A Complete History of Medieval Ireland

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Hello, I'm Dr. Eleanor Yarniger, and welcome to Gone Medieval from History Hit, the podcast

that delves into the greatest millennium in human history.

We uncover the greatest mysteries, the gobs backing details, and the latest groundbreaking

research from the Vikings to the Normans, from kings to popes to the Crusades.

We delve into the rebellions, plots, and murders that tell us who we really were, and how

we got here.

In the year 431, soon after the abandonment of Britannia by Rome's famed legions, a

Romano-British monk arrived on the shores of the Emerald Isle, schooled in the mystical

practices of ancient Ireland's Druids, and spurred on by a holy vision.

This church became with a sacred mission, to save the pagan Irish and convert them to

a new and enlightened faith.

His name was St. Patrick, and with his coming, Medieval Ireland was born.

Years before, as a meek teenager, Patrick had been taken captive by Galic raiders and

carried across the Irish Sea.

In Slaived in a strange land, he spent his days hurting animals on lonely hillsides,

turning the language and customs of the people who had taken him.

After escaping and returning home, Patrick would one day come back, not as a captive,

but as a missionary, determined to transform pagan Ireland through force of will alone.

Over the span of the medieval millennium that followed, Ireland emerged from the myths

of ancient myth and legend to become a vibrant and distinct society, molded by the deeds

of Galic high kings, Viking adventurers, and Norman invaders.

Monasteries became great centers of learning, warriors fought bitter rivals for a chance

of power, and bustling towns rose along the coasts as Ireland opened itself to the wider

medieval world.

It is a rip-roaring tale, taking in the lands of brilliant saints and the tyranny of

oppressive warlords.

But one thing shines through it all, the astonishing resilience of a dynamic Galic culture that

helped forge the Ireland we know today.

Now, to help me chart the enthralling story of Medieval Ireland, and the unpick of

Brown, a thousand years of history, inconsiderably less time than that, I'm thrilled to be joined

by historian James Haas, author of the new book, The Shortest History of Ireland.

Welcome to Gone Medieval James.

And thank you very much for having me.

Well, thank you very much.

I really, really enjoyed this book, and it covers more than just medieval history in Ireland,

but listen, this is a medieval podcast.

So I think that we can start with the beginning is the medieval period.

It's a tricky one to explicate, so I think we kind of have to start there.

So what does early medieval Ireland look like?

I mean, what society arranged around it, who's got political control at that point?

Well, I think the most important thing about it is that it's unique in Western Europe,

because it has not been conquered by the Roman Empire, which means not only has its culture

not been kind of deep plowed, first by Roman paganism then by Roman Christianity, but

it hasn't suffered the trauma of collapse of the Roman Empire, and then the extra trauma

of being invaded by Germanic ex Roman auxiliary warbank to take over.

So it's every other country, if it's shattered, basically, and rebuilt up from the ground

up.

And then even when that settles down, you start to have the Umayyads coming in from the

south of Europe in the late 7th century, early 7th century, threatening it even France,

you have the Allars coming in from the east, pushing into the Balkans and pushing the

Slavs further west.

So the whole of Western Europe between around 450 to about 750 isn't a complete state of

flux, except Ireland, because it has not been attacked by the Romans, but the Anglo-Saxons

never touch it.

This is extraordinary thing about it.

No one has disrupted Irish society since the Bronze Age, since the Bronze Age repopulation

by what we are now called Western European, with their Western European common language,

the Indo-German language.

This is a culture which now way over 3000 years old and has never been disrupted by anybody,

except Christian missionaries who have had to, we noticed from the earliest results,

you know, the earliest annals talk of St Patrick, essentially as a kind of, as a druid basically,

he had in fact been trained as a druid by when he was a slave, he was a slave to a high-ranking

druid and had learned the secrets at all.

And so he is actually, what's come is what Fesakira Mata in Oxford is called, a brahonised

Christianity.

So yeah, Christianise, brahon society.

When the first Christian mission has come to Ireland, they find the only culture in

Europe, which has this kind of ancient rooted in this still and which they have to treat

as an equal on its own terms.

That's the extraordinary thing about it.

So you have a country there entirely undisturbed for 3000 years, economically, extremely well

off because there's one other disruption in this period, which you'll know of, in most

you'll don't know of, there's a climate disaster between six and eight centuries.

Back at O, we think, blows up and the entire Northern Hemisphere is blanketed with ash.

There are crop failures, plagues all over the place.

Now, Ireland, because it has this Atlantic raided climate, if things get a bit colder and

a bit drier there, that's no big deal.

It's a big deal if you're a farmer in England or central Germany to get colder and drier

is bad.

But for the Irish, who are entirely cattle-based, it makes actually no difference.

So you have, for example, a hard archaeological evidence of this.

There have been more water mills, tidal mills excavated in just a province of Munster,

in the, for the seventh, eight centuries, than the whole of the rest of Western Europe

put together.

So Ireland is not only untouched by kind of foreign interference, it's actually the wealthiest

and safest country in Europe.

One of the things that's so interesting about early medieval Ireland and more particular

early, it's economy, is that it is cattle-based.

Can you explain to us what this means and how it came about?

The roots we go back in fact to the Neolithic, because the Neolithic farmers, with the first

to bring cattle, cattle are not native to Ireland at all.

There are no native bovines, they came in with the first farmers around 4,000 BC.

There was a climate change event, shortly, we think shortly after the start of the Bronze

Age, which meant that the climate is warmer even now in the Neolithic.

It's colder and wetter, and this means that the arable crops become marginal in large

parts of Ireland.

So that the cattle, which are already important in the Neolithic, become completely dominant

in the Bronze Age.

I mean, one of the extraordinary things and the wonderful things that are walking through

the Irish countryside, particularly when you get into the West, is that they are everywhere.

It is small wring, what they call wring forts, small mounds.

You see that all over the place, every village has one, outside it's there.

And these are cattle enclosures.

They're built to shelter cattle either overnight or when it appears that we're not entirely

sure when.

But they are built consistently from the Bronze Age up to about 1,000 AD, people are still

building them and using them, and it's extraordinarily continuity because cattle are all that

matters.

The entire tribal wealth is cattle.

This affects everything, notably the ways of warfare.

Because to this day, you know, if you, if you're, if you're, if anyone knows anything

about farming, you will be aware that my own grandfather was a dairy farmer, so I know

this, your cattle are a very, very concentrated way of having your wealth.

And but you can shift them.

That's to see this, this will become really important later with how this society resisted

denormons better, frankly, than the Anglo-Saxons could.

It's really quite simple.

Think of this.

If you're an arable farmer, your crops are in the ground, okay, obviously that you've

invested all this money, or your work time, that's your survival package.

If an attacker comes, you have got to stand and fight.

You can't shift it.

You have to either fight or run and starve.

And if the, if the opponent is, it literally superts you, you stand and fight and get killed.

Now if you've got cattle, of course, now you're in permanent danger of them being raided,

which is why all the iris sagas are about raiding cattle.

It's the quick way to make yourself rich and your neighbor's poor, hara, you nick their

cattle.

And that's one of the weirded of phenomena is why it's to Irish wars, and this was, this

was found quite weird even after Elizabethan times.

The place of honor in an Irish army was in the rearguard, because you think you've done

a cattle raid, you're bringing the cattle away, they're chasing you.

The posse is after you, so you send a best guy.

The hero stands behind the stolen cattle to face the oncoming posse and keep them back.

That's so that this is a complete, it's a complete different conception of warfare.

But you see, if you have cattle, you're attacked by someone.

You can take those cattle away into the mountains, or the bogs, or somewhere.

And this will become, this explains cutting to the chase a bit, you know, we can say when

the Normans finally come with their invincible cavalry, well, cavalry are not invincible

in bogs and uplands.

So you can take them away and survive to fight another day in a way which an abel farmer

just cannot.

So it's a completely different arrangement of agriculture, which of course is the economy

all over Europe.

And this will become very, very important to the kind of survival power of Gaelic island,

this cattle-based notion.

Something that we end up hinting at a lot on gone medieval, particularly when we're

talking about, for example, the Christianization process in what is now England, because it

very much was the sort of thing where, for a while, we were looking at bouncing back

and forth between very specific Irish forms of Christianity and Roman forms of Christianity.

But I don't think we've ever really talked in excess about that.

Yeah.

Well, the annals of the Four Masters record the beginnings of this tradition, which we

came embedded in the whole notion of Celtic Christianity, which, and I say in quote

it from memory here, that some Patrick caused the old books of Ireland to be brought towards

him, to be studied and corrected.

And that's the fascinating thing, you know, the earliest Irish law court we have, lower

code, sorry, called the centias more, which is actually datable to a manuscript extraordinary

love of the 7th century.

It talks about, it asks the rhetorical question in Irish, you know, what is the tradition

of the Men of Ireland?

What is it?

What's kept it going?

And it says, you know, something like recitation of truth of elders, the law of nature

and augmented by the law of Scripture, that's a fantastic phrase to me.

It's not been replaced.

It's been augmented.

So really, the prehonsist, the Irish prehonsist of law has been, in their own words, augmented

by it.

They've assimilated Christian teaching without actually changing anything.

So the Irish church, by, I say, let's just say around 8, about 750, let's say, is

entirely different from the Roman church.

And of course, Rome knows this very well and does not like it, which will be called

vital for our story, because for example, the, the obvious thing is that the Irish church

is not run by bishops, but by abbots.

Abbots are hereditary, which obviously means they can marry.

They are always related to the local ruling elites.

So they are basically kind of the spiritual arm of the O'Neill or the Oconos, or whoever

they, who's ever territory there, and they're, they're related to them.

They're privileged as I inherited, and they can use themselves as priests and bless

in everyone else.

All the different forms of America is allowed under, under Brehon Law, which, which are

very many and varied, probably too detailed for us to describe, but some of them, for

example, were much more beneficial to women than normal marriage in Western Europe.

So it's an entire different church, which tolerates and encourages behavior, which the

church and the Roman church, as it starts to recover after Charlemagne, and really start

to kind of centralise and become the Catholic church, we know, it gets more and more impatient

with this, but it does not have the power at this stage, because, as I just said, European

Christianity is kind of under three, you know, three of the five patriarchies have gone

to the Muslims now.

And that's why Ireland sends forth this great wave of saints and scholars.

It's actually driven by its economic boom and its security as a kind of base for Christianity.

And so you have this extraordinary period about around, from around the late 700s to about

1000s, where all over Europe, there are monasteries founded, which are often called things

in German like, shot in this and shot in that, because the Irish were called Scotty

and Latin, which are actually founded by Irish mysteries.

And these monasteries will run on entirely different lines from the Roman ones.

So you have this, it's quite a quite a different church entirely.

Well, how do we then, from this kind of tribalistic form of cattle farming and cattle raids and

you know, the various different groups that this encourages?

How do we get that into what become the kingdoms that I suppose we expect when we're talking

about me, violent?

So Ulster or Kahnach or Munster?

That is a good idea.

The answer to that is we just don't know, but what we do know fascinatingly is that seems

to be existed.

I mean, as a quote I have in the book there, from a guy, I know very well, I should be like,

I can talk to Colin Newman from Goliath University, he's a great expert on it.

I mean, as far as we can tell, you know, both the written and the archaeological evidence

suggest that they were, in fact, bizarrely, wonderfully, or the form, there was something

very, very much like the present four provinces of Ireland, possibly five, because the area

to put it in Ireland, it's just not a doubling called Mee's, where tar is and things, where

they were the great, the great, the tar and new bridge.

It was sometimes a separate kingdom and sometimes not, because it has the best, some of the best

land in Ireland and the most expensive land in Europe to this day, but that also means

it's not very defensible.

So it tends to be, it tends to be in play rather than a player, do you see what I mean?

But generally speaking, by the earliest records we have, people are talking about the

provinces, Alster, Conach, Munster, and Lentz, the very much as we talk today, how these

were formed, frankly, is just a matter of conjecture.

They want to assume, one has to assume their successful dynasties, who simply expanded

and incorporated smaller ones in a familiar process going on everywhere, probably nothing

particularly special about that, except inasmuch as the sense of their being within Ireland.

And it's important to say within, within Irish-Gaelic culture differences, is very, very profound.

We know, Aiman Devallera's own son, Ruri, who was like the chief archaeologist in Ireland

for 20 years, he produces huge survey of the megalithic monuments, we're talking in

the megalithic here, and he can trace something very, very strong north-souths divide, and

other south-westies divides, right back to the megalithic, it appears there's a really

interesting thing, if anyone is looking at a map of Ireland, which anyone can do here,

look at the road from modern Dublin to modern Galway.

That goes across what is now known as the Great Central Plane.

And this was known in the early, from the time of the early striatings, as Esquery either,

or just simply onslee more, the Great Road, which are Esquery Ademies, the road for

the track for driving herds along.

And this was a gigantic virgin deciduous forest full of bears and wolves and wild boars,

and it was very, very difficult to traverse.

So it became a north-south border, very early on, this is really important.

And for obvious reasons, perhaps, is not kind of foregrounded in modern Irish historiography,

is that the vision of Ireland into north and south appears to have gone back to the

megalithic, it's nothing to do with the Brits, and most of my Irish friends don't know

this at all.

But it's there, you can check it out yourself really easily by looking at the foremasters

and things like that.

Every Galic scribe from the earliest annals, right up to the end of Galic culture as a

kind of full spectrum culture in the 17th century, they simply treat it as axiomatic that

there are two halves in Ireland called Lesqueen and Lesmua.

Lesqueen means the cons half, and Lesmua means mocks half.

And the foremasters ascribe a magical origin to this.

Obviously, it was something that was well established by the time of the first writings

and continues to be talked of by every Galic writer, right up to the 1630s.

And this is there are these huge divisions within it, and that militates against the construction

of a unitary state simply because they have been these well-known, universally acknowledged

differences within Ireland, since literally whenever, you know.

I just think that it's a really interesting point because we have this tendency to think

about things in terms of the conglomerations of nation-states as we see them now.

There's a natural Ireland, there's a natural England, and really the early medieval period

is a proof positive that that is true.

But we have this modern superstition, and you'll find it very, very often, and even that

great and wonderful people aren't immune to it, which is this notion that if you propose,

for example, that under Atholstan there was the foundations of the English nation-state,

that's somehow a good thing, because it's somehow stronger.

Now that's not born out at all.

Anglo-Saxon England was far closer to a modern nation-state than, say, Ireland in

2000 AD, Anglo-Saxon England was entirely destroyed by 1075 AD, whereas that's how you

know, Gaelic Ireland was actually far more capable of resisting, so that a centralised

state is actually much easier to decapitate as well.

So it's not necessarily the best thing to be in terms of your culture surviving, look

at someone like Afghanistan.

If you know, a conglomeration of tribes, each with a very deep sense of belonging to a

general culture, but with their own really tight local loyalties, is actually the best culture

for surviving attack from outside, whereas basically, in a modern state, say, you reach

the capital, you've won, you know.

Well, speaking of surviving attacks from outside, we do then get into the Viking age, and

the Vikings are very happy to show up in Ireland, you know, as you say, this is an incredibly

wealthy sort of place, there is rather a lot to gain, I suppose, by raiding it.

But why do they come over to Ireland, is it just to take advantage of the riches that

are there, or is there also, I don't know, a political vacuum of sorts that they're

taking advantage of?

I think both, I mean, the Vikings go everywhere, we have to imagine there was a kind of fleet

of people think probing attacks, they go everywhere, as you know, they go right down to

Pisa, they've burned Paris, the Pisa, Florence, the places, but they go right down to what's

now Kiev, and they're constantly probing like what's in the next river, who's there,

is there anything we're stealing or trading with, how tough is the resistance here, you

know?

And that's what, now in Ireland, they find great wealth, as you know, go to the National

Museum of Ireland, explore any things like the Dairy in a Flanchalis, the absolutely

priceless thing, pounds and pounds of pure gold in them, I worked with you, buried out

of fear of the Vikings, the Vikings knew this stuff was there, because that's what they

did, they found out what was there, and if they could get it, they took it.

The modern thing about the war being nice, peaceful traders, I'm in police, you know?

So, I mean, honestly, so the Irish are shocked by this, because, as I said, they've never

been attacked by anyone, including the Anglo-Sax, that's a really important thing for us

to remember, by the way, in terms of the later history of Britain and Ireland, the idea

of an ethnic clash, we can put that to bed, there have been no Anglo-Sax and Kingdom ever

attacked Ireland once, there was one raid in Six-Aid 480 because one of the royal family

of Northern Ireland had actually been educated in Ireland, and according to Bede, spoke

through an Irish, because Ireland had the best universities in the world of the time,

and he got mixed up in Irish domestic politics, it was a raid, that's it.

The English, choir, ethnic English, whatever the call of Anglo-Sax is, never interfered

with Ireland.

The other way around, yes, they're not it that way around.

So, the Vikings find a country which is simply not used to being attacked.

It's used to warfare among each other, but not to be attacked from abroad.

And this does help them out, because the initial reaction of the Irish is not to close

ranks and say, kick out the foreigners.

The initial reaction of Irish warlords and Irish minor kings and over kings is to say,

useful, maybe I can use them against the O'Neill's, or against the O'Brien's or whatever

it is, and that's what happens.

So for the first 30 or 40 years, they are conscripted into Ireland's internecy warfare.

Until they're dead, but by, I think it's eight, I'm just going to be my memory now.

I think it's eight, seven, eight.

The annals record for the first time that the kingdoms of the south left mother and

Les Queen get together, and the southerners hand over what's now County Kilkenny to the

northerners to get peace, and then they launch a joint assault on the Vikings, who are

this time based entirely in the north.

Now, Ado Neill, Ades Hu in Irish, actually destroys all the Viking bases in the north of

Ireland, thanks to this peace with the O'Brien's of the south.

And the Vikings are entirely kicked out by 902 AD, which is very, very different, or

of course, by now they've taken over half of England in the Damedore and settled and

are colonising it.

They're thrown out, and then suddenly really interesting happens, which is the second wave

comes back.

But these are different guys, because these are actually, they come from the western

Isles and the island of Man, not directly from Norway.

They already speak Gaelic, now that the annals call them Gael Gach, they're actually,

they are foreign gales, meaning they're foreigners, but they speak Irish.

So they're already bilingual, Norse and Irish, and they fit in much more easily to

what's going on.

So they're still coming as aggressors, of course, but it's not a kind of full-on culture

clash, because they already speak the language.

They found all of what will become Ireland's cities, Limerick, Cork, Rexford, Waterford.

And they're all in the south-distan, now we don't really know why, but it may be because

their previous generation were all massacred by the O'Neill's in 902 AD, and six dozen

heads were brought before King O'Neill, as it says in the things.

So they choose to go south this time, whatever reason.

And this actually changes the whole of Irish politics, as this is the first time that

Les Moga, the southern half, once Brian Baroux, the great founder of the dynasty of the

O'Neill, remains Brian of the cattle tribute.

Of course, the cattle being the most important thing.

He manages to defeat all the Vikings one by one, pick off their towns, but because partly

because they already Gaelic speaking, he lets them stay on.

He doesn't kick them out this time.

He lets them stay on.

So they stay in Waterford and Westerly, Limerick and Cork and Limerick trading and making

money, which Brian can now control.

Now, no Irish King has, they've had cattle in wealth, rather like some of the Somalis,

the Somali warlords today still count their wealth in cattle.

I love that so much, but for the first time now that the southern kings of Ireland have

a way to generate actual money, silver bullion, the Vikings like bullion, not coins.

And they have a navy, Brian Baroux because he's actually assimilated the Vikings, these

semi-foreign Gales.

He now has a strategic navy, a Viking of a deviking descent, which he can use and does

use to sail up the Shannon, and basically kick the shit out of the Northerners for the

first time.

And it's that which enables Brian Baroux to become the first non-O'Neill, high king.

It's switched to the whole power thing that Ireland has switched because this is the second

generation of Vikings have been assimilated by the O'Brien of Munster and used to grab

the high kingship.

Can we talk a little bit about the office of high king?

How is this chosen?

How does it differ from offices of king that we would see elsewhere in Europe at the

time?

It seems to me now, this is this, again, we're on, it's not dodgy round, it's just

ground people that really know about.

Now I, but I think having comes with fairly fresh as a non-expert, it's somehow

tells.

It struck me towards the end of the book, when you study the way that the

Brown Law operated within tribes, within a tribe, it said, any guy descended from the

common great grandfather, father to son, anyone, a fighting age, which could be dozens of

people, was a legitimate successor.

And you were basically, you made your legitimacy real by kind of blinding, killing, doing

your way with all your making submit in public, all your male relatives.

And then you were crown king.

And now, it wasn't, that wasn't an exception to the rule, that was the rule.

That was the way it was supposed to happen.

You know, he really confused Elizabethan's later when they said, this guy, Shane O'Neill,

he's like, murdering everyone to become top of the O'Neill's, yeah, but that's what

you did.

Okay.

That's how it was expected when you're down.

It didn't affect anyone else, of course, it's like a fight among the top mafia guys.

It doesn't affect the shopkeepers, they're still just playing their tax.

You know, wait, when the top mafia guns kill each other to see who's the next top capital,

it doesn't affect business.

So it's strictly limited bloodletting among the royal family.

So here he is.

So that happens on a local level.

Now it occurred to me that actually, and that, as far as we know, it's, it's a thousands

of year old tradition.

And when it starts to become, when communication starts to get better and the priests are

taking news from one province to another, things start to pull together, they construct

something which is basically like a nationwide version of that same thing.

Because the high kinship is not hereditary, nor is it limited after Brian Barou to the O'Neill's.

So basically any member of one of the royal families can bid to become high king.

And the route you do, this is very like the way you'd do it within your own tribe.

You would first be established in your own tribe.

Then you were, say, if you're an O'Brien in the south, you would have to make sure you

could impose yourself on the other big country in the southern half, Lester.

So you'd have to make sure the Lester men also.

And then you'd say, I'm chief of lethmore, now I'm going to be high king.

I'm bidding for high king.

And if you could enforce that against the O'Neill's, you would be selected.

And then then you'd be crowned by everyone's agreement just like a tribal king would be.

The important thing is that when you are deposed or die, I'll get killed or whatever.

Any member of any of the royal families in Ireland is then still an eligible king

to bid for next high king, just as any grandson was eligible within the family.

So they've constructed this extraordinary extension of Brehon tribal law to cover the entire

country in a kind of, frankly, it's a kind of medieval federalism.

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Hi there. I'm Dan, host of Dan Snows' History at Podcast.

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Em, I correct in thinking that eventually the Battle of Clontarf

helps in terms of shaping up the way that we think about the High King.

Or is that a bit of an outdated way of looking at it?

There's a very well-known song.

Of course, if everyone who goes to the Knife Poverners about

your will in your Vikings had Brian Barou and kicked them back into the water.

Unfortunately, this is entirely wrong.

And Brian Barou is actually the villain of the piece.

Brian Barou is in a lion's field, because they have this anti-viking alliance first.

Now, the North and South finally get together,

and it explicitly says in the annals,

Les Morgos and Les Queen come together and kick the Vikings out.

But now is a problem, because there's a standoff,

because the prize is the High Kingship.

You have Brian in the South,

and this guy called Miles Sachmal of the O'Neal in the North,

who've allied to kick out the Vikings from Dublin,

which is the only place not yet assimilated.

But the question is now, right?

Each one has their own half,

whoever gets the Viking, the wealth of Viking Dublin on side,

is going to be High King.

And this, this, this truth is not going to last.

And it's Brian, who actually breaks it.

Brian, let's sit trick back.

Brian brings the Vikings back into Dublin.

As to work as his under-kings,

which he's been used to doing, of course, with the Vikings in Limerick

and called, and having them as his helpers,

he's used to dealing with it.

He thinks, I can control these guys.

And with their wealth, it works.

It seems to work.

And then he's able to force Miles Sachmal to give up the High King trip.

Without killing him, he's okay, fine.

I can't find you plus the Vikings.

If you've broken the deal, but I give in.

So Brian becomes the first High King, not from the O'Neal.

It does not last, however, because the Vikings,

and the Alstermen, and the Lensdomen, all revolt against him.

So the story of the Battle of the Clontalf is not about,

you know, a united island throwing the Vikings out.

It's this mad family story.

And one hates to use the analogy,

but it really is a big game of thronesy, you know,

because Citric of Dublin, the Viking King of Citric,

his mother is a Irish princess,

who is now be married, or has married,

Brian Boruto sealed the deal.

She then switches and marries Miles Sachmal instead.

And at the Battle of Clontalf, basically,

what seems to happen is you look carefully at the annals

and don't think about the common story.

What looks like how it happens is that

Brian Boruto's army comes up from the South.

It has to fight the Lensdomen before the walls of Dublin

with Viking assistance.

These two forces more or less wipe each other out,

at which point Miles Sachmal of the O'Neal,

who is notionally there as Brian's second in command,

but has actually just secretly married Brian's ex-wife

behind his back, keeps out of things till the last minute

at which point he just marches into Dublin

and has no casualties mentioned in his army.

Brian dies.

Brian's son dies.

All Brian's main general die.

But Miles Sachmal and Citric both live on.

And far from being caked out,

the Viking, the Citric, the king of Dublin,

comes back and reigns for a further 26 years quite happily.

So, you know, the legend of Brian Boruto kicking the Vikings

out is entirely cackhanded.

And this will actually be really, really important.

It's so vital because exactly at this time,

so Dublin is now firmly Viking again.

And will be for the next 30, 26 years,

for the next 100 years.

Exactly at this time,

England is totally conquered by the Vikings.

A year after the Battle of Planta, basically,

two years, possibly, depending on when you date the collapse.

England is now totally ruled by King Canot of Denmark.

It's part of his Scandinavian empire.

And he has clearly has a special relationship

with Viking Dublin, who are from the same culture as he is.

We know that, for example,

King Canot goes to row in 1028, 1027, sorry.

Citric does exactly the same thing a year later

and converts to Christianity.

He builds the first Christian,

the first of the Viking theatre in Dublin,

which is still there to this, this day,

Christchurch Cathedral.

And he sends the first bishop to be consecrated,

not in Amar, but in Canterbury

by Knutz Viking English Church of England, Vicar.

You know, Archbishop of Canterbury.

This is the first time ever in the history of Ireland

that anyone in England has claimed to run anything in Ireland

and is brought in by this relationship

between Citric, the King of Dublin,

and Knut, the King of England.

That's where the troubles start.

It goes indeed, yeah.

We are going to fast forward about 100 years at this point in time

because you've already mentioned this briefly,

but in the 12th century, around about 1169 or so,

we start having the invasions of Ireland

that are launched from England.

And, you know, I would argue that this is kind of a Norman phenomenon.

You know, this is what they do.

You know, what is causing this to happen?

Why do the English suddenly notice

that Ireland is over there at this point?

Well, the first thing, if I may,

is that we have to be really careful at terminology.

You have correctly said Norman

and incorrectly say the English.

This is really funny.

We have to, and this is something which patchyotic English historians

kind of just resist even acknowledging,

but it's so clearly the historical truth.

The people who invaded Ireland

were entirely French speaking.

In some cases, French and Welsh speaking,

Strongbow and the future Fitzgeralds.

They were all Canberot Normans and Cord themselves thus,

but they did not speak English at all.

Henry II did not speak a word of English as far as we know.

He may have, there's one reference

that he may have understood a bit,

but he certainly never wrote it

and there's no record of speaking it.

He was French, he wasn't even Norm of God's sake.

So England's elite are 100% French speaking.

There, they're attacking Ireland.

It's really, it's part of the second crusade, really.

And unlike the second crusade in the northern branch of it,

it's really driven by climate change.

Because the medieval warm period

or the medieval climate anomaly, as it's sometimes called,

is in full swing by now.

The climate of Europe is significantly warmer even than now,

having been colder beforehand.

Vines are growing as far as Leicester in England.

Places like the south of Ireland

are now extremely desirable wheat farming places.

Wheat gives you the highest acre,

the highest energy per acre.

That's why it's always the prime thing people want

compared to Old St Barley.

And the population of all northern Europe expanding

everyone wants new land.

The Chutonic Knights go east to find it.

But also there's this thing in southern Ireland

where they have all this cattle and stuff.

That could be fantastic wheat country now, they think.

And this is the driver.

It's economic expansion driven by population expansion,

driven by climate change,

rather fascinating for our own age.

The immediate trigger for it is the church.

Because in 1151, Ireland is actually coming very close

to being united under the Ocona Kings of Connacht.

And the Pope sends a legate for the first time officially to Ireland.

It's like, okay, we'll end this fight

between the Irish and Roman churches.

We're going to reform the Irish church within reason,

not to...

We haven't got a force too much to put.

And Dublin is taken away from Canterbury.

I've made it into an Irish bishop week of it.

So now, the Norman-Archbishop of Canterbury is furious.

It's called Theodore Debeck.

And he's just been robbed of a sea.

Many of you, Irish bishops, do not like being robbed of seas.

He and his secretary are direct friends.

You can do this wonderful link paragraph you wanted to

with the greatest influence of the age, some Bernard of Clairville,

who is the guy who inspires the whole second crusade.

And St Bernard sits down having failed

to convert the Irish church through St Malachy.

He found that they still won't give up their Celtic ways.

And he writes this one of the most seminal texts

of the middle of the century called The Life of St Malachy,

in which he absolutely denounces the Irish

as, quote, Christians in name, in fact, pagans,

which is...

And this is the very same guy,

the same man who had just that year, in fact,

sent the tutonic knights crusading,

saying, white them out, literally,

until their nations or their region is exterminated.

And he's now saying the Irish of pagans,

like brackets, like the Slavs, guys.

And so the Norman-Archbishop's, who all know him personally

and their secretaries, they go off the room

and get the Pope, who is, of course,

the first English Pope, age in the fourth,

the first and only English Pope,

to give an invitation to Henry

to go get him.

The bull, Lord Abilitar, he says,

go get him, go get the Irish,

force the church, make them change their church

into the Roman church at last,

and we will bless you as king of the place.

And it doesn't happen bizarrely for other 11 years,

because Henry the takes too busy.

Nothing happens until he gets a get-in

when one of the kings lie in the king of Lentsta,

Dermott, Mugwara, Wu,

decides to cross the...

Crosses the High King, Rory O'Connor,

has to flee and goes to Henry,

having helped Henry and England civil war,

yet another Irish intervention in England,

not the other way around.

He helped his fleets help Henry,

who's based in Bristol,

to win the throne of England.

So he calls in his favourites,

look, you know, I helped you in your civil war,

with the Empress Matilda,

your mother, the Empress and you,

I helped you fight against King Stephen.

Yeah, so come on, now deliver.

I'm offering you a country.

The Pope's offering it to you too.

I'm telling you, this place is right for the taking,

because I'm king of part of it.

In fact, I'm the rightful king, he says.

And, vitally, this is also in Geoffrey,

Geoffrey of Mum and Sutterian tales.

They have no armour.

This is a really important part of what's,

the information trickling out of Ireland,

is that the Irish fight on foot without armour.

Now, to fight a bit of military history,

and I know a lot of people are interested,

as I am deeply in military history.

What's happened now is that the Normans,

we could rewind to the,

the Normans beat Anglo-Saxon England partly by,

check out the details by our tapestry,

it's the first depiction in European art of them

using a lance couchant under the arm,

with a shield going head on,

that's never happened before,

it's not the normally cavalry fight in any period of history.

The Normans have got this weapon,

it's known as the Frankish charge,

it shatters whole Muslim armies in the first crusade,

because no one's face is kind of thing before.

This is the force,

which German Mara now invites to England,

Henry still hasn't come,

but his Camero-Norman warlords do,

and they have something else.

They don't just have the Frankish charge,

they have Welsh longbows.

The reason that they became Camero-Normans

is that unlike the English,

one has to say this,

I mean, people don't like it,

but the Welsh fought much harder than the English

against the Normans.

There's no natural barrier,

stopping in Norman invasion or south of Wales.

But they were held up,

largely by a huge Welsh victory

at Kriegmauer, 1133,

where an army bigger than the army at Hastings

was wiped out entirely,

including 2000 Norman cavalry apparently,

and Gerald of Wales

recores that the longbows,

even at this stage,

could quote a pin-an-armad knight

straight through his armour onto his horse.

So the Normans marry the local Welsh elite,

unlike in Anglo-Saxon England,

they regard them as okay,

we're going to deal with you.

The result is that when they invade Ireland,

the Camero-Norman warlords,

the future Fitzgerald's strongbow,

they can dispose of the most terrifying shock weapon,

military historians,

and the most terrifying missile weapon.

Of the day,

and the Irish have no chance against this,

they've never faced a head-on cavalry charge

of armoured cavalry,

they've never faced longbows,

and now they have to face them both at once,

which explains why in the first few battles

it's clearly a shock to them,

because the hiking Rorio Conner,

although he musters against them,

he obviously, it's quite clear

if he has, he avoids a pitch battle,

because the first few scourishes

have shown that these guys

have something completely new,

which the unarmoured Irish foot soldiers

just have no chance against.

Well, how does the invasion then play out?

I mean, would we say that

the Angerans actually achieve

what they were aiming to when they show up?

It looks like it's initially,

by politics,

and neither the second is a really clever politician.

When he lands at Waterford,

he does not go to Dublin,

he goes straight to Casho,

which is the HQ of the southern branch

of the Irish church,

it's been split like York and Canterbury now

on the English model.

So the southerners,

who hate the Northerners,

of course, they're their Brian Barou's guys,

and he goes straight to them

and says, you know what?

I'm only here to do that,

he calls a sinner,

and says, I'm only here for the church,

and he rolls out this invitation for 1155.

He said that the Pope invited me for God's sake,

I'm not here to take it,

I'm just here to kind of, you know,

do the Pope's bidding.

The combination of this

and the heavy cavalry

and the archery

is just too much

for the Hiking Royal Conny,

he's politically outflanked

and he's outgunned,

and it looks like complete victory.

So,

Henry then just rolls into Dublin,

and he basically declares,

okay, strongwill,

you get to keep Lentster

as your,

under me,

I keep Dublin

Rex Award for his Royal Towns,

and you guys,

Hugh Delacie,

Marshalls and people,

you take what you can,

just like after 1066,

go get it, guys,

because we've won.

That's what it looks like,

and he heads off again,

and straightaway,

leaving Ireland by grants of conquest

to people like the Delacies,

meaning they can just basically get,

if they get it,

it's theirs,

says Henry the Second.

They quite clearly expect a walkover,

this is what's really fascinating,

is it doesn't happen in Ireland.

Totally unlike Anglo-Saxon England,

because even though he's been badly hurt,

the Hiking Royal Conor is able to regroup,

very spectacularly,

and two years later,

1173,

he's able to destroy the Delacies,

big brace,

at trim,

and he goes then,

goes down south to Thurlis,

where he makes an alliance

with the southerners,

and actually stops strongwill himself,

at the Battle of Thurlis.

So suddenly,

it's all changed.

This is not Anglo-Saxon.

Hold on,

this society is able to survive,

in a way, in Anglo-Six,

and it wasn't,

if Henry,

then does this really interesting change,

because, as a politician,

he's not, as you said right at the beginning,

he's not interested in modern ideas

of nationality or ethnicity at all.

He runs the Injuvin Empire,

which has all sorts of people and languages in it.

As far as he can see,

suddenly,

the Strollmine in Ireland is Rory O'Connor.

So he calls Rory's envoy over,

and they have the Treaty of Westminster of 1175.

He says,

look, okay,

you're the tough guy now,

I'm going to control Dublin,

and Lester,

and a strip, a strip down to Dungarvan.

But the rest,

you run for me,

as my leisureman.

And it's really extraordinary comeback,

and it could have been.

Unfortunately,

now, this is Rory doesn't seem to understand how,

you know,

that he's actually

up against someone totally new here,

even now.

And what he does with this,

he tries to use the Normans in his old battle

to kill the southerners

and force monster into submission.

Chaos ensues,

the Henry thinks,

geez, I've backed the wrong horse,

and he declares,

like, direct family rule.

No, okay, I'm rude.

Now, he tears up,

he tears the thing up,

and says, right, no,

my son, John,

is Lord of Ireland,

instead of now.

So you've had your chance.

It's a really,

it's a quite extraordinary

moment,

where, you know,

you can see an entire alternative history,

where Gaelic Khan is ruled by Gaelic Irish King

as part of the Anjuban Empire,

but preserving its own identity.

Unfortunately,

King Rory O'Connor is not up to really seeing,

just how powerful did the Normans are,

and how much he cannot use them,

just like he used to use the Vikings, you know?

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Well,

you've mentioned it already.

You know, this,

this comes then under the auspices

of our good friend John Lacan,

which I still find it very funny

to call John the first that.

But what does this new situation mean

for the Irish?

I mean, is this new,

more direct endgiment rule,

particularly punitive,

would you say?

It becomes absolutely a watershed.

John at first tries to make

the O'Connor kings of Connacht

and the O'Neal kings

else into vessels.

It does not work.

They refuse to give in their sons as hostages,

which, given what John does to hostages,

is actually a really good move on their part.

But they refuse to do it.

So what he does is he switches everything around.

But he has a huge big castle built in Dublin.

And he says that from now on,

it's what we would nowadays say,

law fair instead of warfare.

He says, OK, I call you're not surrendering to me.

I can't beat you.

So from now on,

all law in Ireland is English law.

Irish law does not count as law.

Anyone who does not use English law

is automatically an outlaw.

And this is a really fascinating change

because it's Professor Robert Bartlett

of St Andrews has said this.

It's a complete clash of laws,

which you find nowhere else in Europe.

It's the most extreme clash,

more extreme even than in the way

in Spain or on the marches

of say Poland and Germany,

between the South and Germans.

It's absolute 100% law clash here.

And the reason it's quite fascinating

is because everywhere else in Europe,

all the lawyers are churchmen.

And all their laws are derived

from Roman law books,

Justin's code and so forth.

Now, bizarrely,

Normans and Irish are outliers here

because Brehon law

and what we now call the English common law,

which of course is a Norman invention,

are actually just codifications

of national custom.

All they are,

they're not derived from any philosophy

or any silly codes at all.

So when John says

that English law,

IE, Norman common law,

is the law in Ireland,

you now have a situation

where you have two systems

of law and collision,

which are both,

basically just laymen,

not churchmen,

laymen with records

of their national customs.

There's nothing to discuss.

I say to you,

my national customs says this,

and you say, well tough,

my national customs says this.

It's a complete clash.

And that will set,

that's what really sets

the fault line in Ireland

for the rest of the medieval period.

I think this is a really important point.

This is the sort of things

that historians love.

We love a little bit of a legal clash

because it gives us great records.

But it is this really interesting point.

There is a phrase

that is often used very specifically

within the same kind of law fair

in essential European context,

where people will refer to the old and customary law.

Yep.

Yep. And which is almost a legal formulation

that you bring up.

And I think that especially

in a place like Ireland,

which is so defined by its legal traditions,

and you know,

there is a way of looking,

I suppose,

at the earlier English kings

as just lawyers, actually.

These are people who have got a lot of cows,

and they're really, really good

at making legal arguments.

This is a huge blow

to the way that people

live their lives

and see government as working, I suppose.

Yeah. I mean,

you cannot use the law,

which you've been using for,

that by now, nearly 4,000 years.

Let's say, over here in Ireland,

anymore,

without being automatically a criminal.

There is no place for this law anymore.

The one thing that we do have to remember,

again, to get away

from these modern conceptions is,

it's called the English common law.

We have to be very careful here.

The people doing is called themselves

Les Anglais,

but in French,

that meant,

the other ones were called Les François's

in Norman French.

What it meant was,

people loyal to King John essentially,

people loyal to the throat of England,

as opposed to the throat of France,

but they're all speaking French.

So when you read the word les inglais,

it doesn't mean

ethnic English,

it means French speakers loyal to the throat of England.

That's why it's in French.

It's a no brainer really,

we think about it,

but we're so used to see things

in kind of estonationalism.

It's hard to say.

And one of the things I always,

the killer,

the killer bit,

what I've always shown to my Irish friends is,

in 1265,

William Marshall fortifies

his new port,

which is a rival to the Royal Port of Waterford,

they're called New Ross,

and he builds a beautiful section of walls,

which is still there.

Sadly ignored,

largely by the population,

but it's still there,

and a poem is written to celebrate this.

And that poem is in French,

because the poet begins by saying,

I'm using the language everyone will understand,

because if you don't understand it,

it's not worth a clothe of garlic,

which is literally,

you can't get any more French than this.

So the guy,

this is 100 years after Henry II has come in,

the people who are doing the conquering,

still speak French.

They, they,

all the bosses speak French.

There is almost no record

of ethnic English people in Ireland to say,

there's not one single word of English

from Ireland in the whole 13th century.

Or not even from Dublin,

where, if anything, most of all,

Dublin and Wexford,

they're probably,

there are people there, we think.

But in terms of numbers,

it's really, really small,

and they are of no social account.

As they are not in England,

still, that's what we always forget.

And this, I think,

accounts for something really fascinating and strange,

which really puzzled the crowd at the time,

is that in the Dublin Parliament 1297,

which is the first kind of properly constituted

modern-style Parliament,

we have the records of it wonderfully.

And they are complaining that the Irish are getting bolder and bold.

It's like Tolkien and the minds of Moria,

you know, it's like,

they're coming closer and closer.

We can't hold them back.

The roads are getting overgrown.

And, quote,

the English also being degenerate in these times

are adopting Irish clothes,

cutting their hair like the Irish,

and going Irish.

And at first,

this is really weird.

And why would they be doing that?

But they tell you,

remember that these people

in England were second-class citizens.

When they're enticed over to Ireland

by their French-speaking landals,

they are still second-class citizens

to their French-speaking landlords.

But just across the river,

just across the real Grande,

just across the state line,

there is Gaelic Rambunctious Freedom.

And it seems as though,

it desires it sounds to us,

that the Irish were ready to accept these deserters

because the same Dublin Parliament records.

I said,

this is why it often happens that people who are actually English

get mistaken for the Irish by us

and kill by the authorities,

because they've gone completely out,

and it seems being accepted by the Irish.

If you cut your hair right,

you learn the language,

why not?

And for the English,

why wouldn't you rather be a free Irish tribesman

than a second-class Saxon peasant?

Which, as Gerald of Wales says,

the attitudes best summed up by Gerald of Wales,

the great poet of King John's invasion,

where he says,

the English are the most wretched nation in heaven,

mere slaves of the Normans in their own country.

But in Ireland,

they have right across the fence,

an alternative culture,

which if they can marry into it or whatever,

and it appears they can.

So from 1297,

it's really,

and I knew nothing about this writer in this book.

But from 1297 onwards,

writes up to some of the penal laws

in the late 70th century.

This word is used, degenerate.

King James uses it.

Chromewell's underlings use it.

The same word, always.

Elizabethians use it all the time.

It means the common English turning Irish.

You know, nothing could be further away, ladies and gentlemen,

from this fantasy of an ethnic nationalist collision.

Yeah, please get that into our heads.

Yeah.

Well, I think that it's also a really interesting point,

because when you have this,

this form of quote unquote degeneracy,

right, that the English settlers are succumbing to,

it also shows that there is a kind of vibrant Irish culture

that's still happening.

You know, this is an alternative

to what is being offered

within the Norman legal districts, no?

Absolutely.

And the best and like recommend any of your listeners

to get,

find easily yourself in an online look

for some early, earliest early Irish statutes or whatever.

The Statutes of Kilkenny.

Wonderful.

It's such fun.

And so it was a revelation to read them.

This is not actually an anti-Irish law.

It's the whole point of the Statutes of Kilkenny

is to stop the English inhabitants

of the only 10 counters which still obey the king.

I can't list them.

I can't often remember,

but it's basically the southeast.

So stop them turning Irish.

It's there in black and white.

It says, you know, it says, you know,

it is a, it is agreed and told that no Englishman

can marry an Irishman.

He cannot call himself O or Mac.

He cannot bring in Irish singers into his house.

And this best for this, he cannot play hurling.

It says they cannot play the game men call hurling.

So they obviously are.

Right?

It's extraordinary.

And the most mad thing about it all is, of course,

it's all in French.

So the English settlers of 1366

are being ordered in French

to stop becoming Irish.

You couldn't want it.

It's, it's, it's such a fantastic

trialling your TV drama.

I want to write the series, you know.

They're marrying the Irish that, in fact,

and they're actually forbidden,

because the Kilkenny Statutes say, don't do this.

He says, will you please stop calling

new-come Englishman English dogs?

And this is the dress to the English.

Vibrance is, it's clear.

It's, it's, it's, it's winning.

This is the thing, and this is the big takeaway

the people forget so easily.

It's not just resisting.

This thing called the Gaelic revival,

which starts earlier than most people think.

It starts around 1250, 1260.

By now, it is clearly winning.

You have the royal authorities by 1385,

writing to King Richard, saying,

we are screwed here,

unless our Lord, the King, come in person.

This colony is finished.

The Irish, our complete Gaelic art is absolutely winning.

At this stage, it's a complete comeback.

My family is from Kilkenny, so, you know,

if you told me that I couldn't enjoy the sport of hurling,

well, I would, I would rather die.

Thank you.

I can't.

It's not good enough.

Okay, let's kind of get,

creeping towards the end of the medieval period.

When we hit the 15th century,

Ireland has a really outsized role

in dynastic politics

that are happening over in England,

right?

Like during the reigns of Richard II

and Henry VI, why is that?

Well, it's one of the things

that this is something I really want your listeners

to get into their heads,

because it's so easy to forget,

because we tend to think in the light of now.

Throughout the whole medieval period,

right up to the Act of Union,

right up to the famine, indeed,

the population of Ireland is approximately half

that of England.

And nothing like the power relations now.

Ireland is much bigger than Scotland and Wales.

It's much more powerful.

It's much more worth conquering for tax.

That's the whole root of it.

It's more like England now trying to control

the country, the size of Poland.

So we tend to think of Ireland

being like a tenth of the sizing of something.

It's not at all.

It's a big, powerful country.

When King John tries to escape his barons

by giving the Pope control of both his kingdoms,

a third of all the money is supposed to come from Ireland.

So Ireland is regarded as approximately half

the kind of GDP power military of England.

And this is really important.

It accounts for why it's able,

as you rightly said,

this is fascinating.

It actually defines the war of the roses

in many respects.

Now, anyone who has read Shakespeare will know

what is the approximate cause of Richard II's fall?

It is the fact he's stuck in Ireland.

That's what enables Henry Bollingbroke to do.

It's interesting.

He comes back from Ireland and it's too late.

And he's stuck in Ireland because he had to go there.

Because his heir, his appointed heir,

the Earl of March, Richard Mortimer,

was killed even in supposedly loyal County Carlo.

So the whole column is collapsing.

If Richard, who's now trying to be kind of a dictator

within Britain, within the other bad parliament,

or I kind of think,

he has got to maintain his personal rule.

He has to go to Ireland because his heir has just been killed.

If he can't control it,

and he comes back,

he's tailting his legs,

and that's the end of it.

And then it actually sparks off towards the roses.

And it interferes,

mainly in them.

One of the,

to my astonishment least known bits

as a whole story of Ireland of England,

is that in 1459,

and again in 1487,

wait for it,

the Irish invade England.

They invade England because they are on the side of the Yorkists.

They want to force regime change in England.

Because the Yorkists,

to buy their support,

have guess what,

recognised Irish independence.

The Declaration of the Irish Parliament,

1461, under Richard of York,

it's, that's not just home rule.

It says,

it's free.

And it's so free that Henry VI sends an envoy to Dublin,

and says,

hand over Richard of York.

He's a traitor and draw,

they do,

they hang draw on quarter of the messenger instead,

as a traitor to the half-five of Dublin.

Unlocking messenger,

but it goes to show,

how completely independent the Irish felt by then.

So they invade England,

to make sure the House of York wins,

so that their independence will be recognised.

It's such a little stuff.

And again,

we know,

despite the Shakespeare rights about it for God's sake,

I'm going to quote it by memory now,

you know,

that Duke of York

is newly come from Ireland.

And with a present and a mighty power,

of gallow glasses and stout turns,

is marching hitherward in proud array.

The Irish off menacing England,

this is such a turnaround to a whole thing about this kind of

800 years of a small country fighting a gigantic need,

but no, no, no,

you have a very powerful,

small,

a powerful small country,

only half the size of England,

which is constantly interfering in England

and actually invading it twice in the late 15th century.

That's a beautiful culture.

What can I say?

Well,

craving towards the end of the medieval period here,

how far can we say

the crown in England controls Ireland,

say at the end of the century,

or around the 1490s?

Is this really a place that the English crown

has control of,

or are we looking at something entirely different?

It controls it precisely as far as the modern toll point

at Killcock on the way out of Dublin, westwards.

Right, that's one of my favorite things.

People in a Dublin,

I often say Dublin is like a kind of different world.

And the motorway toll point at Killcock is where most people

think the property prices,

Dublin prices, stop, et cetera.

It is literally on the border,

which was a hard border by now.

The 1488 Parliament orders,

in desperation,

that the English crown has been telling

with things that are statutes of Killcennet.

It's been ordering its subjects not to become Irish

for the last 300 years.

It's not working.

By now, the crown only controls

essentially the greater Dublin commuter area of today.

Almost exactly.

It's quite, it's extraordinary how accurate that is in fact.

And it's saying,

okay, that's okay.

It's not enough for us to order you to.

We're going to build a hard border.

And pointing this parliament orders the construction

of a bank and double ditch at least six feet tall

all around this area.

It could keep it in our fortes in places.

The crown rule in Ireland is reduced,

I say, to literally the modern area

where Dublin transport runs and no further than that.

By the 1490s.

And it's still shrinking.

In 1517, there's a deputation

of the kind of good loyal burgers of Dublin.

Dubliners don't like me saying this.

But it's not only the crown HQ.

But when the Scots invaded in 1317,

and again, any minute now in 1535,

it is the only thing holding out for the crown.

You're a bunch of brits.

It's that kind of thing.

It's that kind of thing.

Right.

Which is why you're like football.

So.

So it's only the loyalists of Dublin,

or Pouchy Fidelis et Maxime W.

As the Latin court has put it,

who saved the colony.

And they, and they are even by 1517,

they are complaining to the same thing.

The wall's not working.

The Irish language is taking over

even here within this fortified wall.

As we come to the end of the medieval period,

you would bet that English rule in Ireland

is about to be extinguished.

The Earl of Kildere,

the Lord left hand, is basically running it

entirely as if he owns the place.

He's only paying taxes to Henry VII,

and even the young Henry VIII,

without account, as it was called,

means, he means what it says.

He just shifts enough gold to keep Henry VIII,

the young Henry happy.

And otherwise, he does whatever the hell he wants.

He's basically acting as King of Ireland.

And the annals of the period,

and by favourite entry in all the annals of the four masters,

check it out ladies and gentlemen,

is for 1504 as a huge battle between the Earl of Kildere

and his rivals within Ireland.

And there is not, when the analyst writes this down

in 1504, it could be 704.

There is no mention of any king,

of anyone being assassinach or a foreigner,

or anything like that.

It says, less queen beats Leithmolger.

It's literally like the crown has never arrived.

The comeback is almost complete.

Oh my God, and then we have the Reformation,

but that's another story.

Right.

So that's too tantalising,

because I think you've argued,

and others have as well,

that had the Reformation not happened,

then maybe Ireland would have kind of kept on

in this same vein,

and not necessarily come to the attention?

So much of the English crowd?

Absolutely not.

I mean, if we just shift slightly into the early modern period,

let's say we're still kind of medieval,

and one of the proudest things,

and I have this,

because I'm not a professional historian,

so the first taste of looking Denmark,

and the professor from Harvard said,

I wish the hell I'd seen that before I wrote my book

on the British Empire,

and it's this.

We know the records,

which you can look up ladies and gentlemen,

the Privy Council Records.

I love this, because it's the timeline.

We love the timeline history, right?

First of May, 1546,

the Privy Council Records say,

you know this French Empire,

we've been going for 500 years, it's finished.

We have to clear out a balloon.

We've been trying to, we're done with France.

Calate, maybe, for the other 10 years.

We're done.

500 years of foreign policy ends.

Four days later,

the Privy Council writes to the Privy Council of Ireland,

saying,

the king requires you in your own hand

to answer how this realm may best be

run to his profit and honour.

In other words,

Henry VIII has been England,

the crown, has finally been kicked out of Europe,

and immediately turns on his one other realm,

which is Ireland.

And it's in the documents,

it's four days that kind of changed the world.

This is the change of English foreign policy,

away from Europe,

into Fest, the archipelago,

and then, well,

go west, you know.

James,

what an incredible journey

through several centuries of Irish history.

Thank you so, so much for coming on to talk to me

about one of the most interesting

kingdoms in medieval Europe.

He really is,

and thank you so much for having me.

Thank you once again to James for joining me,

and thank you for listening

to Gone Medieval from History Head.

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