government. England was in any case focused for most
of the fourteenth century on its Hundred Years War
with France. At both private and public level there was
less investment in military defense against the incur-
sions of the neighboring Gaelic chieftains, and military
retinues maintained by the earls and barons were sup-
ported by billeting mercenary soldiers in the houses of
the tenant farmers. Anglo-Irish peasants and townspeo-
ple were faced—on the one hand—with increased
attacks from the Irish, and the unpleasant burden of
billeted soldiers and added taxation for their upkeep,
and—on the other hand—with the attraction of farms
and jobs that had become vacant in England in the
aftermath of the plague. They emigrated back over the
Irish sea in considerable numbers, while some others,
left farming on the frontiers of an Irish chieftain’s
domains, bought immunity by submitting and paying
tribute to their powerful Irish neighbor rather than to
an absentee English landlord.
Military Recovery
The armies of the Irish chieftains over the same period
became increasingly professional. Instead of relying
on musters of their own subjects, chiefs employed
bands of “kernes” (
ceithirne
,
ceatharnaigh
; light-
armed native Irish mercenaries) and “galloglasses”
(
gallóglaigh
, troops of heavy-armored Scots from the
Western Isles). The first galloglasses arrived in the
mid-thirteenth century, but their numbers were rein-
forced by political exiles from Scotland after the Bruce
wars. They too were billeted on peasant farmers in the
Gaelic lordships, an exaction known as “coyne and
livery.” The chieftains themselves, with their families
and household guards, formed the cavalry, wearing
suits of mail and helmets, and armed with long spears.
A series of major Irish victories in the fourteenth cen-
tury demonstrated their effectiveness: in 1318, at Dysert
O’Dea, where the death of Lord Richard de Clare and
the subsequent failure of his heirs ensured lasting inde-
pendence for the Ua Briain lordship of Thomond; in
1346, when Brian Mór Mac Mathgamna (MacMahon)
of Monaghan defeated the Anglo-Irish of Louth, kill-
ing four hundred of them; or in 1374, when Niall Mór
Ua Néill defeated and killed the Seneschal of Ulster
at Downpatrick. However, real territorial gains for the
Irish chiefs came from a gradual war of attrition on the
borders of the colony, resulting in considerable expan-
sion for Ua Conchobair Failge (O’Conor Faly) along
the southern borders of Meath and Kildare, for Ua Broin
and Ua Tuathail (O’Byrne and O’Toole) in Wicklow,
for Mac Murchada Caemánach (MacMurrough
Kavanagh) in Wexford and Carlow, and for Ua Cerbaill
(O’Carroll) in Tipperary. In Ulster, the murder of Earl
William de Burgh in 1333, and the absenteeism of his
heirs, led to virtual independence for the chiefs there,
but in Connacht and Desmond, or south Munster, the
Anglo-Irish Burkes and Fitzgeralds respectively dom-
inated the local chiefs, although the English govern-
ment itself had little control in those areas.
K
ATHARINE
S
IMMSReferences and Further Reading
Frame, Robin, “Two Kings in Leinster.” In
Colony and Frontier
in Medieval Ireland
, edited by Terence B. Barry, et al.,
155–175. London and Rio Grande: Hambledon Press, 1995.
Hayes-McCoy, Gerard A.
Irish Battles. London: Longman,
1969.
Lydon, James F. “Lordship and Crown: Llywelyn of Wales and
O’Connor of Connacht.” In
The British Isles, 1100–1500
,
edited by Rees R. Davies, 148–163. Edinburgh: Edinburgh
University Press, 1988.
MacNeill, Eoin.
Phases of Irish History
. Dublin: Talbot Press,
1919.
Ó Murchadha, Diarmaid. “The Battle of Callann,
A
.
D
. 1261.” In
Journal of the Cork Historical and Archaeological Society
66 (1961):105–115.
Simms, Katharine. “Late-Medieval Tír Eoghain: The Kingdom
of ‘the Great Ó Néill’.” In
Tyrone: History and Society
, edited
by Charles Dillon and Henry A. Jefferies, 127–162. Irish
County History Series, Dublin: Geography Publications,
2000.
———. “Gaelic warfare in the middle ages.” In
A Military
History of Ireland
,
edited by Thomas Bartlett and Keith
Jeffery, 99–115. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1996.
See also
Armies; Black Death; Bruce, Edward;
Burke; Clare, de; Coyne and Livery; Desmond;
Famine and hunger; Fitzgerald; Gaelicization; Mac
Murchada, Art Caomhánach; Military service,
Gaelic; Mortimer; Ua Domnaill; Ua Néill, Ua Néill,
Domnall; Weapons and Weaponry.
GAELICIZATION
Gaelicization is a rather controversial concept. Nation-
alist historians used to cite the Latin tag
Hiberniores
ipsis Hibernis
, “more Irish than the Irish themselves,”
to convey that many originally English families who
settled Ireland in the Middle Ages came to speak Irish,
wear Irish costume, defy the orders of the English
kings or their representatives, and often allied with
Irish chieftains to make war on their Anglo-Irish neigh-
bors. Art Cosgrove has since demonstrated that this
Latin phrase did not belong to the medieval period and
was of uncertain authorship. Constitutional historians
such as Steven Ellis and Robin Frame have pointed
out that the regional independence and feuding ten-
dencies of the Anglo-Irish frontier barons were not
specifically Irish, but could be found in many otherGAELIC REVIVAL