through Archdeacon Ralph, to report to the pope on
the assistance he had received from the bishops and to
have, in return, papal instructions issued to the Irish
bishops and kings, instructing them to support his rule
in Ireland.
MARTIN HOLLAND
References and Further Reading
Gwynn, A. The Irish Church in the Eleventh and Twelfth Centuries,
edited by Gerard O’ Brien. Dublin: Four Courts Press, 1992.
Watt, J. A. The Church and the Two Nations in Medieval Ireland.
Cambridge: 1970.
Flanagan, M. T. “Henry II, the council of Cashel and the Irish
bishops.” Peritia: Journal of the Medieval Academy of Ireland
10 (1996): 184–211.
See alsoGiraldus Cambrensis; Henry II; Kells,
Synod of
CASTLES
Castles emerged with the new aristocratic society of
Europe in the tenth century, providing lords with
secure centers from which to control estates of land.
From the start they were characterized by defensive
features, both for use against attack and as a display
of wealth and power. By the eleventh century, these
defended residential power centers were being con-
structed to articulate the lands of kings, major aristo-
crats, and landed knights. As the competition for power
developed, they grew more elaborate and required
greater resources to construct; from the twelfth century
they could also display an increasing elaboration of
provision for ceremony and the life of a large hierar-
chical household. The study of castles leads us directly
to the resources and priorities of their aristocratic or
royal builders.
The system of lordship which required a castle was
different from the traditions of early medieval Ireland.
Castle lordship was based on a spatial organization and
stability that saw the enduring control of land as the
primary core of power, rather than personal relations
between lord and man. An estate organized around a
castle imposed its own order on the landscape and
those who lived in it; the focus of the castle made a
ready center for other activities. Possession of a castle
was clear evidence of possession of the lordship, and
it could therefore be transmitted more easily from a
lord to his successor than traditional Irish lordship.
Castles in Ireland show how the new order of feudal
Europe differed from the early medieval polity.
Because of the investment required to build castles,
they are good guides to the real intentions of the lords
who built them. Castle designs show the balance of
lords’ provision of accommodation, display, and
defense and suggest their priorities. In Ireland, it has
been suggested that castles may have been constructed
before the arrival of English lords in 1169, just as in
England before the Norman Conquest of 1066; in both
cases this implies a change in traditional lordship.
These are either remains of stronger fortification than
was normal in early medieval Ireland (Downpatrick,
Duneight, Dunamase, or Limerick) that could be attrib-
uted to the period, or else to references to sites called
castles in contemporary documents. Unlike pre-1066
England, the sites are extensions of Irish royal power
rather than the organization of lesser estates.
Between 1169 and the crisis of the mid-fourteenth
century, castles are overwhelmingly associated with
English lordships. From the start, castles were built
either of stone and mortar or of earth and timber, or a
combination of both. The choice of medium was dic-
tated by resources (stone castles cost at least ten times
as much) or the need for speed (earth and timber build-
ings could be erected in one year, not ten or twenty);
one of the most enduring misconceptions is that earth-
work castles were more primitive and earlier than stone
ones. The early construction in stone is a clear sign of
the new lords’ commitment to remaining in Ireland.
Trim has been extensively excavated, showing how the
stone great tower was inserted into an earthen enclo-
sure. The tower (three periods of construction: 1180s,
1195–1196 and 1203–1204) was a magnificent build-
ing, providing suites of rooms for the lord and mem-
bers of his household. The approach to the castle from
Dublin was marked by a gate tower of a French design
unique to the British Isles. Defensively, however, the
great tower was not particularly effective by the stan-
dards of the day. The great round tower at Nenagh
looked, like the Trim gate, to Pembroke and France
for its inspiration. Carrickfergus was much simpler, a
tower for the lord’s household and a small courtyard
with the public hall, chapel, and kitchen. The bulk of
castles of the late twelfth and early thirteenth centuries
were of earth and timber, and the great majority of
these apparently were mottes, erected where speed was
important or where the lord was prepared or able to
commit fewer resources. The distribution of mottes in
Ireland is surprising, in that they are not evenly spread
over the earlier English lordships. The conclusion from
the study of the castles of the first two generations of
English lordships is that they were built overwhelmingly
by lords to celebrate their seizure of land, not to conquer
it nor to hold it against potential or actual rebellions.
Most of the castles, and all of the most elaborate
ones, put up before 1200 were built for aristocrats, not
for the king. Neither Henry II nor Richard I seized
much land or built significant castles to assert their
power; only with John, who built strong castles atCASTLES