. Matthew J. Byrne (Dublin, 1903; repr. New York and London, 1970), pp 11, 59. 73 Dominic O’Daly, The rise, increase and exit of the Geraldines, earls of Desmond, ed. and trans. C.P. Meehan (2nd ed., Dublin 1878), p. 74. 74 Brady, ‘Faction’, 306–8; McCormack, Desmond, pp 135–6. 75 Myagh to Williams, 9 Aug. 1575 (Bodl., Carte MS 55, fo. 364r). 76 Irish fiants, Eliz. I, nos 2476, 2478. 77 For Tipperary, see David Edwards and Adrian Empey, ‘Tipperary liberty ordinances of the Black Earl of Ormond’, in Edwards (ed.), Regions and rulers, pp 122–45. 78 Walsingham letter-book, pp 32–3.

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have been very glad to understand … how ready and dutifully bent you have been’. While acknowledging that he had sometimes seemed less than well affected, she attributed this largely to the ‘evil counsel’ of others who had led him astray. Significantly, however, the queen also accepted that ‘the fault hath been in our ministers there [in Ireland]’ who had not always ‘performed according to our meaning’. Then followed a remarkable statement: Elizabeth was ready, she promised, to ‘punish with all severity’ those of her servants that might be convicted of wronging the earl. Desmond and his advisers can only have read this one way: as an open invitation by the monarch to prosecute the officers and representatives of senior figures in the Irish administration who had overstepped the mark when confronting him.79 Desmond’s honour and status were to be upheld by the queen even to the point of permitting him revenge on crown personnel. So why did Desmond rebel just ten months later, in October 1579? And what was so important about that fateful decision that merits further examination here, considering the fine work of Brady and McCormack, who have studied it in some detail? Is there actually anything new to be said about it?80 As readers have probably guessed, the lengthy treatment of the events of 1573–4 that forms the first part of this essay is intended to draw out a number of factors that might help better explain the 1579 rebellion. In the following pages particular attention will be given to a number of developments between 1574 and 1579 that severely tested and ultimately destroyed Desmond’s achievements hitherto. While each of these has featured in previous studies, it will be shown that sufficient information survives to allow a seemingly familiar story to be significantly reworked. Thus, the second part will address several topics in turn: the continuing brittle state of the Desmond lordship in the later 1570s; the reassertion of government power in Munster, and the methods employed, especially after 1576; the earl’s political response to this; his family crisis following the fitz Maurice landing in July 1579; and the role of Sir Nicholas Malby in driving him to the precipice during the autumn of that year. The essay will end by discussing the failure of Elizabeth I and her privy council to offer Desmond any assistance as his position became critical, their previous reassurances notwithstanding. But there is one other matter that should be clarified before proceeding any further. Having at length considered Desmond’s actions during 1573–4, it should be possible, finally, to set aside the oft-repeated view that he rebelled in 1579 because he was politically unsophisticated and temperamentally fragile – rash one moment, dithering the next. Garret, earl of Desmond may not have been the most inspiring of Irish lords, but it is a serious misreading of the available sources to portray him as blundering and indecisive, ‘the irresolute 79 Ibid., pp 29–30. 80 Both Lennon, Sixteenth century Ireland, pp 218–27, and Connolly, Divided island, pp 172–5, provide valuable and in places prescient syntheses of the main

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earl’,81 or, worse, as ‘the unstable, impulsive and downright stupid earl of Desmond’.82 In 1573–4, with the assistance of his wife and counsellors,83 he had shown himself a more than able practitioner of the political arts. Through deception, cunning and a fair measure of daring, negotiation and outright brinkmanship, he had contrived to return to his ancestral lordship in Munster and reassert his power there in the face of formidable opposition by newly established government representatives and older regional foes. To gain the trust of his traditional support-base he had defied the presence of English troops, contriving to expel one garrison and seriously weaken another. Significantly, however, he had done this without bloodshed, and to reassure the queen of his essential loyalty he had later agreed to surrender Castlemaine to a new royal garrison under a different commander.84 In addition he had left his only son and heir to be raised in England and had been mindful to maintain strong lines of communication with the royal court.85 Moreover, prior to Desmond’s return to Munster, Fitzwilliam and Perrot had plotted the virtual emasculation of his lordship: but within less than a year Desmond had seen the back of both men and avoided outright rebellion, pulling back from the brink before it was too late. This was hardly the behaviour of someone ‘incapable of reacting coolly in his own interest’, as one scholar has claimed.86 Desmond had held his nerve when it would have been easy to lash out wildly; he had taken counsel, and, generally, followed advice that was well tailored to his interest. The assertion that before October 1579 he had shown himself to be somehow too dim-witted to survive a serious test of loyalty was official spin, nothing more.87 Historians would do well to discard it. It provided royal servitors with a convenient story with which to obscure a very different explanation of events.

IV

Essential to any analysis of Desmond’s situation is an appreciation of his success in re-imposing authority across his troubled territories after 1573 and the shakeup in the local pecking-order that this entailed. Prior to his return, power in his lordship had been fiercely contested between four groups: (i) Earl Garret’s servants and followers; (ii) Sir Thomas of Desmond, the earl’s half-brother and scholarship. 81 Ellis, Ire. in the age of the Tudors, p. 313; Palmer, Problem of Ireland, p. 111. 82 Brady, ‘Faction’, 310. 83 Anne Chambers, As wicked a woman: the biography of Eleanor, countess of Desmond (Dublin, 1986) makes a spirited case for the countess’s importance as a restraining influence on her husband, but it ignores his other advisers. 84 Cal. SP Ire., 1571– 5, no. 1088. 85 Between Jan. and Sept. 1574, Desmond sent at least nine letters either directly to the court, or to agents of the court in Ireland: ibid., nos 818.5, 835.3, 835.5, 872, 880(ii), 918, 1030, 1065, 1097. 86 Brady, Chief governors, pp 194, 199. 87 The contemporary evidence for his supposed irrationality comes invariably from the pens of enemies stung by his successful defiance: see the sources cited in Brady, Chief governors, p. 194 n. 77.

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rival; (iii) the earl’s cousin James fitz Maurice FitzGerald, formerly acting governor of the earldom, but in rebellion since 1569; and (iv) the English lord presidency of Munster. By summer 1574, after barely six months back in situ, Desmond had reduced the contest for power in his earldom to a basically peaceful struggle between just two elements, his representatives and those of the English presidency (and, by extension, the viceroyalty in Dublin). That Desmond ended what effectively had been a civil war between the Munster Geraldines deserves emphasis. It allowed him to demonstrate how his earldom, and not the lord presidency, could impose the order necessary to stabilize relations between the crown and the lesser lords and chieftains of the province, and thereby limit the danger of widespread and persistent rebellion. Despite the assertions of its local agents, the introduction of the lord presidency had not brought about any great improvement in local political conditions. Reeling under the impact of Perrot’s heavy-handed and bloody tactics, large numbers of lesser lords and their retainers had become reluctant to engage with the government, and their sense of exposure and insecurity had allowed James fitz Maurice to continue his revolt long after he should have been defeated. The better to establish a new regime that worked chiefly to his benefit, but also to the queen’s, Desmond pursued a two-pronged strategy, on the one hand to push back the military reach of the presidency, and on the other to smother fitz Maurice. His curbing of the presidential forces has already been examined. He displayed a similar adroitness in tackling fitz Maurice. Much is often made of James fitz Maurice’s charisma as a Geraldine leader and his encroachment on Desmond’s support base prior to November 1573. Whatever the case, it is striking how easily the earl isolated and diminished him on his return to Munster. For all fitz Maurice’s far-ranging intrigues and religiously charged pronouncements, his differences with Earl Garret were material, not ideological. He had been openly at war with the earl since Desmond’s decision in 1568 to convey Carrigaline castle and other lands in Kerricurrihy, co. Cork, to the English adventurer Sir Warham St Leger – lands that fitz Maurice insisted Desmond had no right to transfer, his father having received them in perpetuity from a previous earl.88 It is likely that Desmond had gone through with the Carrigaline deal to clip fitz Maurice’s wings in his capacity as acting governor of his lordship, by rendering him a landless dependent; on his imprisonment in the Tower with his brother Sir John in 1567 the earl had been uneasy about having to rely on fitz Maurice, whom he did not trust but had to accept (his other brother James of Desmond being still a boy, much too young to assume the role). In the event, of course, the decision to convey Carrigaline from over fitz Maurice’s head backfired spectacularly and proved to be one of the worst – and, 88 David Edwards, ‘Sir Warham St Leger (1525?–1597), colonist’, ODNB.

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yes, stupidest – of Desmond’s career. Yet it gave Desmond an advantage over fitz Maurice on his return to Munster in 1573. Fitz Maurice held no land in the earldom except by force. Offering only a vague promise of future compensation for Carrigaline, Desmond demanded fitz Maurice’s submission,89 and then made him wait. Over a month passed before fitz Maurice was identified as back in Earl Garret’s circle, seen greeting visitors in a chamber at Askeaton.90 Even then no settlement was forthcoming and it was not until spring 1574 that Desmond assigned any land to fitz Maurice, at Tarbert and Carrigafoyle in co. Kerry, and Glin in co. Limerick.91 The terms of the grant provide clearer proof of fitz Maurice’s desperation than of Desmond’s generosity. Having previously owned a sizeable and centralized lordship overlooking the Owenboy estuary in co. Cork and lying within the commercial hinterland of Cork city, fitz Maurice had now to be content with a scattered estate to be held without fixity of title, at the earl’s whim. As if this were not bad enough, the Glin estate was not even the earl’s to grant, but belonged to the crown following the attainder of its previous owner, fitz Maurice’s former ally, the Knight of Glin. Consequently fitz Maurice could expect to be challenged either by Perrot’s grantee, Edmund fitz David, and Edmund’s brother David Óg, capable soldiers, or by another royal leaseholder.92 The prospect at Carrigafoyle was only slightly better. Though in the earl’s gift via the minority and wardship of Seán, the seven-year-old son of the late Ó Conchobhair Ciarraighe (O’Connor Kerry), fitz Maurice could at best hope to enjoy its profits for fourteen years – provided, that is, that other members of the Ó Conchobhair lineage did not obstruct him.93 By March 1575, fitz Maurice had had enough. According to a statement by one of his servants, sometime in the previous few months his entry into Carrigafoyle castle had been casually blocked by Desmond, without any offer of compensation. Fitz Maurice had been played for a fool. When Desmond subsequently learned that fitz Maurice was preparing to flee to France, it seems he did nothing to stop him; on the contrary, he rode from Connello to Glin to bid him bon voyage.94 Lest his lack of preventive action should expose him to fresh government suspicion he wrote to both the Protestant bishop of Limerick and the mayor of the city reporting fitz Maurice’s impending 89 It is possible that fitz Maurice may have been among those Munster leaders who offered ‘atonement’ to the earl late in November, but the evidence is vague (Cal. SP Ire., 1571–5, no. 752). 90 Ibid., no. 758. 91 See Desmond’s grant, 23 Apr. 1574 (ibid., no. 944), in which Glin is given as ‘Glancorbery’. 92 It seems Perrot granted Glin to Edmund fitz David only as a custodiam – that is, before it was officially surveyed by the crown – therefore another royal grantee was likely to materialize after a survey was held: Myagh to Williams, 9 Aug. 1575 (Bodl., Carte MS 55, f. 364r). 93 For the Ó Conchobhair Ciarraighe wardship, see the details provided in an inquisition post mortem of 18 June 1593 (TCD, Mun. P23/8); I must thank Kenneth Nicholls for tracing this reference for me. McCormack, Desmond, pp 160–1, discounts fitz Maurice’s landlessness as a cause of his flight. 94 The version of Brack’s confession in Cal. SP Ire., 1571–5 (no. 1420.5) is a copy; the original, in Fitzwilliam’s private papers, is dated 30 June (Bodl., Carte MS 55, fos 69r–70r).

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flight, suggesting the mayor had the authority to best deal with the matter. And of course he had copies made of these letters, and sent them to Whitehall.95 Weeks later, though still unsure of his demeanour, the privy council had to write to him praising his ‘dutiful and conformable behaviour’ and promising that if he ‘continue[d] the same’, the queen would soon restore him ‘to her entire favour again’.96 An added bonus for Desmond of James fitz Maurice’s departure was the decision of other troublesome kinsmen to join in the latter’s French adventure, among them Edmund FitzGibbon, the White Knight; John FitzGerald, the seneschal of Imokilly; and ‘a lad of seventeen years’, Edmund fitz Thomas FitzGerald, heir to the attainted Knight of Glin. As with fitz Maurice, Desmond made no attempt to prevent the departure of these figures. Their leaving was advantageous, freeing him of the necessity of watching them. It also allowed him to get on with stifling other likely sources of resistance to his power, such as the baron of Lixnaw, from whom he took hostages,97 and Sir Thomas of Desmond, who was already in decline when Earl Garret returned, having been badly wounded by fitz Maurice’s men in a skirmish.98 Eight months before fitz Maurice and the rest fled overseas Desmond had demonstrated that there was no place for them under his rule. In his recent fine study of the earldom Anthony McCormack has given long-overdue attention to the ‘Desmond Combination’ of July 1574, which he rightly describes as one of the most important documents of the period.99 Containing the signatures of twenty-two local lords and gentry from across Desmond’s lordship, it gives striking testimony to the commitment to his leadership that Earl Garret was able to command at a time when a military attack by Viceroy Fitzwilliam seemed imminent. Tension and fear were running high, and the fact that so many local notables signed their names to a declaration of defiance of Fitzwilliam was remarkable, considering their likely fate as ‘traitors’ had hostilities in fact ensued. However, the ‘Combination’ is also important for another reason: it marks the emergence of a new ruling group in the lordship, Desmond’s inner ring of counsellors and trusty vassals.100 There was no place for James fitz Maurice, for the seneschal of Imokilly, for the White Knight, or for the heir to the Knight of Glin, all once major figures, entitled by birthright to a voice in the earldom’s affairs; now they were elbowed aside. Crucially, three of the four had fought against crown forces in previous years (the heir of Glin was too young), and suffered attainder. Desmond had no place for them, even as a confrontation with Fitzwilliam briefly loomed. Those who would help him stand up to the viceroy and defend his lands would be those who had refrained from revolt in the past. That the signatories of the ‘Combination’ were nervous about a possible conflict 95 Cal. Carew MSS, 1575–88, no. 25. 96 Ibid., no. 26. 97 Munster commissioners to Fitzwilliam, 11 Jan. 1575 (Bodl., Carte MS 55, fo. 192). 98 Cal. SP Ire., 1571–5, no. 760.3. 99 McCormack, Desmond, pp 133–4. 100 Cal. SP Ire., 1571–5, no. 1066.

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is undeniable, but that is what made them so valuable to Desmond. Unlike fitz Maurice and other more senior Geraldines they could be trusted to do the earl’s bidding and not to act independently against Fitzwilliam, and so precipitate a crisis. They represented the emerging political order in his territories, prepared to stand up to government aggression if provoked, but to hold back from actual rebellion, out of loyalty to the earl and to the monarch. For the next few years there would be a more structured regime in the Desmond lordship than had obtained for a generation. Markedly less divided than before, the key figures under the earl would now be his brothers Sir John and James of Desmond; the dean of Cloyne cathedral John fitz Edmund FitzGerald; John de Brúin of Hospital; the earl’s secretary, Muiris Ó Síodhacháin (Maurice Sheehan); and the galloglass captain Ruaidhrí Mac Síthigh (Rory MacSheehy). Also important would be Andrew Skiddy, the recorder of Cork, and a long-standing legal adviser of the earl, whom he served as justice of the liberty of Kerry;101 and Dionisius Cahissy, the chancellor of Limerick cathedral, who seems have been keeper of the liberty records and the earl’s seal.102 All were familiar faces in the province, but one of their key characteristics as a group, setting them apart from other prominent Geraldines, was their engagement with English government. De Brúin and Mac Síthigh had led the defence of Desmond’s lands against the forces of fitz Maurice, the White Knight and the seneschal, in 1569, and had cooperated with English military personnel sent south against the rebels.103 Though holding back following the inception of the Perrot lord presidency, de Brúin had married one of his daughters to an English captain, William Apsley – the same Captain Apsley whom Desmond subsequently accepted as the new constable of Castlemaine in 1574.104 Skiddy, as Cork recorder, served on numerous government commissions of inquiry for Munster, something of obvious benefit to the earl, and maintained his own line of correspondence with Lord Burghley.105 But in many ways the most interesting of the group was the dean of Cloyne, John fitz Edmund. An outstanding opportunist and arch-manipulator, he had pounced on the turmoil sparked by the fitz Maurice revolt to devour the estate of his cousin and namesake, and fitz Maurice’s ally, the seneschal of Imokilly, during the 1570s annexing swathes of land in east co. Cork as he pressed the government for favours and grants. He spent most of 1572 in England, taking lodgings at Hampton Court, and was unique among Desmond’s group in earning the praise of President Perrot.106 101 Cal. SP Ire., 1566–7, no. 400; Cal. SP Ire., 1568–71, no. 253; Cal. SP Ire., 1571–5, nos 780, 835.4. 102 David Edwards (ed.), Campaign journals of the Elizabethan Irish wars (IMC, Dublin, 2014), p. 71. 103 Cal. SP Ire., 1568–71, no. 512 b. 104 David Edwards, ‘The landgrabber’s accomplices: Richard Boyle’s affinity in Munster, 1588–1603’, in David Edwards and Colin Rynne (eds), The colonial world of Richard Boyle, 1st earl of Cork (forthcoming). 105 Irish fiants, ii, Eliz. I, nos 2758, 2771, 2862, 2906, 3156, 3490; Cal. SP Ire., 1566–7, no. 595. 106 Paul Mac Cotter, ‘The Geraldine clerical lineages of Imokilly and Sir John fitz Edmund of Cloyne’, in Edwards (ed.), Regions and rulers, pp 65–71, provides a vivid outline of fitz Edmund’s political and economic exploits.

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With this group assuming the running of the Desmond lordship after 1574 it was possible for the earl to construct a better working relationship with the government and to avoid being accused of bad faith towards the queen over his promise to open his territories to political and institutional reform. Certainly the initial response of royal representatives visiting Munster after the earl’s submission to Fitzwilliam was positive about the prospects for the future. In August 1575, John Myagh, the queen’s attorney in the province, described how Desmond and his advisers had attended the royal commissioners in Cork, staying in the city for a full week and cooperating while cases were heard. Besides confirming Desmond’s acceptance of the crown courts and English legal norms, Myagh insinuated that the earl might be prepared to acquiesce in the survey of attainted lands in his territories, a significant departure.107 The justice of Munster, James Dowdall, was nearly as upbeat. By 1575 the crown’s principal officer in Munster while a new president was under consideration, Dowdall had been invited by Desmond to witness an important family settlement in which the line of succession to the earldom was established.108 The two had reached an understanding thereafter. When in July 1575 the seneschal of Imokilly had returned unexpectedly from France, fetching ashore in co. Limerick, Dowdall had worked closely with the earl to contain the situation. Within days the seneschal had been located and isolated, with Desmond’s tenants ordered by the earl’s officers to treat him as a fugitive.109 By early August he had been forced to submit to the queen’s commissioners in Cork, who interrogated him at length, and had to enter into a bond accepting the curtailment of his movements and promising to abide by the queen’s laws and directives.110 Dowdall was delighted. Writing to Dublin he observed that Desmond’s willingness to act had set an example to all the other lords of the region, who, he now confidently expected, would be inclined to cooperate more fully with the crown.111

V

This, then, was the situation that pertained when Sir Henry Sidney returned to Ireland as viceroy in August 1575. Sidney, it is well known, had long exhibited a sense of sympathy for the Desmond Geraldines in his Munster dealings, identifying them as a counterweight to what he perceived as the overweening influence in the south of the country of the Butlers and their overlord, the ‘Black Earl’ of Ormond.112 However, because Sidney had been forced to arrest Desmond 107 Myagh to Williams, 9 Aug. 1575 (Bodl., Carte MS 55, fo. 364r). 108 A.B. Grosart (ed.), Lismore manuscripts (10 vols, London 1886–8), 2nd series, i, introduction, pp x–xiv. The version published in Cal. Carew MSS, 1515–74, pp 481–3 is a 1580s copy and omits the witnesses. 109 Cal. SP Ire., 1571–5, no. 1484.2. 110 The seneschal’s recognizance, 5 Aug. 1575 (Bodl., Carte MS 55, fo. 349r). 111 Cal. SP Ire., 1571–5, no. 1484; Dowdall, Walsh and Myagh to Fitzwilliam, 9 Aug. 1575 (Bodl., Carte MS 55, fo. 347). 112 Edwards, Ormond

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and his brother Sir John in 1567, thereby initiating Earl Garret’s six-year exile from his lordship, it did not necessarily follow that the former good relations between Sidney and Desmond could be easily restored. As Ciaran Brady has noted, Earl Garret nursed a strong and abiding sense of betrayal.113 He felt that he and Sir John had been unfairly singled out by Sidney, sacrificed while Ormond’s brother Sir Edmund Butler had escaped punishment for a string of offences before 1567 at least the equal of anything they had done. Moreover, reestablishing trust with Sidney was further complicated by the fact that prior to the news of Sir Henry’s appointment to the viceroyalty Desmond had indicated his support for his main rival for the post, the earl of Essex. On assuming office, Sidney was determined to reduce Essex’s growing influence in Ireland, before it undermined him as it had helped to undermine Fitzwilliam.114 Inauspicious though such circumstances were they were not insurmountable. Unlike Fitzwilliam, Sidney was a political showman. He believed in projecting his personal authority through the staging of grand occasions in which he could be seen to act the patron and to make large gestures, as well as through elaborate memorials (built and written) to record his achievements for contemporaries and posterity.115 His penchant for spectacle and fanfare, for banquets and assemblies of notables, could be utilized by Desmond to make a great show of his own role in affairs and to sound out the prospect of a new political understanding with Dublin – and, covertly, to test the extent to which Sidney’s fine words had substance or masked something darker. Hence when Sidney announced his intention of visiting Munster at Christmas 1575, Earl Garret responded by being the first lord of the province to welcome him. Submitting to Sidney at Dungarvan castle, Desmond, along with his countess and his brothers Sir John and James, accompanied the viceroy to Cork, where the citizens presented ‘joyful lordship, pp 188–207, 215–28. 113 Brady, Chief governors, pp 193–4. 114 There is a great need for a detailed study of Essex’s time in Ireland, emphasizing his political as well as his colonial activities. In the meantime, see Nicholas Canny, The Elizabethan conquest of Ireland: a pattern established, 1565–1576 (Hassocks, 1976), pp 87–92, 120–1, 130–1; Rory Rapple, Martial power and Elizabethan political culture: military men in England and Ireland, 1558–1594 (Cambridge, 2009), pp 229–33; and Brady, Chief governors, pp 144–6, 251–2, 259–60. See also Mark A. Hutchinson, ‘An Irish perspective on Elizabeth’s religion: reformation thought and Henry Sidney’s Irish government, 1560–1580’, in Brendan Kane and Valerie McGowan Doyle (eds), Elizabeth I and Ireland (Cambridge, 2014), p. 158. 115 Hiram Morgan, ‘Overmighty officers: the Irish lord deputyship in the early modern British state’, History Ireland, 7:4 (Winter 1999), 17–21; Vincent Carey, ‘John Derricke’s Image of Irelande, Sir Henry Sidney, and the massacre of Mullaghmast’, IHS, 3:123 (1999), 305–27. See also five of the contributions to a special issue of the Sidney Journal, 29:1–2 (2011), ed. Thomas Herron and Willy Maley, Sir Henry Sidney in Ireland and Wales: Valerie McGowan Doyle, ‘Representations of Sir Henry Sidney: authority and the rhetoric of virtue’ (27–43); Stuart Kinsella, ‘Colonial commemoration in Tudor Ireland: the case of Sir Henry Sidney’ (105–45); Maryclaire Moroney, ‘“The sweetness of due subjection”: Derricke’s Image of Irelande (1581) and the Sidneys’ (147–71); Robert Shephard, ‘The motives of Sir Henry Sidney’s Memoir (1583)’ (173–86); and Brandie R. Siegfried, ‘Rivalling Caesar: the Roman model in Sir Henry Sidney’s Memoir’ (187–208).

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… tokens and shows’, and Desmond made sure his kinsmen and followers were to the fore in all the ensuing receptions and ceremonies. In February 1576, they brought Sidney to Limerick for a repeat performance.116 Though the main source detailing the various gatherings is Sidney’s viceregal journal, a document that was carefully composed well after the events it purports to describe, and omitted any mention of discussions that might deflect attention from its narrative of Sidney’s personal achievements,117 it is clear from other evidence that discussions with Desmond must have taken place. How well they went for the earl is less certain. At first glance it might be thought they went relatively well. While Sidney was still in Limerick he issued an order restoring Desmond to his customary rents in Clanmorris, which had been withheld from him for some time by the baron of Lixnaw.118 Months later, after Sidney’s return to Dublin, the earl received a further boost to his revenues, securing grants authorized by the viceroy of two former monastic houses and their estates in co. Kerry.119 He also received an assurance of a permanent place on the Munster Council, which, Sidney announced, would reconvene as soon as a new lord president was appointed.120 And as for Desmond’s followers, a place on the council was reserved for Andrew Skiddy;121 while the dean of Cloyne, John Fitz Edmund, and eleven of his private band obtained a royal pardon sanctioned by Sidney that ensured they could not be prosecuted for their previous actions against the dean’s rivals in the territory of Imokilly.122 Likewise, in May 1576 Sidney sanctioned no less than five pardons to the earl’s brother Sir John and his retainers in co. Cork and co. Waterford, all ‘at the earnest suit of Sir John of Desmond, knight’.123 However, on closer inspection it is clear that Sidney fell short of what Desmond might have found acceptable. In fact the new governor seemed to be almost as determined as Fitzwilliam to curtail the earl; it was just that he was more subtle, intentionally more deceptive, in his approach. His journals are a case in point. Far from providing an accurate guide to his government, as historians sometimes assume, they provide a guide to how Sidney wanted his government understood at Whitehall, a very different thing. Regarding Desmond, Sir Henry wanted to create the impression not merely that he intended to govern Munster with the consent of the earl and other local lords, as Elizabeth and her privy council expected of him, but rather that Desmond and the rest were entirely won over by his suasions, and had consented to his 116 Arthur Collins (ed.), Letters and memorials of state of Sir Henry Sidney (2 vols, London, 1746), i, pp 89–97; Cal. Carew MSS, 1575–88, no. 36. 117 David Edwards, ‘Fashioning service in a Renaissance state: the official journals of the Elizabethan viceroys in Ireland’, in Brendan Dooley (ed.), Renaissance now (Oxford, 2014), pp 141–2, 150–3, 155–6. 118 Sidney’s order for Desmond, 27 Feb. 1576 (TNA, SP 63/55/22). 119 Irish fiants, ii, Eliz. I, nos 2819–20. 120 McCormack, Desmond, p. 140 121 Drury’s instructions, June 1576 (BL, Cotton MS Titus B XIII, fos 215r–222r). 122 Irish fiants, ii, Eliz. I, no. 2750. 123 Ibid., nos 2779–84.

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programme of accelerated political reform. Accordingly he insisted they were eager to embrace the various changes that he proposed, and even accepted the superiority of English manners and customs, no less, as they ‘seemed in all appearance generally to loathe their vile and barbarous manner of life’.124 Sidney was, of course, wildly misrepresenting what had transpired in the various submissions and rituals of obeisance staged for him at Cork and Limerick. Desmond and the other lords were hardly in a rush to cede their traditional authority to English government. And they certainly did not consider themselves barbarians! But none of that mattered. By writing so self-assuredly to the queen and council, and at such length, Sidney hoped to secure the appointment of Sir William Drury as the next lord president and gain the leeway necessary to pursue a policy in Munster that was markedly more aggressive than had previously been agreed. Sidney had several reasons for wanting to impose tighter limits on the earl. Rumours were rife that an invasion by fitz Maurice was imminent.125 Sidney speculated that should this happen Desmond would be unable to prevent a mass revolt in his territories; his basis for such an opinion was left unexplained, but it may have had more to do with his increasing obsession with international Catholicism and its influence across southern Ireland.126 It is possible, too, that the barely concealed ‘popery’ of several of Desmond’s servants unsettled him: for instance it has been said of the dean of Cloyne that it was only after his death that Protestants were able to obtain entrance to the diocese he dominated;127 while in Limerick the chancellor, Cahissy, was later found with ‘many mass books’ in his chamber.128 But secular considerations also animated Sidney. As with other Irish magnates such as the earls of Ormond and Clanrickard, the sheer independence that Desmond enjoyed from the royal government, his private military strength, his haughty sense of his own superiority, all frustrated Sidney. Determined to transform Ireland, to make it more like England so that England itself could count the benefit, Sidney was convinced that Desmond’s independence in the southwest needed to be curbed. Only when the earl and his family had surrendered their steely grip over key parts of Munster would the government control the whole of the province, and thereby prevent more rebellions from draining the crown’s resources and presenting fresh opportunities to England’s continental enemies to make mischief.129 124 As above, n. 116. 125 Collins (ed.), Letters and memorials, i, pp 185–9, 200, 203–4. 126 Mark Hutchinson, ‘Reformed Protestantism and the government of Ireland, c.1565– 1582’, Sidney Journal, 29:1–2 (2011), 86–90, provides a valuable treatment of the fluctuations in Sidney’s religious thought at this time, but see also Ciaran Brady and James Murray, ‘Sir Henry Sidney and the reformation in Ireland’, in Elizabethanne Boran and Crawford Gribben (eds), Enforcing reformation in Ireland and Scotland, 1550–1700 (Aldershot, 2006), pp 33–6, which pays closer attention to Sidney’s executive actions. 127 MacCotter, ‘Geraldine clerical lineages’, in Edwards (ed.), Regions and rulers, p. 75. 128 Edwards (ed.), Campaign journals, p. 71. 129 The main treatments of Sidney’s approach remain Brady, Chief governors, ch. 5; and Canny, Elizabethan conquest, ch. 3.

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To ensure that the momentum towards stronger English power and influence was regained, Sidney authorized Drury to encroach on Desmond’s territories and followers immediately after his installation as the new lord president in 1576. The liberty of Kerry, which Desmond had been promised would be left untouched, was to be subjugated to the presidency, with Drury objecting to its existence as a separate jurisdiction beyond the reach of his office. Then there was the process by which the proposed demilitarization of the lordships was to be achieved. Usually described as the abolition of coign and livery, this entailed the outlawing of a range of customary charges levied by the Munster lords on their territories – or often on the territories of unfortunate neighbours – towards the maintenance of their private armies.130 The abolition of coign would lead directly to the forced unemployment of thousands of soldiers. Anticipating widespread resistance among the rank and file horsemen and kerne, the viceroy looked to counter this threat by issuing commissions of martial law to enable those charged with implementing the policy to impose it with a hangman’s rope.131 Significantly, though several local lords and leaders received martial law commissions following Sidney’s announcement of the policy, Desmond did not. Neither did his brother Sir John. Instead they had to look on as power of summary execution was given to the likes of James Barry, Viscount Buttevant, Cormac son of Tadhg Mac Carthaigh (Cormac Mac Teige McCarthy), Patrick Sherlock, and the son of the baron of Curraghmore, Richard Power, each of whom were opposed to Desmond and his lordship.132 In fact just one commissioner appointed in the province between 1575 and 1579 was well inclined to Desmond and his family, William Apsley.133 The abolition of coign and livery in Munster was highly politicized as a result. It was not just that Desmond’s foes would be able to execute private retainers with impunity while he would not; but also that their retainers would be able to carry out the killing of his retainers if they were found in ‘disputed areas’, for instance in border zones between his territories and theirs. The key moment in this unfolding drama was the arrival of Drury to assume the presidency in July 1576. Two months earlier Apsley had been granted martial law authority across the entire province, by which Desmond would have been afforded at least a modicum of protection. Drury’s appearance stripped even that away, for he came armed with a commission of martial law that supplanted Apsley’s.134 As is well known, the inception of the Drury lord presidency was marked by a flood of executions of native soldiers in Munster. According to his own 130 C.A. Empey and Katharine Simms, ‘The ordinances of the White Earl of Ormond and the problem of coign in the later Middle Ages’, PRIA, 75C (1975), 161–87; David Heffernan (ed.), ‘Six tracts on coign and livery, c.1568–78’, AH, 45 (2014), 1–33. 131 For Sidney’s reliance on martial law, see David Edwards, ‘Ideology and experience: Spenser’s View and martial law in Ireland’, in Hiram Morgan (ed.), Political ideology in Ireland, 1541–1641 (Dublin, 1999), pp 127–57. 132 Irish fiants, ii, nos 2772, 2821, 2937, 3487. 133 Ibid., ii, Eliz. I, no. 2815. 134 Ibid., ii, no. 2868.

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account, between July 1576 and March 1578 Drury personally oversaw the killing of ‘above 400’ ‘by justice and martial law within this province’.135 It is not recorded how many more were slain by the other commissioners, Desmond’s enemies, but it may be that they never got much opportunity. Unable to retaliate if his retainers were killed for remaining in the borderlands, Desmond took the only other option available to him: he allowed all those threatened with summary execution in the disputed frontiers of cos. Cork, Waterford, Tipperary and Limerick to withdraw into Kerry, and the sanctuary of his liberty. Drury probably exaggerated the numbers involved when reporting Desmond’s action to London, claiming that the earl paraded around Kerry ‘with an unlawful company of warlike men … to the number of four thousand and more well furnished, besides a great number of rascals’, but the fact that Desmond’s private army remained intact demanded a response. This is the main reason why Drury entered Kerry when he did, in July 1577 and again the following December – not merely to hold court sessions and demonstrate his rights to jurisdiction there, as is usually supposed, but rather to defy the liberty’s transformation into a haven for opponents of his government. Twice in a few months the president and his legal officers rode into Tralee, their movements monitored by hundreds of armed and sullen men, an ‘evil and loose sort’. Desmond barely greeted him. Peace seemed unlikely, ‘in greater danger now to be overthrown’.136

VI

Between them, Drury and Sidney presented the sternest challenge to his power and authority that Desmond had experienced since his private war with Ormond and the Butlers in the early 1560s. While it is true that Perrot had posed a similar challenge during 1571–3, and may even have killed more people than Drury, he had encroached into the earldom at a time when Desmond was absent; he had also targeted fitz Maurice’s followers far more than he did the earl’s. Drury, in stark contrast, was defying Desmond to his face, and looked to target the adherents of the earl and his brothers at least as much as any other group. In Dublin, Sidney pretended innocent intentions but invariably supported the president. News of developments in other territories must have exacerbated Desmond’s sense of endangerment. In co. Galway, the earl of Clanricarde and his family had been subjected to heavy measures meted out by the new military governor of Connacht, Sir Nicholas Malby, while in co. Kilkenny the earl of Ormond and the 135 Drury to the privy council, 24 Mar. 1578 (TNA, SP 63/60/25). An extract from this important letter was published in W.M. Brady (ed.), State papers concerning the Irish church in the time of Queen Elizabeth (London, 1868), pp 24–5, but it omits much. See Edwards (ed.), Campaign journals, pp 22–8 for the full text. 136 Drury to the privy council, 15 Jan. 1578 (TNA, SP 63/60/3).

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Butlers were experiencing a sustained challenge to their autonomy by Sidney’s lieutenants Francis Lovell and Henry Harrington, and Drury encroached upon the liberty of Tipperary.137 It was as though the viceroy was intent on abolishing magnate power itself. The sudden death of the earl of Essex in Dublin in September 1576 was no less worrying. Rumours abounded that Leicester, Sidney’s brother-in-law, had had him poisoned.138 Though that was clearly untrue – and there is no evidence that Desmond ever believed it – Essex’s passing left Earl Garret bereft of a senior English advocate in Ireland with strong ties to the queen and her court. He was increasingly exposed. Observers wondered if he would finally waver. As before, however, Desmond held his nerve. In a replay of the events of 1573–4, he and his advisers looked to defy and undermine Drury’s power, and to chip away at the viceroy, Sidney, while maintaining an open line of communication with the royal court in England to advertise the earl’s continued loyalty and to protest his predicament. To keep those subject to him in line Desmond showed the sharp point of his sword to troublesome lesser lords such as Lixnaw. In August 1576, Desmond’s forces attacked Lixnaw’s estate with great violence, seizing the baron’s herds and killing some of his tenants, in order to stifle his efforts to use the re-emergent presidency to break free of the earl’s palatine jurisdiction in Kerry.139 The seneschal of Imokilly received similar treatment, compelled to pay for the maintenance of Desmond’s troops when the earl quartered a hundred horseboys with sixty horses on his lands in open defiance of Sidney’s proclamation against the use of coign and livery and other private military exactions.140 But of course Desmond was much cagier when dealing with Drury or other crown officers. Early in 1577 he indicated his readiness to cooperate with the collection of Drury’s army tax, the ‘cess’, but he was only playing for time. Immediately afterwards he wrote to Burghley and Leicester in London complaining of the burden this would place on the queen’s subjects across Munster. As he had done with Perrot in 1573, he now suggested that Drury was turning a blind eye to widespread abuses perpetrated on the peasantry by the forces under his command, unconscionably adding to the misery of the common man and sullying the reputation of the crown.141 And again Desmond succeeded in raising concerns at Whitehall. In May 1577, the privy council intervened, requiring Sidney to heed the earl’s complaints and to order an inquiry into the alleged misconduct of Drury’s troops in Munster.142 They also 137 Lennon, Sixteenth century Ireland, pp 248–9; Edwards, Ormond lordship, pp 215–20. 138 Terry Clavin, ‘Walter Devereux (1539–76), 1st earl of Essex’, DIB; J.J.N. McGurk, ‘Walter Devereux, 1st earl of Essex (1539–1576), nobleman’, ODNB. 139 Lixnaw to Sidney, 25 Aug. and 1 Sept. 1576 (TNA, SP 63/56/21, 23). Lixnaw caved in at the end of the year: Desmond’s protection, 30 Nov. 1576 (TNA, SP 63/56/54). 140 Seneschal to [Sidney?], 16 Nov. 1576 (TNA, SP 63/56/50); Sidney to the privy council, 27 Jan. 1577 (TNA, SP 63/57/5). 141 Desmond to Burghley, and to Leicester, 20 Mar. 1577 (TNA, SP 63/57/43–4). 142 Privy council to Sidney, 11 May 1577 (TNA, SP 63/58/15).

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wrote directly to Drury, warning him of the ‘dangerous consequences’ that might ensue for the state if the abuses committed by his soldiers went unchecked.143 This perhaps explains why Drury did not take a large force with him into Kerry in the following months, and also why he was careful to represent his provocative entry into the earl’s liberty as being motivated solely by his concern to see the queen’s jurisdiction upheld.144 It is unclear if Drury ever conducted an inquiry, but in January 1578, when he and Desmond met in Kilkenny to settle their differences the president admitted that the recent tensions between them were partly his fault. He had become uneasy, less sure of his ground. To prevent the threat of prosecution in the courts he procured a royal pardon from Sidney in April 1578.145 Desmond had succeeded in holding his nerve because he was no longer alone. Midway through 1577, Sidney and Drury had learned that for months Earl Garret had been sending packets of letters to the Black Earl of Ormond in London, for Ormond to distribute at court among Elizabeth’s main advisers.146 The circulation of Desmond’s grievances forced the privy council to intervene in Munster, as concerns grew over the destabilizing effect of Sidney and Drury’s approach to reforming the province. Accordingly when Desmond withdrew into Kerry and gave sanctuary to large numbers of Geraldine retainers there, he was trying to guarantee the avoidance of conflict as he awaited news from England. A heave against Sidney’s government was under way at court, led by Ormond and the earl of Kildare, but also involving several lesser lords and a delegation of the gentry and merchants of the Pale. The process took many months but by the beginning of 1578 it had effectively sealed Sidney’s fate, with allegations of financial malfeasance combining with those of political high-handedness and military intimidation to persuade Queen Elizabeth to dismiss him.147 Hence Sidney and Drury’s attempt to mollify Desmond at the Kilkenny meeting in January: both needed to be seen to be seeking the earl’s cooperation, and they hoped that by wooing him they might partly retrieve the situation, by dividing their opponents. Desmond played along, to maintain his claims to loyalty, and to see what he could get. Sidney agreed to further his petition for a new land grant in Kerry; Drury intimated he accepted the existence of the liberty of Kerry, and would seek no more authority in it than he had already done. A rapprochement of a kind was achieved. When Drury resumed his circuit of Munster in March 1578 he steered clear of Kerry, and when he reached Limerick, Desmond went to him ‘and accompanied me … with honourable terms’, vowing, Drury claimed, ‘to be wholly directed by me’.148 If Desmond 143 Privy council to Drury, n.d. May 1577 (Lambeth Palace, MS 628, fos 268v–269r). 144 Drury to privy council, 15 Jan. 1578 (TNA, SP 63/60/3). 145 Irish fiants, ii, Eliz. I, no. 3272. 146 Drury to Walsingham, 5 May 1577 (TNA, SP 63/58/9). 147 David Edwards, ‘A viceroy’s condemnation: matters of inquiry into the Sidney administration, 1578’, AH, 43 (2012), 1–24; Edwards, Ormond lordship, pp 223–5; Brady, Chief governors, pp 240–2. 148 Edwards (ed.), Campaign journals, p. 26.

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meant what (allegedly) he said, he took his time about it. Negotiations over the abolition of coign and livery did not even commence until the last week of October 1578, exactly a month after Sidney had finally left Ireland.149 Even then, despite Drury’s confidence that he could jolly Desmond along, there is no evidence that the earl ever actually abandoned the exaction. As Anthony McCormack has noted, Desmond declared his intention to end the system of coign and livery, but as events unfurled, he never had to fulfil the promise.150 A large army of private retainers remained active in his territories a year later.

VII

Ultimately, it was this more than anything else that doomed Desmond. In the early months of 1579 it appeared as though his position was strong and he was in command of his fate. The previous Christmas he and his countess had received warm letters from the queen, expressing Elizabeth’s pleasure at their ‘dutiful devotion towards us’ and undertaking to show them ‘the proof of our good meaning towards you’.151 After first sending a gift of cloth of gold to Countess Eleanor, a few weeks into the New Year Elizabeth rewarded the earl and his wife with the thing they most desired – possession of their son. By now a little English gentleman aged eight, James fitz Garret FitzGerald at last crossed the Irish Sea to be reunited with his parents, six years since they had last seen him.152 The future of the earldom seemed assured. Regarding the slow pace of negotiations for the reform of his territories, there was no longer any great sense of urgency. For months Sir William Drury had been gone from Munster, ensconced in Dublin castle following his appointment as lord justice, or acting viceroy, of the kingdom. The only negative development was a sudden ‘jar’ between the earl and his brother Sir John, by the beginning of January 1579.153 The precise reason for their dispute is not discernible from documents of the time, but a subsequent statement, written months later by Desmond himself, claims that ‘Sir John mortally hated’ Lord James, the eight-year-old heir to the earldom, and also James’s mother, Countess Eleanor.154 Evidently, then, the news of the boy’s imminent arrival in the earldom made Sir John consider his own position. Hitherto he had been Earl Garret’s unquestioned deputy within the family lordship, his number two in all things. He had helped restore Desmond to power in 1573, and played a key role in containing the threat of James fitz Maurice before 1575. He had taken charge of Desmond’s forces, and had assisted the earl in pursuing useful alliances with other lords, especially in Connacht. What was 149 Cal. Carew MSS, 1575–88, no. 109. 150 McCormack, Desmond, p. 143. 151 Walsingham letter-book, pp 29–30. 152 Chambers, As wicked a woman, p. 119. 153 Drury to Burghley, 6 Jan. 1579 (TNA, SP 63/65/5). 154 Desmond to [Perrot], 10 Oct. 1579 (TNA, SP 63/69/51).

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to be his future? Would Desmond’s negotiations with Drury over the abolition of coign and livery, stalled though they were, actually result in its abolition? And if so, what role would be left for Sir John? At issue here was something historians have often overlooked: the fact that in none of the communications between Desmond and the government since 1575 had Sir John ever been promised a role in provincial affairs once the much-mooted reforms were introduced. This was curious, to say the least. Viceroy Sidney admired Sir John, claiming he was much more able – read biddable – than Earl Garret, and in the 1560s had even encouraged Sir John to think of assuming greater power in the earldom. Moreover, when in 1575 the abolition of coign was completed in the neighbouring earldom of Ormond, the government had allowed the Black Earl to appoint his cousin Edmund Butler, Viscount Mountgarret as his deputy governor of co. Kilkenny and commander of the reformed English-style ‘shire force’.155 Likewise in the lordship of Fermoy in north co. Cork: in 1577 Sidney authorized David, Lord Roche to assume ‘the office of leader’ of the local forces whenever it was necessary to confront rebels in the area or to serve on government hostings.156 Sir John of Desmond was offered no such prospect. In the medium term, while the earl’s son and heir was still a child, he faced a gradual reduction in his status; in the longer term, once James fitz Garret was of age, he faced certain demotion. Sir John’s military status was closely intertwined with the question of his landholdings. In 1579, his principal possessions lay at Lisfinny and Mogeely on the Waterford/Cork border, and also at Mallow, between the Roche’s country in north co. Cork and the Gaelic districts further to the west.157 It was potentially a valuable estate, but it was not a secure one. Since the appointment of Henry Davells as constable of Dungarvan in 1574, Sir John’s position at Lisfinny had been largely undermined by Davells’s close cooperation with his local adversaries, the Powers of Curraghmore, and the FitzGeralds of the Decies.158 Their growing access to martial law authority under Davells’s direction had left Sir John further exposed, so much so that a large proportion of those Geraldine forces that headed to Kerry for safety in 1577 were probably his men. His holdings at Mallow, and at Kilcolman further north, were similarly threatened by Sidney’s support of Lord Roche and by the arrival in Cork in 1578 of a new presidential official, the provost marshal of Munster Arthur Carter.159 As provost, Carter was charged with the elimination of ‘idlemen’, the term applied to unlicensed soldiers in order to banish or execute them in line with English antivagrancy legislation.160 The advent of Carter put added pressure on Earl Garret 155 Collins (ed.), Letters and memorials, i, pp 134–5, 147. 156 Irish fiants, ii, Eliz. I, no. 3116. 157 Certificate of Desmond castles, 1580 (TNA, SP 63/72/7i); K.W. Nicholls, ‘The development of lordship in county Cork, 1300–1600’, in Cork history and society, p. 190. 158 Irish fiants, ii, nos 2517, 2530, 2746; co. Waterford commission, n.d., c.1575 (Lambeth Palace, MS 616, fos 114r–115r). 159 Cal. Carew MSS, 1575–88, no. 109; Irish fiants, ii, no. 3595. 160 Patrick Fitzgerald, ‘Poverty and vagrancy in early modern Ireland’ (PhD, Queen’s

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to proceed with the abandonment of coign and livery. Sir John, then, faced losing his military command; and without his men it would be impossible to defend his lands from his enemies. A possible way out of the impasse was for Earl Garret to cede him additional lands elsewhere in the earldom, to compensate him for his difficulties. But that was to reckon without the countess. According to the seventeenth-century Geraldine historian Thomas Russell, jealousies within the Desmond family were greatly inflamed by Countess Eleanor, who through endless ‘persuasions, tears and implorings’ convinced the earl ‘not to dismember his patrimony, but rather to leave it whole and entire to his only son James fitz Garret’.161 Sir John could expect nothing extra. And he had a further grievance, one which had nothing to do with Earl Garret but may have played a part in turning him from being a pragmatist like his brother into someone bearing a strong and growing antipathy for English government. In 1577, the Irish Council had learned that Sir John hoped to marry Mary Burke, daughter of the earl of Clanricarde.162 The fact that he was already married was not necessarily an impediment: Irish lords customarily pensioned off or ‘put away’ wives when they wanted a new bride (the Burkes were especially prone to this practice).163 The government disapproved, wary of the effect the proposed marriage might have by uniting the two most powerful lineages on the western Atlantic seaboard. However, the fact that the marriage was blocked is only part of the story. Equally pertinent is what is known about Sir John’s intended bride. In December 1576, despite being the daughter of an earl and under a royal protection, Mary Burke had been taken prisoner by an English officer in co. Galway. She was committed to a dungeon in Loughrea castle, where she remained for ten weeks ‘in very miserable condition with her hand [chained] over her head in a handlock’. It was after this ordeal that Sir John of Desmond offered to marry her. The English official was Sir Nicholas Malby.164 Whether Desmond realized his brother was on the brink is a matter of speculation. All that can be said is that when James fitz Maurice landed at Dingle on 18 July 1579 Sir John waited less than two weeks before joining him in rebellion. It may be that because fitz Maurice was accompanied by foreign troops and by the papal envoy Dr Nicholas Sander, Sir John calculated that rebellion was worth the risk. Though fitz Maurice’s force was small, it appeared that reinforcements were expected. Besides, Sir John had an army already to hand, far bigger than fitz Maurice’s: the Desmond soldiers, whose very future was shrouded with uncertainty as the abolition of coign and livery remained under discussion. But personal grudges played a part too. The government’s decision to send Henry Davells into Kerry to help the earl contain fitz Maurice would University Belfast, 1994), pp 89–97. 161 Samuel Hayman (ed.), ‘Unpublished Geraldine documents, 1’, JRSAI, 10 (1858–9). 162 Irish council to Eliz. I, 12 Sept. 1577 (TNA, SP 63/59/6). 163 Nicholls, Gaelic Ire. (2nd ed.), pp 83–4. 164 Note of Malby’s abuses, n.d., c.1580 (TNA, SP 63/72/24).

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have stung Sir John. Why had the government not asked him to help? Had he not beaten fitz Maurice before? It was as though Davells was chosen only to thwart him. Provost Marshal Carter’s subsequent appearance with Davells at Tralee was particularly unsettling for the rank and file Desmond soldiers, considering his role as their possible exterminator. Finally, there was Sir Nicholas Malby. On 27 July, just four days before Sir John of Desmond commenced his rebellion by murdering Davells and Carter in Tralee, Lord Justice Drury let it be known that Malby would be assisting him in the suppression of fitz Maurice and the foreign invaders in Munster, once he had ‘set order’ in Connacht.165

VIII

The final part of the saga is in some respects the easiest to explain – Desmond’s decision, in October, to follow his brother Sir John into revolt. The chronological outline of Earl Garret’s slow slide into rebellion is well recorded. At first he tried to smother fitz Maurice, but his efforts had little effect, undone by Sir John’s actions and the unpredictability of the Desmond forces; unable to control his brother and the soldiers he quickly lost the confidence of crown officials in Ireland; he delivered his son as a hostage to Drury, yet his behaviour failed to reassure the authorities; eventually, a day after Drury’s sudden death, he was provoked into military retaliation by Malby’s appearance with a large force at Askeaton; though his hatred of Malby drew him into the rebels’ orbit he still held back, agreeing to talks with Ormond as a royal intermediary at the end of October, only to be proclaimed a rebel by the new lord justice, Sir William Pelham, days later. Then, and only then, did he enter fully into a war against the crown. Given that this is mostly common knowledge, described in various narrative accounts of the rebellion,166 all that remains is to emphasize a few of the factors that underpinned Desmond’s fate that are not always fully appreciated. In the first place the earl was as much engulfed by the government’s reaction to the arrival in Kerry of the former Oxford scholar Dr Nicholas Sander as he was by its response to fitz Maurice. Fitz Maurice, it is true, was feared for his apparent talent for political leadership, and royal intelligencers had carefully tracked his movements in Europe since his flight from Ireland in 1575. But by wading ashore with Sander as papal envoy, fitz Maurice had put his challenge to royal power – and to Desmond – into an entirely different order. Since the very beginning of Elizabeth’s reign Dr Sander had been at the forefront of English 165 Walsingham letter-book, pp 100–1. He was expected at Limerick by 2 Aug., but did not arrive until 8 Aug. (ibid., pp 114, 118). 166 Hayes McCoy, ‘Completion of the Tudor conquest’, pp 105–6; Morton, Elizabethan Ireland, pp 53–5; Cyril Falls, Elizabeth’s Irish wars (London, 1950), pp 127–30; McCormack, Desmond, pp 145–6.

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Catholic resistance to the queen. From various sanctuaries on the Continent, he had denounced her in print as a heretic and a Jezebel, and had urged successive popes to deny her the right to rule – urgings that had not been wasted.167 In the wake of Elizabeth’s excommunication by the papal bull Regnans in excelsis in 1570, her ministers in England had had to take an increasingly stern line against the threat of conspiracy among a large domestic Catholic population.168 At Whitehall, Sander was hated and feared in equal measure. In 1577, the privy council had gone into a tailspin when one of his letters to Rome was intercepted wherein he wrote openly of the need for an invasion of England.169 When he landed in Kerry with fitz Maurice in 1579 the government entered full emergency mode. Should he and fitz Maurice be successful in Ireland, many thought, England might be next. Had fitz Maurice landed without Sander, the earl of Desmond might have been allowed to proceed against the invasion after his own fashion. Sander’s presence guaranteed he would be afforded no such leeway. The proof of this was in Drury’s choice of Sir Nicholas Malby to help him implement the initial military response to the landing of fitz Maurice and Sander. Lord Justice Drury was a militant Protestant who in his time as lord president in Munster had not shied away from attacking Catholic religious ‘superstition’, punishing recusants, or hunting – and executing – priests.170 When fitz Maurice arrived, Drury, whose health was failing, could think of no one better qualified to deal with the threat than Malby, who shared his religious outlook. There were alternatives. Drury could have relied upon the most experienced English military officers in situ in Munster, Henry Davells and William Apsley, giving them senior commands to take charge of the emergency. He refrained, however, because, though Englishmen and with many years of service between them, both were Catholics.171 At a time of open religious confrontation a strong Protestant was needed, to stay the course and do whatever might be necessary. It was Malby’s combination of military prowess with rigid Protestantism that most recommended him. He could be trusted to kill Catholics and stop the contagion spreading. 167 T.F. Mayer, ‘Nicholas Sander (c.1530–1581), religious controversialist’, ODNB. 168 Stephen Alford, The watchers: a secret history of the reign of Elizabeth I (London, 2012); Francis Edwards, Plots and plotters in the reign of Elizabeth I (Dublin, 2002); Peter Lake and Michael Questier, The antichrist’s lewd hat (New Haven, 2002); William J. Sheils, ‘The Catholic community’, and Paul E.J. Hammer, ‘The Catholic threat and the military response’, both in Susan Doran and Norman Jones (eds), The Elizabethan world (London and New York, 2011), pp 254–68, 629–43. 169 A copy is in the papers of Robert Beale: Sander to Allen, 6 Nov. 1577 (BL, Add. MS 48029, fo. 50r). 170 Cal. Carew MSS, 1575–88, no. 109; Clodagh Tait, ‘“The just vengeance of God”: reporting the violent deaths of persecutors in early modern Ireland’, in David Edwards, Pádraig Lenihan and Clodagh Tait (eds), Age of atrocity: violence and political conflict in early modern Ireland (Dublin, 2007), pp 133–6. 171 For Davells, see David Edwards, ‘A haven of popery: English Catholic migration to Ireland in the age of plantations’, in Alan Ford and John McCafferty (eds), The origins of sectarianism in early

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In the event Malby did not disappoint. His letters from the co. Limerick theatre, as he commenced the process of confronting the followers of Earl Garret, Sir John, and fitz Maurice, testify to a deep personal conviction that he was not just fighting rebels, but evil itself. Indeed, early in October, setting out the day after his victory at Monasternenagh, he wrote to Secretary Walsingham to warn him to prepare the queen and the privy council for a torrent of complaints against him for what he was about to do. ‘I can not but follow this service with all extremity’. By his account, his men ransacked churches, destroyed religious images, burned down farms, destroyed the crops in the fields, killed wounded and unarmed prisoners, besides many (uncounted) civilians. Most of all they stalked Desmond. Malby simply could not believe that the earl was trying to stay loyal: ‘He is mad and senseless’; he must be rooted out, ‘or else her Majesty shall every year [be] in danger to be supplanted by him’. ‘By God’s grace’, he swore, he would make Desmond ‘nobody’, for ‘there is no good part in him to make a good subject of ’.172 It is easy to portray Sir Nicholas as a dangerous militant. But his religious fundamentalism only partly explains his actions. He was motivated too by a genuine fear of the havoc that the Munster Geraldines, with all their foreign helpers, might wreak along the western Atlantic coast. The various political ties of the Geraldines to the Clanricarde and Mayo Burkes tended to suggest to him that a much larger conspiracy was afoot. Additionally, there was the alarming report that the Galway Uí Fhlaithbheartaigh (O’Flahertys) had sent a force to Dingle within days of fitz Mautrice’s landing. Should the Geraldine rebels succeed in breaking out of Kerry and igniting the neighbouring regions, Malby feared that his claim to be an effective manager of Connacht and its troublesome lineages would be revealed as mere vainglory.173 Lastly, there is Desmond’s own desperate predicament. Despite allegations to the contrary by suspicious government officials, he did try to oppose the fitz Maurice/Sander landing and prevent the rebellion spreading among his followers and adherents. Indeed, in less fraught times his earliest piece of service would probably have been enough to reassure all but the most implacable of his critics of his loyalty to the state and the Protestant established church: namely his role in the arrest of the Catholic bishop of Mayo, Patrick Ó hÉilidhe (O’Healy), a known associate of fitz Maurice, who put ashore with two other clergy at Smerwick shortly before fitz Maurice’s coming. Intercepting them and inviting them to Askeaton, Desmond and his countess tipped off Drury of their arrival, after which they were arrested in Limerick, tortured, and executed.174 modern Ireland (Cambridge, 2005), p. 119; for Apsley, see Roger B. Manning, Religion and society in Elizabethan Sussex (Leicester, 1969), pp 135, 155, 244, 268. 172 Malby to Walsingham, 4 Oct. 1579 (TNA, SP 63/69/48). 173 It is generally overlooked that in Oct. 1579, immediately after his swearing-in the new lord justice, Sir William Pelham was persuaded to leave the Munster fighting to Ormond, in order to accompany Malby on a campaign to restore presidential authority in Connacht. 174 Benignus Millett, ‘Patrick

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When fitz Maurice and Sander subsequently arrived at Dingle on 18 July he again notified Drury and, while awaiting Henry Davells to join him, he gathered his personal forces, before confronting fitz Maurice at Smerwick six days later. On 29 July, the two armies clashed, but without a clear outcome. This is where he was when his brother Sir John murdered Davells and Carter at Tralee on the night of 1 August. News of Sir John’s action caused the earl to panic. Riding to Tralee the following day he met with Justice Myagh, who had witnessed the killings. Myagh shared the earl’s fear that Sir John next intended to kill his eightyear-old son and heir, James fitz Garret, and also Countess Eleanor; to protect them Desmond headed straight to Askeaton. In doing so he abandoned his watch on fitz Maurice and opened the way to allegations of double dealing.175 Throughout August he remained in co. Limerick, but with English forces gathering his situation became more complicated and his attitude less predictable. Following fitz Maurice’s death Drury wanted to lead a large force into Kerry to destroy Sir John of Desmond’s power and locate the legate Sander; the earl strenuously objected, throwing a tantrum in which reportedly he swore ‘rather than Englishmen should come to Dingle he would raze the town’. Desmond’s purpose in doing this was to prevent those of his servants and followers who still obeyed him, but were unnerved by the English military menace, going over en masse to Sir John on the appearance of Drury and Malby, both reviled figures, in Kerry. Drury perceived his outburst very differently.176 After mediation the two men seemed to recommence cooperation. Meeting at Limerick, Desmond presented a written plan for the final reduction of the rebellion, proposing that he and the native lords loyal to the crown – not English forces – play the leading role. Drury took delivery of the document and then had the earl arrested, demanding that the earl’s son and heir be handed over as a hostage to guarantee his loyalty.177 The earl’s ‘plat’ was objectionable; worse, it was dangerous. By advocating that Irish Catholic lords take charge of operations against Catholic rebels and invaders it was possible to view it as a ploy to isolate the forces of the Protestant crown. Moreover, Drury could not have accepted it because to do so would have implied he accepted that the on-going crisis was to some extent his responsibility. As Desmond later recounted, within hours of his arrest the Geraldine forces still loyal to him divided down the middle: ‘My men hearing thereof scattered, and for the most part fled to the Traitors, whereby they being before daunted were then with 400 persons increased, and my force by so much weakened.’178 Emboldened, Sir John pressed home his advantage, ambushing a detachment of Drury’s forces at Springfield in the Limerick countryside. The rebellion gained O’Healy, OFM, and Conn O’Rourke, OFM’, in Patrick J. Corish and Benignus Millett OFM (ed.), The Irish martyrs (Dublin, 2005), pp 33–53. 175 Desmond to Perrot, 10 Oct. 1579 (TNA, SP 63/69/51). 176 Walsingham letter-book, pp 166–71. 177 Ibid., pp 165–6. 178 Desmond to Perrot, 10 Oct. 1579 (TNA, SP 63/69/51).

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further impetus. When weeks later Sir Nicholas Malby assumed military command in Munster, he was encouraged to attack Earl Garret because so many of the earl’s personal retainers had been identified in the rebel forces that confronted him.179 Tellingly, even at this point Desmond still hoped for delivery. As in 1573–4 and 1577–8 he attempted to defend his position and minimize official interference in his affairs by maintaining open lines of communication with Whitehall. He had received at least two letters from the queen, the first late in the summer praising his service against fitz Maurice,180 the second sometime before October, also, reportedly, a ‘favourable letter’.181 Though Drury had dashed off a warning to Elizabeth and the privy council at the start of September that ‘the earl of Desmond will rebel’,182 this alarming message had been disregarded, contradicted by subsequent reports from others in Ireland. Hence, on 25 September, Secretary-of-State Walsingham had written to advise Drury that the queen expected the Geraldine rebellion to soon be over, as Desmond seemed unlikely to stir.183 The earl’s own actions seemed to bear this out. About the time that Walsingham wrote, Desmond’s remaining forces killed five of the rebels in co. Limerick, ‘practisers’, he claimed, with Sir John; a few days later, though holding himself aloof at Askeaton in case he was arrested again, he had the countess bring his son and heir to Drury at Limerick as a guarantee of his loyalty. Yet Drury and his officers were increasingly disinclined to trust Desmond. His killing of rebels was dismissed as a subterfuge, his delivery of his son a mere trick to stop Sir John of Desmond and Dr Sander smuggling the boy overseas ‘as a pledge into Spain’. The fact that he did not want his son sent to Spain was deemed immaterial. For Drury and his advisers what really mattered was that Desmond appeared to have allowed the influence of his traitorous brother and the pope’s envoy to grow so much that he was powerless to stop them and had to resort to sneaking his son out of Askeaton in order to get him away from their clutches.184 From a lengthy letter that Desmond wrote on 10 October it is clear that he hid himself away at Askeaton during these critical weeks because he was awaiting royal intervention. Addressed to his former foe Sir John Perrot, who had been made ‘Admiral of the narrow seas’ to guard the southern Irish coast against foreign invasion, the letter urged Perrot to further Desmond’s plea for support to the queen and her council, as Drury, Malby, and other senior officials remained deaf to his plight and by their aggressive actions were only making his situation worse.185 The letter, significantly, was written immediately after Malby had raided the Askeaton estate, besieging the earl in his castle, and destroying the 179 Walsingham letter-book, pp 200–4. 180 Ibid., p. 109. 181 Ibid., p. 194. 182 Ibid., p. 148. 183 Ibid., pp 186–7. 184 Ibid., p. 195. 185 Ibid., p. 132; Desmond to Perrot, 10 Oct. 1579 (TNA, SP 63/69/51).

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adjacent abbey, chief burial place of generations of Desmond earls. Malby had made a point of desecrating the tomb of Desmond’s first wife, Joan FitzGerald, who also was the mother of the Black Earl of Ormond. Desmond saw his chance. He calculated that Malby’s behaviour would offend Perrot’s sense of honour. ‘These dealings I thought good to signify unto you, desiring you as you are a gentleman to certify thereof unto her Majesty and to the LLs of the Council: nothing doubting but you will procure speedy redress for revenge hereof, as also friend me in my good causes’. To ensure his letter reached Perrot, he sent it first to Ormond, and in a covering note provided added lurid detail of what Malby’s troops had done to Countess Joan’s tomb. Perrot and Ormond were in high standing with the queen, ideal intermediaries; moreover, Desmond reckoned, once she learned of the Askeaton depredations, the queen would be bound to take great offence at Malby, for Countess Joan, as Ormond’s mother, was a kinswoman of the monarch. Better, then, for him to avoid full-scale military retaliation against his persecutor, and to try to wait things out, as he had done before. But time was working against him: government records for parts of the autumn of 1579 contain reports of ‘extreme foul weather’, unseasonable sailing conditions and interrupted shipping between England and southern Ireland.186 Two weeks passed, then three, after Desmond wrote to Perrot of the Askeaton attack, but still there was no response from the queen. By the end of October, Earl Garret’s nerves were wearing thin. Having assumed that Malby had overstepped the mark, and would be hauled back, Desmond had to look on as Malby sent more troops into his territories, to commit further outrages; indeed the earl believed that Malby intended to kill him. Ormond made one last effort to intervene, on 28–9 October, but he found Desmond disillusioned and resentful.187 The Geraldine earl’s final missive as a subject of the crown, on 31 October, saw him demanding the right to send a messenger bearing his complaints, unmolested, to Whitehall. He trusted only the queen and her council to treat him fairly, but despaired of being heard. His short letter ended on a note of bitter sarcasm: ‘I will remain as true hearted a subject to her Majesty as any one that seeketh to undo me.’188 To persuade Desmond to surrender, the new lord justice, Pelham, was persuaded by Malby to lead a large force to Adare, another of the earl’s estates, where Malby had established a garrison. Desmond, apparently, watched on from less than a mile away, while a Geraldine force that included his butler offered to skirmish. Returning from the fray, again in Malby’s company, Pelham proclaimed Desmond ‘in the highest degree of treason’ on 2 November 1579.189 To the very last Desmond continued to maintain that he had not rebelled, and to 186 Cal. Carew MSS, 1575–88, no. 203; Walsingham letter-book, pp 192, 194, 220–1; Edwards (ed.), Campaign journals, p. 42. 187 Cal. Carew MSS, 1575–88, nos 140–1. 188 Ibid., nos 144, 146.

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protest his loyalty to the queen; the proclamation, followed immediately by another royal expedition, cut short any prospect of a negotiated settlement.

* * * Arguably the most significant fact about Desmond’s being pushed into rebellion is that in London Queen Elizabeth was enraged when she learned that Pelham had proclaimed him a traitor. On 28 November, she wrote the new lord justice a stinging rebuke for his action, which had succeeded in escalating the war in Munster rather than ending it. Desmond, she recognized, had been pressed too hard.190 Reading between the lines, it seems likely that the content of the earl’s letter of 10 October to Perrot had finally been passed on to the queen, six or seven weeks after it had been written. One wonders how events might have unfolded if news of the letter had reached the queen much sooner? Was the slowness of its delivery due chiefly to the bad weather at sea, or had Perrot – or someone else – delayed passing it on, and if so, why? Perhaps careful investigation of the circulation of government papers during October 1579 will help solve this puzzle, but whether that is possible or not one thing seems certain: Desmond become a rebel not because he was ‘irresolute’, but because he was given no choice by crown officers determined to crush him, for reasons of their own. It is more than a little ironic that Elizabeth I should have become so angry about the outbreak of an avoidable rebellion in Ireland. From the beginning of her reign, her rule in the country was punctuated with a series of avoidable rebellions, and would continue to be so for many years to come.191 This is an issue that historians need to investigate in greater detail. No less pressing, however, is the question of why Elizabeth seemed surprised to discover that her senior-most officials had adopted an attitude towards Desmond that was completely at odds with her own efforts to reassure him, since 1573. Successive viceroys and lords president had been informed of her wishes to mollify Earl Garret, only for those wishes to be repeatedly ignored. Their evident freedom of action belied the supposedly contractual basis of their appointments. The queen’s inability – or was it disinclination? – to control her senior officers in Ireland more rigorously greatly complicated the efforts of embattled lords like Desmond to negotiate their way out of a looming confrontation. In Desmond’s case his earlier successes in negotiating with the royal court while blocking viceregal and presidential encroachments seemed only to guarantee that he would face further challenges, more aggressive than before. Suffice it to say, then, until much more work is 189 Edwards (ed.), Campaign journals, pp 41–3. 190 Cal. Carew MSS, 1575–88, no. 208. 191 David Edwards, ‘Ireland: security and conquest’, in Doran and Jones (eds), Elizabethan world, pp 196–8.

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done on the conduct and character of the government’s relations with the territorial lordships and the lords who ruled them, historians should think twice before accepting as accurate official reports of those relations in which the benevolence of viceroys, presidents, or other senior crown officers was presumed – all the more so if the lords being discussed in the reports were presented as being too dim or too backward to see sense.

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The myth of ‘Silken Thomas’

C I A R A N B R A DY

For some reason for which only a speculative answer can be offered, the Geraldines – and especially the main branches of Kildare and Desmond – have proven to be peculiarly susceptible to the process of mythification in Irish history. To list a few of the most prominent in chronological order, there is the myth, or set of myths, surrounding Gearóid Iarla, third earl of Desmond (discussed by Katharine Simms, above); the stories of defiance and bravery associated with Gerald (Gearóid Mór), the ‘Great Earl’ of Kildare; the extraordinary story of the brief historical appearance of ‘Silken Thomas’, the sobriquet attached to Thomas Lord Offaly, tenth earl of Kildare; the stories of the sanctity of James fitz Maurice FitzGerald; the ghost stories concerning the reappearance of Gerald the last earl of Desmond; accounts of the dubious necromantic experiments of Gerald, the eleventh or ‘Wizard’ earl of Kildare; rumours concerning the life and death of Gerald, the Súgán earl of Desmond; and marvels concerning Eleanor, ‘the old countess of Desmond’, said to have lived for 120 years.1 Though myths of this kind, persistent but unverifiable by actual historical evidence, have occasionally been attached to representatives of other great Irish families – for example the stories composed about Seán an Díomais Ó Néill (Shane O’Neill the Proud) and Gráinne Mhaol (Granuaile or Grace O’Malley) – no other great dynasty, neither the Butlers, nor the Burkes, nor the O’Neills, has proven to be so persistently susceptible to, or attractive for, the processes of mythification as the Geraldines.2 The reasons why this should have been the case are not easily discovered and it seems likely that they are better explored through the sophisticated techniques of the anthropologist and the social psychologist, rather than the mundane methods of the historian. But one partial explanation, I would like to suggest, is to be found in the peculiarly bifurcated nature of the Geraldine experience in Irish history as a whole, and most particularly within the crucible of the sixteenth century. In this turbulent period, the experience of the Desmond Geraldines, as is well known and as David Edwards describes in this volume, closely paralleled that of the majority of the great Gaelic dynasties: that 1 FitzGerald, Geraldines, is a convenient repository of the substance of most of such myths. 2 Ciaran Brady, Shane O’Neill (2nd ed. Dublin, 2016), ch. 1, ‘The legend of Shane the Proud’; Anne Chambers, Granuaile: Ireland’s pirate queen, Grace O’Malley, c.1530–1603 (Dublin, 1979; 2nd revised ed., 2003), passim.

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is, having first entered into complex negotiations with the Tudor administration with a view of achieving their gradual assimilation within the legal framework of English government in Ireland, the Desmond Geraldines found it increasingly difficult to reach or sustain a final accommodation with the crown. Several crises and revolts ensued until, like the O’Conors, the O’Neills and the O’Donnells, their resistance was violently suppressed, their lands confiscated and their surviving members forced into permanent exile as another element among the Irish wild geese.3 The experience of the Kildare Geraldines proved, however, to be altogether different. These unrepentant supporters of the Yorkist cause in the late fifteenth century were among the first of the great dynasties to face the challenge of the Tudors in the sixteenth; and the first to launch a full-scale rebellion proclaiming their refusal to reach an accommodation with Tudor reform.4 They lost, of course – their leadership annihilated, their lands confiscated, and their surviving members forced into exile. But, as is also well known, though sometimes conveniently forgotten, they came back. Pardoned within a decade of the suppression of the rebellion, Gerald, son of Gearóid Óg, the ninth earl, by his second wife, was restored in blood by Queen Mary in 1554, and subsequently restored to all lands, titles, rights of lordships, dues etc., in so full a manner as was to be confirmed by statute in the Irish Parliament in 1569. Though there were to be rocky passages ahead, most notably for the eleventh earl in the early 1570s and again in the early 150s, the Kildare Geraldines, as Vincent Carey has put it, ‘survived’ the Tudors.5 Indeed they became so integrated into English rule in Ireland that the fifteenth earl was further raised in the peerage as first duke of Leinster in 1766. Under that title the family has continued down to the present, the present ninth duke being expected to be succeeded by his nephew, Edward FitzGerald, the duke’s own son, ominously titled Thomas Lord Offaly, having been killed tragically in a car crash in 1997.6 It is this sharp, and in some quarters embarrassing, contrast between the sorry fate of one branch of the Geraldines and the remarkable survival of the other that has in no small part encouraged the mythification of individual Geraldines – the poet earl, the great earl, Silken Thomas, the wizard earl, the old Countess, and the rest. For the accentuation of distinctive individual characteristics – the genius of one, the brave defiance of another, the vanity of a third, the mystery of a fourth, and even the longevity of a fifth – has helped significantly in bringing about the complex and subtle effect of disrupting and diminishing the notion of the Geraldines as a coherent and generic group, as 3 For the most recent detailed study, see McCormack, Desmond. 4 McCorristine, Revolt. 5 Vincent P. Carey, Surviving the Tudors: the ‘Wizard’ earl of Kildare and English rule in Ireland, 1537–1586 (Dublin, 2002). 6 On the later history of the Kildare Geraldines, see Aspects of Irish aristocratic life; and, in detail, Terence Dooley, The decline and fall of the dukes of Leinster, 1872–1948: love, war, debt and madness (Dublin, 2014).

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typically rebels, nationalists or leaders of the people, while preserving a residual sense of their continuing significance in Irish history. It may be possible to test this suggestion concerning the subtle uses of myth in Irish history in relation to any of the figures so characterized. But the most interesting of such test cases of mythification, both because of the immediate political purposes which it was deployed to serve, and also because of the broader and longer ideological uses for which it was to be employed in later centuries is the story of the curious fabrication of the myth of ‘Silken Thomas’.

I

Though it appeared relatively early, the description of Thomas Lord Offaly as a naive and self-regarding young man, whose vain self-indulgence in having his horse-boys decked out in livery of embroidered silk earned him the sobriquet ‘Silken Thomas’ among his fawning followers, finds no foundation whatever in the surviving materials of the 1530s. Those materials, though they are relatively rich in regard to the outbreak, course and suppression of the rebellion, and though they have much to say about Offaly’s conduct, give little mention of his character, and offer nothing at all pertaining to silk.7 Only one adverse comment on his character and youth is recorded to the effect that ‘he is taken to be young and wilful, and most to this time ordered to light counsel’; but this is to be found in an anonymous and propagandist memorandum on Ireland, which is strongly anti-Geraldine in tone and prompted by the earl of Kildare’s decision to appoint Offaly as his deputy on his summons to court early in 1534. Thereafter, all of the relevant sources notice Thomas’s ruthlessness, his shrewd manipulation of other parties among both the English and the Gaelic Irish, and his determination to develop the revolt into a papal crusade.9 Neither at the time of his surrender nor of his attainder and execution is there any further speculation on the character of the traitor Lord Thomas. Nothing further concerning the character of Offaly is recorded in the English state papers. And in alternative sources closest to the events, there is no hint of personality disorder either. Thus in the compilations known as the Annals of Connacht, whose latest entries may have been made in the mid-sixteenth century, Offaly is recorded as an honourable and brave figure properly seeking 7 The bulk of the material pertaining to the Kildare rebellion is to be found in the UK National Archive’s ‘State Papers’ collections, supplemented by some documents in Lambeth Palace. The former have been extensively, and for the most part expertly, edited and printed in SP Hen. VIII, vol. 2; the latter in Cal. Carew MSS, vol. 1. 8 ‘Report on the state of Ireland’, in SP Hen. VIII, ii, p. 13. 9 Steven Ellis’s authoritative concluding comment in his sketch of Offaly is entirely in accordance with the contemporary evidence: ‘He acquitted himself well militarily, but the political difficulties he faced in 1534–5 would have taxed even the most experienced politician’ (Steven G. Ellis, ‘Fitzgerald, Thomas [Silken Thomas], tenth earl of Kildare (1513–1537)’, ODNB).

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revenge for the murder of his father (which the Annals appear to accept as a fact). He was overwhelmed by superior forces, but ‘he put up a good fight’. ‘There never lived’, says the annalist, ‘of all the Galls of Ireland, a man of his years whose death was a greater loss, both as regards humanity and military leadership, than this Thomas’.10 Instead, it is only after a long silence that the myth of ‘Silken Thomas’ makes its first appearance in 1577, some forty-three years after the events of 1534, in an extensive passage in Richard Stanihurst’s contribution to Raphael Holinshed’s Chronicles, comprising … the description and historie of England … Ireland … and Scotland, first published in that year.11 Its uses then were obvious. Engaged on a project to exonerate the now rehabilitated house of Kildare from the taint of treason, Stanihurst sought to diminish both the causes and the consequences of the rebellion of 1534 by attributing it to the actions of a rash and immature young man. Stanihurst, indeed, interrupted the course of his narrative to supply an extensive character assessment: [The Lord Thomas was one] on whom nature poured beauty and fortune by birth bestowed nobility, which, had it been well employed, and were it not that his rare gifts had been blemished by his later evil qualities, he would have proved an imp worthy to have been ingrafted in so honourable a stock. He was of stature tall and personable, in countenance amiable, a white face, and withal somewhat ruddy, delicately in each limb featured, a rolling tongue and a rich utterance, of nature flexible and kind, very soon carried where he fancied, easily with submission appeased … in matters of importance a headlong hotspur, yet nonetheless taken for a young man of wit, were it not … that a fool had the keeping thereof.12 This was the individual who was driven by passion and a sense of his own honour to listen recklessly to false rumours of his father’s murder and then, by the advice of flatterers, to take actions from which there was no retreat:

10 AC, 1535.10. 11 The general textual history of Stanihurst’s contributions to the two editions of Holinshed’s Chronicles is complex and indeterminate. For a lucid and authoritative analysis, see Colm Lennon, ‘“A iagged hystorie of a ragged wealpublicke”: Holinshed’s Irish Chronicle’, in Paulina Kewes, Ian W. Archer and Felicity Heal (eds), The Oxford handbook to Holinshed’s Chronicles (Oxford, 2012); on Stanihurst’s relationship with the house of Kildare in general, see Colm Lennon, ‘The making of the Geraldines: the Kildare Fitzgeralds and their early historians’, in Aspects of Irish aristocratic life, pp 71–8. While the Chronicles are available in several editions and reprints, including an online version available at EEBO: Early English books on-line (http://eebo.chadwyck.com/home), for ease and accuracy of citation, reference is made here to the extraction of Stanihurst’s contributions in Liam Miller and Eileen Power (eds), Holinshed’s Irish chronicle, 1577 (Dublin, 1979). I have modernized the spelling in quotations from the text. 12 Miller and Power (eds), Holinshed’s Irish chronicle, p. 286.

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The Lord Thomas being youthful, rash and headlong, and assuring himself that the knot of all the force of Ireland was twisted under his girdle, was by Delahide his counsel so far carried as he was resolved to cast all on six and seven.13 This was how Stanihurst introduced the famous scene at the meeting of the Irish council at St Mary’s abbey, Dublin. Bursting into the council chamber with a large number men, all armed to the teeth, and ‘silence with security’ thus ‘commanded’, the Lord Thomas declared: I am none of Henry his deputie. I am his foe. I have more mind to conquer than to govern; to meet him in the field than to serve him in office.14 At this the lord chancellor and archbishop of Armagh, George Cromer, rose in horror and dismay to dissuade the reckless youth from the irrevocable step he was about to take. Cromer’s plea is retailed by Stanihurst at length over several pages of reported direct speech.15 Thomas should heed the words of a man whose loyalty to the Geraldines is long proven; the rumours of his father’s killing are no more than rumours, and should not be credited until verified; even so, it stands with the duty and allegiance of a good subject (from whom I hope in God you mean not to dissever yourself) not to spurn and kick against the prince but contrariwise … to fear him … to honour him … to obey him … For sacred is the name of a king and odious is the name of a rebellion.16 Thomas’s rebellion is not only morally wrong, it is doomed to failure. King Henry is such a powerful sovereign: ‘He tameth kings, judge you that he masy not rule his own subjects?’.17 He will move against the rebellion and, when he does, all of Thomas’s sometime-friends and adherents will desert him, and alone Thomas shall have brought total ruin on his house. Despite Archbishop Cromer’s suitably proleptic pleadings, Thomas was implacable: My Lord Chancellor, I come not hither to take advice what I should do, but to give you to understand what I mind to do … I may not, nor will not hold him [Henry] for my king … and catch as catch may, I will take the Market as it riseth, and will choose rather to die with valiantness and liberty than live under king Henry in bondage and villainy.1 Such speeches were not reported by Stanihurst with any tinge of sympathy or extenuation. ‘With these words’ – which he glosses as ‘shameful’, ‘slanderous’ 13 Ibid., p. 262. 14 Ibid., pp 262–3. p. 264. 18 Ibid., pp 265–6.

15 Ibid., pp 263–5.

16 Ibid., pp 263–4.

17 Ibid.,

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and ‘foul’ – ‘he rendered up the sword and flung away like a bedlam being guarded with his brutish drove of brainsick rebels’.19 The scene at St Mary’s was cleverly devised to serve several purposes. In addition to demonstrating Thomas’s arrogance and foolishness (those references to gambling), and so insinuating that his rebellion was nothing more than an adolescent stunt, it also provided the opportunity of presenting Lord Chancellor Cromer in a highly favourable light. Cromer was suspected by contemporaries of being deeply implicated in the rebellion (a suspicion which modern scholarship has tended to support), and there is no contemporary evidence that he was actually in Dublin at the time of the rebellion.20 As a crypto-recusant at the time of writing, Stanihurst was no doubt anxious to ensure that an ecclesiastic whose career (like Stanihurst’s own) had been furthered by the Geraldines and whose resistance to the Henrician reformation was by then wellknown, should not be tainted with the stain of sympathy for political rebellion. But there was a further problem relating to the fate of the senior clergy in the 1534 rebellion which Stanihurst was also required to address. This was the murder of Archbishop John Alen.

II

Alen’s murder on 28 July 1534 was one of the few absolutely demonstrable facts of the rebellion with which at the time of writing Stanihurst had to deal. Even immediately upon its execution, it was seen as one of the most scandalous events that deeply compromised the aims of the rebels. Modern research has uncovered the real political and financial motives underlying the attack.21 But both at the time and subsequently, the brutal assassination of the last pre-reformation archbishop of Dublin, who was also a loyal supporter of the Henrician government, was an offence that compromised the Geraldines with both the proponents and opponents of the Tudor reformation and the Church of Ireland. Thus Stanihurst’s final task in offering an account of the Kildare rebellion was to explain away to all interested parties the circumstances of Alen’s murder. Thomas’s wild and immature irresponsibility having been demonstrated earlier, it is adduced once more as the accidental cause of the event. Having tracked the archbishop down to his hiding place in Artane, Thomas proposed to arrest him for the duration of the rebellion. The old man’s pleadings, however, so disgusted the fiery young rebel, that he cut their conversation short, curtly ‘saying in Irish “Ber wem e boddeagh” which is as much in English as “Away with the churl” or 19 Ibid., pp 263, 266. 20 Sir William Skeffington to Henry VIII, 30 Apr. 1535 (SP Hen. VIII, iii, pt 1, p. 243); H.A. Jefferies, ‘Dr George Cromer, archbishop of Armagh (1521– 1543), and Henry VIII’s reformation’, in A.J. Hughes and William Nolan (eds), Armagh history and society (Dublin, 2001). 21 James Murray, ‘Archbishop Alen, Tudor reform and the Kildare rebellion’, PRIA, 89C (1989), 1–16.

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“take the churl from me”’.22 Stanihurst insists that Thomas’s intent was, as it had been at the outset, merely ‘to detain him prisoner’. But he made the mistake of turning his horse away from the archbishop in disgust, and worse, of addressing his followers in their barbaric native language. And thus ‘the caitiffs present, rather of malice than of ignorance, misconstruing his words, murdered the archbishop without further delay, brained him and hacked him in gobbets’.23 The echoes here of the murder of Archbishop Thomas Becket at Canterbury (1170) are unmistakable, and Stanihurst’s account, which again has no contemporary corroboration, is clearly intended to arouse the same ambivalent responses which that momentous event continued to evoke – revulsion and scandal at the blasphemous act, but a residual sympathy for King Henry II (he was, after all, the founder of the English colonial community in Ireland) whose unfortunate but familiar personal deficiencies, and most importantly his carelessness with language, caused him, quite unintentionally, to be responsible for the grievous misdeed. The suggestion that Stanihurst’s account of the Kildare rebellion, and Silken Thomas’s role in it, was part of a conscious programme of rehabilitation for the house of Kildare is strengthened by a comparison with two slightly earlier accounts of the rebellion, one supplied in the Book of Howth written around 1571, and a second given in Edmund Campion’s Historie of Ireland. The former gives no sense of rashness or youth on the part of Offaly and is unambiguously hostile: having heard the rumour of the death of his father and of his imminent summons to England, ‘the Lord Thomas’ dissimulated, ‘coming with a great power to Dublin, he very reverend did deliver the king’s sword with weeping tears and sorrowful countenance and desired that some other might take the pains, for he perceived that it was not allowed for him to bear that charge and so departed’. But then he proceeded to burn and spoil all the whole English Pale where as he thought he was not beloved: ‘he killed the bishop of Dublin in Tartayne … and took the Lord of Howth prisoner which continued a long time in prison’. His rebellion continued until Thomas was defeated at Athlone. Surrendering to Lord Leonard Gray, Thomas and his five uncles ‘were taken a sent to England where they and the Lord Thomas received their reward according to their desert’.24 Composed while he was resident with the Stanihursts in Dublin, and during the sitting of the parliament that gave statutory recognition to the full restoration of the earl of Kildare in 1570, Edmund Campion’s Historie is, unsurprisingly far more sympathetic. Its closing pages deal with the events of the Kildare rebellion, and are based, according to Stanihurst, who in large part follows Campion’s account, on the evidence of ‘such as he thought best knew the state of things in 22 Miller and Power (eds), Holinshed’s Irish chronicle, p. 269. A modern rendering of the original Irish would be ‘Beir uaim an bodach’. 23 Miller and Power (eds), Holinshed’s Irish chronicle, p. 269. 24 Cal. Carew MSS, v, pp 193–4.

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Ireland’, which, given Campion’s own acknowledgement in the Preface to his Historie, implies that he was in fact relying in good part on the as yet unpublished accounts of Stanihurst himself and possibly of Stanihurst’s father, James.25 So it is not surprising that there are very close similarities between the two accounts. But it is in the minor differences that the real interest lies. As in Stanihurst, the Lord Thomas is briefly described as ‘rash and youthful’ but the further elaboration of his recklessness by Stanihurst is not in Campion. His speech to the council at St Mary’s is recounted in both with only minor and insignificant variations.26 But the powerful speech of the chancellor Archbishop Cromer entreating Thomas to come back from the brink is not in Campion at all; it is entirely Stanihurst’s creation. And it is consequently in Stanihurst only that Thomas’s impertinent reply to Cromer is produced and that the account of the joyous reaction of his barbaric Irish followers to his contumacy hailing him as ‘Silken Thomas’ appears for the first time. In contrast, Campion is terse. Following his renunciation of the sword of state, Thomas and his followers determined first to murder all of the English birth in Ireland, to send ambassadors to the pope and the emperor seeking military support, and to impose an oath of allegiance on the gentry of the Pale, to raise a great army and to invade the territories of the loyal house of Ormond.27 In time Stanihurst touches on some of these moves – though the attempt to secure the support of pope and emperor is conveniently left out. But following the elaboration of the scene in St Mary’s these actions are presented as those of a demented young man now out of control, rather than, as with Campion, a systematically planned and ruthless revolt. Another divergence is also significant. Following an account of Offaly’s repulse by James Butler – they both print Butler’s letter to Offaly as testament to his bravery and loyalty in this time of crisis – Campion proceeds briskly. Thereafter, having ‘offered violence to a very few’, Offaly proceeds to Artane.2 But immediately after Butler’s repulse, Stanihurst introduces an account of Offaly’s defeat of the Dublin citizenry. It is in this context – the ‘victory [having] bred so great an insolency in [him]’ – that Thomas arrives at Artane.29 Concerning the murder Campion offers no extenuation: Alen, ‘a reverent personage, feeble for age and sickness, kneeling at [Offaly’s] feet in his shirt and mantle, bequeathing his soul to God, his body to the traitor’s mercy, the wretched young man commanded to be brained like an ox’.30 Alen was ‘hated by the Geraldines … as that he crossed them diverse times, and much troubled both the father and son in their governments’.31 It was cold-blooded revenge murder. 25 Edmund Campion, Two bokes of the histories of Ireland, ed. A.F. Vossen (The Hague, 1963), p. 4 [fo. 6v]. The folio numbers supplied in square brackets here and in subsequent notes refer to the foliation of Campion’s text, supplied by Vossen in his printed edition. I have modernized the spelling in quotations from the text. 26 Ibid., p. 129 [fos 3r–3v]. 27 Ibid., p. 130 [fo. 4r]. 28 Ibid., p. 131 [fo. 5r]. 29 Miller and Power (eds), Holinshed’s Irish chronicle, p. 26. 30 Campion, Two bokes of the histories of Ireland, ed. Vossen, p. 131 [fo. 5r]. 31 Ibid.,

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The purpose of Stanihurst’s pleadings in regard to Silken Thomas becomes even more comprehensible when seen in relation to the substantial changes in the text that he was required to make by the privy council at the point of publication. Thus he was instructed to cut the extensive ‘quipping gamegall’ between Alen and Lord Thomas, which illustrated the deep enmity of the archbishop toward the house of Kildare, and more importantly, he was compelled to drop altogether the scabrous allegation made by Thomas that the archbishop was sleeping with Sir John Alen’s wife.32 The possibility of partially explaining the disaster of the rebellion as a response to the intimidations and injustices perpetrated on the house of Kildare by an ambitious ecclesiastic politician being thus ruled out, Stanihurst was obliged to give heavier emphasis to the more accidental origins of the rebellion, which were to be found in the unhappy, but nonetheless fateful, personal deficiencies of the rash young dandy who delighted in the sobriquet, ‘Silken Thomas’. Given its enduring evocative power, it is worth considering the implicit connotations of the term. In addition to its obvious adjectival character – made of or consisting of silk – the word silken had, by the time Stanihurst was writing, acquired more complex and more ambiguous connotations. The rarity and expense of the material, as well as the sheer intricacy of the skill required in weaving it into a cloth, quickly attracted to it a connotation of preciousness, artistry, beauty, elegance, but also of luxury, prodigality and even effeminacy. In the earlier sections of the Chronicles within which Stanihurst’s ‘Historie’ appeared, one finds reference to ‘those silken pictures hallowed by the pope’, an identification of wealth and luxury with power and corruption.33 And also with falsity and deception: Shakespeare’s ‘taffeta phrases, silken terms precise’.34 And, more pertinently, there is also an association of effeminacy and immaturity. Thus, Thomas Dekker: ‘A slave of Barbary, a dog; for so | Your silken courtiers christen me.’35 Or Marlowe: ‘Nothing they spake, for ’twas esteemed too plain | For the most silken mildness of a maid | To let a public audience hear it said.’36 Or Shakespeare again in King John: ‘shall a beardless boy, A cockred-silken wanton, brave our fields?’37 And most pertinently of all in Richard III: ‘his simple truth must be abusede | By silken slie insinuating iackes.’3 Marlowe and Shakespeare were composing some fifteen years or more after the first appearance of Stanihurst’s ‘Historie’ in 1577; and, while there is no direct evidence that Shakespeare had read Stanihurst’s contribution to the Holinshed p. 132 [fo. 5v]. 32 The censored sections in regard to Archbishop Alen are printed in Miller and Power (eds), Holinshed’s Irish chronicle, pp 336–7, 339: ‘The archbishop (as it was in those days suspected) lived over loosely with this Alen’s wife which he stole so covertly by naming her issue to be of the Neills.’ 33 Raphael Holinshed chronicles, comprising … the description and historie of England … Ireland … and … Scotland … newlie augmented and continued (3 vols, London, 157), iii, p. 492. 34 William Shakespeare, Love’s labour lost, V. II. 406. 35 Dekker (attrib.), Lust’s dominion or the lascivious queen, I. II. 151–3. 36 Christopher Marlowe, Hero and Leander: the argument of the fifth sestyad. 37 William Shakespeare, King John, V. I. 69–70. 38 William Shakespeare, Richard III, I. III. 53.

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Chronicles (that he had read in detail the English sections is incontrovertible), there is an eerie echo between this last passage and Stanihurst’s claim that Thomas earned his sobriquet because his ‘horseman’s jacks were gorgeously embroidered with silk’.39 Whether Shakespeare or Marlowe or others had read Stanihurst or not, however, is less important than the fact that they, and their audience, shared with the historian an understanding of the implied symbolism associated with a figure charged with the leadership of men who nonetheless indulged himself in the caprice of having his lowliest followers egregiously decked out in the most luxurious of oriental fabrics. The kind of person who did so was not only selfindulgent, but soft, unmanly, unfit for the responsibilities of rule, and highly likely to bring to ruin those with whose welfare he was charged. Despite – or because of – the intense complexities of its origins, Stanihurst’s fabrication of the mythical ‘Silken Thomas’ proved to be of remarkable historical endurance. Within the surviving Gaelic sources of the later sixteenth and early seventeenth century, Offaly and his rebellion are indeed recorded. But curiously in the later and larger annals, and notably in the Annals of the Four Masters, the event itself and Thomas’s role in it is rather diminished. In the compilations known as the Annals of Connacht and the Annals of Loch Cé, where the entries are almost identical, Offaly is recorded as an honourable and brave figure properly seeking revenge for the murder of his father (which the annals appear to accept as a fact). ‘The Earl’s son, i.e. Thomas’, says the annalist of Loch Cé with no mention of his character, ‘ruined the king of the Saxons’ people in Erinn with war; i.e. he demolished the residences of, and exacted their pledges from, all who were faithful to the king of the Saxons throughout Midhe’.40 The Annals of Ulster, which devote more space to an account of the rebellion, offer no such praise, but instead give a grim depiction of the murder of Archbishop Alen (briskly passed over without any attribution of guilt in the other annals), which is described as cold blooded and deliberate murder perpetrated by Thomas, ‘a prodigious, unprecedented and unmerciful deed’.41 It is this discomfort over Alen’s killing that may have accounted for the relative reticence with which the Four Masters present their account. The victim of false rumours, Thomas was also the subject of treachery from his own family – who sought to dissociate themselves from his actions – but was ‘the best man of the English of Ireland’. However, they make no bones about his role in Alen’s killing: ‘The archbishop of Dublin came by his death through him, for he had been opposed to his father: many others were slain along with him.’42 It is nevertheless evident that, whether they were openly sympathetic or more ambivalent in their attitude, none of the Gaelic sources supply support for Stanihurst’s rash and immature young man: and there is no mention of silk. 39 Miller and Power (eds), Holinshed’s Irish chronicle, p. 265. 41 AU, 1534.7. 42 AFM, 1535.1 (sic).

40 ALC, 1534.6; AC, 1534.6.

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Moreover, despite Stanihurst’s claim that the sobriquet had originated with an Irish bard, whom he named as Nelan, no bardic poem eulogizing or lamenting Offaly has survived. In fact the earliest reference to the original Gaelic form of the term is to be found only in the seventeenth-century Latin annalistic compilation of Thady Dowling: ‘Thomas fitz Gerald vocatus Thomas Sericus, in Irish etida orsidan, for that his followers had silk frienges about their head peeces.’ But Dowling, as he acknowledged, had read and used Stanihurst.43 Thus while Lord Offaly or the earl’s son seemed to have disappeared from the Gaelic historical recollections, it was Stanhurst’s fabrication of ‘Silken Thomas’ that achieved historical dominance in the following century. It was reinforced first by Sir James Ware both in his annals and in the account of Archbishop Alen in his De praesulibus Lageniae (1626) – reproduced in 1665 as part of his De praesulibus Hiberniae and translated by Walter Harris as the Lives and actions of the bishops of Ireland – which drew heavily on Stanihurst’s account.44 But it achieved greater prominence through its endorsement in Sir Richard Cox’s Hibernia Anglicana (169) in an account which, being largely sympathetic to the house of Kildare, followed Stanihurst almost verbatim.45

III

Engaged as their histories were in the confessional struggles of the seventeenth century, neither Ware nor Cox exonerated Lord Offaly from the murder of Alen, but they did accept the accounts of Campion and Stanihurst depicting him as a rash and impetuous young man; and they accepted enthusiastically and uncritically Stanihurst’s invention of the silken youth, thus reinforcing the suggestion that the sacrilegious violence of the rebellion was accidental, a misfortune to be attributed to the wildness of the young man and his followers, rather than a characteristic of the house of Kildare. In the mid-eighteenth century, this explanation of the cause of the archbishop’s murder was reinforced by Walter Harris in his edition of Ware’s writings. But Stanihurst’s version attained its supreme influence in the extended and detailed account of the rebellion given by Thomas Leland in his widely read and highly influential History of Ireland from the invasion of Henry II, first published in 1773 and in many editions thereafter.46 43 The annals of Ireland by Friar John Clyn, of the convent of Friars Minor, Kilkenny; and Thady Dowling, chancellor of Leighlin, together with the annals of Ross, ed. Richard Butler (Dublin, 149), pp 35–6. 44 Ware, De praesulibus Hiberniae commentarius […] (Dublin, 1665), ii, pp 11–19; Walter Harris, The whole works of Sir James Ware concerning Ireland […] (2 vols, Dublin, 1764), i, pp 143–4. 45 Richard Cox, Hibernia anglicana or, The history of Ireland, from the conquest thereof by the English, to this present time (Dublin, 169), pp 225–35. For a discussion of the context and purposes of Cox’s history in general, see Ian Montgomery, ‘An entire and coherent history of Ireland: Richard Cox’s Hibernia Anglicana’, Linen Hall Review, 12:1 (1995), 9–11. 46 Thomas Leland, History of Ireland from the invasion of Henry

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Moving away from the sectarian asperities that had characterized the earlier narratives of Cox and Harris, Leland offered a highly detailed account of the rebellion that was couched in the dense background of Anglo-Irish feudal politics.47 The rebellion was the outcome not merely of false rumour that the young man had foolishly swallowed; those rumours, and the way they were received were the product of a poisonous and degenerate political atmosphere which decades of neglect by the English crown had allowed to grow and fester. Though it was to be welcomed in view of that which had preceded it, intermittent revival of interest in governing Ireland that occurred under Henry VIII served, in the short term at least, to intensify rather than reduce the rivalry of the great Irish dynasties, as both groups jockeyed for position and favour at court. The Henrician court’s own trouble, intensifying as the Reformation crisis loomed only made this atmosphere of intrigue, secrecy and manoeuvre more intense. It was in these circumstances that the rumour of his father’s murder was perfectly plausible, a symptom, not merely of the young man’s rashness, which Leland concedes, but of the dangerously fermenting factional atmosphere that had been cultivated inadvertently by the consciously reformist but chronically over-stressed Henrician regime.4 Deeply informed, as none of his predecessors had been, by the rich materials pertaining to Ireland in Lambeth palace, and evidently influenced by the neoMachiavellianism of the eighteenth century that saw the emergence of the strong state as a necessary stage in the development of civilization, Leland regarded the Kildare rebellion as a predictable – even inevitable – crisis in this course of political and social progress.49 But it was precisely because he regarded it in this way that he found Stanihurst’s account so useful. Thus he took from Stanihurst the account of the encounter between Offaly and Archbishop Cromer in St Mary’s. But he did so not to exonerate Cromer from the stain of treachery that had dogged him in the sixteenth century, but rather to adduce the lord chancellor as a representative of the reforming civil servants of early Tudor Ireland whose writings Leland, with evident pleasure, had discovered in the Carew manuscripts in Lambeth. And, for similar reasons, he was happy to endorse Stanihurst’s character sketch of Lord Thomas, but with subtle and important modifications:

II with a preliminary discourse on the ancient state of that kingdom (3 vols, Dublin and London, 1773). On Leland’s History in general, see Joseph Liechty, ‘Testing the depth of Catholic/Protestant conflict: the case of Thomas Leland’s “History of Ireland”, 1773’, Archiv. Hib., 42 (197), 13–2. 47 Leland, History of Ireland, ii, book 3, chs 6–7. 48 Ibid., ch. 5. 49 On the importance of neo-Machiavellianism to eighteenth-century history writing, see inter alia J.G.A. Pocock, The Machiavellian moment: Florentine political thought and the Atlantic republican tradition (Princeton, 1975); Mark Salber Phillips, Society and sentiment: genres of historical writing in Britain, 1740–1820 (Princeton, 2000); J.W. Burrow, Gibbon (Oxford, 195).

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Thomas was a captivating person, and of endowments sufficiently amiable in the public eye which looks with indulgence and partiality on a youth of noble birth. But to the rashness of youth and a natural violence of temper, he joined an extraordinary portion of the pride of family, an insolent contempt for the rivals of his house, and a boyish confidence in the power of the Geraldines which he conceived that no power in Ireland could withstand.50 Thomas was indeed rash and impetuous; but such features were not individual or accidental. They were the products of nature mixed with the inherited and cultivated characteristics of a scion of a great feudal house. And it with such subtle modification that Leland also glosses the significance of Stanihurst’s famous sobriquet: as Nelan the bard extols, ‘the gallant Silken lord, for so he styled him from the richness of his dress, caparisons and attendants, extolling his greatness, magnificence and valour’.51 These were not, we may note, the symbols of a vain and effeminate youth who decked out his horse-boys inappropriately, but the badges of a proud, extravagant feudal lord. It is, however, for precisely this reason that Leland, unlike any of his seventeenth- or eighteenth-century predecessors, was willing to accept Stanihurst’s account of the killing of Archbishop Alen. For an act so vile as the killing of a defenceless old man could never have been conceived of by a scion of a great noble house, even at the point of its collapse: It is not reasonable to imagine that this act of barbarity had been intended by Lord Thomas. His bitterest opposers, when they fell into his hands were only detained prisoners; and notwithstanding the deadly feuds which had subsisted between his family and the house of Butler, he now sent a messenger to the earl of Ossory, reminding him of their connexion and affinity.52 With Enlightenment Leland’s important variation, Stanihurst’s myth appears to have attained its most complete authority, if largely by implication. The rebellion was not the dastardly act of the house of Kildare bent on treason and anarchy. It was a necessary event in the progress of civil society that was to see the old feudal dynasties eventually accommodate themselves to the state; and while the character of the young Lord Thomas were central in its occurrence, as a symptom, for Leland, of a dying spirit, it was not due to the murderous viciousness of the young man.

50 Leland, History of Ireland, ii, book 3, p. 142.

51 Ibid., p. 144.

52 Ibid., pp 145–6.

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As a sixteenth-century myth, Stanihurst’s apologia for the house of Kildare proved to be remarkably enduring, adaptive and effective. But in the century that followed the image of Silken Thomas was to take on a dramatic further development, far beyond the apologetic or interpretative intentions toward which it had been applied by Stanihurst and his eighteenth-century reviser, Leland. Sometime in the first decades of the nineteenth century, Silken Thomas – the vain, effeminate destroyer of an ancient Irish house, the perpetrator, willingly or otherwise, of a despicable murder – became a hero. His new-found status was confirmed in Thomas Davis’s ode to ‘The Geraldines’, which appeared in the Nation in 144. The relevant verse runs: Ye Geraldines! ye Geraldines! – since Silken Thomas flung King Henry’s sword on council board, the English thanes among, Ye never ceased to battle brave against the English sway.53 But Davis was not the only young man or woman in the 140s to celebrate this intensified and simplified image of Silken Thomas, Hero. Before Davis’s poem appeared, a drama entitled ‘Silken Thomas’ was performed on the Dublin stage in the summer of 143.54 In Cork city at the Desmond Confederate club a lecture was given by William Lyons on the Geraldines. Lyons ‘dwelt at some length on the rebellion of Silken Thomas … and the many acts of violence and perfidy by which the English rulers of the country endeavoured at all times to crush or to corrupt the Geraldine family’.55 In July 14 a lengthy poem by ‘Eva’ (the pseudonym of Mary Izod O’Doherty), celebrating ‘Silken Thomas’ unambiguously as a hero and effecting an interesting reversal of the significance of silk, was published in the Nation. This is a small sample: His white plume tosses to the wind like foam upon the sea And his palfrey bears him fleetly on so proud and gallantly He shone before their dazzled eyes, a glory and a joy Their young brave Silken Thomas, that bright and princely boy The leader of the land he looked, decked in a robe of green The flashing gems and yellow gold beseemed a regal mien But gems and gold and silken sheen before his glance were dim From them he borrowed naught of grace – ’twas they had all from him!56 53 Davis’s poem first appeared in the Nation, 13 Jan. 144, p. 9, and was reprinted several times both in that paper and elsewhere. 54 Noticed in the Nation, 16 Sept. 143, p. 9. 55 Irish Examiner, 19 Nov. 147, p. 3. 56 The Nation, 29 July 14, p. 11.

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It was reprinted twice in 149. Contributors to the Nation signed themselves boldly ‘Silken Thomas’. Confederate clubs dedicated to Silken Thomas were established in Dublin, Cork, Bradford and London.57 To loud applause in a fiery speech delivered in the Rotunda in 147, John Mitchel hailed ‘Silken Thomas’ as the first in a long line of patriot martyrs.5 And, excelling them all in gushing enthusiasm, James Clarence Mangan celebrated him in deeply questionable verse: Take heart once more, O, Erin! The great God gives thee hope; And thro’ the mists of Time and Woe thy true Life’s portals ope! Earl Thomas of the Silken Robes! – here doubtless burns thy soul? Thou beamest here a Living Sun, round which thy planets roll? O! would the Eternal Powers above that this were only so! Then had our land, now scorned and banned, been saved a world of woe!59 How had this remarkable rehabilitation come about? One answer is obvious, even deceptively so. This was the era of Young Ireland, of the assertion of the courage and honesty of youth against the cynical manipulations, falsities and compromises of the older generation of politicians and public leaders, Daniel O’Connell among them. But why select Thomas, with all his ambiguities of character and conduct, for such a role while there were so many other more likely figures available within the Irish pantheon, such as Red Hugh O’Donnell, Redmond O’Hanlon, Wolfe Tone, Robert Emmet and even Lord Edward FitzGerald? These figures were indeed celebrated by the generation of Young Ireland.60 So, given the relative richness of this tradition, why risk compromising it by the addition of a figure associated with an act so grievous as the killing of the Catholic archbishop? For despite the partial indications of Stanihurst and Leland the stigma of the murder at Artane continued to cling to Offaly in certain historical writings, notably by overtly Catholic authors. Thus in the earliest antiunion histories to appear in the first decade of the nineteenth century, by Denis Taaffe and Francis Plowden, Alen’s murder is silently passed in their accounts of the Kildare rebellion, and even in 147 the Young Ireland cleric C.P. Meehan in his edition of Dominic O’Daly’s History of the Geraldines laid the blame for the murder squarely on ‘Silken Thomas’.61 The question then as to why an attempt 57 Some of the activities of these clubs are noticed in the Nation, 15 Jan. 14, p. 5, 10 June 14, p. 14, 1 July 14, p. 14, 22 July 14, p. 14; Irish Examiner, 19 July 14, p. 3. 58 The Nation, 23 Oct. 147, p. 3. 59 J.C. Mangan, ‘The siege of Maynooth’, printed in The Irishman, 26 May 149 (no page). 60 James Quinn, Young Ireland and the writing of Irish history (Dublin, 2015). 61 Denis Taaffe, An impartial history of Ireland from the period of the English invasion (Dublin, 109), i, pp 314–27; Francis Plowden, History of Ireland from its invasion under Henry II to its union with Great Britain (London, 112), book ii, ch 1. Meehan,

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was being made to rehabilitate Silken Thomas as a hero is of greater complexity than it might on the surface appear.

V

One clue as to the motivations underlying this move is to be found in a distinct shift in emphasis within the nineteenth-century rehearsals of the myth that brought into prominence a third element in the story hitherto regarded by Stanihurst and his followers as something of a postscript. This was the siege of Maynooth, and, in particular, the role of one ‘Parese’ in its fall. Again it is Stanihurst, not Campion and not the author of the Book of Howth, who is the original source for this tale of treachery and its nemesis. Christopher Parese, who was Lord Thomas’s foster-brother, had volunteered, so Stanihurst recounts, to take charge of the defence of the castle. But he had done so only to commit the deepest treachery. Having established contact with the besiegers, Parese caused the ward ‘to swill and boll so much as they snorted all the night like drunken hogs, little misdeeming that while they slept a new Judas was waking in the castle’.62 Totally surprised by the silent invaders, the ward surrendered without a fight. And Parese ‘not misdoubting that he should have been dubbed a knight for his service done that day presented himself before the lord deputy with a cheerful and familiar countenance as who should say “Here is he that did the deed”’.63 But he was coldly received by Skeffington who, on the pretext that he wished to have a true estimate of how much the traitor should be rewarded, asked how many gifts and favours had been bestowed on him by the earl. Supposing ‘the more recited the better he should be rewarded, left not untold the meanest good turn that he had received at his lords hands’. Disgusted at this treacherous ingratitude, however, Skeffington retorted ‘thou that wert so hollow to him will never be true to us!’ He ordered the original sum agreed be given the traitor and then ‘to chop off his head: “Farewell and be hanged”, he said.’64 A salutary tale, no doubt, for those contemplating treachery. But while there is some contemporary supporting evidence – Skeffington’s letter of 26 March 1536 names one Christopher Paris as captain of the garrison and records his execution by beheading – the dialogue with the deputy appears, like so much of his material, to have been all of Stanihurst’s own invention.65 Still a good story wears well and, as such, it was taken up by Ware, Cox and Leland, along with in an editorial note, deplored the tendency of defenders of the Geraldines to ignore Thomas’s rash and cruel acts, especially the murder of Alen (Dominic O’Daly, The Geraldines, earls of Desmond, and the persecution of the Irish Catholics, trans. C.P. Meehan (Dublin, 147), pp 47–). 62 Miller and Power (eds), Holinshed’s Irish chronicle, pp 277–9 (quotation at p. 27). 63 Ibid., p. 279. 64 Ibid., pp 279–0. 65 Sir William Skeffington to 26 Mar. 1535 (SP Hen. VIII, iii, pt 1, pp 236–).

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Stanihurst’s other dramatic set pieces at St Mary’s and Artane. But, significantly, it is only in the nineteenth century that the siege, and Parese in particular, acquires a new and special emphasis. James Clarence Mangan’s poem, quoted above in regard to Silken Thomas, was entitled ‘The siege of Maynooth’ and was focused not on events earlier in the rebellion, but on the events in which Parese’s treachery and his miserable fate were central.66 But the shift to Maynooth, and to Parese, represented by Mangan’s poem had begun in fact a decade earlier. It appears first, so far as I have been able to ascertain, in the concluding section of a series of ‘Historical notices of the city of Dublin’ published in the first volume of the Dublin Penny Journal in 132.67 But the motif introduced there was greatly developed in a large two-volume novel entitled The siege of Maynooth: or, romance in Ireland, which appeared anonymously in the same year, and has been attributed to the reforming landlord Gerald Geoghegan.6 As the title suggests this was an historical novel avowedly in emulation of Scott (whose poetry is cited on several occasions). It is hardly distinguished as literature; but as a document of cultural history it has considerable interest. For here Lord Thomas, who is never once in the seven hundred odd pages of the book referred to as Silken Thomas, can be seen emerging as a kind of hero. He is ‘rash and impetuous’, of course; but he is also gentle and kind – he has a way of taming horses which has earned him great respect among the native Irish, and he is generous and tender in love. If he had a fault, it was that he was naive: He believed as many a young and warm imagination had dreamed both before and since that law and justice and equity ought to go hand in hand, that one man’s claim was as good as another’s; and that it was only necessary to prove right in order to have it executed … that Lord Thomas was a visionary, who has ever doubted.69 It is in contrast to this well-meaning innocence of youth that Parese, ‘a ready and artful counsellour’, is introduced to play a central role in the entire drama.70 A veritable Iago, he has set out from the beginning to destroy the noble Thomas. Even before the summoning of the earl to Court he has been intriguing with the Dublin council, notably Archbishop Alen, to bring about the house’s downfall. It is he who delivers the letter reporting the murder of the earl, and he who eggs 66 See above, n. 59. 67 ‘The rebellion of Silken Thomas’, Dublin Penny Journal, 1:1 (132), 34–6, in which Thomas is portrayed as noble and honourable (not rash) and Parese is accounted as the first in a long line of traitors to the Irish cause including Moriarty, the betrayer of the last earl of Desmond, and Luttrell the man who caused the lifting of the siege of Limerick. The mission statement of the Journal as announced in its Preface was ‘to effect a public good … by exciting a national and concordant feeling in a country in which there is, as yet, so much of discord and party’. 68 The siege of Maynooth: or, romance in Ireland (2 vols, London, 132). The attribution to Gerald Geoghegan is made in Patrick Raifriodi, Irish literature in English: the romantic period, 1789–1850 (2 vols, Gerrard’s Cross, 190), ii, p. 172. 69 Siege of Maynooth, i, p. 63. 70 Ibid., i, p. 55.

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on Thomas toward his defiance at St Mary’s, and who attempts to silence the peace-seeking pleas of Archbishop Cromer. But when Alen, whom Thomas has detained and is about to release, indicates that in gratitude he is about to divulge the name of the traitor, it is Parese himself who coolly assassinates the primate. Thus the treachery at Maynooth was only the last of a series of betrayals perpetrated by a villain filled with hate for all that was good and noble. Parese is also the central villain in a slightly more sophisticated romance which was serialized in the Dublin University Magazine in 135 and 136 entitled, ‘The rebellion of Silken Thomas’.71 An early work of Samuel Ferguson, this story, despite its title, barely features Lord Thomas at all. Instead it centres on the much crossed love affair between a fictional Sir John Talbot, a loyal follower of Thomas, and an equally fictional Ellen Dudley, the daughter of the lord mayor of Dublin. The citizen’s loyal resistance against the rebels, and the Geraldines’ siege of Dublin force Talbot to make difficult choices between loyalty and love. Reluctantly but bravely, he sides with the Geraldines and, when Ellen’s father is killed in defence of the city, he is held responsible for the deed by Ellen. But again, the villain Parese is the saving of the plot. Intensely jealous (not now of Thomas, but of his surrogate Talbot, for he had nursed an unhealthy passion for Ellen), he does everything possible to destroy their love. It is he who tells Ellen that Talbot is responsible for her father’s death (in fact it is Parese himself who had cruelly despatched the old man) and says it was Talbot also who took part in the killing of Alen (in fact he had tried to rescue him), etc. But all is revealed in the tale of exposed treachery at Maynooth, and Ellen and Talbot are free to love again. Feudal nobility and civic pride are joined in unison. The amplification of the role of Paris/Parese – and the Italianate version of his name is surely no accident – served several purposes. It personalized, and, in doing so subtly modulated Leland’s neo-Machiavellian historical analysis of the conflict, at once confirming and simplifying the dangerous Tudor world of malice and intrigue. It was an age, the story sought to suggest, not only of competing factions and opposing political forces, but of personal dissimulation and betrayal. Archbishop Alen and his cousin John are not simply the agents of English church and state: they were ruthless careerists frustrated in their personal ambitions by the authority of the house of Kildare, and determined, therefore, to destroy it. In this atmosphere, the alien ‘Parese’ is simply the last and most egregious of such radical individuals. And his fate – the would-be betrayer betrayed by a treacherous Englishman – served at once as a fitting nemesis and a confirmation of the inherent treachery of all Englishmen in Ireland. Amid the welter of unbridled malice and ambition stood the young Irish hero, standard-bearer of the traditional noble values of loyalty, honour and duty 71 Ferguson’s ‘The rebellion of Silken Thomas’ formed a very large part of his sequence of contributions to the Dublin University Magazine under the general title of ‘Hibernian nights entertainments’. See Dublin University Magazine, 5 (135), 192–215, 293–312, 43–59, 705– 23; ibid., 6 (135), 50–71, 207–24.

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was personally doomed, and yet, because of the manner of his sacrifice, destined to the enshrined in the pantheon of true Irish heroes whose history would be an inspiration to those who came after, as well as a salutary warning against English perfidy. This radical reconceptualization of the Silken Thomas myth essayed by the Romantics endured long after the 140s. It received wide currency and further authority in the celebratory volumes on The earls of Kildare compiled by Charles FitzGerald (119–7), marquess of Kildare, in the 150s and 160s; and it was rehearsed in detail in such supposedly scholarly publications as Charles Russell’s edition of a Geraldine treaty with the MacRanalls, published in the Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy, and in a no less scholarly footnote appended by C.P. Meehan to his edition of Dominic O’Daly’s history of the earls of Desmond.72 Its persistence into the twentieth century is attested to by innumerable sources, including being authorized in the standard eleventh edition of Encyclopedia Britannica, while the subheadings in a popular history of Maynooth serialized in An tÓglach neatly summarized the essence of the trope: ‘the inevitable traitor’ and ‘an eminently fitting reward’.73 Significantly, but hardly surprisingly, the Parese myth attained its fullest elaboration in dramatic fiction. In Silken Thomas; or, St Mary’s Abbey – a three act drama by Thomas Bibby, published in 159 – Parese’s treachery was placed even further back: he is the means by which the fateful letter reporting the death of the earl Gerald is put into Thomas’s hand.74 And it is the centrepiece of an extraordinary play, Silken Thomas: an Irish historical drama, by Samuel Byrne, published in 191, where Parese is transmuted into Lord Radley, a vicious English roué whose determination to ruin the young Lord Thomas is fired by a desire for revenge, the young man having foiled his scheme to ravish Moira, the newly wed bride of the O’Byrne.75 Yet for all its evocative force, and perhaps because of its appeal to successive generations of tyros acutely sensitive to all manner of gerontocratic oppressions and betrayals, the Parese element of the Silken Thomas myth never attained ascendancy. Even in the time of its greatest popularity, it had dissenters. In a footnote to the year 1535, in his edition of the Annals of the Four Masters, the

72 Fitzgerald, Earls of Kildare, i, p. 49; C.W. Russell, ‘On an agreement, in Irish, between Gerald, ninth earl of Kildare, and the MacRannalls […]’, PRIA, 1st series, 10 (170), 40–9; O’Daly, Rise, increase, and exit of the Geraldines, trans. Meehan, p. 54. 73 Encyclopedia Britannica (11th ed., 1910), ix, p. 445; ‘Maynooth castle under fire’, An tÓglach, 19 July 1924, p. 9. 74 Silken Thomas; or, St Mary’s Abbey (Dublin, 159), I. iii. The play ends with the dramatic scene before the council in St Mary’s abbey, but the introduction of Parese at such an early stage is evidence in itself of how current was the story of his later betrayal at Maynooth. 75 Silken Thomas: an Irish historical drama (Pittsburgh, 191). A further play in Irish, Oidheadh an tSíodaigh, was performed in Maynooth in Mar. 193: see Philip O’ Leary, Gaelic prose in the Irish Free State, 1922–1939 (Philadelphia, 2004).

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ever-scrupulous John O’Donovan explicitly rejected the story.76 And in his History of Ireland, ancient and modern, Martin Haverty earned the distinction of being the only major writer to question not only the Parese betrayal, but the entire Silken Thomas myth.77 This tendency developed in the major histories of the early twentieth century, where the Parese story was either directly challenged, as in the second volume of E.A. D’Alton’s six-volume History of Ireland, or discreetly ignored, as in Hayden and Moonan’s standard text book and Edmund Curtis’s single-volume History of Ireland. Yet curiously, even as they questioned the tail end of Stanihurst’s dramatic narrative, neither D’Alton, nor Curtis, nor Hayden and Moonan questioned its central core, though each tactfully bowdlerized the subtle sexual insinuations of Stanihurst’s sketch. ‘So vain and so proud of his dress that he was called “Silken Thomas”’, wrote D’Alton, ‘had more than the usual share of rashness and impetuosity of youth’.7 ‘So famed by the splendour of his dress’, Thomas – according to Hayden and Moonan – was a ‘rash youth’, who plunged into rebellion ‘without waiting for any confirmation’ of his father’s death.79 And Curtis, oddly ascribing the sobriquet to a Gaelic tradition, concluded that ‘all was ruined by the rashness of a fiery young man and the coldblooded malice of the enemies of his house’.0 Concerning the significance of this selective revisionism – the deletion of the Parese amidst the perennial rehearsal of the general myth – one can only speculate. It was due, perhaps, to a genuine but curiously inchoate historical criticism, or perhaps to an unwillingness to reinforce that other contrapuntal trope of Irish history: the traitor from within. Or perhaps it arose from a nervousness regarding the inter-generational conflicts implied in the story as a whole.1 But the endurance of the myth of Silken Thomas across centuries of fundamental change is evidence at once of the remarkable quality of Stanihurst’s historical imagination, but also of the disturbing seductions of tradition.

76 AFM, v, pp 1443–4 n. (s.a. 1537): ‘He was usually called Silken Thomas. Cox gives many particulars of the rebellion of this rash young lord, but as his details are not at all borne out by the public records, or Irish annals, the Editor shall pass them by in silence, believing them to be mere traditional stories, arranged, enlarged, and embellished by Holinshed, Stanihurst, and the compiler of the Book of Howth.’ 77 Martin Haverty, The history of Ireland, ancient and modern: derived from our native annals […] with copious topographical and general notes (Dublin, 160), pp 357–. 78 E.A. D’Alton, A history of Ireland: from the earliest times to the present day (6 vols, London, 1910), ii, pp 471, 477. 79 M.T. Hayden and G.A. Moonan, A short history of the Irish people: from the earliest times to 1920 (Dublin, 1922, and subsequent editions), p. 196. 80 Edmund Curtis, A history of Ireland (1st ed., London, 1936), pp 162– 3. A new edition, published as Edmund Curtis, A history of Ireland: from the earliest times to 1922 (London and New York, 2002), includes an introduction by Seán Duffy (the passage concerning ‘Silken Thomas’ appears at p. 141). 81 For an exploration of the theme of intergenerational tension in early twentieth-century Ireland, see R.F. Foster, Vivid faces: the revolutionary generation in Ireland, 1890–1923 (London, 2015).

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The battle for the Geraldines: a contested legacy in nineteenth-century Ireland

RUA I R Í C U L L E N

In nineteenth-century Ireland, historians, antiquarians and politicians fought over the Geraldine legacy and produced competing, often overlapping, interpretations of the family’s history of rebellion and loyalty, its Catholicism and Protestantism, its Irishness and Englishness. Many politicians portrayed themselves or their movements as the true inheritors of the Geraldine tradition. This usually meant leading a cross-ethnic unified Ireland. The aim of this essay is twofold: first, to reconstruct and narrate efforts in nineteenth-century Ireland to publish material about the family; second, to deconstruct the portrayals of the family and their role in Irish history. In order to illustrate this effectively, I explore the continuing popularity of, and intellectual interest in, the Geraldines through three case studies. The first concerns Daniel O’Connell’s attempt to marshal support from the dukes of Leinster and thereby connect his political movement with the Geraldine name and the dukes’ powerful medieval ancestors. The second examines Thomas Davis’s famous poem, ‘The Geraldines’. In contrast to another strain of nationalist thought that portrayed the Geraldines as Catholic crusaders, Davis presented the family as a model of assimilation for the Protestant Irish. The final section examines the efforts of antiquarians (usually from a unionist standpoint) to translate and publish medieval and early modern documents concerning the family. Rather than promoting assimilation and glamorizing Gaelic custom, these antiquarians perceived the family as a chivalric and heroic (if at times misguided) addition to Irish history, providing the national narrative with civilized aristocrats who competed for posthumous prestige with English and continental counterparts. Joep Leerssen has identified a recurrent ‘auto-exoticism’ in nineteenthcentury Irish representations of the past.1 This trend, which emphasized the ‘otherness’ and ‘un-English’ aspects of Irish life, normally manifested itself in folk culture, mythology and the lost Celtic past. The same trend may, however, also account for the interest in the Geraldines, whose mixed ancestry – which could be traced back to Wales, France, Italy and ultimately Troy – offered a highly distinctive ‘otherness’.2 In narrative terms, the recurrent rise and fall of 1 Joep Leerssen, Remembrance and imagination: patterns in the historical and literary representations of Ireland in the nineteenth century (Cork, 1996), p. 225. 2 For the mixed ancestry of the Geraldines, see above, pp 17, 57, 236, 272–4, 280.

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the Geraldines in general, and the sheer longevity of the Kildare Geraldines in particular, demanded the attention of historians. The role played by the family in momentous historical events seemed to tie the Geraldines to the fate of the country. The historian A.M. O’Sullivan wrote of the ‘mysterious protection’ enjoyed by various family members and he admitted to being overawed by the family’s history, which ‘in many respects’, he wrote, ‘outrivals the creations of fiction’.3 By the eighteenth century, it was widely believed that the descendants of the invaders of the twelfth century had become ‘more Irish than the Irish themselves’.4 This iconic phrase became indelibly associated with the Geraldines and added fuel to the fire of their exceptionalism, which had enjoyed centuries of cultivation through noble patronage.5 With the advent of romantic nationalism in the early to mid-nineteenth century, the family’s gaelicization became something to celebrate and the Geraldines were transformed from degenerate Englishmen into patriotic Irishmen, as well as reinforcing the brilliance of their adoptive country. The Great Earl of Kildare, Silken Thomas and the Desmond rebels of the later sixteenth century were turned into proto-nationalists with the apogée of the family being realized in the person of Lord Edward FitzGerald (1763–98). In contrast to heroes from Gaelic Ireland, Geraldine origins in Britain required comparisons with Irish Protestants, who had their own mixed identities.

DA N I E L O ’ C O N N E L L A N D T H E D U K E S O F L E I N S T E R

Like their forebears the earls of Kildare in the Middle Ages, the dukes of Leinster in the nineteenth century were great patrons of art and literature who advanced the glory of their house and were keenly aware of their medieval origins.6 The 1840s saw the advent of Carlylean hero worship and the ‘Great Man’ theory, a historiographical style that arguably contributed to the increased centrality of Geraldine heroes to the national narrative. Yet many reformers and nationalists found they had to settle for Daniel O’Connell (1775–1847) as the leader of the national cause, and they met much frustration in dealing with the most significant member of Geraldine family in terms of political weight: the third duke of Leinster, Augustus FitzGerald (1791–1874), Whig figurehead, freemason grandmaster, and promoter of reform in agriculture and education. In an examination of the political life of Augustus FitzGerald, Elizabeth Heggs 3 A.M. Sullivan, The story of Ireland (Dublin, 1905 [1867]), pp 190, 206. 4 Art Cosgrove, ‘Hiberniores ipsis hibernis’, in Art Cosgrove and Donal MacCartney (eds), Studies in Irish history presented to R. Dudley Edwards (Dublin, 1979), pp 1–14. 5 Colm Lennon, ‘The making of the Geraldines: the Kildare FitzGeralds and their early historians’, in Aspects of Irish aristocratic life, pp 71–8. 6 Terence Dooley, The decline and fall of the dukes of Leinster, 1872–1948: love, war, debt and madness (Dublin, 2014), pp 12–13.

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showed convincingly how he resembled his medieval antecedents in his almost unique role as a go-between for English and Irish politics. She characterizes him as a ‘model liberal Protestant’, defined by promotion of reform but a refusal to act in any hostile way towards the administrations in London and Dublin. Unlike the hands-on O’Connell, the duke acted with an ‘inherent detachment’ in his role at various pro-reform meetings, where he would chair proceedings but rarely speak.7 Nonetheless, the FitzGerald name carried substantial political weight and the duke’s signature empowered any petition or movement. In O’Connell’s mind, the Geraldines had played a provocative and romantic role in various national causes and it was to this tradition that he would always compare the contemporary Leinsters. However, his appeals to the family to support the repeal movement fell upon deaf ears and ensured an awkward relationship between these two towering icons of Liberal Ireland. By the 1820s, the duke was considered the symbolic leader of the Whigs in Ireland, as well as the island’s premier peer. His ancestors (who held the title earl of Kildare until elevated to the dukedom of Leinster in 1766) had been committed Whigs since the Williamite War and, with the exception of Lord Edward FitzGerald, remained staunchly loyal to the crown. The Leinsters were also proponents of moderate reform. In 1753, James first duke of Leinster (d. 1773) presented George II with a petition of grievances, and his son, William second duke of Leinster (d. 1804), supported the independence of the Irish parliament in 1782. Augustus, the third duke, continued the reforming tradition by consistently backing the repeal of the Penal Laws, finally achieved in 1829. This impressed Daniel O’Connell so much that he described the duke as ‘the finest fellow that ever bore the noble name of FitzGerald’.8 O’Connell revised his opinion after the duke organized the ‘Leinster declaration’ of October 1830. The declaration was released in reaction to O’Connell’s agitation for repeal of the union and supported instead ‘the permanence of the British connection’.9 This frustrated O’Connell who clearly saw it as a betrayal of the Geraldine tradition and wrote to an associate how the duke was ‘the first of his race who was un-Irish and he is un-Irish to the backbone.’10 This attitude towards the duke typifies the fraught relations between Irish Whigs and O’Connell after 1829 and the refusal to support the repeal of the union. However, the Whig–Repeal alliance from 1835 led O’Connell to re-dedicate himself to wooing the Whigs and he saw the success of his movement as relying upon keeping them in government.11 7 Elizabeth Heggs, ‘Whig politics and the third duke of Leinster (1791–1874)’, in Aspects of Irish aristocratic life, pp 169–77. 8 Daniel O’Connell to Lord Cloncurry (14 May 1820) in Maurice O’Connell (ed.), The correspondence of Daniel O’Connell, 8 vols (Dublin, 1972–80), ii, p. 261. 9 Dublin Evening Post, 30 Oct. 1830. 10 Daniel O’Connell to P.V. Fitzpatrick, 22 Sept. 1832 (O’Connell (ed.), Correspondence of Daniel O’Connell, iv, p. 451). 11 Oliver MacDonagh, The emancipist: Daniel O’Connell, 1830–47 (London, 1989), p. 191. The Whigs were in government between 1835 and 1841.

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From 1837, O’Connell was an MP for Dublin city with Robert Hutton, a Whig who did not support repeal, but on 12 June 1841, one week after a general election was called, the twenty-two-year old Charles FitzGerald (1819–87), marquess of Kildare and son of the duke, was publicly invited to replace Hutton, who was supposedly stepping down. This potential propaganda coup caused great excitement among Whigs and Repealers. In one day, two thousand signatures were taken in support of the marquess’s candidature.12 O’Connell admitted the marquess was not yet a supporter of repeal but assured an audience of Repealers that the young man would soon change his mind: ‘in the name of his martyred ancestors’, O’Connell declared, ‘I call on the people of Ireland to rally around the house of Geraldine!’ He even claimed that ‘there were Repealers in [the FitzGerald] family before’, a reference to the second duke’s opposition to the Act of Union, but perhaps also an allusion to the separatist politics of Lord Edward FitzGerald.13 For O’Connell, the marquess’s forebears had not struggled or died for personal gain, but for Ireland. His rallying call also contained a subtle threat that if the Leinsters did not comply they could not be considered truly Irish. The family was either with the Repealers or against them. A week later, the duke informed the disappointed reporters of the Freeman’s Journal that his son was about to commence his travels and would not be standing.14 On 24 June, O’Connell spoke of his regret at calling upon the marquess and declared that he and Hutton would seek re-election.15 Two months later, after a disastrous showing by his party which lost several seats, O’Connell castigated the marquess for delivering his rejection disrespectfully and labelled the duke ‘one of the most useless patriots that ever had existence in any country’.16 In July 1843, it was reported that O’Connell, at a Repeal Association meeting, had compared the Leinsters negatively with their ancestors: ‘Oh! In the silence of my retreat, my heart throbs to think of their inactivity now. That fine and noble-looking young man, the heir of that illustrious house, ought to be with us – ought to be at our head.’17 Suddenly, the marquess was turned from the Geraldine hero reborn into someone grossly neglecting their ancestral imperative to lead Ireland. The idea of the Liberator voluntarily stepping down for a young Protestant aristocrat is quite absurd and O’Connell’s Geraldine rhetoric was instead meant to connect the repeal movement with the glorious legacy of the Geraldines.18 Representing Dublin city alongside the marquess of Kildare would allow a strong (but not overbearing) political association with the Geraldines, whose mixed identity and origins served also to appeal to the Protestant Irish. O’Connell sought to attract 12 Freeman’s Journal, 15 June 1841. 13 Ibid. 14 Freeman’s Journal, 22 June 1841. 15 O’Connell and Hutton lost by a thin margin on 10 July to the two Tory candidates: John Beattie West and Edward Grogan. The marquess eventually became the Whig MP for Kildare from 1847 to 1852. 16 Freeman’s Journal, 24 Aug. 1841. 17 The Nation, 8 July 1843. 18 In another example of this, O’Connell likened the departing chief secretary for Ireland, Lord Morpeth, to the Geraldines because of his service and affinity to Ireland (Freeman’s Journal, 13 Aug. 1841).

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cross-confessional backing and by associating himself with this famous family he showed a precedent for Anglo-Irish and native working together to limit Westminster’s power in Ireland. It further suggests that O’Connell saw the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries as a period of Irish unity in the face of foreign aggression and something worthy of emulation in his own day. In essence, the FitzGerald name and the legends surrounding the family were a provocative propaganda tool for O’Connell. He would have known that the odds of a volte face from the marquess and his embracing of repeal were low. One newspaper even reported the young Geraldine saying: ‘I would much sooner become the supporter of a baboon – of my own family arms – than of Mr O’Connell.’19 Arguably the Leinsters had only themselves to blame. They were happy to receive praise regarding their glorious (but rebellious) antecedents because it demonstrated their ancestral imperative to lead Ireland, but they took exception to the exploitation of this idea by those in the Repeal camp searching for medieval forebears. Although the third duke of Leinster is now remembered as a relatively compassionate landlord during the Great Famine, he faced some criticism at the time for his lack of action.20 A member of the Irish Confederation (a more confrontational and eventually revolutionary offshoot of the Repeal Association) lambasted him in 1847 for having ‘witnessed the destruction of the Irish people, and stretched forth no arm to shield or save’.21 From 1846 until 1849 the duke was lord justice of Ireland, and so this statement argues that in this position and as the leading Geraldine he had failed in both his ceremonial and ancestral duties. In a further blow to his popularity, the duke’s land agents composed the ‘Leinster Lease’ in 1872 to prevent leaseholders receiving compensation after the 1870 Land Act. In protest, tenants of Athy, co. Kildare, formed one of the first tenant defence associations and the lease became a symbol of national oppression.22 This contributed to an ever-widening gap between the modern Geraldines and their ancestors in the popular imagination, the first strains of which are discernible in O’Connell’s dealings with the Leinsters. In 1879, the marquess, now the fourth duke after his father’s death in 1874, was sued over a petty matter by a neighbour, whose lawyer reportedly drew a dramatic comparison to ‘the Czar of Russia, for the purpose of conveying that the duke was an oppressor of his tenants’.23 After the death of the fifth duke in 1893, the Leinsters never again exerted political influence.

19 At a meeting of the Irish Metropolitan Conservative Society, a Mr Pike claimed that the marquess said this (Nenagh Guardian, 3 July 1841). 20 Cecil Woodham-Smith, The Great Hunger (London, 1962), pp 18, 295. New criticism has been brought against the duke by Ciarán Reilly, ‘A middleman in the 1840s: Charles Carey and the Leinster Estate’, in Aspects of Irish aristocratic life, pp 178–86. 21 The Nation, 23 Oct. 1847. 22 Heggs, ‘Whig politics’, p. 173. 23 Irish Times, 9 June 1879.

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Ruairí Cullen T H O M A S DAV I S A N D T H E G E R A L D I N E S

Perhaps the most famous criticism of the Leinsters is found in Thomas Davis’s seven-stanza poem ‘The Geraldines’, first published in The Nation on 13 January 1844 and republished in 1845 in the selection of ballads entitled the Spirit of the Nation.24 It is the most prominent piece of nineteenth-century literature concerning the family and was frequently quoted by historians to introduce chapters about late-medieval Ireland.25 ‘The Geraldines’ follows the traditional narrative of gaelicized Anglo-Normans, but rather than lamenting the decline of English control in Ireland, Davis celebrated their assimilation as a patriotic act. The subject of the poem was deeply personal to its author, who was born in 1814 in Mallow, co. Cork,26 to a Welsh father and a mother of both Cromwellian and Gaelic stock. In ‘The Geraldines’, we are shown Davis’s mission to exhibit an inclusive Irish nationality and come to terms with his own origins. After studying law at Trinity College Dublin between 1831 and 1836, and briefly flirting with utilitarian philosophy, Davis became a strong critic of utilitarianism and condemned its influence on O’Connellism. Instead, he turned to the romantic nationalism found in the works of Herder and in the histories of Thierry and Michelet that were sweeping across Europe. Davis, who was Anglican, along with two Catholic friends, John Blake Dillon and Charles Gavan Duffy, established The Nation newspaper in Dublin in 1842 with Gavan Duffy as editor. The paper was highly successful and had a readership of 1.4 million by 1843.27 The founders and their colleagues – most notably John Mitchel, Thomas Meagher and William Smith O’Brien – were known as the Young Irelanders by analogy with Disraeli’s Young Englanders, who in the 1830s and 1840s published literature about England’s utopian medieval past. The Young Irelanders joined the Repeal Association, but were frustrated with O’Connell’s moderate goals and the spectre of a populist Catholic-dominated Ireland. They envisaged not only repeal, but a spiritual and cultural rebirth through a new national literature and, although very few of them spoke the Irish language, the rather ambiguous ‘deanglicization’ of Irish life. Locating and defining the essence of Irishness is a constant theme in Davis’s writings because, in contrast to romantic nationalists from Germany or Italy, in Ireland it was problematic to focus upon unifying racial origins or a shared language. He and the majority of the country did not speak the native tongue and had mixed ethnic origins. Consequently, Davis presented Irishness as a product not of race, but of environment:28 24 The spirit of the nation: ballads and songs by the writers of “The Nation” with original and ancient music (Dublin, 1845), pp 141–3. I quote from the edition of ‘The Geraldines’, in T.W. Rolleston (ed.), Thomas Davis: selections from his prose and poetry (London, 1910), pp 306–10. 25 See, e.g., Sullivan, Story of Ireland, p. 190. 26 Mallow is the site of a former Desmond fortress. 27 D. George Boyce, Nationalism in Ireland (3rd ed., London, 1995), p. 159; James Quinn, Young Ireland and the writing of Irish history (Dublin, 2015), pp 35–41. 28 Boyce,

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These Geraldines! these Geraldines! – not long our air they breathed; Not long they fed on venison, in Irish water seethed; Not often had their children been by Irish mothers nursed; When from their full and genial hearts an Irish feeling burst! The piece also demonstrates an attempt on Davis’s behalf to wed his romanticism with elements of a civic, as opposed to ethnic, nationalism. It was a popular idea at the time that Ireland and its people possessed an extraordinary ability to assimilate its invaders. ‘The Geraldines’ addresses the Protestant Irish, informing them that despite some Catholic rhetoric, they had just as much right to assert their Irishness. Geraldine history is charted from their mythical Tuscan origins (‘The Geraldines! the Geraldines! – ’tis a thousand years | Since, ’mid the Tuscan vineyards, bright flashed their battle-spears’) to their arrival in Ireland and their assumption of Irish nationality to the death in 1798 of ‘sainted Edward’ – the United Irishman Lord Edward FitzGerald, brother of the second duke of Leinster. Davis venerated the United Irishmen and his obsession with Lord Edward (mentioned four times in the poem) can be traced to the rapid response by some members of the extended FitzGerald family to present a romanticized image of an innocent and virtuous hero.29 This image was popularized by Thomas Moore (1779–1852) in his Life and death of Lord Edward Fitzgerald, which attracted mild controversy at its publication in 1831.30 Moore had been pressured to delay publication by certain establishment figures who feared inciting growing agitation and he made efforts to assure readers that his work was purely historical.31 The book did not inspire revolution but it did secure the elevation of Lord Edward to nationwide cult status and revived interest in the Geraldines. The main body of the text opens with a dedication to the family: There is, perhaps, no name, in the ranks of the Irish peerage, that has been so frequently and prominently connected with the political destinies of Ireland as that of the illustrious race to which the subject of the following Memoir belonged; nor would it be too much to say that, in the annals of the Geraldines alone … a complete history of the fatal policy towards Ireland, through a lapse of more than six centuries, may be found epitomized and illustrated.32 This statement constructs a timeless picture of Irish history with its people constantly beguiled by tragedy, but always accompanied by heroic Geraldines. Moore goes on to identify the similarities between Lord Edward and Silken Nationalism, pp 155–8. 29 Stella Tillyard, Citizen Lord: Edward Fitzgerald, 1763–1798 (London, 1997), pp 311–13. 30 Thomas Moore, The life and death of Lord Edward Fitzgerald, 2 vols (London, 1831). 31 Ronan Kelly, Bard of Erin: the life of Thomas Moore (Dublin, 2008), pp 482–3; Moore, Life and death of Lord Edward Fitzgerald, i, pp vii–xi. 32 Moore, Fitzgerald, i, pp 1-2.

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Thomas: the latter too had ‘a rash, no doubt, and miscalculating, but still noble thirst after national independence’.33 These statements act as brief tableaux displaying the unbreakable bond between the Geraldines and Ireland and in the comparison with Silken Thomas, widely seen as a valorous but hot-headed youth, Moore reveals himself as a conveyor of noble and romantic stories, not a revolutionary firebrand.34 It is worth noting that there is no mention of an end to the Geraldine tradition – Moore had been aided by several of Edward’s relatives – and his politics contrasts sharply with Davis, who would criticize the Leinsters. Davis would most certainly have read ‘Desmond’s Song’, a Moore poem that finds Thomas, heir to the earldom of Desmond falling in love with Catherine McCormack, a native Irishwoman.35 It takes place in Abbeyfeale, co. Limerick, a locale that Davis mentioned in the Geraldines, as the earl crosses a dangerous ‘threshold’ tempted by Catherine’s beauty.36 ‘Desmond’s Song’ serves as a metaphor for the gaelicization of the Anglo-Normans attracted to the wild ways of Irish life, but the piece has a tragic tone, carrying with it the implication that assimilation did not always end happily. Therefore it is problematic to label Moore as a ‘nationalist’, but his highly popular works that romanticize the ancient and medieval past were crucial to later nationalist thought. The Repeal Association’s courting of the marquess of Kildare demonstrates the popularity and influence of his family’s name, in particular the idea that the natural stance of a Geraldine was to lead a national movement. None of the other great Anglo-Norman houses, such as the Burkes or the Butlers, continued to possess such political weight or to inspire the imagination. Through the actions of the first invaders, and of the medieval earls and the Leinsters, scholars and intellectuals saw a vivid array of prominent Geraldines always ready to help Ireland (however unsuccessfully) in its times of need. This was not lost on Davis and as O’Connell had done, ‘The Geraldines’ castigates the Leinsters through a comparison with their ancestors. Davis declared: And, though Kildare tower haughtily, there’s ruin at the root, Else why, since Edward fell to earth, had such a tree no fruit? ‘Kildare’ is a reference to the Leinsters and it is clear that Davis believed not only that they had become detached from their illustrious ancestors, but also from the Irish people they professed to represent. However, this was not a complete dismissal of the role that families like the Leinsters should play in 33 Ibid., p. 2. 34 On the myth of Silken Thomas, see Brady, above, pp 379–98. 35 The original story concerned Thomas fifth earl of Desmond. See above, pp 229, 299. 36 Thomas Moore, ‘Desmond’s song’. The poem originally appeared as the ninth instalment of Irish melodies, published in ten instalments between 1807 and 1834, and collected in Moore’s Irish melodies: illustrated by D[aniel] Maclise (London, 1846), where ‘Desmond’s Song’ appears at pp 185–6. A later edition is available in A.D. Godley (ed.), The poetical works of Thomas Moore (Oxford, 1910), pp 225–6.

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Ireland. The poem implies that Davis preferred an enlightened Protestant aristocrat to lead the country than O’Connell. It is later asserted that ‘[i]n front of Ireland’s chivalry is that Fitzgerald’s place’. Davis had not rejected the Leinsters completely, but hoped his poem would remind them of their patriotic duty to embrace their Irishness. In 1910, ‘The Geraldines’ was republished in T.W. Rolleston’s selection of Davis’s writings with an additional eighth stanza demanding a revival of the Geraldines: The Geraldines! the Geraldines! – and are there any fears Within the sons of conquerors for full a thousand years? Can treason spring from out a soil bedewed with martyrs’ blood? Or has that grown a purling brook, which long rushed down a flood? – By Desmond swept with sword and fire – by clan and keep laid low – By Silken Thomas and his kin, – by sainted Edward, no! The forms of centuries rise up, and in the Irish line COMMAND THEIR SON TO TAKE THE POST THAT FITS THE GERALDINE! Though this extended version was first published in 1861, Rolleston adds an editorial note to the effect that Davis had intended these lines, which were found among his papers after his death in 1845, to be a ‘personal reference, not to any Geraldine but to William Smith O’Brien’.37 O’Brien (1803–64), a descendant of Brian Bóraime (Boru),38 was a Protestant landowner turned nationalist, eventual leader of the abortive 1848 rising and a close acquaintance of Davis. The lines above imply that Davis perceived him to be the true heir to the Geraldine tradition (not the Leinsters) as his Anglican faith and mixed ethnic origin gave him the necessary dual heritage and position amongst the Irish elite. The AngloIrish needed O’Brien, a Geraldine re-born, to guide them on the road to true Irishness and unify the nation. In addition, the trope of a modern Geraldine relates to widespread folklore about various earls of Desmond and Kildare in slumber until Ireland needs them again.39 Davis alludes to this earlier in the poem to demonstrate the popularity of the family with the lower classes, again reinforcing the image of a Geraldine leading the native (and Catholic) Irish. The poem is notable for its lack of sectarian language and cross-confessional unity was a key ingredient of the Young Ireland project. Nevertheless, the late sixteenth-century Desmond rebellions were equated by some as a religious war against Protestant England. This narrative relied upon Dominic O’Daly’s history of the earls of Desmond, Initium, incrementum, et exitus familiæ Geraldinorum, 37 Rolleston, Thomas Davis, p. 310 n. 38 It is interesting that Davis did not write a poem concerning the O’Brien family; perhaps the popular image of Brian Bóraime with cross in hand did not have such inclusive connotations. 39 Dáithí Ó hÓgáin, ‘“Has the time come?” (MLSIT 8009): The Barbarossa legend in Ireland and its historical background’, Béaloideas, 59 (1991), 197–207.

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Desmoniæ comitum, originally published in 1655.40 O’Daly, an exiled Irish Dominican, characterized the Desmonds as victims of Protestant tyranny and Irish disunity. For him the proud Geraldine tradition was extinguished after the defeat of the Desmonds as the contemporary earl of Kildare was not particularly powerful and a Protestant loyal to the regime in London. This would later feed the accusation that the Leinsters were traitors to their ancestors and Protestant stooges. In 1847, O’Daly’s history was translated from Latin into English by C.P. Meehan, as The Geraldines, earls of Desmond, and the persecution of Irish Catholics. Fifty copies were issued.41 Meehan was a Catholic priest and Young Irelander who espoused conciliatory nationalism in the introduction. The publication is thought to have been intended to lobby the duke of Leinster and his son, because the latter was standing in the Kildare constituency in the upcoming election.42 Yet, one of Meehan’s footnotes states, in reference to the Protestant son of the fifteenth earl of Desmond: ‘I know nothing more incongruous than Protestantism and a FitzGerald, except it be a grenadier’s uniform coat … on a recumbent effigy of a Crusader!’43 As well as implying that the Leinsters were not true Geraldines, this statement equates faith and fatherland suggesting that true Irish heroes are Catholics. Meehan’s words reveal the ambiguity and ambivalence of Catholic nationalists who avowed cross-confessional unity but could not help identifying their faith as the conduit through which true Irishness was achieved. The hero of O’Daly’s work is the martyr for faith and fatherland James fitz Maurice FitzGerald (d. 1579), a personality cult enthusiastically revived in the popular histories of Ireland by Thomas D’Arcy McGee and A.M. Sullivan in the 1860s. The latter recycled McGee’s narrative, much of which had taken from O’Daly, and Sullivan described how fitz Maurice ‘conceived the idea of a great league in defence of religion; a holy war.’44 Although McGee was a former Young Irelander and Sullivan was editor of The Nation, both were Catholics and clearly saw a strong connection between their faith and Irish nationality. This attitude stands in contrast to Davis’s focus on the Gaelic, rather than the Catholic, tradition, and Davis’s ‘Geraldines’ contains no reference to James fitz Maurice FitzGerald. The signifiers of Geraldine Irishness for Davis were ‘fosterage … 40 Dominicus O’Daly, Initium, incrementum, et exitus familiæ Geraldinorum, Desmoniæ comitum, palatinorum Kyerriæ in Hibernia, ac persecutionis hæreticorum descriptio (Lisbon, 1655). 41 Dominic O’Daly, The Geraldines, earls of Desmond, and the persecution of the Irish Catholics, trans. C.P. Meehan (Dublin, 1847). A revised version of the translation appeared in the second edition of 1878: Dominic O’Daly, The rise, increase, and exit of the Geraldines, earls of Desmond, and persecution after their fall, trans. C.P. Meehan (2nd ed., Dublin and London, 1878). 42 Mark Williams, ‘History, the interregnum and the exiled Irish’, in Mark Williams and S.P. Forrest (eds), Constructing the past: writing Irish history, 1600–1800 (Woodbridge, 2010), p. 27. 43 O’Daly, The Geraldines, earls of Desmond, ed. Meehan, p. 117 n. This reference was removed from the 1878 edition: The rise, increase, and exit of the Geraldines. 44 Sullivan, Story of Ireland, p. 221. For Thomas D’Arcy McGee on James fitz Maurice FitzGerald, see his A popular history of Ireland: from the earliest period to the emancipation of the Catholics, 2

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breitheamh, cloak, and bard’, and defence of national sovereignty. There is no mention of religion or use of the image of Ireland as a victimized martyr nation, rather ‘The Geraldines’ celebrates a warlike people where spiritual fulfilment is found in the essential unity of those born in Ireland. Though the piece became central to the remembrance of the Geraldines, Davis’s ambivalence towards, if not outright avoidance of, the issue of confessional sectarian conflict left it open to reinterpretation by less conciliatory nationalists who viewed Catholicism as the key ingredient to Irish identity.

G E R A L D I N E A N T I Q UA R I A N I S M

After the collapse of the Irish Record Commission (1810–30), the succeeding decades saw the establishment of text societies, such as the Irish Archaeological Society (1840) and the Celtic Society (1845), dedicated to publishing historical manuscripts. Individual scholars, with sponsors or their own resources, contributed to this effort to make historical source material more accessible at a local or even national scale. This movement must be placed in the context of pan-European romanticism and medievalism that had resurrected interest in the Middle Ages and its role in the origins of nations. The mid-nineteenth century also saw the establishment of numerous antiquarian societies and journals dedicated to the study of Ireland’s past.45 Alongside the Royal Irish Academy (founded earlier in 1785), the most prominent new organization was the Royal Society of Antiquaries of Ireland (originally established as the Kilkenny Archaeological Society in 1849).46 The three Kilkenny-based founders included Revd James Graves (1815–86), one of the most prolific authors of antiquarian studies during the period and a keen investigator of Geraldine history. Rather than celebrating the proto-nationalism of the Geraldines, these antiquarians saw the family in less overtly political terms as an ornamental addition to the Irish past. This drew attention away from more subversive elements. After Meehan’s publication of O’Daly’s history, the next text primarily concerned with the Geraldines came from the family itself when, late in 1857, twenty-five copies appeared of a work by Charles FitzGerald, marquess of Kildare, entitled The earls of Kildare and their ancestors from 1057 to 1773.47 The work was based on the research of Gaelic scholar and antiquarian, Eugene vols (Glasgow, 1860), ii, pp 16–30. 45 For Irish antiquarians in the nineteenth century, see Damien Murray, Romanticism, nationalism and Irish antiquarian societies, 1840–80 (Maynooth, 2000); John Waddell, Foundation myths: the beginnings of Irish archaeology (Bray, 2005); Próinséas Ní Chatháin, Siobhán Fitzpatrick and Howard Clarke (eds), Pathfinders to the past: the antiquarian road to Irish historical writing, 1640–1960 (Dublin, 2012). 46 For a narrative of the society’s first fifty years, see Aideen Ireland, ‘The Royal Society of Antiquaries of Ireland 1849–1900’, JRSAI, 112 (1982), 72–92. 47 C.W. Fitzgerald, The earls of Kildare and their ancestors: from 1057 to 1773 (Dublin, 1857; 2nd ed., 1858).

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O’Curry, employed by the marquess in the mid-1840s to compile a family history. Although O’Curry had 492 pages of research by 1846, he never completed the task.48 Demand for more copies of the Earls of Kildare led to a second and then a third edition by August 1858. This is indicative of a reading public hungry for more Geraldine material. The only criticism from one glowing review was about the limited scope of the sources, although this was blamed on the lack of a national Record Commission.49 The first page of the Earls of Kildare is adorned by the fourth stanza of ‘The Geraldines’ by Thomas Davis, presumably to show the popularity and literary fame the family had achieved.50 Unsurprisingly, the medieval Kildares are depicted as brave and honourable aristocrats and the author is keen to emphasize their loyalism. To this end, Silken Thomas is described as a misled youth, ‘wilful and wanting in discretion’.51 Although a generous forty-seven pages are given to the eleventh earl, it is not until the forty-fourth page that we are told rather sweepingly that he ‘conformed to the Protestant religion in the beginning of the reign of Queen Elizabeth’.52 Here we find a similarity with Thomas Davis in the reluctance to tar the family with the brush of religious division, as the Leinsters were happy to cultivate the image that they represented the entire country and all its faiths. With the eleventh earl’s conversion the Geraldines became modern, losing their wild Celtic characteristics and replacing the sword with the pen and the petition. The narrative ends in 1773 thereby avoiding the actions of Lord Edward. This illustrates efforts by the marquess to reduce his family’s association with separatist politics in the modern era. He celebrated the exceptionalism of the Geraldines, but it was an exceptionalism that made them worthy premier peers and symbolic national figureheads, not proto-nationalists. The marquess’s history did not include the earls of Desmond and the southern Geraldine branches, so in the 1870s and early 1880s in the pages of the Journal of the Royal Historical and Archaeological Association of Ireland,53 Church of Ireland clergymen Samuel Hayman and James Graves wrote a series of articles to fill in the gaps.54 Eventually turned into a book entitled Unpublished Geraldine documents, they published pedigrees and manuscripts taken from the new Public Record Office, the library of the Royal Irish Academy and various private collections.55 There is little analysis in the text and it should be seen in 48 Eugene O’Curry to marquess of Kildare, 18 Aug. 1846 (NLI, MS 18849/1). 49 B[ernard] B[urke], ‘The earls of Kildare’, Dublin University Magazine, 51:301 (1858), 28–39. 50 This is the stanza with the fewest political connotations (quoted above, p. 17). 51 Fitzgerald, Earls of Kildare, p. 129. 52 Ibid., p. 223. 53 This association became the Royal Society of Antiquaries of Ireland in 1890. 54 For a recent examination of Hayman, see Patrick Maume, ‘The ruins of Youghal: Canon Samuel Hayman, antiquarianism and the decline of Irish Anglican ascendancy’, in Ciaran O’Neill (ed.), Irish elites in the nineteenth century (Dublin, 2013), pp 172–84. 55 Unpublished Geraldine documents (4 parts, Dublin, 1870–81); first published as ‘Unpublished Geraldine documents’, ed. Samuel Hayman, James Graves, Abraham FitzGibbon, JRSAI, 3rd series, 1 (1868) 356–416; 459–559; 4th series, 1 (1870)

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the context of the new drive, demonstrated most obviously in Ireland with the establishment of the PRO in 1867, to catalogue and classify historic documents. There is little veneration of rebellious family members and James fitz Maurice FitzGerald is neatly summed up as ‘gallant, but misguided’.56 This may be interpreted as a rejection of McGee and Sullivan’s depiction of the Geraldines, whose Irishness is defined by their defence of the Catholic faith. The publishing costs of Unpublished Geraldine documents were covered by Maurice FitzGibbon (and his younger brother Abraham), who used the research to promote a claim to the extinct hereditary title of the ‘White Knight’ and each volume is emblazoned with the FitzGibbon coat of arms. He lived at Crohane House, co. Kilkenny and was a member of the Royal Historical and Archaeological Association. Twelve members of the FitzGibbon family, an offshoot of the Desmond Geraldines, successively held the title from the fourteenth century until 1611. In the early nineteenth century, George King, third earl of Kingston and descendant of the penultimate White Knight, sought to revive the title, but this was successfully resisted by another claimant William Vesey FitzGerald.57 Two pedigrees demonstrate Maurice’s ancestry and one actually declares him as the sole claimant.58 Unfortunately for him, his claims were never officially recognized and he died in 1881. Nonetheless, it would have been quite a coup for Maurice to convince some of the leading antiquarians of his day to display his bloodlines and connection to the illustrious Geraldines and it was mutually beneficial as Graves et al. were sponsored to compile their research. FitzGibbon mirrors O’Connell’s efforts to link his activities with the FitzGerald name and again illustrates the continuing renown of the family. Why did Davis’s ‘more than Irish tribe’ attract such interest from unionists like Hayman and Graves? The latter published a contemporary manuscript concerning James Butler, the first duke of Ormonde, so he was not solely interested in spreading more Geraldine propaganda.59 The answer is found in the opening pages of Unpublished Geraldine documents, in which Hayman wrote of how Ireland was lagging behind Britain and Europe in the publication of the ‘histories of [its] great Houses’. The project was an essential national concern because the Irish must show the validity of their historical experience to the rest of the world and publish ‘living restoration[s] of the Departed.’60 In the Geraldines, these antiquarians identified an illustrious and chivalric family with which to joust with the best of English history. Another instance of this is found in the obituary of the duke of Leinster in the Irish Times: ‘few, indeed, amongst the English Peers could claim a more ancient origin, fewer still – none in fact – 591–616; 4 (1876–8) 14–52, 157–66, 246–64. 56 Samuel Hayman, ‘The earls of Desmond’, in Unpublished Geraldine docs, i, pp 2–3. 57 John O’Donovan, ‘The descendants of the last earls of Desmond’, Ulster Journal of Archaeology, 1st series, 6 (1858), 91–7. 58 See pedigree C, Unpublished Geraldine docs, iv. 59 James Graves (ed.), Anonymous account of the early life and marriage of James, first duke of Ormonde: with an appendix (Dublin, 1864). 60 Hayman, ‘The earls of Desmond’, in Unpublished Geraldine docs, i, p. 1.

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could boast of an ancestry whose history formed so important a part of the history of their country.’61 In addition, promoting material about the Geraldines allowed unionists, perhaps uncomfortable with venerating the O’Neills and the O’Briens, access to an Irish tradition, but one with British, and not solely Gaelic, connections. The great Gaelic families had also faded from the political arena and so could not rival the Geraldines for continued relevance. The Geraldines were not revered by all those interested in Ireland’s past. For instance, Richard Bagwell, historian and unionist MP for Clonmel, in his Ireland under the Tudors (1885–90), saw nothing admirable in the destructive wars of the Kildares and Desmonds. In opposition to the ‘more Irish than the Irish themselves’ ideal, Bagwell argued that the Desmonds cared little for either the English or the Irish and characterized the rebellious Kildares as over-powerful tyrants.62 The medieval Geraldines showed the danger of turning one’s back on England. Nevertheless, for its time, Ireland under the Tudors was meticulously well-researched and Bagwell strove more successfully than others to avoid contemporary allusions. In more unoriginal and recycled histories from the unionist perspective, such as Emily Lawless’s Ireland (1888), the Geraldine– Butler rivalry was a straightforward way of navigating through several centuries of history and explaining the ebb and flow of English power. Just as wilful Celts were presented as the antithesis of industrious Anglo-Saxons, the Butlers were the loyalist antithesis of the hot-headed Geraldines. The numerous Butlers who had rebelled against the crown over the centuries were conveniently forgotten, perhaps owing to the lasting influence of Thomas Carte’s Life of James, duke of Ormonde (originally published 1735–6 and reprinted in 1851), which depicted James Butler as a virtuous subject defined by his loyalty to the crown.63 In a rejection of the deification of rebellious and gaelicized Anglo-Norman lords, Lawless stated that Ormonde was ‘perhaps the most distinguished representative of all these great Norman Irish houses, unless indeed one of the greatest names in the whole range of English political history – that of Edmund Burke – is to be added to the list’.64 Although her choice of Burke can be seen as a rejection of his contemporary Lord Edward FitzGerald, Lawless did admit that the Geraldines had a great charm about them. The cultish devotion to their romantic place in Irish history was difficult to completely overcome.

* * *

61 Irish Times, 12 Oct. 1874. 62 Richard Bagwell, Ireland under the Tudors, 2 vols (London, 1885–90), i, pp 192–3; ibid., ii, p. 138. 63 Thomas Carte, An history of the life of James, duke of Ormonde, from his birth in 1610, to his death in 1688 […], 3 vols (London, 1735–6) [vols 1 and 2 are dated 1736; the title-page of vol. 3 is dated 1735]; new edition published as The life of James duke of Ormonde […], 6 vols (Oxford, 1851). 64 Emily Lawless, Ireland (London, 1888), p. 105.

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This essay has shown that the place of the Geraldines in late-medieval Irish history became a field of historical interest and political contention in the nineteenth century. In the divided world of nineteenth-century Irish politics, the appeal of the Geraldines lay in their intermediate position between Britain and Ireland and there was no clear ‘nationalist’ or ‘unionist’ consensus. This theme of Geraldine history held particular meaning for the Protestant Irish – a group caught between Gaelic-Catholic Ireland and Anglo-Saxon Protestant Britain. But equally, in the actions of James fitz Maurice FitzGerald, a figure who was arguably ‘more Catholic than the Catholics themselves’, Catholics continually offered a model of integration that emphasized their faith as the key to Irish nationality. For more conciliatory nationalists, figures such as the Great Earl or Lord Edward FitzGerald were demonstrative of a civic-based identity where anyone could become Irish if they willed it. Unionist interpretation of the past was similarly divided as some, spearheaded by the Leinsters and notable antiquarians, sought to emphasize the recurrent importance of the family in the national narrative and as leaders of the natives, whereas others saw only conquerors gone to rot and a moral tale of how not to rule. These conflicting interpretations of the Geraldines continued into the twentieth century as medieval lords were reshaped into early proponents of Home Rule. Famously, Edmund Curtis, in his History of mediaeval Ireland (1923) labelled Geraldine ascendancy in the fifteenth century ‘Aristocratic Home Rule’.65 Though future generations of scholars have criticized this anachronism, it has been suggested more recently that Curtis endeavoured to present a digestible account of late-medieval Ireland to a relatively uninformed public.66 In this he followed a precedent set by previous authors, including Alice Stopford Green, who, in her rather more polemical history, Irish nationality (1911), identified the earl of Desmond as the first to make ‘a demand for home rule in 1341’.67 Although the text was inscribed ‘in memory of the Irish dead’, Green found no place for James fitz Maurice FitzGerald; seemingly his war for Catholic Ireland bore no resemblance to the struggle for Home Rule. Curtis and Green, both from Protestant Irish backgrounds, reveal a shared desire to highlight the significance of those of mixed heritage to the nationalist causes of past and 65 Curtis, Med. Ire. (1st ed.), pp 356–84; Curtis, Med. Ire. (2nd ed.), pp 309–36. 66 James Lydon, ‘Historical revisit: Edmund Curtis, A history of medieval Ireland (1923, 1938)’, IHS, 31:124 (1999), 536–9; Peter Crooks, ‘The Lecky professors’, in Crooks, Government, p. 25. 67 Alice Stopford Green, Irish nationality (London, 1911), p. 120. A somewhat more subtle comparison to contemporary politics had been drawn in 1893 by the historian Patrick Weston Joyce, who portrayed the Geraldines as fourteenth-century Land Leaguers, describing how in 1342 [recte 1341]: ‘Desmond and Kildare … openly spoke of armed resistance, and convened a parliament of their own in Kilkenny. Here they drew up a spirited remonstrance to the king … They exposed the evils of absenteeism, and showed that many colonial districts had been ruined, as their proprietors, resident in England, extorted as much money as they could and cared for nothing else’ (P.W. Joyce, A short history of Ireland from the earliest times to 1608 (Dublin, 1893), p. 314).

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present and to show that all could live together in an independent Ireland. Here we discern the lasting success of earlier efforts to present the Geraldines as the leading light of English assimilation into Ireland. Nor were the myths of the Geraldines only to be found in the pages of history. In a memorable passage of Joyce’s Ulysses, Ned Lambert recites a tale of Geraldine recklessness and wit: – God! he cried. I forgot to tell him that one about the earl of Kildare after he set fire to Cashel cathedral. You know that one? I’m bloody sorry I did it, says he, but I declare to God I thought the archbishop was inside … That was the great earl, the Fitzgerald Mor. Hot members they were all of them, the Geraldines.68

68 James Joyce, Ulysses (Oxford, 1993), p. 222 (spelling and italics reproduced as in the original). For Joyce’s source, see Ulysses annotated: notes for James Joyce’s Ulysses, ed. Dod Gifford with Robert J. Siedman (rev. ed., Berkeley, 1989), p. 269 (referring to episode 10.444–8).

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Index

Members of English ruling dynasties are normally indexed under their forenames (e.g., ‘Edward I’, ‘Lionel of Antwerp’). Other titled English lords are listed under family names (e.g., ‘Butler’). A family name such as ‘de Burgh’ is entered under ‘B’. An exception is made for members of the Geraldine family: the lineages that gave rise to the earls of Desmond and Kildare appear as subheadings under ‘Geraldine (FitzGerald), family’; minor branches of the family are indexed by the place with which they are most closely associated (e.g., ‘Broghill, Geraldines of ’; ‘Kerry, knights of ’). Irish names are given in that form followed by an Anglicized standard form in parantheses. The lower-case ‘mac’ indicates a genuine patronymic as opposed to an element in a surname. Similarly the distinction between a patronymic (‘fitz Maurice’) and surname (‘FitzMaurice’) is indicated by spacing. Persons identified solely with a true patronymic are indexed under their forenames. Married women are normally indexed under their maiden names. Italic type indicates post-medieval antiquarians and historians. The following abbreviations are used: abb. (a)bp(ric) bar. bro. cant. co. dau. dk. e. Eng. Ire. kg(dom) par. parl. s. w.

abbot of (arch)bishop(ric) barony brother of cantred county daughter duke of earl of England Ireland king(dom) parish parliament son of wife of

1 The editors are grateful to Dr Áine Foley for her assistance in compiling the index.



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 Abbeyfeale (co. Limerick) 0 Abergavenny (Monmouths)  Aberteifi (Cardigan, Ceredigion)  Abingdon abbey (Oxon) 28, 33 cartulary 3 chronicle 3 Acmys, cant. (co. Kerry) 82 Act of Union (800) 02 Adare (co. Limerick) 79, 3, 9, 9, 30, 30–, 307–8 Augustinian friary  castle 28, 3 Franciscan friary 20 Adelelm, abb. Abingdon (07–83) 28 Adrian IV, pope (–9) 8, 90 Adeliza of Louvain (d. ), queen Eng. 38–9 ‘Aeneas’ 280– Aghade (Carlow) 39 Agincourt, battle of () 229 Albold, abb. Bury St Edmunds (–9) 3–7, 39 Alen, John, abp Dublin (28–3) 27, 38–7, 389, 39, 393, 39– John (fl. 3), cousin of John, abp Dublin 387, 39 Allen, lordship (co. Kildare) 90 Geraldines of 90, 290, 29 Bartholomew 29 Gerrot fitz Robert 29 John fitz William 90 Maurice fitz Richard (fl. 3) 29 Philip fitz Maurice 29 Richard fitz Maurice (fl. ) 29 Robert fitz John Williamson 29 Robert fitz Maurice 90 Altry (Listowel), cant. (co. Kerry) 8–3, 8 André, Bernard (d. 22), poet 287–8 Angevin empire 77, 79, 83 Angharad, dau. Gerald of Windsor 2, 0, , –7 Anglesey 8, 0, – Anjou (France) 77 Annales Cambriae 2, 9, 8 Annals of Connacht 270, 388

Index Annals of Loch Cé 388 Annals of Multyfarnham 7–8 Annals of the Four Masters 2, 298, 388, 397 Annaly, lordship (co. Longford) 33 Anonymous of Béthune 80 Anselm, abb. Bury St Edmunds (2–) 38 antiquarianism 09–2 Antoninus of Florence (d. 9) 287 Any (Knockainy, co. Limerick) 8, 88 Apsley, William, constable of Castlemaine 39, 3, 372 Apulia (Italy) 2–7 Aquitaine (France) 72, 77 Archdall, Mervyn (d. 79), antiquary 2 Ardagh (co. Limerick) 82, 23 Ardcanny (co. Limerick) 88 Ardcree (co. Sligo) 3 Ardfert (co. Kerry) 82, 23, 30, 30 Franciscan friary 2 Ardglass (co. Cork) 82 Ardnagragh (co. Westmeath), Geraldines of (Coardal) 8, 92 Ardnurcher (co. Westmeath) 3, 32 Ardrahan (co. Galway) 3, 78 Ardristan (co. Carlow) 39 Ardskeagh (co. Cork), MacHenry Fitzgibbons of 8 Argentan (dép. Orne) 38, 0 Ariosto, Ludovico 279–80 Arlingham (Gloucs) 20 Arno, river (Italy) 280 Artane (co. Dublin) 38–, 393, 39 Artur, Eustace 307 Arwystli, Welsh cantref  Ashdown-Hill, John, historian 22 Ashtown (co. Dublin) 90 Askeaton (co. Limerick) 8, 23, 29, 37, 373– abbey 37 castle 28, 3, 9, 99, 202, 3, 37 Athassel (co. Tipperary) 220 Athenry (co. Galway)  Dominican priory 7 Athlacca (co. Limerick) 77, 30, 30, 308

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Index Athlone (cos Roscommon and Westmeath) 38 Athy (co. Kildare) 33, 39, 32, 33, 338, 03 Aubigny d’, William Pincerna (d. 7), st e. Arundel 39 Audley, Hugh de (d. 37), st e. Gloucester 208 Avignon (dép. Vaucluse) 20 papal curia 209–0 Avranches d’, Hugh (d. 0), st e. Chester  Aylmer, family 33 Badlesmere, family 29 Bartholomew de (d. 322), st baron Badlesmere 2–2 Bagshot Park (Surrey/Berks) 28 Bagwell, Richard (d. 98), historian 2 Baldwin (d. 097), abb. Bury St Edmunds 37 Baldwin of Forde (d. 90), abp Canterbury  Ballilig (co. Westmeath) 3 Ballinasmall (co. Mayo), Carmelite priory 7 Ballineanig (co. Kerry), Geraldines of 90 Ballingaddy (co. Limerick) 88, 30, 308 Ballingarry (co. Limerick) 8, 88 Ballinlig (co. Meath) 323 Ballinrobe (co. Mayo) 3 Ballintemple (co. Cork), Geraldines of 9 Ballybeg (co. Cork), Augustinian priory 2 Ballyboggan (co. Meath) 32 Ballybracken (co. Wexford) 30 Ballycahane (co. Limerick), Geraldines of 88 Ballycaroon (Tirawley, co. Mayo) 7 Ballycasey (co. Clare), Geraldines of 88 Ballycrenane (co. Cork) 89 Geraldines of 9 Ballycullen (co. Kildare) 39 Ballydoole (co. Limerick) 88 Ballyfreera (co. Limerick) 88

7 Ballygarrett (co. Kerry), Geraldines of 92 Ballygleaghan (co. Limerick), Geraldines of 88 Ballygub (co. Kilkenny) 77 Ballyhahill (co. Limerick) 88 Ballyhay (co. Cork) 200 Ballyhonuck (co. Cork), Geraldines of 9 Ballykineally (co. Cork), Geraldines of 9 Ballymacaquim (co. Kerry) 82 Ballymacegoge (co. Kerry), Geraldines of 92 Ballymacoda (co. Cork), Geraldines of 9 Ballymagarvey (co. Meath) 32 Ballymaloe (co. Cork), Geraldines of 9 Ballymore Eustace (co. Kildare) 303, 32 Ballymote (co. Sligo) 7 Ballynacourty (co. Kerry), Geraldines of 88 Ballynamona (co. Limerick), Geraldines of 88 Ballyogarty (co. Waterford), Geraldines of 93 Ballyregan (co. Cork), Geraldines of 9 Ballyroe (co. Kerry), Geraldines of 9 Ballyshonickbane (co. Limerick), Geraldines of 88 Ballysonan (Ballyshannon, co. Kildare) 79–80 Ballyteig (co. Kildare) 90, 29 Baltinglass (co. Wicklow)  Bannada (co. Sligo) 3, 78 Bannow Bay (co. Wexford) 7 bardic poetry 2– Barlow, Frank, historian 30 Barnacrow (co. Kildare) 90 Barrett, family 7 Barri (Barry), family 2, 7, 239 Ellice, dau. of Lord Barry of Buttevant 239, 300 of Glamorgan  James (d. 8), th viscount Buttevant 3

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8 Barri (Barry), family (continued) John, lord of Orrery 233, 2– Odo de 7, 2 Philip de , 7, 78, 0, 2 Robert de 7, 7, 77 Thomas, bp Ossory (27–0) 22 William de, lord of Manorbier , 7 William 233 see also Giraldus Cambrensis Barron, family 70, 8 Barrow, river 2, 27, , 33 valley 33– Barruc, St  Barry, family Barry island (Glamorgan)  Bartlett, Robert, historian  Bealadrohid castle (co. Tipperary) 3 Beauchamp, Joan de (d. 30), countess of Ormond 22, 233 Beaufo, James de (d. 330), sheriff of Limerick 22 Beaver (Carrigaline, co. Cork) 23 Beckett, Thomas (d. 70), abp Canterbury 3, 38 Bective (co. Meath) 3, 322 Bede  Bedfordshire 38 Belagh (co. Westmeath), Geraldines of 80 Belan (co. Kildare) 80 Belfast (co. Antrim) 332 Belgrecourte (co. Meath) 32 Bellême, Robert de (d. c.30), 3rd e. Shrewsbury 8–9 Belmeis, Richard de, bp London and royal steward of the earldom of Shrewsbury , 2 Berkeley, family of Berkeley castle (Gloucs) 99, 20– Margaret, dau. Thomas, st baron Berkeley , 9, 20– Maurice (d. 37), of Uley 202, 20 Thomas (d. 32), st baron Berkeley , 9, 20 Thomas (d. 3), 3rd baron Berkeley 99, 202–3

Index Berkeley castle (Gloucs) , 9, 99, 20, 20, 2 St Mary’s church 99 Berkshire 38 Bermingham, family , 7, 230, 2, 29, 32 Basilia 7 Eva 78, 9–, , 7–8, 2, 37 Milo 7 Peter  Piers (d. 308) 9,  Robert 9, 8–9, 2, 27, 77 Walter, G. Ire. 209 William (d. 332) 209 Bernard, bp St Davids (–8) 0 Bernard fitz Ospac, archdeacon Rouen 2 Berre (co. Cork) 83 Bibby, Thomas (d. 83), poet 397 Bigod, lords of Carlow 9, 7– Bigod, Roger I (d. 07) 3 Black castle (co. Kildare) 02 Black castle (co. Wicklow) 9,  Blackhall by Clane (co. Kildare), Geraldines of 80 Patrick fitz Maurice 80 Blackrath (co. Kildare) 33, 320 Blackwater, river 37 Bleddyn ap Cynfyn (d. 07), ruler of Gwynedd and Powys 3 Blund, Andrew le 9 Blunham (Beds) 3 Bodleian Library (Oxon.) 283 Boethius (d. 2 CE), philosopher 289 Bohun, Eleanor de (33), countess Ormond 20, 2, 238 William de (d. 30), e. Northampton 208 Bolane (co. Limerick) 88 Bona of Savoy (d. 03), duchess of Milan 22 Bona Anima, William (d. 0), abp Rouen 2 Book of Fermoy 2–7, 29, 27 Book of Howth 22–, 329, 38, 39 Bosworth, battle of (8) 328–9 Boulabally (co. Limerick) 88

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Index Bourchier, George 30– William, 3rd e. Bath 30 Bouvet, Honoré (d. 0) 28 Boyne, river 33 Bracciolini, Poggio (d. 9) 287 Bradford (Yorks) 393 Bradley, John, archaeologist 02 Brand, Paul, historian 37 Braunton (Devon)  Brecon (Powys) 3, – Brian Bóraime (Brian Boru, d. 0) 70, 28, 27, 07 Brigown (Mitchelstown), co. Cork 8 Brill (Bucks) 33 Briouze, family 83 Philip de 70, 78–9 William de 80–2 Bristol, city 72, , 20, 3 St Augustine’s abbey 20 Brittany (France) 3 Broghill (co. Cork), Geraldines of 93 Brotherhood of Arms of St George 332 Browne, Anthony (d. 8), master of the horse 2 Brownsford (co. Kilkenny) 77 Brownstown (co. Kildare), Geraldines of 80 Bruce invasion of Ireland (3–8) 83, 23, 28 Bruges (Belgium) 28 Brúin, John de, of Hospital 39 Bruni, Leonardo (d. ), of Arezzo, chancellor Florence 237, 23, 279, 287 Brutus 28 Brut y Twywsogyon (‘The chronicle of the princes’) 2, –7, 9, ,  Bryan, Donough, historian 32 Brycheiniog, Welsh kgdom ,  Bucklebury (Berks) 27 Bunratty (co. Clare) 8, 2 Buolick (co. Tipperary) 20 Burgh, family , 200, 2 Elizabeth (d. 33), th countess Ulster 220 Joan, dau. Richard, 2nd e. Ulster 20

9 Katherine (d. 33), dau. Richard, 2nd e. Ulster 9, 20, 29 Margaret, dau. Richard, 2nd e. Ulster 20 Richard (d. 23), lord of Connacht , 2 Richard (d. 32), ‘Red Earl’, 2nd e. Ulster 2–3, –8, 78, 9, 97, 20, 220, 2, 2 Walter (d. 27), st e. Ulster 7–8, , 8 William (d. 20/) 80, 9, , 82, 2 see also Burke of Clanrickard, family; Burke of Mayo Burghersh, Bartholomew (d. 3), st baron Burghersh 20, 220 Elizabeth, dau. Bartholomew 220 Burgundy (France) 28–2, 28–7 Burke of Clanrickard (Mac Uilliam Uachtar) 7, 232, 373, 379 Mary (fl. 20), dau. Uilleag, lord of Clanrickard 299 Mary, dau. Richard, 2nd e. Clanrickard 370 Richard Sassanach (d. 82), 2nd e. Clanrickard 33, 3 Uilleag, lord of Clanrickard 299 Uilleag (Ulick) Fionn of Clanrickard 33 Burke of Mayo (Mac Uilliam Íochtar) 232, 373 Burke, Bernard, genealogist 32 Burke, Edmund (d. 797), historian 2 Burnchurch (co. Kilkenny), Geraldines of 8 Rowland FitzGerald 8 8 Burnham (Bucks) 27 Buckingham, dk. 2 Burriscarra (co. Mayo), Carmelite priory 7 Burton (co. Kildare) 80 Bury St Edmunds, abbey 3–8,  Butler (le Botiller) of Ormond, family , 97, 223, 229, 238, 23, 27, 29, 30, 3, 379, 38, 2

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20 Butler (le Botiller) of Ormond, family (continued) Anne, dau. James, th e. Ormond 233 and earldom of Ormond 200, 209, 220, 223, 2, 29–, 30, 3, 3, 39 Edmund 7 Edmund, baron of Dunboyne 300 Edmund, husband Aveline FitzGerald 277 Edmund mac Richard 28 Saltair of 28–7 Edmund of Cloughgrenan (d. 02), s. James, 9th e. Ormond 3 Edmund (d. 02), 2nd viscount Mountgarret 39 Eleanor, dau. Edmund, baron Dunboyne 300 Eleanor, dau. James, 2nd e. Ormond 238, 27 Elizabeth, dau. James, th e. Ormond 22, 299–300 James (d. 88), st dk. Ormonde –2 James (d. 338), st e. Ormond 238 James (d. 382), 2nd e. Ormond 20, 2, 220, 238 minority of 209–0 lands ravaged by Desmond (3) 2 marriage of 220 James (d. 2), ‘White Earl’, th e. Ormond 229–30, 232–3, 22–7, 20, 28–9 James (d. ), th e. Ormond 27, 30 James (d. ), 9th e. Ormond 9, 29, 300, 38 James, bro. Thomas, 7th e. Ormond 330 James of Pottlesrath 29 Joan FitzGerald (d. ), countess of Ormond 300, 37 John (d. 7), th e. Ormond 20, 28 Piers (d. 39), 8th e. Ormond 29, 328

Index Piers, s. Richard (d. ) 277 Richard, bro. th e. Ormond 28 Theobald (d. 20)  Thomas (d. ), 7th e. Ormond 328–9 Thomas (‘The Black Earl’, d. ), 0th e. Ormond 300, 30, 33, 3, 37, 37, 37 William 329 see also Beauchamp, Joan (d. 30), countess of Ormond Buttevant (co. Cork) 233, 2 Cadwgan ap Bleddyn (d. ), prince Powys 9,  Cáeluisce (co. Sligo) 3,  Caen (dép. Calvados) 2– Caeriw (Pembrokes), see Carew Caherboshinny (co. Kerry), Geraldines of 90 Caherelly (co. Limerick) 8 Cahermone (co. Cork), Geraldines of 9 Cahir abbey (co. Tipperary) 2 Cahissy, Dionisius, chancellor of Limerick cathedral 39 Calais, pale of 332 siege of (37) 20, 208, 20 Calepino, Ambrogio (d. 0) 288 Callann, battle of (2) 2 Calverstown (co. Kildare) 33 Campion, Edmund (d. 8) 223–, 2, 2–, 38–, 389, 39 Canterbury, ecclesiastical province 30, 3 Cantwell, John, abp Cashel (2–/2) 20 Caoursin, Guillaume (d. 0) 28 Cappagh (co. Limerick) 87 Carberrystown (co. Meath) 32 Carbury (co. Kildare) 230, 32, 39, 33 Cardiff castle ,  Cardigan (Ceredigion) , 73 castle , 73, 2, Carew castle (Pembrokes) 0, 2, 73 Carew, family 0, 7, 70, 7, 2, 28 George, e. Totnes (‘Sir George Carew’, d. 29) 7, 20

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Index Griffin 7 John (d. 33), lord of Idrone 20 Leonard fitz John (d. 37) 7 Odo de (d. c.202), lord of Carew and Idrone , , , 7 Peter 7 Raymond ‘le Gros’ (d. a.98) 7–, 78–9, 87, 9, 7, 7–, 8 Richard fitz Raymond de 7 Thomas 22 Thomas of Desmond 7 Thomas fitz Leonard 7 William de (d. 73), lord of Carew 3–, 0–, 3, 73– William fitz Odo de (d. 23), lord of Idrone 3–, 7 Carew manuscripts 390 Carews of Antony (Cornwall) 7 Carews of Beddington (Surrey) 7 Carews of Haccombe (Cornwall) 7 Carews of Moulsford (Berks) 7 Carey, family 70, 7 Carlingford (co. Louth) 337 Carlow, county 9, 7, 208, 37, 33–8 castle 33, , 20, 330 town 20 Carmarthen castle (Carmarthens) , 2, 2 Carney, James (d. 989), Celtic scholar 27 Carrick (co. Kildare) 90 Carrickfergus (co. Antrim) 33 Carrickittle, bar. (co. Limerick) 9, 3, 3, 77 Carrickmacgriffin (Carrick-on-Suir), co. Tipperary 7 Carrick-on-Suir (co. Tipperary) 7, 2 Carrigacottaig (Castlemary, co. Cork), Geraldines of 9 Carrigafoyle (co. Kerry) 37 Carrigaline (co. Cork) 79, 8, 23, 3– 7 Carte, Thomas (d. 7), historian 2 Carter, Arthur (d. 79), provost marshal Munster 39–70, 37 Carton House (co. Kildare) 283

2 Cashel (co. Tipperary) 29, 273 abp 208, 220, 2 dioceses 209 Hore abbey 2 Saltair 27 Castlecorth (Ballynacorra, co. Cork) 7 Castledermot (co. Kildare) 32, 39, 33, 338 Castleishen (co. Cork), Geraldines of 9 Castleisland (co. Kerry) 82, 92, 99, 202 Castleknock (co. Dublin)  Castlemaine (co. Kerry) 32, 39–0, 33– Castlemartyr (co. Cork) Geraldines of 9, 32, 39 Castle Maurice (St Davids) 7 Castle Reban (co. Kildare) 33, 39 Castlerichard (co. Cork), Geraldines of 9 Castlerow (co. Kildare), Geraldines of 80 Castletown (co. Kildare) 33 Castletown Glanneth (Castletown Kenry, co. Limerick) 87 Castletown Moylagh (co. Meath) 80 Caxton, William (d. 9) 28–7, 290 Cecil, William (d. 98), st baron Burghley 3, 39–0, 32, 39, 3 Celbridge (co. Kildare) 80, 33, 33 , see also Kildrought Cenarth Bychan castle (Pembrokes) 9– 0 Ceredigion (Wales) , 9, 2, 73– Chapelrussell (co. Limerick) 88, 30 Charlemagne 220, 28 Charles VII, kg France (22–) 239 Charles IX, kg France (0–7) 3 Charles of Blois (d. 3), dk. Brittany 20 Charles the Bold (d. 77), dk. Burgundy 28 Charleville (co. Cork) 93, 23 Charlton, William 28 Chepstow castle (Monmouths) 3, 2 Chertsey abbey (Surrey) 27, 0

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22 Christ Church cathedral (Holy Trinity), see Dublin Cilgerran (Pembrokes) 9–0,  Clane (co. Kildare) 33, 37–8 Franciscan friary  Clanmorris (co. Limerick) 32 Clanrichard (‘FitzGerald’) of Lickbevin , see Lickbevin Clare, family 8, 2–2 Margaret (d. 333/) 2 Maud 2 Richard fitz Gilbert (d. 3)  Richard fitz Gilbert (‘Strongbow’, d. 7), e. Strigoil 72–8, 9, 3, 2, 7, 97, 20 Richard (d. 38), lord of Thomond 2 Thomas (d. 287), lord of Thomond 0, 2, , 78, 87 Thomas (d. 32), lord of Thomond 2 Claregalway (co. Galway), Franciscan friary 7 Clement VI, pope (32–2) 97, 20 Clenish (co. Limerick) 8 Geraldines of 87 Clifford, family 2–2 Clinton, Edward Fiennes (d. 8/), e. Lincoln 2 Clinton, Geoffrey 30 Clonagh (co. Kildare) 308 Clonard (co. Meath) 3, 32 Clonbeg (co. Tipperary) 8 Cloncagh (co. Limerick) 88 Cloncrew (co. Limerick) 88 Cloncurry (co. Kildare) 320 Clone (co. Kilkenny) 77 Clonea (co. Waterford), Geraldines of 92 Clonshanbo (co. Kildare) 320 Cloyne, diocese, 30 deans 9 see also Cork and Cloyne, bps Cloyne and Ballymaloe (co. Cork), Geraldines of 9 John fitz Edmund (d. 2) 9 Clonmel (co. Tipperary) 8, 2, 2, 2

Index Clonmore (co. Carlow) 33 Clyn, John, friar 9, 202, 208, 2 Clyn’s annals 8, 20 Cobham, Reginald de (d. 3) 99, 202, 20 Cogan, family 0, 23 John de 7 Geoffrey, lord of Kerrycurrihy 233– Miles de (d. 82) 78 William, lord of Ballyhay 200, 208–9, 2 Cogan (Glamorgan) 23 Coleshill (Flints)  Collins, Arthur 2, 32 Collinstown (co. Westmeath) 323 Compton (Surrey) 27, 0 Condon, family 8, 7 Connacht 80, 2–, 7–9, 7–2, 7, 78, 8, 229, 232–3, 332, 38, 37, 373 lord of 32 lordship of 200 seneschal of 29 Connell (co. Kildare) 33, 320 Connello (co. Limerick) , 8, 88, 23, 37, 37 Constantinople, fall of (3) 28 Coolanure (co. Tipperary) 20 Coolcap (co. Cork), Geraldines of 9 Cooley, bar. (co. Louth) 337 Coolock (co. Dublin) 9 Coologorra (Mount Uniack, co. Cork) Geraldines of 9 Corbally (co. Tipperary) 20 Corcomohide (co. Limerick) 8 Cork, city 23, 38–9, 37, 30–, 33, 392–3 county 9, 7–, 83, 9, 2, 229, 233, 20, 27–8, 330–, 32, 3 Dominican priory 2 fee-farm 28 kgdom (Desmond) 78, 9, 22 lordship , 23 St Finbarre’s cathedral 3 sheriff 27–8 Cork and Cloyne, bps 9

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Index Corkbeg (co. Cork), Geraldines of 9 Corkely (co. Cork) 83 Cornaveigh (co. Cork), Geraldines of 9 Cosgrove, Art, historian 22 Costello, family 7 Coterel, Eleanor, w. John 208 John (d. 3), steward Maurice fitz Thomas, st e. Desmond 200, 202, 208–0, 2 Courcy, John de (d. 29), lord of Ulster 70, 79–80, 82, 87, 9 Courcy, Nicholas de 89 Court (co. Limerick), Geraldines of 88 Cowley (Oxon.) 39 Cox, Richard 389–90, 39 coyne and livery 2, 23, 3, 3, 38–9 Crécy, battle of (3) 20 Crevaghe (Cruagh, co. Dublin) 33 Croagh (co. Limerick) 87, 308 Crohane (co. Tipperary) 20 Cromer, George, abp Armagh (2–3) 383–, 38, 390, 39 Croom (co. Limerick) 93, 9, 9, 9, 79, 30, 30, 30–7 castle 3–, , –,  Curragh (co. Kildare) , 29–70 Curraghbridge (co. Limerick), Geraldines of 88 Curtis, Edmund (d. 93), historian 98, 22, 32, 398, 3 Dacre, Thomas, 2nd baron Dacre 239 Dagworth, Thomas (d. 32) 20, 2 Dál Cais 70, 8 D’Alton, E.A., historian, 398 Damastown (co. Dublin) 90 Dante Alighieri (d. 32) 279 Darcy, Elizabeth (390), countess Ormond 20, 220 John (d. 37), st baron Darcy de Knayth 20, 22 William 2, 33, 337 Darcy, family, of Platten 29 William 29 Dardistown (co. Dublin) 3, 32

23 Davells, Henry (d. 79), constable of Dungarvan 39–72, 37 St David (d. 89) 8 David I, kg Scots (2–3) 0 David II, kg Scots (329–7) 20– Davies, John (d. 2) 98 Davies, R.R., historian 9 Davis, Thomas (d. 8) 7, 392, 399, 0, 0– Decies , 92, 200, 28 Geraldines of 93, 39 Gerrot fitz James 93 viscount 93 Decimore 30 Deesbeg (co. Limerick) 77 Deheubarth, Welsh kgdom 8, 7,  royal house 0, 3 Dekker, Thomas (d. 32), playwright 387 Derbforgaill (Dervorgilla), w. Tigernán Ua Ruairc 9, 2 Derrygealane (co. Limerick) 30 Desmond, earldom 22 earls 223, 30, 307, 309–0, 3, 07–8 lordship , 7–, 83, 28, 239 kingdom 78, 9, 82 rebellion (73–9) 93, 3, 3, 32, 3 rebellion (79–83) 33, 32, 3 Despenser, Hugh (d. 32) 29 Deugleddyf, Welsh cantref 9 Devereux, Walter (d. 7), st e. Essex 3, 3, 3 Dewisland , see Pebidiog Dillon, family 29 Dillon, John Blake (d. 8) 0 Dingle (co. Kerry) 89–90, 92, 3, 370, 373– Disraeli, Benjamin (d. 88), Prime Minister UK 0 Dives, river (France) 2 Dofin, family  Domesday Book 27, 3, 0–, 72 Donadea (co. Kildare) 30 Donaghmore (co. Meath) 322 Donegal, county 2–3

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2 Donore (co. Kildare) 79–80 Dorset 38 Dowdall, James (d. 8), G. Ire. 30 Dowling, Thady (d. 28) 389 Down, battle of (20) 27 Drogheda (co. Louth) 223, 20, 28, 27, 3 parl. (8) 2, 22–3 Droghera (co. Meath) 3 Dromadda (co. Cork), Geraldines of 9 Dromana (co. Waterford) 93 Dromen (co. Limerick) 30 Dromin (co. Limerick) 308 Drommoher (co. Limerick) 88 Drury, William (d. 79), president Munster and G. Ire. 33–9, 37– Dublin 20, 220, 23, 27 administration 83, 7, 97–8, 20, 22, 2, 232–3, 2, 33, 30, 30, 39 annals of 8, 9, 20–2, 20, 330 archbishop 9 castle 8, 9–, 2, 38 Christ Church cathedral 2, 32, 329 city 72, 7, 78, 2, 32, 3–2, 3, 39, 32, 3, 392–3, 02 county 2, 302–3, 337–8 exchequer 9,  great council at (9) 2 Hoggen Green 329 mayor and citizens 32 mountains 2 Oxmantown green 32, 330 St Mary’s abbey 8, 383–, 38, 390, 39 St Patrick’s cathedral 209, 303 St Saviour’s priory 2– Thomascourt wood 330 Trinity College 0 Dudley, Robert (d. 88), e. Leicester 3, 3 Duff, surname 37 Duffy, Charles Gavan (d. 903) 0 Dugdale, William 2 Duiske abbey (co. Kilkenny) 22 Duleek (co. Meath) 32

Index Dunboyne (co. Meath) 90, 3, 32–2 Dundalk (co. Louth) 337 Dún Domnaill (co. Wexford) 7 Duneany (co. Kildare), Geraldines of 80 Dungarvan (co. Waterford) 37, 200, 208, 20 Augustinian friary 2 castle 2–, , , 99, 20, 3 honor of 83, 93 town Dunleckny (co. Carlow) 7 Dunloe (co. Kerry) 82 Dunlough (co. Meath) 322 Dunmakothmund (Castle Salem, co. Cork) 7 Dunmanoge (co. Kildare) 33, 39 Dunmore (co. Galway)  Dunmoylan (co. Limerick) 8 Dunmurraghill (co. Kildare) 80 Dunmurry (co. Kildare) 30 Dunnamark (Bantry, co. Cork) 7 Dunquin (co. Kerry) 89 Dunsany (co. Meath), chantry 20 Dunstable, priory (Beds) 38 Durham 3 bp 38 Dyfed (South Wales) –0, 8, 0, 2–3 Dysart (co. Westmeath) 323 Dysert O’Dea, battle of (38) 2 Eadnoth 20 East Anglia 9 East Bedfont (Middx) 27 Edgecombe, Richard (d. 89) 330 Edward the Confessor, kg Eng. (02–) 22, 2, 27, 20 Edward I, kg Eng. (272–307) 9, 9, , , 8, 9, 20, 2, 28, 238 Edward II, kg Eng. (307–27) 2, 29 Edward III, kg Eng. (327–77) 9–7, 20, 20, 208–, 28, 220–2 Edward IV, kg Eng. (–70, 7–83) 223–, 228, 20, 29–0, 22–3, 28, 327–9 Edward V, kg Eng. (8) 328

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Index Edward (d. 37), ‘the Black Prince’, prince Wales 20 Edward (d. 99), 7th e. Warwick 329 Effin (co. Limerick) 30, 308 Eleanor of Aquitaine (d. 20), queen Eng. 39 Eleanor of Castile (d. 290), queen Eng. , 9, 238 Elizabeth I, queen Eng. (8–03) , 2, 3–7, 39–, 33–, 30, 32, 3–8, 37–2, 37–7 Ellistown (co. Kildare), Geraldines of 80 Emlyn, Welsh cantref 0–, 73– Emmet, Robert (d. 803) 393 England 22, 3, 20 administration 77 king’s council in 23 Norman conquest (0)  Northern Rising (9) 3 trade 238–9 English settlers in Ireland and attitudes towards native Irish 9 intermarriage with Irish 293–30, 339 Enniscorthy (co. Wexford), Augustinian abbey 2 Ennismore (co. Kerry), Geraldines of 90 Eógan Mór, kg Munster 70 Erasmus, Desiderius (d. 3), theologian 287 Essex 37–8, 73 Eton (Bucks) 27, 2 Eudo Dapifer (d. 20), royal steward 33 Eustace, family 32–3 Evesham, battle of (2) ,  Ewias Lacy (Heref) , 9 Exeter, family  Jordan de 3, 7 Stephen de 7 Expugnatio Hibernica (‘The conquest of Ireland’) –7, , 9–7, 7, 8–92, 27, 28 Fagan, Christopher, mayor Dublin (73–) 3 Faha (co. Limerick) 82 Faricius, abb. Abingdon 28, 33–

2 Farnane (co. Limerick), Geraldines of 92 Farranmarine (co. Limerick) 88 Fassaghroe (co. Wicklow) 33 Fenian cycle 2 Fercullen (co. Wicklow) 33 Ferguson, Samuel (d. 88), poet 39 Fermanagh, county 2–3, 70 Fermoy (co. Cork) 29 Ferns castle (co. Wexford) 3 Fethard (co. Tipperary) 2 Field of the Cloth of Gold (20) 289 Finglas, Patrick (d. 37), baron Ir. exchequer 292 Finniterstown (co. Limerick) 88 Fir Maige Féne, dynasty 29 First Barons’ War (2–7) 80 FitzAlan, Joan (d. 3), Lady Bergavenny 233 FitzEmpress, William (d. ) 3 Fitz Eustace, Alison (d. 9), w. Gearóid Mór, 8th e. Kildare 270, 33, 338 Roland (d. 9), st baron Portlester 29, 2 FitzGerald, Brian, historian –7 FitzGerald, James fitz John fitz Garret (fl. 7) 37 FitzGerald, James (d. ) 277 FitzGerald, Katherine, dau. John, lord of Decies 29 Fitzgerald, Richard fitz John fitz Maurice 30 Fitz Gerald, family, of Essex 73 FitzGerald alias Barron family of Brownsford (co. Kilkenny) 77 FitzGerald alias Williams family of Baronrath (co. Kildare) 77 Fitzgibbon, see White knights Fitzgibbon, Abraham  Maurice (d. 88)  Fitzgibbons of Ballynatray (co. Cork) 8 Fitzgibbons of Camphire (co. Waterford) 8 Fitzgibbons of Cloonsherick (co. Limerick) 87 Fitzgibbons of Kilquane (co. Kerry) 87

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 Fitzgibbons of Knocklong (co. Limerick) 187 Fitz Griffin, barons of Knocktopher (co. Kilkenny) 17 FitzMaurice of Kerry, see Kerry, knights of (FitzMaurice) FitzMaurice of Beheens (co. Kerry) 181 FitzMaurice of Duagh (co. Kerry) 181 FitzMaurice of Mayo (Prendergast) 18 Fitzsimons, Walter, abp Dublin (18– 1511) 331 FitzWilliam, William (d. 1599), G. Ire 31–, 3, 38–51, 353, 355, 358– Flanagan, Marie Therese, historian 15 Flanders (Belgium) 1, 19 Flatisbury, family 180 Philip, clerk of the Ir. exchequer 35 Flemish, in Ire. 7 Flood, John L., historian 87–8 Florence (Italy) 3, 5–7, 78, 80–1, 87, 90 Gherardini family of , 3–7, 53, 5, 78–80 Flower, Robin, 7, 71 Fore (co. Westmeath) 31, 33– Foulkstown (co. Tipperary) 0 Frame, Robin, historian 18 France 77, 79, 19, 80–1, 90, 330, 357, 30, 399 kg 8, 19, 35 English military campaigns in 1, 1, 19, 0–1 Frehans (co. Tipperary) 0 Froissart, Jean (d. 105) 87 Furness (Lancs) 39 Gaelic Ir. –77, 9–3 Intermarriage with English 93–301, 339 Gallarus (co. Kerry) Geraldines of 190 galloglass (gallóglaigh) 30, 3, 7, 338– 9, 359 Galway, county 13, 1, 178 town 1, 331 Garranejames (co. Cork), Geraldines of 191 Garrymore (co. Cork), Geraldines of 191

Index Garth, captain 35– Garthe (co. Tipperary) 0 Gascony (France) 39 Gaul 81 Geashill, bar. (co. Laois) 1, 301, 30, 30 castle 93, 113–5, 18, 15, 11 genealogies 170–93, 8, 8, 7, 9 Geneville, Geoffrey de (d. 131), lord of Meath 158, 10, 1 Geoffrey of Monmouth 5, 81 Geoghegan, Gerald 395 George II, kg Eng (177–0) 01 George (d. 178), 1st dk. Clarence –, 9, 3 Gerald, steward of William, dk. Normandy , 1 Gerald of Wales, see Giraldus Cambrensis Gerald of Windsor (d. p.111), eponym of the Geraldines 1, 1–, –5, 31–, 39–, –5, 53, 55–8, 0–, 7, 73, 93, 15, 157, 159, 173, 78 G ERALDINE (F ITZ G ERALD ), family , 53–8, 73–, 8–, 170–1, 197, 9– 70 and castle building 93–15, 1 and church foundations 11–, 17, 35 and Irish culture –7 and European cultural developments 78–91 origins 1–5, 17–, 3 see also Geraldines, early family members; Geraldines of Offaly; Geraldines of Shanid; Glin, knights of; Gherardini of Florence; Kerry, knights of (FitzMaurice); White knights Geraldines, early family members Alexander fitz Maurice 78, 9, 1, 17–7 David fitz Gerald (d. 117), bp St Davids 3–, 50, 53, 59, 1, , 8, 73–, 155, 173–, 17 Gerald fitz Maurice (d. 10) 7, 78, 81, 95–7, 101, 108, 113–1, 117– 19, 13–5, 17, 133–, 137, 1, 15, 17, 153–5, 175–8, 78

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Index Maurice fitz Gerald (d. 7), lord of Llansteffan 9, 22, 2, , 0, , 7, 7–8, 72–, 77–8, 93–, 99, 3–, , –3, –, 9, 73–, 77–8, 270, 272, 278, 290 Maurice fitz Maurice 7, 8 Milo/Miles fitz David (d. c.2) 7, 7 Nest, dau. Maurice fitz Gerald 7 Robert fitz Maurice 9, 3, 7, 8 Sabina ‘Sadhbh’, w. Thomas fitz Maurice 20 Thomas fitz Maurice (d. c.23) 7, 79, 83, 9, 3–, –7, , , 7, 82, 8, 20, 278 Walter fitz Nest ,  William fitz Maurice (d. c.99), lord of Naas 9–7, 99, 0, 03, 08, 3, , 9, 7–7, 8 see also Gerald of Windsor, eponym of the Geraldines; Óttárr (Otho/ Ot(h)er), progenitor of the Geraldines Geraldines of Offaly (cr. earls of Kildare in 3) –7, 22, 7, 9, 8, 7, 9–0, 7, 7–7, 88, 220, 228, 22, 2, 280, 282–8, 290, 292, 379, 39, 399, 2 Alice, dau. Gearóid Mór, 8th e. Kildare 339 Augustus (d. 87), 3rd dk. Leinster 00–, 03 Charles (d. 887), th dk. Leinster 22, 2, 32, 23, 397, 02–3, 09–0 Edward (‘Lord Edward Fitzgerald’, d. 798) 393, 00–2, 0, 0, 2–3 Eleanor, dau. Gearóid Mór, 8th e. Kildare 27–2, 27, 339 Eleanor, dau. Thomas fitz Maurice, 7th e. Kildare 293, 339 Elizabeth, dau. Gerald fitz Maurice, th e. Kildare 27 Elizabeth (d. 90), countess Lincoln 2–2

27 Gearóid Mór (‘The Great Earl’, d. 3), 8th e. Kildare 9, 80, 23, 28, 270–, 27, 278, 280–, 288, 32–0, 379, 00, 3 Gearóid Óg (d. 3), 9th e. Kildare 9, 22, 9, 23, 270, 27, 283, 288–9, 293–, 33, 33, 338, 380 Gerald (d. 893), th dk. Leinster 03 Gerald fitz Gerald (d. 8), th e. Kildare 80, 272, 3, 37, 379–80, 0 Gerald fitz Maurice (d. 23)  Gerald fitz Maurice (d. 287), th baron Offaly 0, , 78 Gerald fitz Maurice (d. 32), th e. Kildare 97, 237, 27, 302 James (d. 773), st dk. Leinster 380 James fitz Thomas 80 Joan, dau. Gearóid Mór, 8th e. Kildare 339 John Cam (d. 3), th e. Kildare 80, 27 John fitz Thomas, (d. 3), th baron Offaly and st e. Kildare 8–2, , –9, 78–9, 87, 89–90, 9 John fitz Thomas of Glyn (d. after 3) 87, 9 Juliana fitz Maurice (d. 300) 0, 78 Margaret (d. 2), dau. Gerald fitz Thomas, 8th e. Kildare 328 Mary, dau. Gearóid Óg, 9th e. Kildare 293 Maurice (b. 98), 9th dk. Leinster 9, 380 Maurice fitz Gerald (d. 27), 2nd baron Offaly 8, 9, 7, 33, 37, 2, 7, 3–, 8–0, 2–7, 9, 78, 22 Maurice fitz Gerald (d. 28) , – Maurice fitz Maurice (d. 28), 3rd baron Offaly 8, , , 78 Maurice fitz Thomas (d. 390), th e. Kildare 79–80, 97, 20, 208, 27

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28 Geraldines of Offaly (cr. earls of Kildare in 3) (continued) Oliver fitz Gearóid of Belagh (d. 3/7) 80, 293, 33, 339 Thomas FitzGerald, prior of Kilmainham 22 Thomas fitz John (d. 328), 2nd e. Kildare 87, 90, 92, 20, 30 Thomas fitz Maurice (d. 27) 78 Thomas fitz Maurice (d. 78), 7th e. Kildare 80, 27–2, 22–3, 270, 302, 30, 327 Thomas fitz Oliver 293 Thomas (‘Silken Thomas’, ex. 37), 0th e. Kildare 8–9, 22, 79, 22, 270, 379–98, 00, 0–7, 0 myth of 379–98 rebellion (3–) 3, 33, 382– Thomas (d. 997), Lord Offaly 380 Walter fitz Gearóid (d. 37) 80 William (d. 80), 2nd dk. Leinster 0–2, 0 Geraldines of Shanid (cr. earls of Desmond in 329) –7, 22, 7, 9, , , 7, 9–0, 73, 7, 78, 82–, 89, 9, 238, 2, 29, 272, 280, 282, 289, 292, 30, 379, 0, 2 earls of 22, 8, 22 Aibhilín (Aveline), dau. th e. Desmond 277 Amy, dau. Maurice fitz Thomas, st e. Desmond 29, 2–7, 27 Eleanor, w. Garret fitz James, th e. Desmond 3, 37, 3, 38, 370, 373– Ellice, dau. Maurice fitz Thomas, 9th e. Desmond 29 Garret of Decies (d. 8) 2 Garret fitz James (d. 83), th e. Desmond 272, 300, 3–78, 00, 08 Gerald fitz Maurice ‘the Rhymer’ (d. 398), 3rd e. Desmond 202, 228– 9, 2–9, 27, 27–, 379 Gilbert (Giobún) fitz John 8–

Index James ‘the Usurper’ fitz Gerald (d. 3), th e. Desmond 9, 93, 22, 228–33, 23, 238–7, 2– 2, 299–300 James fitz Garret (d. 0), st e. Desmond 3, 38–9, 37 James fitz John (d. 8), 3th e. Desmond 22, 20, 298 James fitz Maurice (d. 29), 0th e. Desmond 298, 30–7, 379 James fitz Maurice (d. 0), de jure 2th e. Desmond 29, 298, 300 James fitz Maurice FitzGerald (d. 79) 272, 27–, 32, 3, 39, 32, 3–9, 33, 3, 38, 370–, 00, 08, , 3 rebellions of (9–73, 79) 33, 3, 3 James fitz Thomas (d. 87), 8th e. Desmond 270, 27, 298, 30, 330 James fitz Thomas (‘the Súgán Earl’, d. 08) 33, 379 revolt of (98) 33 James Sussex of Desmond, bro. of Garret, th e. Desmond 38, 30, 3, 39, 3, 00 Joan (d. 8), dau. James fitz Gerald, th e. Desmond 28, 20, 270 Joan, dau. Thomas fitz Maurice 0 Joan, dau. Maurice fitz Thomas, st e. Desmond 220 John fitz Edmund, dean Cloyne 39, 32–3 John fitz Gerald (d. 398), th e. Desmond 229–30 John fitz James of Desmond, bro. Garret, th e. Desmond 3, 33, 3, 39, 3–2, 3, 38–7, 373–, 00 John fitz John (d. 2) –2 John (Seán Mór na Sursainge) fitz John 8– John fitz Thomas (d. 2) 7, 9, –2, , 82–, 92, 2 Margery, w. of 82

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Index John fitz Thomas (d. 3), de facto 2th e. Desmond 29, 298–9 John mac an Iarla (d. 82) 272, 27, 27 Katherine (d. 0), countess of Desmond 379 Maurice fitz Gerald (d. 0) 229 Maurice fitz James (d. 2) 2 Maurice (Muiris) fitz John, sheriff of Kerry (320–), 8–, 89 Maurice fitz Maurice (d. 38), 2nd e. Desmond 202, 2, 29–2, 2, 27 Maurice fitz Thomas (d. 3), st e. Desmond 9, –, 7, 83– , 87, 89, 92, 9–222, 2–, 27– Maurice fitz Thomas (d. 20), 9th e. Desmond 29, 29, 298 Nicholas fitz Maurice, s. of Maurice fitz Thomas, st e. Desmond 202, 222 Thomas fitz James (ex. 8), 7th e. Desmond 202, 223–, 233, 23, 20–, 27–2, 22–3, 28–9, 27, 298–9 Thomas (Tomás) fitz John 8, 92 Thomas fitz John (d. 20), th e. Desmond 93, 229–30, 237, 239, 299–300, 0 Thomas fitz Maurice (d. 29) 0, 2, , 8–, 9, 20, 2 Thomas fitz Thomas (d. 3), th e. Desmond 29 Thomas of Desmond, half-bro. Garret, th e. Desmond 37, 3–, 38 Geraldine League (38–9) 33 Geraldinis, David Johannis (David s. John) 308 Philip de, rector Killeedy 307 Thomas de 308 Gerard of Bryn (Lancs) 2 Gherardini of Florence 22, 23–7, 23, 2, 278–80 Antonio d’Ottaviano di Rossellino 279

29 Giovanni Betti de’ 237–8, 20, 23, 2–7 and myth of the exiled brothers (‘Gherardo’, ‘Maurizio’ and ‘Tommaso’) 22, 23–7, 278–9, 290, 399 Giffard, William, bp Winchester (00– 29) 0 Gilbert, J.T., historian 2 Gillingham, John, historian 202 Giraldus Cambrensis (‘Gerald of Wales’, c.–c.223) 7, 2, –7, 3–8, 9–70, 73–7, 82, 8, 87, 93, , 3, 7, 2, 28, 290 Girley (co. Meath) 3, 322 Glandine (co. Cork), Geraldines of 9 Glanerdalliv, co. Kerry 89 Glanneth (Kenry, co. Limerick) 87–8 Glassely (co. Kildare), Geraldines of 80 Glenane (co. Cork), Geraldines of 9 Glengoole (co. Tipperary) 20 Glenogra (co. Limerick) 82 Glin (Glyncorbry, co. Limerick) 87, 37–8 Geraldine knights of 73, 8, 87–8, 39 David fitz David 88 David Óg fitz David 37 David fitz John (d. a.37) 87 Desmond FitzGerald, 29th knight of Glin (d. 20) , 88 Edmund fitz David 39–0, 37 Edmund fitz Thomas 38 Henry fitz David 88 John fitz David 87–8 John fitz John, st knight of Glin 87 Philip fitz Thomas, 9th knight of Glin 88 Seaán mac Sir Éamuinn mic Thomáis mic Mhuiris Mheic Gearailt 27 Gloucester 20 abbey (Gloucs) 3 Glyncorbry, see Glin (co. Limerick) Godfrey of Bouillon (d. 00) 28

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30 Gortnatubbrid (Springfield, co. Limerick) 87 Goslingstown (co. Kilkenny), Geraldines of 8 Peter FitzGerald 8 Gowles [Gould], James 23 Gowllis, William, mayor Cork 23 Grace, Piers 3 Grafton (Northants) 22 Graigue (co. Tipperary) 20 Granard (co. Longford) 32 Grandison, family 2 Grangeclare (co. Kildare) 33, 320 Grangegorman (co. Dublin) 3 Grant, William (d. 3) 202 Graves, James (d. 88) 09– Gray, John de (d. 2), bp Norwich and G. Ire. 82 Gray, Leonard (d. ), G. Ire. 38 Gray, Thomas 283 Great Connell (co. Kildare), Augustinian friary  Greece 8, 2–7 Green, Alice Stopford (d. 929), historian 3 Greencastle (co. Down) 337 Greenoge (co. Meath) 32–2 Grey, Henry (d. 9), th (7th) baron Grey Codnor 327–8 Gringore, Pierre (d. 38) 28 Grubb, family 93 Gruffudd ap Rhys (d. 37), prince Deheubarth 8–9, 8, , 3,  Guildford (Surrey) 20 Guines, Margaret de, w. Richard, 2nd e. Ulster , 9 Grüninger, Johann (d. 33), printer 287 Gwenllian (d. 3), w. Gruffudd ap Rhys  Gwent, Wales  Gwladus, dau. Rhiwallon ap Cynfyn 3–3 Gwynedd, kingdom of  Hagbourne (Berks) 27 Hammondstown (co. Louth) 32 Hampton Court (London) 39

Index Hand, Geoffrey, historian 97 Hanmer, Meredith 33 Harding, Robert fitz (d. 70) 72, 20– Hardmead (Bucks) 27 Harrington, Henry (d. 2) 3 Harris, Walter 389–90 Harristown (co. Kilkenny) 30 Hastings, Ralph de, steward of the abbey of Bury St Edmunds 38–9 Hastings, William de 3 Hatton (Middx) 27 Haverford (Pembrokes) 73 Haverty, Martin 398 Hayman, Samuel (d. 88) 0– Heathtown (co. Meath) 32 Heggs, Elizabeth, historian 00– Henry I, kg Eng. (00–3) 33–, 37–8, 2, , , 8–, 8–0, , 73–, 9, 7, 2, 73 Henry II, kg Eng. (–89) , 3, 38–9, , , 8, 3–, 70–2, 7–80, 83, 88, 9–, 97, 278, 38 Henry III, kg Eng. (2–72) 3– Henry IV, kg Eng. (399–3) 22 Henry V, kg Eng. (3–22) 229 Henry VI, kg Eng. (22–, 70–) 22, 233, 238–0, 29, 22, 2, 327, 330 Henry VII, kg Eng. (8–09) 32, 32, 328–32, 337 Henry VIII, kg Eng. (09–7) 2, 22, 22, 20, 289, 30, 33, 3, 383–, 390 Henry (d. 2), 3rd e. Northumberland 0 Henry fitz Gerald, chamberlain Henry II  Henry fitz Henry, s. Henry I (d. 8) 33, 2, , 0, 8–0, , 73, 9 Henry of Grosmont (d. 3), st dk. Lancaster 208 Henry of Huntington 7 Herbert, John 37, 30 Herder, Johann Gottfried von (d. 803) 0 Hereford (Herefords) 

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Index

3

Historia ecclesiastica  Historia regum Britannie 28 Histories of Ireland 22 Hoggen Green, see Dublin Holbein, Hans (d. 3) 9, 283 Holinshed’s Chronicle 282, 382, 387 Holycross abbey (co. Tipperary) 20 Holywood (co. Wicklow) 33 Horace (d. 8 BCE), poet 287–8 Horton (Bucks) 27 Houts, Elisabeth van, historian  Howard, Henry (d. 7), e. Surrey 2–2 Howth (co. Dublin), prebend 209 Hoxne, Suffolk, chapel 3 Hugh fitz Walter 0 Huizinga, Johan, historian 28 Hundred Years War 239, 28 Hungary 27 Hurtmore (Surrey) 27 Hutton, Robert, MP 02 Hywel, s. Nest , 8

colonisation 2 English conquest , 22, 29, 3, 7, 3, 9–92, 9, 20, 278, 28 English law in 83, 97–8, 209, 30, 30 Gaelic Ir. interactions with English 292–37, 339–0 Great Famine (8–2) 03 Land Act (870) 03 parl. (78) 33 parl. (88) 332 parl. (9) 380 trade with Eng. 72 trade with Italy 238 Irish Civil War (922–3)  Irish Confederate Wars (–3)  Irish Free State 32 Irish language 292 Italy 8, 22, 238, 399 Itinerarium Kambriae (‘Journey through Wales’) , 7, 3, , 7

Idrone, bar. (co. Carlow) 7 Ifor Bach (‘Ifor the Little’), lord of Senghennydd  St Illtud  Imo (co. Laois), Geraldines of 80 Imokilly, bar. (co. Cork) 9, 2, 7, 90–, 20 Geraldines of Imokilly 89, 9 John, seneschal Imokilly 39–0, 38–0, 3 Richard fitz Maurice 9 Inch (co. Wexford) 8 Inchiquin (co. Cork) 9, 0, 77, 8, 90, 208, 20, 22, 2, 27, 230, 233 Inisfallen, annals of 99 Inishloughnaght abbey (co. Tipperary) 20 Inistioge abbey (co. Kilkenny) 22 Inyskisty (Askeaton, co. Limerick) 8 Iorwerth ap Bleddyn (d. ), prince Powys  Ireland 2 coinage 83

Jerpoint abbey (co. Kilkenny) 22 Jerusalem 28 Joan of Eng. (d. 38), dau. Edward III 20 Jocelin of Louvain (d. 80) 39 John, kg Eng. (99–2) 3, 9–7, 79– 8, 88, 7–7, 20 expedition to Ire. (20) 9–7, 82–3 John II, kg France (30–) 20 John of Gaunt (d. 399), dk. Lancaster 2 Johnstown (co. Kildare) 32 Johnstown (co. Meath) 322 Joyce, James (d. 9), novelist  Joyce, Patrick Weston (d. 9), historian 3 Julius Caesar 287 Kavanagh, family 7 Kay, John, poet 28 Keating, Geoffrey, poet 27 Kells (co. Meath) 37, 32–2 Kells-in-Ossory priory (co. Kilkenny) 22 Kennedy [Ó Cinnéidigh], 8–

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32 Kenry, bar. (co. Limerick) 87, 32, 39 Kericuruby, cant. (co. Cork) 23 Kerrane, surname 7 Kerricurrihy (co. Cork) 3 Kerry, county 7, 78, 8, 83, 8–, 89–9, 22, 2, 2, 20, 27–8, 27, 32, 372 crosslands of 229 liberty of 20, 20, 27–8, 230, 33, 39, 3–7, 39, 37 Kerry, knights of (FitzMaurice) 70, 7, 8–2, 8, 89–92, 230, 237 Aveline, dau. Nicholas fitz Maurice, 3rd baron Kerry 202, 29, 2 David fitz Maurice 9 Edmund fitz Maurice 9 John fitz Nicholas 8 Maurice Fitzmoris, precentor of Ardfert 23 Maurice fitz Richard, st knight Kerry (d. after 0) 89–9 Maurice fitz Thomas (d. 30), 2nd baron Kerry 8–2 Maurice fitz William 27–7 Maurice Óg (d. 398), th baron Kerry 23 Nicholas fitz Maurice (d. 32), 3rd baron Kerry 202, 29 Nicholas fitz Maurice, bp Ardfert (08–0) 9, 23n. Peter, st baronet Valencia 90 Peter fitz Maurice 82 Richard fitz Maurice, 2nd knight Kerry 89–90 Thomas fitz Maurice, st baron Kerry 2 Kerrycurrihy (co. Cork) 77 Kidwelly (Carmarthens)  Kilbarraree (co. Cork), Geraldines of 9 Kilbeg (co. Kildare) 320 Kilbolane (co. Cork) 8 MacJohn Fitzgibbons of 8 Kilbree (co. Cork), Geraldines of 9 Kilcolgan (co. Galway) 3, 78 Kilcolman (co. Cork) 233, 2–, 39 Kilcooly abbey (co. Tipperary) 2

Index Kilcork (co. Kildare) 30 Kilcullen (co. Kildare) 38, 33 bridge 33– Kildare, county , 9, 78, 229, 2, 302–3, 32–, 39–20, 33–8, 3 diocese 30– earls 200, 223, 27, 30, 303, 307, 309–0, 3, 07–8 Franciscan friary 9 liberty 30 lordship 93–, 9, , 79, 83 manor 338–9 marches 2 revolt (28) 33 revolt (7) 33 town 32 Kildorrery (co. Cork) 8 Kildrought (Celbridge, co. Kildare) 80, 33 Kildimo (co. Limerick) Geraldines of 88 Kilfeakle (co. Tipperary) 2, 39 Kilfinny (co. Limerick) 88 Kilgorman (co. Wexford) 8 Kilkea (co. Kildare) 9, 39, 32, 33–, 338–9 castle 33 Kilkenny, city 22, 37 Irishtown 22 St John’s priory 22 county 7–, 8, 208, 23–, 22, 29–0, 3, 39 lordship 22, 307 Statute (3) 22, 23, 23 Kill (co. Kildare) 33, 38 Killashuragh (Shannongrove, co. Limerick) 88 Killeedy 308 castle (co. Limerick) 0– Killesk (co. Wexford), Geraldines of 8 Killorglin (co. Kerry) 8 Killowny (co. Cork) 90 Kilmacthomas (co. Waterford) 93 Kilmainham (co. Dublin) 22 Kilmainhambeg (co. Meath) 32 Kilmainhamwood (co. Meath) 3, 32 Kilmalkedar (co. Kerry) 89

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Index Kilmallock (co. Limerick) 8, 30– Kilmead (co. Kildare) 80 Kilmeadan (co. Waterford) 2 Kilmeague (co. Kildare) 90, 290 Kilmore (co. Cork) 8–7, 30 MacHenry Fitzgibbons of 8 Kilnew (co. Meath) 32 Kilsheelan (co. Tipperary) 2 Kiltealy (co. Limerick) 3 Kilteel (co. Kildare) 33, 37–8, 32 Hospitaller priory  Kiltrany (Burnchurch, co. Kilkenny) 7, 8 Kindlestown castle (co. Wicklow) 23 King, George (d. 839), 3rd e. Kingston  King’s County 33 , see also Offaly Kingston-upon Thomas (Surrey) 27 Kinnatalloon, bar. (co. Cork) 8 Kinsale (co. Cork) 89 Kintbury (Berks) 27 knights hospitaller 28 Knightstown (co. Meath) 32 Knock (co. Meath) 3 Knockainy (‘Any’, co. Limerick) 8 Knockamore (co. Meath) 322 Knockdoe (co. Galway) 33 Knockmark (co. Offaly) 32 Knockmoan (co. Waterford), Geraldines of 92 Knocktopher (co. Kilkenny) 22 Lacey, Hugh, bp Limerick (–7) 32 Lackagh (co. Kildare) 80, 33 Geraldines of 80 Gerald fitz Maurice (d. 8) 80 Thomas fitz Thomas (d. 87), s. Thomas fitz Maurice, 7th e. Kildare 80, 328–9 Lacy, family 70, 80, 82,  Hugh (d. 8), lord of Meath 78–80, , , 3, 3, 97 Hugh (d. 23), e. Ulster 83, 3,  Walter (d. 2), lord of Meath 83,  William,  Ladycastle Lower (co. Kildare) 9

33 Lambeth (Surrey) 239 palace 390 Lancaster, dynasty 223, 239 Landino, Cristoforo 279 Lanfranc (d. 089), abp Canterbury 2 Laois (also Laoighis or Leix), county , 78, 23, 3 Laracor (co. Meath) 3 Laragh (co. Meath) 80 Laraghbryan (co. Kildare) 30 Larne castle (co. Antrim) 332 Laudabiliter 209 Lawless, Emily (d. 93), historian 2 Lawless, Stephen, bp Limerick (3–9) 200, 208– Lea (co. Laois) 93, 30, 33–, 338 castle , 7, 2–3, ,  Leabhar Muimhneach 8– Leap castle (co. Offaly) 32, 332 Lebor Gabála (‘The book of the taking of Ireland’) 27 Leerssen, Joep, historian 399 Lefèvre, Raoul 28, 290 Leighlin (co. Carlow) 33 Leighlinbridge (co. Carlow) 7, 33 Leinster 73–, 78, 2, 9, 7 dukedom 79 kgdom 77 lordship 82, , 27 Leixlip (co. Kildare) 32–3, 38, 337–8 Leland, Thomas 389–9, 39 Lemaire de Belges, Jean (d. 2), poet 28 Lennon, Colm, historian 23 Lickbevin (Faha, co. Limerick) 82 Clanrichard (‘FitzGerald’) of 82 Lidgate (Suffolk) 3 Life of St David  Liffey, river 2 Limerick, bishopric 2, 37 castle 232–3, 29 cathedral 3 city 232, 32, 33, 37, 32–3, 3 county 9, 7, 78, 8, 83, 8, 88, 9, 22, 2, 2, 229–30, 233–, 20, 27–8, 302, 30, 37, 373–

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3 Limerick, bishopric (continued) diocese 209, 30, 30– fee-farm 28 kgdom (Thomond) 78, 273 lordship 8–2, 9, 3–, , 22, 23, 32, 33 parl. (83) 328 Lincoln, earls  Lingfield (Surrey) 99 Lionel of Antwerp (d. 38), st dk. Clarence 220 Lisbon (Portugal) 33 Lisfinny (co. Waterford) 39 Lismortagh (co. Tipperary) 20 Lismullen (co. Meath) 322 Lisnamrock (co. Tipperary) 20 Lissanisky (co. Limerick) 88 Listowel (co. Kerry) 8 Listrim (co. Kerry) 8 literary culture 278–9 Little Easton (Essex) 0 Lixnaw (co. Kerry) 8 baron 38, 32, 3 Llanbadarn Fawr (Ceredigion) 2 Llandaff (Glamorgan) 8, 89 Llandovery (Carmarthens) 9 Llan-gors lake (Powys)  Llansteffan (Carmarthens) , 2, 7 Llanthony priory (Monmouths), history of  Lochsewdy (co. Westmeath) 323 Loucher, Jacob (d. 28) 287 Louvain (Belgium) 288 London 3, 20, 2, 273–, 28, 288–9, 329, 33, 3–7, 08 Tower of 3–, 3–, 38, 32 Longespee, Emelina de (d. 29) 8 Longford, county 37 Lough Erne (co. Fermanagh) 3, 9 Lough Gur (co. Limerick) 32 Lough Mannin (co. Galway) 3 Lough Mask (co. Mayo) 3, 78 Loughrea (co. Galway)  castle 370 Loughsallagh (co. Meath) 322 Louth, county 9, 2, 303, 337

Index Lovell, Francis (fl. 88), st viscount Lovell 329 Lovell, Francis (fl. 7) 3 Low Countries 282–3, 28, 290 Lucy, Anthony de, st baron Lucy, G. Ire. 20, 209, 22, 2 Lucy, Richard de (d. 79), chief justiciar Eng. 3 Lydon, James (d. 203), historian 8, 97 Lye (co. Kildare) 30 Lyons, William 392 Lyreen, river 08, 0 Mac Carthaigh [MacCarthy], dynasty 0, 8, 83, 8, 99, 202 Cormac 20 Cormac Mac Teige (Cormac s. Tadhg) 3 Cormac Óg Láidir, lord of Muskerry 29 Domhaill 2, 27 Domhaill Mór 298 Fínghin 2 Gille, sis. Cormac Óg Láidir 29 Mary, dau. Cormac Óg Láidir 29 Mac Carthaigh Riabhach, lord of Carbury 293 Domhnall, lord of Carbury 339 Mac Cormaic [McCormack], Katherine 299, 0 Mac Craith, Maolmhuire, poet 27 mac Dáire, Domhnall, poet 272 McFarlane, K.B., historian 2 Mac Fhir Bhisigh, Dubhaltach, antiquarian 22 Mac Gearailt, Seaán Óg (d. 2), lord of Decies 27 Muiris (d. c.30) 277 McGee, Thomas D’Arcy (d. 88) 08,  Mac Giolla Phádraig of Osraige [MacGillapatrick of Ossory] 23, 28, 29 Mac Murchadha [MacMurrough], dynasty 8 Aífe (d. 88) 72, 77

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Index Art Caomhánach (d. c.7) 7 Diarmait (d. 7) , 2–3, 72–, 77, 8, 88 Domhnall Riabhach (d. 7) 23, 28 Mac Murchadha Caomhánach, Sadhbh dau. of 29 MacShane [Pierce] of Crossmacshane (Cloontubrid, co. Kerry) 82 MacSheehys [Clann Síthigh] 232 Ruaidhrí 39 MacThomas Geraldines 79–80 George fitz Gerald 80 Gerald fitz Gerrot 80 Gerald Oge fitz Gerald 80 Gerrot mac Shane 80 James fitz Gerrot 80 James fitz William 79–80 John fitz Gerrot 80 John fitz William Oge 79 Oliver fitz William Oge 79 Robert fitz Gerald 79 Thomas (d. 0) 79 William fitz Thomas, sheriff Kildare 79 William mac Shane 80 William Oge fitz William, ‘lord of the Blackwood’ 79 MacThomas Geraldines of the Decies (co. Waterford) 92 John fitz Thomas 92 Maurice fitz Thomas (d. 32) 92 Thomas fitz John ‘le Néve’ 92, 200 MacUlicks of Dunquin and Minard (co. Kerry) 90 Madrid (Spain) 32 Máel Coluim Cennmór (Malcolm III), kg Scots (08–93) 30 Mág Eochagáin (MacGeoghegan), lordship 339 Magna Carta (2) 80 Magorban (co. Tipperary) 20 Mág Raith, Donnchadh an tSneachta, poet 273, 27 Maolmhuire Bacach, poet 2–7 Tomás Mór, poet 27 Mag Uidhir (Maguire), lineage 70

3 Maguire, see Mag Uidhir Mahoonagh (co. Limerick) 8, 8–7, 30, 308 Maigue valley (co. Limerick) 9, 3, , 273 Maitland, Frederic William (d. 90), historian 202 Malby, Nicholas (d. 8), president of Connaught 3, 3, 370– Malcolm III, see Máel Coluim Cennmór Mallow (co. Cork) 39, 0 Malory, Thomas (d. 7) 28 Malshanger (Hants) 27 Mandeville Geoffrey de (d. ), st e. Essex 3– Geoffrey de (d. ), 2nd e. Essex  Thomas 20 Walter 200–, 208 Mangan, James Clarence (d. 89), poet 393, 39 Map, Walter (d. c.20), archdeacon Oxford 87, 9 March, earldom 29 Margam abbey (Neath Port Talbot), annals of  Margaret of York (d. 03), dau. Richard, 3rd dk. York 28 Marlowe, Christopher (d. 93) 387–8 Marshal, lords Leinster 70, 79–80, , 7, 7 Gilbert (d. 2), th e. Pembroke  Richard (d. 23), 3rd e. Pembroke  William (d. 29), st e. Pembroke 8– 3, 9, 7–8, 2, 33, 3– Mary I, queen of Eng. (3–8) 2, 380 Matilda of Boulogne (d. 2), queen Eng. 38–9 Matilda of Flanders (d. 083), queen Eng. 2, 30, 37 Matilda of Eng. (d. 7), empress 3 Matthew, Elizabeth, historian 233 Maud of Lancaster (d. 377), countess Ulster 20, 20, 208 Maurice (d. 07), bp London and chancellor Eng. 3

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3 Maurice fitz Philip 7 Mautravers, John (d. 3), st baron Maltravers 29 Maynooth (co. Kildare) 93, 9, 9, 77, 79, 27, 290–, 30, 303–, 30–7, 309–0, 32, 33, 338, 39–7 castle 9–7, 03, 08–, 8, 2, 3, 33–, 3–, , 282–3, 28 court rolls 27 St Mary’s church 08 Mayo, county 3, , 7 Meagher, Thomas (d. 87) 0 Meanus (co. Kerry) 8 Meath, county 7, 79, 230, 2, 32– , 37, 337–8 Liberty 29 lordship 82–3 marches 2 Meehan, C.P. (d. 890) 393, 397, 08–9 Meelick (co. Clare)  Meiler fitz Henry (d. 220) 33, , 0, 73–, 80–2, 87, 9, 7, 7, –3,  Menevia (St Davids) 7 Mereduk, s. Robert fitz Stephen 33 Middleham (Yorks) 329 Middlesex 38, 73 Midleton (co. Cork) 7 Cistercian abbey 2 Midleton papers 22 Milford Haven (Pembrokes) , 9 Milltown (co. Tipperary) 20 Milshane (co. Cork), Geraldines of 9 Minard (co. Kerry) 89 Mitchel, John (d. 87) 393, 0 Mitchelstown (co. Cork) 8 Mogeely (co. Cork) 39 Geraldines of 90 Moglass (co. Tipperary) 20 Mog Ruith, ancestor of the Fir Maige Féne 29 Mohun, John de 8 Molahiffe (co. Kerry) 8 Monasternenagh (co. Limerick) 373 battle of (370) 27 Monatray (co. Waterford) 88

Index Monstrelet, Enguerrand de (d. 3) 287 Montagu, William (d. 3), st e. Salisbury 208 Montfort, Simon de (d. 2), th e. Leicester  Montgomery Arnulf de (d. c.22), e. Pembroke 2, –9, 8, 2, 73 Hugh de (d. 098), 2nd e. Shrewsbury  Roger de (d. 09), st e. Shrewsbury 2,  Montmorency, Hervey de (d. c.89), marshal Ire. 7–, 87, 9 Moore, Thomas (d. 82), poet 0– More, Thomas (d. 3) 287 Morett (co. Laois) 33– Morgans (co. Limerick) 87 Geralds family of 88 Morice Castle, cant. (co. Wicklow) 7, 8 Mornane (co. Limerick), Geraldines of 88 Mortimer, family  Margaret (d. 337), dau. Roger, st e. March 20 Roger (d. 32) 0 Roger (d. 330), st e. March 20, 28–9 Moulsford (Oxon.)  Mourne (co. Down) 337 Mowbray, Robert de (d. 2), e. Northumbria 30 Mayfenrath, bar. (co. Westmeath) 3 Moyglare (co. Offaly) 32 Moylagh (co. Meath) 79 Moymet (co. Meath) 322 Moynour (Tarbert, co. Kerry) 82, 8 Muckenagh (co. Limerick) 88 Mullaghareirk mountains (Munster) 37 Mullaghmost (co. Kildare) 80 Mullingar (co. Westmeath) 3, 32 Munster 78, 8, 83, 9, 3, , 8, 2, 9, 7–2, 83–, 9, 9, 22, 229–30, 232–3, 22, 2, 2, 28, 273, 30–, 32, 3, 3, 3– 9, 3, 33–, 39–9, 37, 37–7

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Index Murreagh (co. Kerry) 89 Murririgane (co. Kerry), Geraldines of 92 Murwagh, John, mayor Cork 23 Myagh, John, queen’s attorney 30, 37 Mynydd Carn, battle of (08) 8 Naas, bar. (co. Kildare) 78, 93, 9–, , 7, 7–7, 80, 33, 38, 32, 33 Augustinian friary  castle 9–03, 07–8, 7,  Dominican friary 0 Geraldines of 9, 9, 77 David fitz William (d. 20), th baron Naas 77 Hugh fitz David (d. c.300), 7th baron Naas 77 St David’s church 99 Narberth (Pembrokes) 9, 0 Narraghmore (co. Kildare) 30 Nás na Ríg (Naas, co. Kildare) 99, 0 National Archives of UK (Kew) 22 Navan (co. Meath) 3, 323 Neath abbey (Glamorgan) 9 Nelan, poet 389, 39 Nest, dau. Rhys ap Tewdwr (d. a.3) , 3–3, , , 8–2, 3–8, 0–3, –7, 73, 9, 2, 7, 9, 2, 73, 7, 278 Neufmarché, Bernard de (d. c.2)  Neville, Charles (d. 0), th e. Westmorland 3 Neville’s Cross, battle of (3) 20 New Abbey (co. Kildare) 38 Newark (Notts) 329 Newcastle (co. Longford), Geraldines of 80 Newcastle (co. Wicklow) 33 Newcastle West (co. Limerick) 3, 9, 99–200, 23 New Ross (co. Wexford) 20 Newtown (co. Dublin) Geraldines of 80, 88 Newtown (co. Laois) 27 Newtown Trim (co. Meath) 3–, 322 Niall Naígiallach 70

37 Nicholls, Kenneth, historian 70, 77, 8, 9, 23, 29, 37 Norfolk 37–8, 0 Normandy (France) 22, 2, 30–, 33, 77– 9, 8, 88, 229 Norragh (co. Kildare) 30 Northamptonshire 38 Northumbria 30 Norwich bp 38 cathedral 3 Nugent, Richard (d. 37), th baron Delvin 33 Nurney (co. Kildare), Geraldines of 80 Obren, Thady 307 Ó Briain [O’Brien] of Thomond, dynasty 9, 307, 33–2, 2 Brian Bán 9, 2–3 Clann Bhriain Ruaidh branch 2 Conchobhar of Thomond 228 Diarmait (d. 3), kg Thomond 2 Domhnall Mór (d. 9), kg Thomond 2 Donnchadh of Carrigogunnell, lord of Pobblebrien 29 Donough, 2nd e. Thomond 29 Margaret, dau. Tadhg an Chomhaid of Thomond 298 Mór, dau. Donnchadh of Carrigogunnell 29 Muirchertach (d. 9), kg of Munster and high kg of Ire. ‘with opposition’ 8 Tadhg an Chomhaid of Thomond 298 Theodoric [or Tadhg], rector of Croom 30–7 Toirdhealbach (fl. 0) 29 Toirdhealbhach (d. 2), bp Killaloe 298 O’Brien, William Smith (d. 8) 0, 07 Obrun, manor (co. Wicklow)  O’Byrne, Fiach MacHugh (Fiach mac Aodha Uí Bhroin) 80 Ocarbry (Athlacca, co. Limerick) 7–7, 82

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38 Ocassin, cant. (co. Clare) 8 Ó Carráin, surname 7 Ó Cearbhaill [O’Carroll], dynasty 32, 332 Ferganainm 29 Maolruanaidh of Ely 29, 298, 339 Mór, dau. Maolruanaidh 298 Ó Cinnéide, dynasty 2 Ó Coileáin, dynasty 2 Ó Coinín, dynasty 2 surname 8– Ó Conchobhair [O’Connor], dynasty , , 8, 83, 8, 2, 29, 30, 380 Aodh (d. 27), kg Connacht 2,  Aodh (d. 3), kg Connacht 2 Feidhlim (Feilim), kg Connacht 3, 8 Honora, dau. 8 Ruaidrí (d. 98), high-kg of Ire. 72 Ó Conchobhair Ciarraighe [O’Connor Kerry], Seán 37 Ó Conchobhair Failghe [O’Conor Faly], dynasty 230, 293, 30, 33– An Calbhach Mór 30 Brian 293 Conn 30 Meadhbh, w. Oliver fitz Gerald of Belagh 293, 339 Ó Conmhuighe, Eoin, poet 277 O’Connell, Daniel (d. 87) 393, 399– 0, 0–7,  Ó Cuileáin, kgs western Uí Chonaill 8, 87 Mathghamhain 8 O’Curry, Eugene (d. 82), antiquarian 09–0 Ó Dálaigh [O’Daly] Conchobhar Cairbreach 277 Cúchonnacht, poet 27 Diarmait, poet 277 Dominic (Daniel, d. 2) 23, 280, 33, 393, 397, 07–9 Gofraidh Fionn, poet 200, 2–7, 27 Muireadhach, poet 2 Muireadhach Albanach 2

Index Odder (co. Meath) 3, 322 Ó Díomusaigh [O’Demsey], family  Finn 9 O’Doherty, Mary Izod (‘Eva’, d. 90), poet 392 Ó Domhnaill, dynasty  Aodh Dubh 29 Maghnus, lord of Tír Conaill 27–2, 27 Ó Donnabháin [O’Donovan] 37 John (d. 8) 398 O’Donnell, family 380 Red Hugh (d. 02), kg Tír Chonaill 393 Ó Duibhidhir, Éamonn (d. ) 277 Ó Fearghaill [O’Farrell], lordship 339 Ó Flaithbheartaigh [O’Flahertys] of Galway 373 Offaly, bar. 9, –3, 2, , 77, 33 county , 78 see also King’s County; Uí Failge Offelan, see Uí Fáeláin Offerba, cant. 8 Ó Gearáin, Muiris, poet 277 Oglassyn (Inchiquin, cos. Cork and Waterford) 2, 7 Ó hAinmire, lands of (co. Limerick) 8 O’Hanlon, Redmond (d. 8) 393 Oheelayn [Ó hAoileáin/Ó Faoláin?], family 30 John 30 Malachy 30 Maurice 30 Ó hÉidigheáin [O’Hedigan], Richard, abp Cashel (0–0) 28 Ó hÉilidhe [O’Healy], Patrick, bp Mayo (7–9) 373 Ó hÍcidhe [O’Hickey], family 30 Dermot Yhiki [Diarmait Ó hÍcidhe] 307–8 Ohymur [Ó hÍomhair], Cornelius, rector of Croom 308 Ohywelayn [Ó Faoláin?], Richard (fl. 27) 30 Oilly d’, Robert (d. c.092), castellan of Oxford castle 28

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Index Olongsygh [Ó Loingsigh], Cornelius (fl. ), rector of Croom 307 Omaena [Ó Maonaigh?], John, rector of Geashill 30– Thady [Tadhg], rector of Geashill 30 O’Malley, Grace [Gráinne Mhaol] 379 Omanaidh, Thady 30 Ó Maoilriain, Conchobhar 2 Ó Maolchonaire, Maoílín mac Torna (d. 9) 29–70 Torna Óg mac Torna (d. 32) 29– 70, 272, 27 Omeath (co. Louth) 337 Omilid, cant., (co. Clare) 8 Ó Mórdha [O’More], family , 23, 29, 32, 33–, 3 Ruaidhrí Óg (Rory Oge) 3 Omurrehech [Ó Muircheartaigh?], John 308 Ó Néill (O’Neill), family 379–80, 2 Aodh (Hugh), e. Tyrone (87–) 3 Aodh Reamhar, kg Tír Eoghain (3–) 99 Art Óg, kg Tír Eoghain (3–9) 293, 339 Brian, kg Tir Eoghain (238–0) 27 Conn, kg Tír Eoghain (83–93) 293, 339 Énrí, kg Tír Eoghain (32–) 99 Seán an Díomais (Shane the Proud) (9–7) 27, 379 Orderic Vitalis, chronicler 30 Order of the Garter 32, 99, 20, 33 Oregan (co. Offaly) 9 Ormond, earls and earldom of, see Butler (le Botiller) of Ormond, family Ormrod, Mark, historian 220 Ó Ruairc, Katherine 29 Orpen, Goddard Henry (d. 932), historian 99, 0, 2, 9, 8–9, 2, 22 Ortone (Berks) 27 Osbertstown (co. Kildare), Geraldines of 80 John fitz John Cam 80

39 Ó Síodhacháin, Muiris (Maurice Sheehan) 3, 39 Ossory 23 O’Sullivan, A.M., historian 00 O’Sullivan Beare, Philip (d. 0) 32 Osurrys, cant. (co. Kerry) 78, 8, 89–90 Othee, manor (co. Wicklow)  Otheragh (Adare and Croom, co. Limerick) 7–7 Othorna and Oflannan, cant. (co. Kerry) 8 Óttárr (Otho/Ot(h)er), progenitor of the Geraldines 22, 2–7 Otway-Ruthven, Jocelyn, historian 97, 228 Outlaw, Roger, prior Kilmainham 22 Overk, bar. (co. Kilkenny) 7 Geraldines of 7–7 Alan ‘fitz Milo’ 77 Gerald ‘fitz Milo’ 77 Henry fitz Gerald 77 John ‘fitz Milo Baronis’ 77 Milo fitz Milo, th baron Overk 77 Roger fitz Milo, th baron Overk 7 Owain ap Cadwgan (d. ), prince Powys 9–2,  Owain Gwynedd (d. 70), prince of Gwynedd 8 Owenboy (co. Cork) 37 Owney castle (co. Limerick) 2 Oxford (Oxon.) 28 university 2 New College 288 Oxmantown green, see Dublin Pale of Ire., the 90, 303, 30, 33–, 37, 32, 33–0, 3, 37, 38 Pallas (Kenry, co. Limerick) 88, 92 Parese, Christopher (d. 3), foster-bro. Thomas, 0th e. Kildare 39–8 Paris (France), 229, 239, 288–9 schools 3,  patronage 38, 7, 70–, 8, 9, 28, 2, 28–9, 27–2, 27, 288, 00 ecclesiastical 8, 23, 30–9

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0 Payne, John, bp Meath (83–07) 33 Pebidiog (Dewisland, Pembrokes) 0 Pelham, William (d. 87), G. Ire. 37, 37–7 Pembroke, cantref , 9, 73 Pembroke castle (Pembrokes) , 2, – 0, 8, , , , 73 Pembrokeshire 0, 7, 93, 3 Peper Harow (Surrey) 27 Peppardstown (co. Tipperary) 20 Percy, family 28 Thomas (ex. 72), 7th e. Northumberland 3 Perrot, John (d. 92), president of Munster 3, 3–9, 33, 3–7, 39, 3–, 37– petitions 232–3, 238– Petworth (West Sussex) 39 Peuliniog (Carmarthens) 0 Philip II, kg Spain (–98) 3 Philip the Good (d. 7), dk. Burgundy 28 Pierce of Aghamore (co. Kerry) 82 Pierce of Ballybranhig (co. Kerry) 82 Pierce of Ballyhorgan (co. Kerry) 82 Pierce of Clanmaurice (co. Kerry) 82 James fitz Richard, bp Ardfert (3– 83) 82 Pierce of Drommartin (co. Kerry) 82 Pierce of Meenogahane (co. Kerry) 82 Piercetown (co. Westmeath), Geraldines of Gerrot fitz Redmond Oge 80 Pierse, s. John fitz Richard of Ballyteig (fl. 9) 29 Pierse, family 70 Pilltown (co. Waterford) 88 Piltown (co. Kilkenny), battle of (2) 223, 28–9, 28 Pipino, Francesco (d. 328) 289 Pizan, Christine de (d. 30) 28 Plowden, Francis (d. 89) 393 Plunket, Edward 23 Poer, le (Power), family 8, 7, 87 Arnold (d. 328) 200, 2 Eilis, w. Thomas of Desmond 37 Eustace (d. 3) 202

Index Poer, le (Power) of Curraghmore 39 Richard, baron of Curraghmore 3 Poitiers, battle of (3) 20 Poitou (France) ,  Pole, John de la (d. 87), st e. Lincoln 239 Portanure (co. Longford), Geraldines of 80 Portarlington (co. Laois) , 2 Porter, Agnes 28 William, soldier 28 Portlester (co. Meath) 338 Portumna (co. Galway)  Powerscourt (co. Wicklow) 33, 338 Powys (Wales) 7 dynasty 2 Poynings, Edward (d. 2) 32–, 330–2 Prendergast, family 7 Preston family of Gormanston 80 Robert (d. 03), st viscount Gormanston 33 Prioris, Joannes, composer 283 Provence (France) 27 Public Record Office of Ire. 23,  Pullagh (co. Limerick) 88 Punchersgrange (co. Kildare) 90 Punchestown (co. Kildare) 38 Quin (co. Clare) 8 Radclyffe, Thomas (d. 83), 3rd e. Sussex 38, 30 Raghnall’s tower (Waterford city) 78 Rahinnane (co. Kerry) 89 Rainald, abb. Abingdon (08–97) 28 Ralph, s. Robert fitz Stephen 33 Ralph, steward abbey Bury St Edmunds 3–7 Edith, w. 3–7 Ranulf fitz Oter 2 Rathbeggan 32 Rathbride (co. Kildare) 30 Rathangan (co. Kildare) 30, 30–, 33– , 338–9 Rathcahill (co. Offaly) 30, 308 Rathcogan (Charleville, co. Cork) 23

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Index Rathcourcy (co. Cork) 89 Rathdown, bar. (co. Dublin) 33 Rathduff (co. Carlow) 7 Rathjordan (co. Limerick) 88 Rathkeale (co. Limerick) 88, 29 Rathmore (co. Kildare) 93, 9–7, 77, 27, 30 castle 9–7, 03–8, ,  Rathregan (co. Meath) 320 Rathtroane (co. Meath) 80 Rathvilly (co. Carlow) 33–, 338 Ratoath (co. Meath) 32–2 Raymond fitz Griffin 3 Reading (Berks) 39 abbey 38–9 Great Council () 22 Red Book of Kildare 7, 200 Rhiwallon ap Cynfyn (d. 09), ruler of Gwynedd and Powys 3–3 Rhodes, siege (80) 28 Rhos, Welsh cantref 9 Rhyd-y-gors castle (Carmarthens)  Rhys ap Gruffudd ap Rhys (d.97), prince Deheubarth , , 7, , 3–, 7, 73, 9, 7 Rhys ap Tewdwr (d. 093), kg Deheubarth 3, 33, , 8, 3, 8, , 3–, 2, 73 Richard I, kg Eng. (89–99) 79–80 Richard II, kg Eng. (377–99) 82, 7 Richard III, kg Eng. (83–) 328–9 Richard FitzRoy (d. 2), s. King John 20 Richard (d. 272), st e. Cornwall 70 Richard fitz Godebert 7 Richard of York (d. 0), 3rd dk. York 223, 2–0, 22, 20, 327 Richardson, H.G. (d. 97), historian 23 Roan (co. Tipperary) 20 Robert (d. 7), e. Gloucester 33 Robert fitz Gerald , , 73 Roger fitz Gerald  Robert fitz Stephen (d. p. 82) 33, , , 7–8, , 3, , 7, 72–, 77–80, 87, 90, 9, 9, 2, 7, 22 Robert fitz Walter (d. a.28) 38, 0

 Roche, family 8, 7, 29 David, lord of Fermoy, husband Amy, dau. Maurice fitz Thomas, st e. Desmond 29, 2, 27 David (d. ), viscount Fermoy 39 Gerald 3 Rochford, family 79 Rogerstown (co. Westmeath) 80 Rokeby, Thomas de (d. 3), G. Ire. 20, 208 Rolleston, T.W. (d. 920), poet 07 Rome (Italy) 280–, 290, 372 Roscommon, county 2, 29 Rossagh (co. Cork) 2 Rosscarbery (co. Cork) 7 Rostellan (co. Cork), Geraldines of 9 Rouen (dép. Seine-Maritime) 38, 7, 28 siege of (8–9) 28 Roumare family  Round, Horace, historian 22, 2, 33, 0 Russell, Charles (d. 880) 397 Russell, Reginald 20 Russell, Thomas, historian 370 St Davids (Pembrokes) 2, , 73, 8, 89,  annals of 9–0, 8 bishopric 3, 3–, 7, 0, 8, 73 St Finbarre’s cathedral, see Cork Sainte-Foy-de-Montgommery (dép. Calvados) 2 Saint-Germain-de-Montgommery (dép. Calvados) 2 St John, Elizabeth, w. Gearóid Mór, 8th e. Kildare 337–8 St John’s priory, see Kilkenny city St Lawrence, Christopher (d. 2), th baron Howth 38 Christopher (d. 89), 8th baron Howth 22 St Leger, Warham (d. 97) 3 St Mary’s abbey, see Dublin St Mullins (co. Carlow) 7 St Patrick’s cathedral, see Dublin St Saviour’s priory, see Dublin

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2 Salt, bar. (co. Kildare) 33 Sander, Nicholas (d. 8), priest 37– Sassoferrato, Bartolo da (d. 37) 28 Sayles, G.O., historian 9, 9–8, 22, 2, 23 Scaddanstown (co. Tipperary) 20 Scalacronica 283– Scotland 83, , 9, 7, 28, 32, 3 Anglo-Scottish wars 28, 220 kg 9 Scott, Walter (d. 832), novelist 39 Segar, William, Garter king of Arms 32 Shakespeare, William (d. ), playwright 387–8 Shane, Katherine 293 Shaneson, Gerald (fl. 28) 32 Shanid (co. Limerick) 79, 93, 9, 9, 82, 87 castle 3, –, –,  Shannon estuary  river 2, 332 Sherlock, Patrick 3, 39, 3 Shrewsbury (Salop) 2 earldom  Shropshire 2 Shrule (co. Mayo) 3 Sidney, Henry (d. 8), G. Ire. 30–9 Simnel, Lambert (fl. 2) 32, 329 Skeffington, William (d. 3), G. Ire. 39 Skiddy, Andrew, recorder Cork 39, 32 Skreen (co. Meath) 32 Slane (co. Meath) 32 Sligo, castle , 9 county 3, 78 Dominican friary 3, 7 Premonstratensian abbey 3, 7 town 9 ‘Slught Edmund’ Geraldines 92 Smerwick (co. Kerry) 373– Smyth, John (d. ) 99 Spain 32, 3, 37 Spenser, Edmund (d. 99), poet 3 Springfield (co. Limerick) 37 Stagreenan (co. Meath) 3, 323 Stak, family 30 John 308

Index Stafford, Beatrice (d. ), dau. Ralph, st e. Stafford 2, 220– Humprey (d. 0), st dk. Buckingham 20 Ralph de (d. 372), st e. Stafford 20–, 220– Staffordshire 9 Standon, William 28 Stanihurst, James (d. 73) 2–, 38 Richard (d. 8) 2, 272, 282–3, 382–9, 398 Stanley, family 28 Statute of Kilkenny (3) 22, 23, 23 Statute of Treasons (32) 2 Staunton, family  Adam de 7 Stephen, constable of Cardigan 33, , 3, 73, 7 Stephen, kg Eng. (3–) 3, 38–9, 72 Stoke (Staffs) 329 Stoke, battle of (87) 80 Stonestown (co. Tipperary) 20 Stradbally (co. Laois) 200 Strade (co. Mayo) 7 Straffan (co. Kildare) 9, 32, 38 Strancally castle (co. Waterford) 37 Strata Florida abbey (Ceredigion) 7 Stratford, John, abp Canterbury (333– 8) 22 Strongbow, see Clare, family Suffolk 37–8, 0 Suir, river 229, 3 Sulien, bp St Davids (073–8, 080–) 8 Sullivan, A.M. (d. 88) 08,  Sussex, e. 38 Taaffe Denis (d. 83) 393 Talbot, family John (d. 3), st e. Shrewsbury 229, 27, 22 John (d. 0), 2nd e. Shrewsbury 22, 300 Richard, th baron Talbot 20– Richard, abp Dublin (7–9) 23– Talbotstown (co. Wexford) 39 Tara (co. Meath) 273

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Index Tarbert (co. Kerry) 82, 8, 37 Teerbrin (co. Kerry), Geraldines of 92 Teifi, river (Wales) , 9 Temple, knights of (Knights Templar) 39 Tenby castle (Pembrokes) 3 Thames valley 27, 29 Thierry, Augustin (d. 8) 0 Thomas fitz Anthony (d. 229) 2, 82 Thomas of Bayeux (d. 00), abp York 30 Thomas of Lancaster (d. 2), dk. Clarence 229 Thomascourt wood, see Dublin Thomastown (co. Kilkenny) 22, 30 Thomastown (co. Limerick) 88 Thomond, lordship 78, 8 Threecastles (co. Wicklow) 33 Ticroghan (co. Meath) 80 Timahoe (co. Laois), Geraldines of 80 Redmond 80 Timogue (co. Laois), Geraldines of 80 Gerald fitz Gerald 80 Tipperary, county 7, 83, 8, 22, 2, 2, 22–, 22, 29–0, 3, 3, 39, 3 crosslands 3 liberty 2, 22, 307, 33, 3 Tipperkevin (co. Kildare) 7, 37–8 Tiptoft, John (d. 70), e. Worcester 202, 223, 20–2, 22–3, 298 Tír Conaill (Donegal) 78 Tobernea (Deesbeg, co. Limerick) 79 Tomdeely (co. Limerick) 88 Tone, Wolfe (d. 798) 393 Topographia Hibernica (‘The topography of Ireland’) 9, 28 Trabolgan (co. Cork) 88 Tracton (co. Kerry), Cistercian abbey 2 Tralee (co. Kerry) 82, 92, 209–0, 37, 37 Dominican priory  Trim castle (co. Meath) , , 3, 3 liberty 20 parl. 22 town 3, 323 Trinity College, see Dublin Tristernagh (co. Westmeath) 3, 32

3 Troarn (dép. Calvados) 2 Troy 7, 23, 280–, 290, 399 Tuburrogan (co. Kildare) 32, 39 Tudor, dynasty 97, 32,  Jasper (d. 9), dk. Bedford 328 Tully (co. Kildare) 320 Tuscany (Italy) 22, 0 Tyrrellstown (co. Dublin) 90 Ua Maíl Chonaire, John, s. Maoilín 29 Maoilín Mór 29 Sighraidh (d. 87) 29 Ufford, Ralph (d. 3), G. Ire 99, 20–2, 20, 20, 2 Robert (d. 39), e. Suffolk 208 Uí Chennselaig, territory 7 Uí Fáeláin [Offelan], cant. (co. Kildare) 78, 97–8, 03, 08, , 3, 3– dynasty 97 Uí Failge (co. Offaly) 78, 9, 3, 3– Uí Néill northern 70 southern 70 see also Ó Néill [O’Neill], family Uí Thuathail (O’Tooles), dynasty 33 Ulster 338 annals of 32, 388 chiefs 330 earls, 200, 20, 22 lordship 82–3, 200 see also Burgh, family; Lionel of Antwerp; Mortimer, family Vale, Malcolm, historian 282 Valence, Agnes de  William de (d. 29), st e. Pembroke  Valla, Lorenzo (d. 7), humanist 288 Vaticanalis Historia (‘The prophetic history’) 9 Vegetius, writer 28 Ventry (co. Kerry) 89 Vérard, Antoine (d. 2) 289 Verdon, family 9 Verino, Ugolino 279

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 Vescy, William de (d. 297), lord of Kildare 0, 7–8, 78 Vesey-FitzGerald, William (d. 83), 2nd baron FitzGerald and Vesey  Vincent, Nicholas, historian  Virgil (d. 9 BCE), poet 287 Vitelli, Cornelio (d. c.) 288 Wakefield, battle of (0) 29 Wales 29, 3, , , 73, 7, 9, , , 9, 238–9, 399 conquest 3 marches 72, , 329 Wallingford (Oxon.)  Walsh family of Glenahiry and Kilmanahan in Decies 92 Walsh, Nicholas (d. ), chief justice Munster 3, 39–0 Walsingham, Francis (d. 90), Secretary State 373, 37 Walter, s. Nest , 8 Walter Diaconus (the Deacon) 0– Walter fitz Oter, constable Windsor castle (d. after 00) 22, 2–, 27–3, 39–, 2, 72–3 Beatrice, w. 3, 33 Walter fitz Walter 3 Warbeck, Perkin (d. 99) 330– Warin fitz Gerald, chamberlain Henry II  Wars of the Roses 223, 28, 327–8 Waterford, city 7–7, 2, 22, 329–30 county 7, 8, 83, 93, 2, 2, 229, 20, 27–8, 3, 32, 3 sheriff 27–8 Ware, James 33, 389, 39 Welles, Lionel (), th baron Welles 22 William 22 Welsh risings (3–7) 3 West Bedfont (Middx) 27 West Horsley (Surrey) 27, 0 Westmeath, co. 37, 33 Westminster 232, 20, 29, 27–8, 03 King’s Bench at 9 parl. (38) 20 Treaty of (3) 3

Index Wexford county 78, 77, 8, 28, 338 parl. (3) 29 town 73–, 78, 9–,  Whitehall (London) 32, 3, 37, 39– 0, 38, 32, 3, 372, 37– White knights (Fitzgibbon) 70, 8–7, 2,  David na nEch 87 Edmund fitz John (d. 08), th White knight 38–9 Henry fitz David 8 Henry fitz Thomas 8 John fitz David 8 Maurice fitz Maurice (d. 9), th White knight 87 Maurice fitz Thomas 8 Thomas fitz Gilbert (d. 3) 8 Thomas fitz John 8 Whitland abbey (Carmarthens) 9 Wicklow, cant. 9, 3 castle 3 county 77, 79, 37 mountains 2 Wigmore priory (Herefords)  Wilfrid, bp St Davids (09–) 7 Will Hall (Hants) 27 William I, kg Eng. (0–87) 22, 2–7, 30, 3–7, , 2 William II, kg Eng. (087–00) 30–, –7 William fitz Hay , , 8, 3, 73 William fitz Osbern (d. 07), st e. Hereford 2 William fitz Robert 0 William fitz Robert (d. 83), e. Gloucester  William fitz William 3, 0 William Worcester (d. 8x) 2 Winchester (Hants) 38, 8, 90 Winchfield (Hants) 27 Windsor, family 2, 73 Alexander de 3 Hugh de 0, 3 Maurice of 3–,  Edith, w. 3–7, 0–

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Index Reinald (de Wyndelshore) 39–0 William of, keeper Windsor forest 33– , , , 0, , 7, 2, 73– see also Gerald of Windsor Windsor castle (Berks) 2–2, 27–3, 3, 0, , 7, 72–3, 20, 2 council (070) 30 forest 27–8, 3 manor 27, 3, 38,  Treaty of (7) 2 Windsor of Stanwell and Eton, family 3, 2, 73 Walter fitz William 3 Wiston castle (Pembrokes) 3 Wokefield (Berks) 27 Woking (Surrey) 27 Wolfe, David (d. 82), papal nuncio 3 Woodhouse (co. Waterford), Geraldines of 92 Woodinstown (co. Tipperary) 20 Woodstock (co. Kildare) 33 Woodstock (co. Limerick) 88 Woodstock (Oxon.) 38 Worcester, Philip de 7–7

 Wotton, Thomas 2 Wyatt, Thomas (d. 2), poet 2 Wydeville, Elizabeth (d. 92), queen Eng. 22–, 20 Richard (d. 9), st e. Rivers 22 Yagoe (Donaghmore, co. Kildare) 30, 303– Ydonurt [Ó Donndubhartaigh?], Maurice 308 York, diocese 30 dk 2 dynasty 223 Yorkshire 3 Youghal (co. Cork) 0, 77, 202, 20, 208, 20–2, 2, 27, 230, 233 Dominican priory 2 Franciscan friary , 9, 287 Young Ireland 393, 07 Youngstown (co. Kildare) 80 Yronayn [Ó Rónáin], Philip 308 zouche, Alan de la (d. 270) 8 Elizabeth, w. Gearóid Óg, 9th e. Kildare 338

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