References and Further Reading
D’Avray, D. L. “Portable Vademecum Books Containing Fran-
ciscan and Dominican Texts.” In Manuscripts at Oxford:An
Exhibition in Memory of Richard Hunt... on themes selected
and described by some of his friends, edited by A. C. de la
Mare and B. C. Barker Benfield, 60–64. Oxford: Bodleian
Library, 1980
Benskin, M. “The Hands of the Kildare Poems’ Manuscript,”
Irish University Review20 (1990): 163–193.
Bernard, E. Catalogi Librorum Manuscriptorum Angliae et
Hiberniae.Oxford: Sheldonian Theatre, 1697.
Hickes, G. Linguarum vett. Septentrionalium thesaurus.
Oxford: Sheldonian Theatre,1705.
Lucas, A. M. and P. J. Lucas. “Reconstructing a Disarranged
Manuscript: The Case of MS Harley 913, a Medieval Hiberno-
English Miscellany,” Scriptorium14 (1990): 286–299.
Lucas, Angela M. Anglo-Irish Poems of the Middle Ages. Black-
rock, Ireland: Columba Press, 1995.
See also: Bermingham; Cyn, Friar John;
Education; French Literature, Influence of;
Hiberno-English Literature; Hiberno-Norman
(Latin); Kildare; Languages; Lyrics; Manuscript
Illumination; Metrics; Moral and Religious
Instruction; Poets/Men of Learning; Racial and
Cultural Conflict; Satire; Waterford
BRUCE, EDWARD (c.1275–1318)
Edward Bruce, lord of Galloway (from 1308), earl of
Carrick (from 1313), and king of Ireland (1315–1318),
was a younger brother of Robert I of Scotland
(1306–1329). He was heir-presumptive to the Scottish
throne when he invaded Ireland in May 1315, and did
so with King Robert’s full support. It was alleged
against members of the Anglo-Irish de Lacy family
that they invited Edward (presumably to help recover
the lordship of Mide [Meath] lost to the family through
the female line), but one contemporary claimed that
Edward was invited by a nobleman with whom he had
been “educated,” possibly a reference to fosterage as
practiced in the Gaelic world and by the Bruces. The
obvious candidate is Domnall Ua Néill of the Northern
Uí Néill, who acknowledged his role in a letter to the
pope in 1317, adding that he voluntarily ceded to
Edward his own hereditary royal claim.
The assembly that met on April 26, 1315, at Ayr,
facing the Antrim coast, was perhaps a muster for the
fleet that sailed from there, landing on May 26, pos-
sibly at Larne, or Glendun farther north (Robert
Bruce was there in July 1327), where Edward had a
land-claim inherited from his great-grandfather Duncan
of Carrick (in Galloway). The 6,000 troops landed
without opposition, the Anglo-Irish government
being taken unawares, with the chief governor in
Munster and the earl of Ulster, Richard de Burgh, in
Connacht. The earl’s tenants—Sir Thomas de Mandeville,
the Bissets, Logans, and the Savages—took to the
field unsuccessfully against the Scots under Thomas
Randolph, earl of Moray, and when the invaders
marched on Carrickfergus, the town fell easily, although
its heavily fortified castle required a prolonged siege.
Probably while at Carrickfergus, up to twelve Irish
kings came to Edward and, the annals record, he
“took the hostages and lordship of the whole province
of Ulster without opposition and they consented to
his being proclaimed King of Ireland, and all the
Gaels of Ireland agreed to grant him lordship and
they called him King of Ireland.”
King Edward Bruce now campaigned along the
Six Mile Water, burning Rathmore near Antrim,
before heading south through the Moiry Pass, where
Mac Duilechain of Clanbrassil and Mac Artain of
Iveagh apparently ambushed him. But on June 29,
1315, Bruce stormed the de Verdon stronghold of
Dundalk, which he ransacked, including its Fran-
ciscan friary. The chief governor, Edmund Butler,
assembled the feudal host, and de Burgh gathered his
Connacht tenants (and Irish levies under Feidlim Ua
Conchobair) and both converged south of Ardee
around July 22. The Scots and Irish were ten miles
away at Inniskeen, and after a skirmish near Louth
Edward cautiously adopted Ua Néill’s advice and
retreated via Armagh to Coleraine, which they
burned, sparing the Dominican friary but demolishing
the bridge over the Bann. De Burgh alone pursued
Bruce to Coleraine but was forced to withdraw to
Antrim for lack of provisions (being also weakened
by Ua Conchobair’s return to Connacht). When the
Scots crossed the Bann in pursuit, aided by the sea
captain Thomas Dun, they defeated de Burgh in battle
at Connor on September 1, and he withdrew humili-
ated to Connacht, the annals calling him “a wanderer
up and down Ireland, with no power or lordship.”
In mid-November Edward again marched south, and
by November 30 was at Nobber, County Meath, where
he left a garrison and advanced on Kells to challenge
Roger Mortimer, lord of Trim, whose large but disloyal
army fled the battlefield around December 6, Mortimer
himself returning to England. Bruce burned Kells and
turned west to Granard, County Longford, attacking
the Tuit family manor and the Cistercians at Abbeylara
(accused in Ua Néill’s “Remonstrance” to the pope of
spear-hunting the Irish by day and saying Vespers by
evening). Edward raided the English settlements in
Annaly, County Longford, and spent Christmas at
Loughsewdy, caputof the de Verdons’ half of Meath,
before razing it to the ground. Meath manors (like
Rathwire) still in de Lacy hands were untouched by
Bruce, suggesting they had joined him, for which they
were later convicted and dispossessed.BRUCE, EDWARD (c. 1275–1318)