MUNSTERIrish settlement in Wales and western England at that
time, and Cashel, the capital of the Eóganachta in
Munster, possibly took its name from the castella
erected to protect western Britain from Irish raiders.
Roman influences are also reflected by the number of
pre-Patrician saints tradition claimed for the province,
and by the distribution of ogham stones preserving the
earliest examples of Irish writing.
The Eóganachta spawned a series of collateral
branches that took possession of rich lands across
Munster from the fifth to the ninth centuries. The Eóga-
nachta of Cashel provided most of Munster’s kings
throughout that period, but failed to concentrate that
royal power within narrow dynastic limits. The Eóga-
nachta of Glanworth, Lough Leane and of Raithlinn
regularly provided kings of Munster too. Even the
relatively minor Eóganachta of Ainy provided a num-
ber of kings. The failure of individual Éoganachta
dynasties to consolidate their hold on the provincial
kingship meant that they were never in a position to
challenge the novel claims put forward by the Uí Néill
for the high kingship of Ireland. The Eóganachta’s
relative lack of martial prowess is reflected in the fact
that the Vikings succeeded in establishing sizable
towns at Waterford and Limerick, and a smaller port
at Cork.
In 963 Mathgamain, king of the Dál Cais, seized
the kingship of Munster away from the Éoganachta.
In 978, Mathgamain’s brother, Brian Boru, became
king of Munster. He succeeded in harnessing the prov-
ince’s economic and demographic strength to make
himself the king of Ireland. Brian’s supremacy did not
survive his death at the battle of Clontarf in 1014, but
his dynasty, the Uí Briain, held the kingship of Munster
tightly in their grip into the twelfth century. One of
Brian Boru’s grandsons, Tairrdelbach Ua Briain (+1086),
seized the high kingship of Ireland, as did his son and
successor, Muirchertach Ua Briain (+1119).
Muirchertach seemed to be poised to transform the
high kingship of Ireland into a true national monarchy.
In 1101, he granted Cashel, the ancient symbolic cap-
ital of Munster, to the church while he established the
Hiberno-Viking city of Limerick as his capital.
Muirchertach sponsored the twelfth-century reform of
the Irish church, a process that gradually remodeled
the church along more conventional Roman lines.
However, in 1118, Tadc Mac Carthaig (MacCarthy),
king of the Eóganachta of Cashel, led a rebellion of
the various Eóganachta of southern Munster against
the Uí Briain and succeeded, with support from
Tairrdelbach Ua Conchobair, king of Connacht, in cre-
ating the kingdom of Desmond (from Irish Desmuma,
literally “South Munster”). Tairrdelbach Ua Briain
became the king of Thomond (from Tuadmuma,
“North Munster”). A divided Munster was impotent in
terms of national politics. In 1127, Cormac Mac
Carthaig was made the king of Munster with Ua Briain
support in order that he would undermine Tairrdelbach
Ua Conchobair’s hegemony. Mac Carthaig led a coa-
lition of armies from Munster and other provinces to
victory against Ua Conchobair in 1131–1133. However,
once victory was achieved, the Ua Briain turned
against Mac Carthaig and, in 1138, succeeded in hav-
ing him assassinated. Tairrdelbach Ua Briain reigned
over a reunited Munster until 1151, when a second
rebellion, led this time by Cormac Mac Carthaig’s son,
Diarmait, and backed by Tairrdelbach Ua Conchobair,
resulted in Munster being divided once more into the
kingdoms of Thomond and Desmond. For the next two
decades, the kings of Thomond and Desmond vied
with each other in vain for supremacy in Munster.
In 1171, Henry II, king of England, came to Ireland
to assert his authority over Strongbow (Richard de
Clare, lord of Pembroke) and other Anglo-Norman
adventurers who came to Ireland at the behest of
Diarmait Mac Murchada, the erstwhile king of Leinster.
Diarmait Mac Carthaig, king of Desmond, approached
Henry II to seek an “alliance” against Domnall Ua
Briain, king of Thomond—but Ua Briain approached
Henry II too to neutralize the threat posed by Mac
Carthaig. Unwittingly, the two Munster kings may
have helped to persuade Henry II to maintain an
English presence in Ireland by the alacrity with which
they appeared to submit to him.
In 1177, Henry II granted the kingdoms of Desmond
and Thomond to Anglo-Norman adventurers who had
served him well. Robert fitz Stephen and Milo de
Cogan succeeded in capturing the Hiberno-Viking port
of Cork and establishing it as the basis for an English
colony in the heart of Desmond. Philip de Braose, the
grantee of Thomond, failed in his assault on Limerick.
Nonetheless, when the Lord John came to Ireland in
1185, he made important grants of lands in Thomond
to Englishmen, including Theobald Walter, ancestor of
the future Butler earls of Ormond. Domnall Ua Briain
proved to be a formidable adversary to the English,
though, and it was only after his death in 1194 that
English conquest and colonization gathered pace in
Thomond. Diarmait Mac Carthaig’s son, Domnall,
held back the tide of English colonization in Desmond
until internecine struggles following his death in 1206
facilitated massive English conquests in southern
Munster.
The English transformed Munster, forcing the Irish
aristocracy into ever-shrinking enclaves, to the defen-
sible west of the Shannon in Thomond and into the
mountainous southwest of Munster. The fertile lands
elsewhere were extensively manorialized, and English
peasants were settled over wide areas. There was an
economic boom, with large agricultural surpluses