LYRICSIn 1254, Henry III endowed the future Edward I
with wide territories that included the lordship of
Ireland. However the lands were given to him on con-
dition that they never be separated from the crown of
England but remain “wholly to the kings of England
for ever.” This marked a decided change from the grant
to John in 1177. While the land of Ireland could be
granted to another person, the lordship remained sep-
arate and inalienably held by the crown. The principle
was established that the lordship was vested in the
English crown, not in any one king or royal line, and
this was the constitutional principle that underpinned
Anglo-Irish relations throughout the later medieval
period.
Lordship of Ireland implied control over the whole
territory of Ireland, but the reality was very different.
It has been said that medieval Ireland was not so much
a lordship as a patchwork of lordships, a reference to
the fragmented geography of power that pertained
throughout the land. Under Henry II and John, royal
authority had been acknowledged by the submission
of both Anglo-Norman magnates and Gaelic kings to
their feudal lordship. However, by the time of Edward
I it was only considered necessary to obtain the alle-
giance of the English lords who were theoretically in
control of the whole island. Furthermore, the exclusion
of the Irish as a race from the common law, the means
by which a subject obtained the protection of his king,
had the effect of denying to many of the inhabitants
of Ireland the benefits of lordship.
The Remonstrance addressed to Pope John XXII in
1317 in the name of the Irish kings, magnates, and
people complained that the Irish no longer held their
lands directly of the crown nor benefited from the
protection of a powerful overlord. Therefore, it was
claimed, they were vindicated in their withdrawal of
obedience from Edward II. A serious attempt was
made during the reign of Richard II to reestablish the
lordship of the English crown over the whole island.
In 1385, Richard had briefly granted to his favorite
Robert de Vere (who would bear the titles “marquis of
Dublin” and “duke of Ireland”) the lordship and lands
of Ireland almost as an independent palatinate, and all
writs ran in de Vere’s name, his arms replacing those
of the king in Ireland, although the experiment lapsed
shortly afterward. The renewed submissions taken
from Gaelic leaders by Richard during his own
1394–1395 expedition to Ireland (the first by a lord of
Ireland since 1210) were a significant confirmation of
royal lordship and the benefits of personally discharg-
ing the obligations that entailed.
Richard II failed to achieve his ideal of uniting all
the inhabitants of Ireland under his lordship, and
thereafter royal intervention in Ireland was limited in
scope and interest. However, although Ireland was fre-
quently ignored and neglected by England, at no point
did the king ever consider relinquishing lordship in
Ireland or abrogating his obligation as a lord to protect
his subjects there. Moreover, at no point was the position
of the king as lord of Ireland seriously threatened, not
even by the separatist tendencies that were given expres-
sion in the challenge to the constitutional position of
Ireland in the parliament of 1460.
Not long after this date, shortly after the Geraldine
ascendancy began, the Irish parliament can be found
reminding the king that Ireland was “one of the mem-
bers of his most noble crown, and eldest member
thereof.” In 1541, at another parliament—this one held
in Dublin—a bill was presented that stated that Henry
VIII and his heirs “should from thenceforth be named
and called king of the realm of Ireland.” The bill was
apparently passed without the slightest opposition.
Thus, the medieval lordship of Ireland and the consti-
tutional principle that had governed Anglo-Irish rela-
tions from 1171 was brought to an end.
MARGARET MURPHYReferences and Further Reading
Davies, R.R. “Lordship or Colony.” In The English in Medieval
Ireland, edited by James Lydon, 142–60. Dublin: Royal Irish
Academy, 1984.
Duffy, Sean. Ireland in the Middle Ages. Dublin: MacMillan
Press, 1997.
Frame, Robin. Colonial Ireland, 1169–1369. Dublin: Helicon,
1981.
Lydon, James. “Ireland and the English Crown.” Irish historical
Studies, 29, no. 115 (1995), 281–94.
Lydon, James, The Lordship of Ireland in the Middle Ages, 2nd
ed. Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2003.
See alsoAnglo-Irish Relations; Henry II; John;
Parliament; Richard IILYRICS
The corpus of early Irish poetry contains a tiny selec-
tion of lyrics, usually anonymous, ascribed to fictitious
authors or to famous individuals by the use of masks.
There are no great epic poems, but the sagas are fre-
quently composed in a combination of prose and
poetry; these contain most early lyrics. A few excep-
tional sagas are presented in meter alone. Some lyrics
appear on the margins of manuscripts and as verses
illustrative of unusual meters in the metrical tracts. The
eleventh century religious poet Máel-Ísu Ua Brolcháin
is one of the few names that appear in this period. His
compositions included the bilingual Deus, meus.
The earliest pieces are in rosc, a style of meter
without rhyme, rhythm, or stanzas, depending on linking