LANCASTRIAN-YORKIST IRELANDwar” inhabited by “the wild Irish” living in their woods
and bogs—was of little concern to the government.
What the beleaguered Lancastrian government
aimed to do was to conduct a holding operation while
addressing more pressing problems elsewhere. Succes-
sive governors could expect an annual salary of, at
most, 4,000 marks—notably John Talbot, Lord Furnivall
(later earl of Shrewsbury and Waterford), lieutenant
from 1414 to 1420 and from 1445 to 1447; James
Butler, earl of Ormond, a regular choice for two- or
three-year periods between 1420 and his death in 1452;
and Richard duke of York, lieutenant from 1447 to
- This salary, normally payable from the English
exchequer, was intended to offset the deficit on the
Irish revenues, so allowing governors to maintain an
adequate force for defense, commonly 300 or 400
archers. Given that Waterford, Ormond, and York were
the lordship’s leading landowners, each with an exten-
sive manræd, these arrangements should in theory
have been more than adequate. Yet, for various reasons,
the reality was far different. Increased reliance on local
landowners at this time promoted faction: the classic
illustration was the escalating feud between Talbot and
Butler. Besides encouraging Gaelic raids, the feud left
the Dublin administration virtually paralyzed in the
early 1440s. Yet outside governors without a local fol-
lowing obviously needed greater support. Escalating
feuds between provincial magnates also epitomized
the regime’s collapse elsewhere at this time—for want
of impartial justice by the feeble Henry VI. Another
indication of incipient collapse was the worsening
financial situation. Already during Talbot’s first lieu-
tenancy, the English exchequer’s failure to maintain the
payments agreed in his indenture forced the lieutenant
to resort to coign and livery to maintain his troops—
that is, to billet them on the country and to purvey
supplies for his household without payment. Later
lieutenants generally received less of what was owed;
deputies appointed during their long absences com-
manded still smaller resources; and at £500 the salary
allowed to a justiciar elected by the council to fill a
casual vacancy was modest indeed. In short, a governor
with even 2,000 marks a year to maintain a small
retinue was very much the exception, and little was
available in Ireland by way of taxation—700 marks
per subsidy, £300 from a scutage.
The Crisis of Lordship and the Descent
to Civil War
The result was that intensive royal government on the
lowland English model, supervised by the central
courts, the governor, and council, was increasingly
restricted to “the four obedient shires” around Dublin,
the region later called “the English Pale,” which sup-
plied most of the king’s revenues. Here, the government
encouraged the construction of towers and dikes in the
marches to facilitate defense and inhibit cattle rustling.
Elsewhere, however, apart from the predominantly self-
governing royal towns, defense and good rule increas-
ingly devolved on the region’s ruling magnate—notably,
the earls of Desmond in the southwest, and Ormond in
south Leinster, whose private armies of kerne and
galloglass were maintained by coign and livery in the
Gaelic manner. Central supervision was intermittent, in
part because the Barrow valley was now passable only
with an armed escort. Occasionally, when affairs around
Dublin permitted, the governor might make a progress
southwards, perhaps mounting a short campaign against
“Irish enemies” and holding brief judicial sessions. Yet,
conditions in the Barrow valley worsened markedly
following the death in 1432 of the leading lord there,
the earl of Kildare. Ormond had married Kildare’s
daughter and secured most of the estates, but with no
resident earl to defend them, outlying estates were over-
run and key castles like Tullow and Castledermot were
destroyed, thus undermining the whole march.
By the late 1440s, the English position was every-
where collapsing. The arrival as lieutenant in 1449 of
the king’s heir apparent, Richard duke of York, briefly
gave new heart to the Englishry: wholesale submissions
by Gaelic chiefs prompted the rash prediction that
within twelve months “the wildest Irishman in Ireland
shall be swore English.” Then news arrived of the final
English collapse in Normandy: York demanded imme-
diate support, “for I had liever be dead” than have it
chronicled “that Ireland was lost by my negligence.”
Soon after, rebellion broke out in England, and York
departed, leaving Ormond as his deputy. Yet Ormond’s
death in 1452 was followed a year later by Waterford’s
death in distant Gascony in the final English collapse
there, and suddenly Ireland’s leading landowners were
all absentees. Ormond and Waterford’s successors
never visited their Irish estates. In the ensuing crisis of
lordship, the king recognized as earl of Kildare Thomas
FitzMaurice of the Geraldines, grandnephew of the last
earl, in a bid to strengthen the southern marches of “the
four shires.” Yet by then English politics were sliding
towards civil war: York built up strong support, retain-
ing the earls of Desmond and Kildare, although the
absentee earl of Ormond sided with the court party.
War began in earnest in 1459. The lordship’s poten-
tial as a retreat and recruiting ground for attempts on
the throne was first appreciated by the Yorkists, the
duke himself fleeing there after the rout of Ludford,
while Warwick and York’s son, the earl of March,
retired to Calais. During the winter of 1459–1460,
Warwick visited York in Waterford to coordinate a two-
pronged invasion of England, and the army raised for