within his own family, he faced opposition from his
brother, William, who sought to challenge Henry’s
retention of the lordship of Anjou and its attachment
to the kingship of England.
In 1166, Diarmait Mac Murchada, the exiled king
of Leinster, traveled to the court of Henry II in Aquitaine
and solicited military aid to assist him in recovering
his kingdom. In 1165, Henry had hired the Dublin fleet
for a military campaign in north Wales, almost cer-
tainly with Diarmait’s consent as overlord of Dublin.
Henry responded initially by authorizing Diarmait to
raise mercenary troops within his dominions for
deployment in Ireland. In the autumn of 1171, how-
ever, Henry decided to lead a major expedition to
Ireland himself where he remained until Easter 1172.
Some Anglo-Norman chroniclers claimed that he
removed to Ireland in order to avoid the censure of
papal legates in the wake of the murder of Thomas
Becket, archbishop of Canterbury. This may indeed
have been a consideration, but Henry’s main aim was
to assert control over those of his Anglo-Norman sub-
jects who had gone to Ireland, and notably over the
most important of them, the disaffected Richard
FitzGilbert, lord of Strigoil and Earl of Pembroke
(1148–1154) also known as Strongbow, whose lands
in England, Wales, and Normandy were held directly
from Henry II, and whom Henry had deprived of
the earldom of Pembroke in 1154. Henry obliged
Strongbow to acknowledge him as overlord of his
newly acquired lands in Leinster, from which, however,
Henry excepted the Hiberno-Norse ports of Dublin,
Waterford, and Wexford, reserving them for his own use.
Retention of the ports may have been crucial initially
for reasons of security and control of traffic between
the two countries, but Henry’s charter to “his men of
Bristol,” granting them the city of Dublin, issued dur-
ing his stay in Ireland, affords an early indication that
Ireland also presented opportunities for economic
entrepreneurship and profiteering by the king.
On the eve of his departure, Henry made a specu-
lative grant of the kingdom of Mide (Meath) to a
prominent Anglo-Norman magnate, Hugh de Lacy,
who had accompanied him to Ireland. While this may
be interpreted as aimed at securing political stabiliza-
tion by providing a counterweight to Strongbow as
lord of Leinster and by removing Meath, the most
volatile and heavily contested area in twelfth-century
Ireland, from Irish control, it was also another early
indication that Ireland could be exploited as a potential
source of patronage by the English crown. During his
six-month stay, Henry had not ventured outside Lein-
ster, nor did he engage in any military conflict with
the Irish. A significant number of Irish kings traveled
to his Christmas court at Dublin and voluntarily
offered him recognition. Ruaidrí Ua Conchobair, king
of Connacht and claimant to the high kingship, how-
ever, remained aloof, although in 1175 he negotiated
a treaty by proxy at Windsor with Henry whereby he
agreed to acknowledge Henry’s overlordship of Meath
and Leinster, in return for which Henry acknowledged
Ruaidrí as over-king of the remainder of Ireland.
Following Strongbow’s untimely death in April
1176, leaving a three-year-old son as his heir, respon-
sibility for the administration of the lordship of Lein-
ster fell on Henry II until Strongbow’s heir came of
age. In May 1177, at a royal council at Oxford, Henry
divided Leinster into three administrative areas and
signaled his intention to make more formal arrange-
ments for Angevin lordship in Ireland by designating
his youngest son, John, as lord of Ireland, and requir-
ing the principal Anglo-Norman landholders in Ireland
to swear fealty to John. At the same time he made a
series of speculative grants in Munster. To Robert
FitzStephen and Miles de Cogan, who were already
actively involved in conquest there, he assigned the
kingdom of Desmond, while Thomond was offered to
Philip de Braose, who, however, proved incapable of
implementing the grant which then lapsed.
In 1185, Henry judged that it was time for John to
assume the Angevin lordship of Ireland in person and
provided him with a team of experienced administra-
tors and substantial resources, presumably with the
intention that John would take up long-term residence
in the country. Henry had already assigned regional
lordships to his other sons as a means of consolidating
links between the constituent parts of the Angevin
dominions. Within eight months, John had returned to
England, having failed to intensify Angevin lordship
in Ireland. On the evidence both of Anglo-Norman
commentators and of the Irish annals, John’s chief
failure lay in relation to Hugh de Lacy, then the most
prominent Anglo-Norman in Ireland, who was
rumored to aspire to the kingship of all Ireland, and
to have dissuaded Irish rulers from acknowledging
John. Henry was seriously displeased with this out-
come and was contemplating sending John back to
Ireland when news reached the English court of Hugh
de Lacy’s assassination, at which the king is said to
have rejoiced. Henry’s last executive decision in rela-
tion to his Irish lordship was to arrange, shortly before
he died, the marriage between Isabella, daughter and
heir of Strongbow, to William Marshal, who thereby
succeeded to the lordship of Leinster in right of his wife.
Although Henry primarily had reacted to the activ-
ities of his subjects rather than determined theAnglo-
Norman advance in Ireland; nonetheless, he was more
than willing to avail of such opportunities for the dis-
pensing of royal patronage as it afforded him. In his
attitude toward the Irish, he may have been more
tolerant of difference than were his own subjects andHENRY II