hierarchy of land tenure could be precisely defined,
exceptionally so by European standards. If these insti-
tutions are thought of as feudalism in the narrow sense,
then it arrived with the Anglo-Normans.
The entire story of the invasion is described in the
sources in expressly feudal terms. When Diarmait Mac
Murchada applied to King Henry II of England for
military aid to reconquer his kingdom of Leinster, the
chronicler Giraldus Cambrensis states that he did hom-
age and fealty to the English king, the feudal ceremony
in which one became the vassal of a lord, in return for
which the lord was obliged to provide protection.
Diarmait’s own exhortation for men to come to his aid
includes the promise: “Whoever shall wish for soil or
sod, Richly shall I enfeoff them.”
This undertaking is found in the French poem
known as the Song of Dermot and the Earl, composed
shortly after the invasion. It therefore gives us an
Anglo-Norman rather than an Irish view of Diarmait’s
intentions. It is clear, however, that the poem’s Fran-
cophone audience comprehended the settlement of
Ireland in what we would call feudal terminology. To
enfeoff, or to invest someone with a piece of land
a feodem (fief)is the core of the feudal relationship.
At the pinnacle of the hierarchy was the king of
England, who, as lord of Ireland, apportioned lands to
his “tenants-in-chief,” those who held directly of the
crown. The military service that the holder owed was
specified: Leinster was held for one hundred knights’
fees, Meath for fifty, and so on. The lord of each area
then set about subdividing his territory among his fol-
lowers, a process known as “subinfeudation.” The
intention was to provide an army that could rapidly be
summoned by the king or, more usually, the chief gov-
ernor. Except for the fact that the church in Ireland did
not have to provide military service for its lands, feudal
obligations in Ireland were much the same as in
England. The king had the right to take what are
termed the “feudal incidents” of wardship, marriage,
and relief. His tenants owed forty days of personal
knight service annually, although in practice this was
soon commuted to a money payment called scutage
(shield money), which in Ireland was known as royal
service. Scutage survived longer and was levied more
frequently in Ireland than in England; there were, for
instance, nine scutages in the troubled decade 1269−
- With tenure of land came jurisdiction and the
right to hold a court, although the king was the ulti-
mate provider of justice and serious criminal cases
were reserved to his judges.
In the first century after the invasion, some Irish
lords made genuine efforts to adapt to the invaders’
institutions in the hope that it would give them security
of tenure. Cathal Crobderg Ua Conchobair (d. 1224),
king of Connacht, sought and eventually received a
charter for Connacht, which he held “during his good
service.” His son Feidlim (d. 1265) served Henry III
on his campaign in Wales in 1245. The invaders
were, however, prepared to use any pretext to expro-
priate the Gaelic lords. Equally it is likely that the
wide kin groups of Gaelic Ireland did not support
such feudal notions as primogeniture. The feudal
experiment of the Ua Conchobair kings proved in
the end to be a negative experience and one that bred
acrimony and distrust.Bastard Feudalism
It should be remembered that Ireland’s incorporation
into the feudal system occurred extremely late in the
development of feudalism as a whole. Almost from its
inception, therefore, the new lordship displayed signs
of what historians have labeled “bastard feudalism.” If
any term has generated more debate than feudalism
among historians of recent decades, it is surely its
supposedly illegitimate successor. Bastard feudalism,
so-named in the late nineteenth century, refers to a
relationship between lord and man based on money
pensions and a written contract rather than land. An
older school of historians dated this “perversion” of
the feudal system to the reign of King Edward III and
the start of the Hundred Years War in the fourteenth
century. They blamed it for disorder, violence, and, most
extravagantly, for the Wars of the Roses (1455−1485).
The Irish evidence supports more recent scholarship
that has pushed the chronology further back until we
must question if there was ever a purely feudal age. It
seems likely that in Ireland, from the moment of
English involvement, the clear feudal hierarchy was
supplemented by less well-defined expediencies. The
lord of Leinster, William Marshal (d. 1219), brought
his bastard feudal affinity with him to Ireland in the
early 1200s. Indeed, a society like Ireland, where war-
fare was endemic, was ideally suited to such develop-
ments. Lords on the frontiers required their own private
armies if they were to hold on to their conquests.
Edward I exploited this to the full in the late 1290s
when he contracted armies from Ireland to serve in his
attempted conquest of Scotland. So valued were these
levies that the “Red earl” of Ulster was able to nego-
tiate with the king for the highest pay awarded any
earl in the campaign.
A related factor immediately apparent in Ireland
and traditionally associated with the “decline” of feu-
dalism is the growth of liberty jurisdiction, under
which lords were given powers akin to those of the king
within a specific region that had its own administration
and courts. At the time of the initial invasion, Leinster,
Meath, and Ulster were all created as liberties, andFEUDALISM