Tadc Luimnig (d. 1317, AI) may have been born in the
city. Fighting around Limerick in 1313 appears to have
involved rival Uí Briain factions, but the city was in
English hands when in 1370 it was sacked and burned
by the Irish of Thomond. In 1466, Tadg Ua Briain of
Thomond placed on a formal basis the “black rent” long
claimed by his dynasty from the city. Generations of
neglect by the Dublin-based administration of the Lord-
ship of Ireland—its energies concentrated on defense of
the Pale—had left Limerick in a greatly weakened state
by the end of the medieval period. Although the city’s
merchants fortified Irishtown in walls stronger than
Englishtown on King’s Island, and St. Mary’s cathedral
thrived on their patronage, the deficiency of royal gov-
ernment saw even its once great castle reduced to what
contemporaries described as a ruin.
SEÁN DUFFY
References and Further Reading
John Begley. The Diocese of Limerick, Ancient and Medieval.
Dublin, 1906.
Judith Hill. The Building of Limerick.Cork & Dublin, 1991.
Maurice Lenihan. Limerick; its History and Antiquities. Cork,
1866.
James McCaffrey (ed.). The Black Book of Limerick. Dublin,
1907.
T.J. Westropp. The Antiquities of Limerick and its Neighbour-
hood. Dublin, 1916.
See alsoChurch Reform, Twelfth Century; Dál
Cais; Gille (Gilbert) of Limerick; Munster
LIONEL OF CLARENCE
Lionel of Clarence (b. Antwerp, 1338; d. Alba in Italy,
1368), earl of Ulster, lord of Connacht, duke of Clarence.
Lionel was the third son of King Edward III and inher-
ited enormous lands in Ireland through his marriage
to Elizabeth de Burgh, heiress of William de Burgh
(d. 1333), the “Brown Earl” of Ulster. In 1360, a break
in the war between France and England enabled
Edward III to assent to requests from Ireland for a royal
prince to be sent to remedy the “utter devastation, ruin
and misery” of the lordship of Ireland.
Lionel was appointed king’s lieutenant in 1361, and
he arrived in Ireland that September. He was resident
in Ireland, except for a visit to England in 1364, until
- His appointment heralded a policy of military
intervention, heavily funded from England, that was
to culminate in the two expeditions of King Richard II
in the 1390s. The intention was to fulfill the king’s
duty to protect his subjects in Ireland and to revive the
colony as a source of profit to the crown.
Lionel brought with him a large army, including
many absentee landholders. Although Lionel held
notional titles to Connacht and Ulster, these areas were
barely in communication with the central government,
and Lionel made little effort to reconquer them.
Instead, his military campaigns were concentrated on
Leinster, the midlands, and the southwest. It was of
particular importance to secure Leinster because it was
planned to move the Exchequer from Dublin to Carlow
in an effort to make it easier for royal officers to make
payments. Warfare in Ireland was rarely decisive, how-
ever, necessitating a constant presence in the form of
garrisons, known as wards, posted across the country.
This policy was expensive, and when funds from
England disappeared from 1364, there were wide-
spread desertions. From 1366, with the departure of
Lionel and his army, conditions rapidly returned to the
pre-expeditionary situation.
Lionel’s arrival in Ireland was one of the few occa-
sions on which anything approximating to a court life
appeared in Ireland. Lionel renovated Dublin castle
and ordered preparations to be made for sports and
tournaments. These were aspects of royal government
to which the remote residents of Ireland did not usually
have access. Nonetheless, Lionel antagonized the
Anglo-Irish by appointing officials born in England to
implement his administrative reforms and by attempt-
ing to exact a subsidy from the Irish parliament. Lionel
managed to compromise on these issues, but they
reemerged after 1369 during the chief governorship of
William of Windsor.
Except for a modest financial recovery, most of
Lionel’s achievements did not survive his departure
from Ireland. His most enduring legacy was the Stat-
utes of Kilkenny of 1366. These statutes codified much
of the existing legislation dating back to 1297 that
aimed at curbing Gaelicization. While the statutes were
racially exclusionary, they were not a direct attack on
Gaelic culture. They were defensive in tone, and their
simplistic racial distinctions were designed to contain
what was perceived as a principal cause of decline.
Modern historians have stressed the extent to which
the statutes merely summed up previous legislation.
Yet the statutes of 1366 were unusually comprehensive
and were reissued several times during the late medi-
eval period. One of the paradoxes of late medieval Irish
history is that among those who reissued the statutes
were many who knowingly and wilfully transgressed
their provisions.
Lionel left Ireland in November 1366; he is reputed
to have sworn never to return. A marriage had been
arranged for him to the daughter of the Visconti of
Milan, and he died in Albain Piedmont, in 1368. His
Irish estates descended through his daughter Phillipa
to the Mortimer earls of March.
PETER CROOKSLIMERICK