HIBERNO-ENGLISH LITERATUREIrish churchmen and attribute the prime role to Geofrey
de Marisco or William Marshall. During the years of
Henry’s episcopate there was a noticeable increase in the
number of Englishmen appointed to Irish bishoprics.
While Henry clearly would have approved of this trend,
the extent of his involvement in securing the election of
these individuals cannot be systematically assessed.
Although he was responsible for raising St.
Patrick’s as a rival cathedral to Christ Church, he did
not neglect the older institution, but continued to
regard it as very much his cathedral church. He pro-
gressed the building work on the cathedral church of
Holy Trinity, completing most of the nave with stone
and sculptors brought over from England. In 1220,
Henry granted rents to the prior and convent for the
building of a new entrance, and in return, the commu-
nity undertook to celebrate his obit forever.
Henry of London was a generous benefactor to reli-
gious houses in and around Dublin and displayed a
particular favor to institutions which cared for the sick
and the poor. He made gifts to St. Thomas’ Abbey to
help with the care of paupers and to the hospital of
St.John the Baptist. He also founded a hew hospital,
St. James at the Steyne, which was intended to cater
specifically for the needs of poor pilgrims who planned
to visit the shrine of St. James at Compostella. The
evidence of this practical piety goes some way towards
mitigating the “faceless bureaucrat” tag which might
otherwise be applied to him.
MARGARET MURPHY
References and Further Reading
Gwynn, Aubrey. “Henry of London, Archbishop of Dublin: A
study in Anglo-Norman Statecraft.” Studies, 38 (1949):
297–306, 389–402.
Murphy, Margaret. “Balancing the Concerns of Church and
State:The Archbishops of Dublin, 1181–1228.” In Colony
and Frontier in Medieval Ireland: Essays Presented to J. F.
Lydon,edited by Terry Barry, et al., 41–56. London: The
Hambledon Press, 1995.
———. “Archbishops and Anglicization: Dublin, 1181–1271.”
InHistory of the Catholic Diocese of Dublin, edited by
James Kelly and Dáire Keogh, 72–91. Dublin: Four Courts
Press, 2000.
Turner, Ralph. Men Raised from the Dust: Administrative Ser-
vice and Upward Mobility in Angevin England. Philadelphia:
University of Pennsylvania Press, 1988.
Watt, John. The Church in Medieval Ireland. 2nd. ed. Dublin:
University College Dublin Press, 1998.
See alsoChief Governors; St. Patrick’s Cathedral
HIBERNO-ENGLISH LITERATURE
Hiberno-English, or Irish English, is the name given to
the English dialect that developed in Ireland after the
invasion in 1169 by French-speaking Anglo-Normans,
who had English speakers (as well as Welsh and
Flemings) among their followers. The extent to which
English spread subsequently among the population of
Ireland is hard to ascertain. English-speaking followers
of the Anglo-Norman military leaders established them-
selves in the towns of the east and southeast of Ireland,
and the language continued in use in the area of greatest
English influence, the Pale. Medieval Hiberno-English
dates from the twelfth to the fifteenth centuries.
The written evidence for English in medieval Ireland
is small and thus enormously important in relation to
its volume. London British Library Manuscript Harley
913, dating from circa 1330, is the earliest and most
notable repository of medieval Hiberno-English,
containing amongst its forty-eight items seventeen
poems written in the English of medieval Ireland.
These poems include the Land of Cockayne, and the
Songof Friar Michael of Kildare. There is no firm
evidence to support the theory that all seventeen poems
were composed by Friar Michael, and internal evi-
dence does not justify naming Kildare as their place
of origin. Nevertheless, though probably written down
in Waterford, these Hiberno-English poems in MS
Harley 913 are often called the “Kildare Poems.” Sev-
eral of the poems show strong evidence of Irish influ-
ence, and as a collection they display a capacity for
both piety and satire.Some Features of Medieval
Hiberno-English
It is a general feature of the earliest medieval Hiberno-
English that, while its individual linguistic features
will nearly all be found in various Middle English
dialects of England, especially those of the southwest
and the west midlands, collectively they do not match
any single dialect of Middle English. The evidence
overall would suggest that the earliest settlers probably
came from counties around the Severn estuary, and fits
the historical fact that the Anglo-Norman invasion,
planned by Richard de Clare (Strongbow), Earl of Pem-
broke, was largely launched from Bristol. For example:- The earliest texts show loss of final -ein words
such as tak,ber. This loss occurred earliest in
the Middle English dialect of the north of
England, and its occurrence in other Middle
English dialects is later than its earliest occur-
rence in Hiberno-English. Though spellings with
the final -eare also evidenced (take,bere), it
appears from rhymes that in all cases it was
silent. - The spelling sforshin unaccented syllables in
words like Englis(English), Iris (Irish), worsip
(worship), is also a feature of the northern dialect
of Middle English.