STRONGBOW (RICHARD FITZ GILBERT)now traveled in person to meet Henry at Newnham in
Gloucester. His anxiety to confer with the king
strongly suggests that he conceived Henry’s expedition
to Ireland as being aimed primarily at him. Henry,
however, was not deflected from his intention to go to
Ireland himself, where he remained from October 1171
until April 1172, during which time bargaining
between the two must have been protracted. Henry
obliged Strongbow to acknowledge him as his overlord
for Leinster, while Strongbow persuaded Henry II to
restore to him his dignity as an earl, although the king
refused to concede him the earldom of Pembroke.
From 1172 onwards, Strongbow was titled “earl of
Strigoil,” which, however, brought him no additional
lands. Henry II also removed control of Dublin,
Waterford, and Wexford from Strongbow, retaining them
for his own use. In 1173, Henry II tested Strongbow’s
loyalty by summoning him to fight in Normandy,
where he played a critical role in defending the castle
of Gisors and recapturing Verneuil for the king. As a
reward for faithful service, Henry then returned the
port town of Wexford to Strongbow. During Strongbow’s
absence from Leinster, a number of Irish had seized
the opportunity to attack Anglo-Norman garrisons, but,
on his return to Ireland, Strongbow regained the upper
hand militarily and set about planting Leinster with
his own tenants, probably using Irish disloyalty as a
justification for at least some of his land-grants.
Strongbow was now also appointed Henry’s principal
agent in Ireland, and, in that capacity, he issued char-
ters on behalf of the king relating to the now royal city
of Dublin. He died unexpectedly in April 1176 from
an injury to his foot and was buried in Christ Church
Cathedral (the tomb there that is traditionally associ-
ated with him is of later date), his funeral presided
over by Lorcán Ua tuathail (Laurence O’Toole), arch-
bishop of Dublin. He left as his heir a three-year-old
son, Gilbert, and a daughter, Isabella, both children
having been given stock forenames in the de Clare
family. His death meant that responsibility for the lord-
ship of Leinster fell on his overlord, Henry II, for the
duration of the minority of his heir. This undoubtedly
slowed down Anglo-Norman settlement in Leinster.
Gilbert died sometime between 1185 and 1189, and, in
1189, Isabella, who was now Strongbow’s sole heir,
was given in marriage by Henry II to William Marshal,
who became lord of Leinster in right of his wife.
William systematically set about reconstituting his
father-in-law’s landholdings both in Ireland and else-
where, culminating in his recovery of the earldom of
Pembroke in 1199. In the period between Strongbow’s
death in 1176 and the marriage in 1189 of his daughter,
Isabella, Strongbow’s widow, Aífe, is mentioned in
English royal records as enjoying her widow’s dower
from his estates in England and may have resided for
a period at his castle in Strigoil. In 1184, she may
even have been responsible for the organization of
defenses against the Welsh. The date of her death is
not known, but she was buried in Tintern Abbey in
Monmouthshire, alongside her father-in-law, Gilbert,
who had founded that monastery. As settlers in Leinster,
Strongbow chose tenants chiefly from his English
landholdings rather than promoting Cambro-Normans
from south Wales, such as the Geraldines, which
largely accounts for the hostile portrayal of him in
Gerald of Wales’s Expugnatio Hibernica. The English
chronicler, William of Newburgh, commented that as
a result of his acquisitions in Ireland, Strongbow, who
had little fortune previously, became celebrated in
England and Wales for his great wealth and prosperity.
His intervention in Ireland returned him to the favor
of the English royal court, augmented his landed
resources, secured him a wife commensurate with his
status, restored to him the dignity of an earl, and
afforded the means by which his son-in-law, William
Marshal, was to recover the earldom of Pembroke.
From Henry II’s perspective, Strongbow’s strategi-
cally located acquisitions in Ireland had raised the
prospect that a disaffected subject, who deemed him-
self to have been arbitrarily deprived of the earldom
of Pembroke, might destabilize the king’s control of
South Wales. This undoubtedly was a key consider-
ation in Henry’s decision to intervene personally in
Ireland and to reach an accommodation with Strongbow.
Strongbow’s marriage to Aífe is the subject of a
noted historical painting by Daniel Maclise
(1806–1870), which depicts a downcast Aífe, sym-
bolically representing Ireland, being reluctantly wed
to an overbearing conqueror under the authority of
her father, Diarmait. References to her in English
royal sources as “the Irish countess” and the “countess
of Strigoil,” and charters which she issued in her
own name, including one in which she styled herself
“Countess Eva, heir of King Diarmait,” coupled with
the fact that she never remarried, suggest that she
retained a notable degree of independence over her
own career.
M. T. FLANAGANReferences and Further Reading
Duffy, Seán. Ireland in the Middle Ages. London: Macmillan,
1997.
Flanagan, Marie Therese. Irish Society, Anglo-Norman Settlers,
Angevin Kingship: Interactions in Ireland in the Late Twelfth
Century. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989; reprinted,
1998.
See also Diarmait Mac Murchada;
Henry II; Waterford