ANGLO-NORMAN INVASION
provenance consistently described the incomers as
Saxain,
i.e., English. The earliest were adventurers
from the South Wales area and of mixed ethnic
background: hence the terms Cambro-Norman, and
sometimes also Flemish, the latter referring more
specifically to those drawn from the Rhos peninsula,
where the English king, Henry I (1100–1135), had
established a Flemish colony. A more identifiably
English influx was already apparent by August 1170
when Richard FitzGilbert, lord of Strigoil, popularly
known as Strongbow, arrived in Ireland. Although
he was a landholder in South Wales, he also had
extensive lands in England from where he drew some
of his followers, whom he was to install as his ten-
ants in Leinster following the death of Diarmait Mac
Murchada in the spring of 1171. The English ele-
ment was further reinforced by the personal inter-
vention in Ireland in 1171 of Henry II. The use of
the term “invasion” might also be debated, since the
earliest incomers arrived as mercenaries in the
employ of Diarmait Mac Murchada and invariably
fought alongside Irish forces until Diarmait’s death
in 1171.
The major military expedition led by Henry II to
Ireland in October 1171 marked a significant new
phase in the English advance. Henry remained in
Ireland for a six-month period, during which time
he obliged Strongbow to acknowledge him as his
overlord for Leinster. Henry also made a speculative
grant of the kingdom of Meath to Hugh de Lacy,
who had extensive landed interests in England, the
Welsh borders, and Normandy. Moreover, Henry
decided that the Irish port towns should be appro-
priated for his own use. He issued a charter granting
the city of Dublin to his men of Bristol, which not
only confirmed the established trading links between
the two cities, but was also an early indication that
he was ready to exploit the economic resources of
the Hiberno-Norse east-coast towns. During his stay,
Henry did not travel beyond Leinster nor deploy his
army against Irish forces. A substantial number of
Irish kings voluntarily offered their personal submis-
sion to him, while the Irish episcopate was also
prepared to endorse his intervention in the expecta-
tion that greater political stability would be achieved
and the bitter disputes that had characterized the
pursuit of the office of high king during the twelfth
century might be brought to an end.
As a consequence of Henry’s personal intervention,
a link between a part of Ireland and the English crown
was inaugurated, the constitutional repercussions of
which are still resonating. In 1175 the Treaty of Wind-
sor was negotiated between Henry and Ruaidrí Ua
Conchobair, king of Connacht, and claimant of the
high kingship of Ireland. This divided Ireland into two
spheres of influence, one under Henry, the other under
Ruaidrí, with the latter acknowledging Henry as his
overlord. The boundaries delimited by the treaty
proved unstable, however, with individual English
adventurers rapidly expanding beyond them, a notable
instance being the intrusion into Ulaid (Ulster) in 1177
of the soldier of fortune, John de Courcy. In May 1177,
Henry II modified the arrangements of the Treaty of
Windsor by designating his youngest son, John, as lord
of Ireland, with the intention that when he came of age
he should personally assume control of the English
colonists in Ireland. The king also made an additional
series of speculative grants to actual and potential col-
onists in Munster. In 1185 John went to assume the
lordship of Ireland in person, but retreated after a nine-
month period, having failed to assert control over the
English settlers there, and having suffered a series of
military defeats at the hands of Irish kings. Nonethe-
less, John had made a further series of speculative
grants to English members of his entourage, the most
notable of whom was Theobald Walter, ancestor of the
Butler earls of Ormond.
In 1199, all his brothers having died, John became
king of England, an event that could not have been
foreseen by Henry, and this was to forge a more
direct administrative link between the English crown
and the English-held areas of Ireland. Until 1204,
John’s lordship in Ireland was but one among an
assemblage of diverse territories that stretched from
the Anglo-Scottish border to the Pyrenees, each of
which had its own customs and laws. However, King
John’s 1204 loss of the duchy of Normandy to Philip
Augustus, king of France, altered the English crown’s
relations with Ireland. English-held Ireland may be
said to have been transformed more directly into a
colony. A mark of that relationship was that many
of the institutions for the governance of England and
English laws were transferred to Ireland, although
these were to be applied only to English-controlled
areas.
King John was said to have taken the laws of
England with him on his second expedition to Ireland
in 1210 during which he sought and largely suc-
ceeded in asserting control over his English subjects
in Ireland, though much of his success was to be
compromised subsequently by the baronial wars in
England that culminated in the procural of
Magna
Carta
from the king, to be followed by the eleven-
year minority of his son Henry III. The loss of a
substantial portion of its continental lands altered the
character of the English crown’s interest in Ireland.
The English lordship of Ireland came to be seen as
an annex of an England-centered sphere, while the
English settlers in Ireland, the most noteworthy of
whom still retained lands in England, sought to