ANGLO-NORMAN INVASIONfund Edward I’s campaigns against Wales and Scotland.
From the fourteenth century, however, amid the hardship
provoked by the Bruce invasion, the Black Death and the
Gaelic revival, Ireland ceased to be profitable. It was
hoped that the expedition of Lionel of Clarence in the
1360s would rejuvenate the colony so that it could con-
tribute to England’s continental campaigns. This naive
policy climaxed with Richard II’s expeditions of the
1390s. It foundered when Richard II lost his crown to
Henry Bolingbroke while in Ireland in 1399.
The later medieval period is complicated by the
growth of a “middle nation” among the colonists in
Ireland, sometimes called the “Anglo-Irish” by histo-
rians. This group referred to themselves as English and
always insisted that they were loyal to the king. Yet
their growing awareness of a discrete identity from
England arguably altered the constitutional position of
Ireland. The Irish parliament of 1460 declared that “the
land of Ireland is, and at all times has been, corporate
of itself... freed from any special burden of the law
of the realm of England.” It is still debated whether
this declaration had any historical foundation. But, in
a sense, that is irrelevant. The important point is that
the voice of the Irish colony—the parliament—
declared that Ireland was separate, not from the king,
but from the kingdom of England.
The growing alienation of Ireland from England had
become dangerous by the end of the medieval period,
particularly after the Tudor dynasty won the crown in
- In 1487, in an act of extraordinary defiance, a
boy called Lambert Simnel was crowned as King
Edward VI at Christ Church Cathedral, Dublin. In
1494, a second pretender called Perkin Warbeck found
support in Ireland. Yet more insidious were the con-
spiracies of Anglo-Irish lords and England’s international
enemies. Ireland was becoming a strategic liability. This
fear that Ireland could be used as a “backdoor” into
England—a fear that was realized several times in the
modern era—came to be the predominant factor in
English policy towards Ireland.
The administration of Henry VIII (1509–1544) rec-
ognized that the Irish problem had to be addressed.
One response to the Kildare rebellion of 1534–1535
was the decision to change the constitutional position of
the king. In 1541, King Henry VIII adopted the title
“King of Ireland,” rather than merely “lord,” in an attempt
to make the entire population amenable to English law
and customs. The lordship of Ireland had at last become
a kingdom. Ultimately the policy of accommodation fal-
tered, and it became apparent to English administrators
that the only solution was a renewed conquest and plan-
tation of the country. The legacy of this policy is the
embitterment that has characterized so much of Anglo-
Irish relations into modern times.
PETER CROOKS
References and Further Reading
Conway, Agnes. Henry VII’s Relations with Scotland and Ire-
land, 1485–1498; With a chapter on the acts of the Poynings
Parliament, 1494–5 by Edmund Curtis. Cambridge: Cam-
bridge University Press, 1932.
Davies, R. R. The First English Empire. Oxford: Oxford Uni-
versity Press, 2000.
Ellis, Steven. “Henry VII and Ireland, 1491–1496.” In England
and Ireland in the Later Middle Ages: Essays in honour of
Jocelyn Otway-Ruthven,edited by James Lydon. Dublin:
Irish Academic Press, 1981.
Flanagan, Marie Therese. Irish Society, Anglo-Norman Settlers,
Angevin Kingship: Interactions in Ireland in the late 12th
century. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1989.
Frame, Robin. English Lordship in Ireland, 1318–1361. Oxford:
Clarendon Press, 1982.
———. “Les Engleys Nées en Irlande: The English Political
Identity in Medieval Ireland.” In Britain and Ireland,
1170–1450. London and Rio Grande, Ohio: The Ham-
beldon Press, 1998. First published in Transactions of
the Royal Historical Society, 6th series, 3, (1993):
83–103.
Hudson, Ben. “William the Conqueror and Ireland.” In Irish
Historical Studies29, no. 114 (1994):145–158.
Lydon, James F. “The Middle Nation.” In The English in Medi-
eval Ireland: Proceedings of the first joint meeting of the
Royal Irish Academy and the British Academy, Dublin, 1982,
edited by James F Lydon. Dublin: Royal Irish Academy,
1984.
———. “Ireland and the English crown, 1171–1541.” Irish
Historical Studies29, no. 115 (1995): 281–294.
Richter, Michael. “The First Century of Anglo-Irish Relations.”
History59 (1974): 195–210.
See alsoAnglo-Norman Invasion; Bruce, Edward;
Gaelic Revival; Henry II; John; Lionel of Clarence;
Lordship of IrelandANGLO-NORMAN INVASION
The commencement of the so-called Anglo-Norman
invasion of Ireland is dated conventionally to 1169,
although the first overseas mercenaries in fact arrived
in the autumn of 1167 in the company of Diarmait
Mac Murchada, the king of Leinster, who had been
forced into exile in 1166 and had sought military
assistance from Henry II, king of England, to recover
his kingdom. The date 1169 derives from the near-
contemporary account, the Expugnatio Hibernica
(The Taking of Ireland), completed around 1189 by
Gerald of Wales (Giraldus Cambrensis), an apologist
for Anglo-Norman intervention who consistently
exaggerated the role of his own relatives in that
enterprise, the first of whom, his maternal uncle,
Robert FitzStephen, arrived in May 1169. Although
the term Anglo-Norman to describe the incomers
enjoys wide currency, there is no scholarly consensus
on its use; Norman, Cambro-Norman, and Anglo-
French have also been used. All are anachronistic:
Contemporary sources of both Irish and English