Part 11

Mr. Orpen aptly quotes the case of the dying Roland, when ‘por ses pechiez Dieu porofrit lo guant,’ and refers us to ‘vadium in duello,’ and ‘plicare vadia’ in Du Cange. But the most instructive remarks on this custom will be found in Professor Maitland’s introduction to precedents for the Court Baron.[349] The formula he finds for this antique wager runs thus: “He shall wage his law with his folded glove (_de sun guant plyee_) and shall deliver it into the hand of the other, and then take his glove back and find pledge for his law.” The learned, writer explains that the folded glove typified that chattel of value which “in very old times” was the _vadium_, _wed_, or gage constituting the contract, and that this was now supplanted by a contract with sureties, who had become the real security for the party’s appearance in court. This procedure, it will be seen, is brought out in our poem, which was written about a century earlier than the treatise Mr. Maitland quotes. The mention here, I may add, of “his peers,” and the phrase, as Mr. Orpen points out, ‘Li reis receut le cors’ (l. 2635) suggest surely that the writer of the poem had a special knowledge of legal formulas.

The careful reader will detect also a constitutional hint in the summons to the tenants by knight service to come to the assistance of king Henry in the rebellion of 1173:

Chevalers, baruns e meyne, _A chescun barun par sei_, Par le commandement le rei, Que tuz passassent la mer En normandie li reis aider.

For we see here an allusion to that special summons, to which, whether for council or for war, each ‘baron’ was entitled. One of the grievances of Becket, it may be remembered, at Northampton was that he had not been summoned ‘par sei,’ but only through the sheriff. Perhaps, however, the most important contribution made by this poem to institutional history is found in that most important passage, ll. 3064–3177, which the editor describes as “a sort of original Domesday Book of the first Anglo-Norman settlement,” and as presenting all the appearance of being, in substance, a contemporary account. For, apart from its obvious value as “the only connected account of the subinfeudation of Leinster and Meath by earl Richard Fitz Gilbert and Hugh de Laci, respectively,” it affords a very striking confirmation of the new theory on knight service advanced by me in the pages of the ‘English Historical Review,’ in which, as against the accepted view maintained by Dr. Stubbs and Mr. Freeman, I contended that the _quota_ of knight service was determined not by the area of the fief, but by “the unit of the feudal host,” and is therefore reckoned in round numbers, and is almost invariably a multiple of 5, if not of 10.[350] I proved this to be the case for England, and appealed to the Irish evidence as confirming the discovery. But I did not quote this remarkable passage, from which we learn that in Meath--which Henry had granted to Hugh de Lacy for the service of fifty knights (l. 2730)--Richard Fleming was enfeoffed to serve with twenty knights, and Gilbert de Nugent (as we learn from charter evidence) with five; while in Leinster, which the Earl, as we learn from charters, held by the service of a hundred knights, Maurice de Prendergast received his fief “pur dis [10] chevalers servise,” Walter de Riddlesford was bound to furnish twenty knights, and a certain Reginald was assigned fifteen as his quota. Our confidence in the poem is increased by the fact that it names fifty knights as the service due from Meath, which we know to be correct, while so good an authority as the ‘Gesta’ makes it a hundred. The whole of this curious passage is ably annotated by Mr. Orpen, and the puzzling place-names identified. But, familiar though he clearly is with almost every source of information, he would seem to be unacquainted with the valuable Gormanston Register, which contains, I believe, a transcript (fo. 190 _a_) of the actual charter by which earl Richard granted to Maurice Fitz Gerald Naas and Wicklow (ll. 3085–92)--the former for the service of five knights.[351] The same Register has copies of three charters (fos. 5_b_, 188_b_), showing how the lands spoken of in the poem as granted to Gilbert de Nangle came, under Richard I., to Walter de Lacy, who granted them in turn to his brother Hugh.

The comparative ease and rapidity with which a handful of adventurers had parcelled out among themselves the most fertile portions of the island is perhaps the most surprising feature of the whole story. It is certain that the native Irish were by no means wanting in courage; indeed, they were then, as they always have been, only too ready to fight. Their weapons were good and were skilfully wielded; but like the wild Celts of Galloway, who had hurled themselves in vain, at the Battle of the Standard, against a line of mailed warriors, they scorned the use of defensive armour. Their mode of warfare was essentially suited to woods and bogs and passes, while their assailants were accustomed, from continental warfare, to cavalry actions in the open. Combining the evidence of our poem with that of Master Gerald, we can see clearly that, as in so many decisive encounters, from Hastings itself to Culloden, the issue turned on the conflict of wholly differing tactics. Precisely as at Hastings, the Normans--now the Anglo-Normans--enjoyed the enormous advantage derived from the use of the bow. Giraldus, whatever his defects, was a shrewd and sound observer; and he tells us of the demoralizing effect on the natives, in the early days of the conquest, of the arrows against which they had no means of defence. Careful investigation shows that each band of the invaders landed with a force of knights and archers, the latter being usually found in the proportion of ten to one. In the combined action of these two arms, as at the great battle which had decided the fate of England, the Normans excelled. “In Hibernis conflictibus,” wrote Gerald, “hoc summopere curandum, ut semper arcarii militibus turmis mixtim adjiciantur.” As Harold had discovered, before the Conquest, how unsuitable was a force composed of heavily-armed English infantry for pursuit of the nimble Welsh, as Richard was shortly to find his host of mailed knights and men-at-arms harassed to death by the swift movements of the light Saracen cavalry, so, writes Gerald, the Irish could only be successfully attacked by troops able to pursue them among their mountain fastnesses. Nor are his criticisms less true for being animated, as they evidently are, by the scorn of his gallant relatives, as the pioneers of the conquest, for those later comers who despised their experience, and on whom they looked in their fierce warfare, as a rough colonist of the present day would look on a pipeclayed guardsman.

The very first battle in which the invaders took part proved that the Irish could not hope to stand against them in the open. Forcing their way with Dermot into Ossory, through the woods and bogs, they found themselves deserted at a critical moment by almost all their native allies, who lost heart suddenly and fled. Maurice de Prendergast, one of their leaders, saw that the little English band was likely to be “rushed” by the natives, with whom the woods were swarming (“Que els lur curusent sure”). In accordance with the old Norman tactics, he detached his archers to form an ambush, and then spurred for the open field: the natives followed in hot pursuit, and their wily foes, reaching ground on which cavalry could act, turned and rode them down. The archers in their rear completed their discomfiture, like the English sharpshooters at Poitiers, and the native “friendlies,” with their beloved axes, were soon spread over the field, pleasantly engaged in decapitating the corpses of their fellow-countrymen. I see no reason to doubt the tale of king Dermot gloating over the heads that his followers brought and piled before him, and leaping for joy as with a loud voice he rendered thanks to his Creator on detecting among them the face of a specially hated foe. It may have been the thought of his own son, blinded by his kingly rival, that made him, we read, clutch the head and gnaw the features with his teeth. Such a ‘deviation from humanity’ (to quote a famous phrase) will not seem incredible to those who have seen his countrymen, centuries later in the history of civilization, burn alive a woman as a witch,[352] deliberately mutilate defenceless men, or dance in the very blood of the murdered Lord Mountmorres.

In all this internecine conflict the only motive that can clearly be traced is the passionate desire for vengeance. To glut that desire Dermot was ready, not only to call in the alien against his fellow-countrymen, but even to promise ‘Strongbow’ the succession to Leinster and his followers landed possessions, which he could only do at the cost of enraging his own kinsmen and subjects. Giraldus, indeed, is at pains to justify the position of the English in Ireland, and to claim that it was virtually brought about by consent rather than by conquest. Here again we may best picture to ourselves the situation by comparing the treaties or concessions wrung from barbarous potentates by the adventurous Englishmen of to-day. Dermot had notoriously promised what was not his to give, without the least consideration for the rights or interest of his people. But just as, at the conquest of England itself, Norman casuistry had enabled William to claim the succession by gift of his kinsman, and to forfeit as traitors all those who opposed that claim, and just as his followers, by Norman law, though standing in the shoes of English thegns, assumed the position of feudal lords, so, in Ireland, the new settlers looked at things from a feudal standpoint, and so originated that conflict of irreconcilable polities which has practically continued without intermission ever since. In the end indeed, especially outside of Meath and Leinster, they adapted themselves, as is well known, to the native system of government, and became, in the eyes of the English, more or less Irish chieftains. But at first the necessities of the case accentuated their alien status. For on the one hand the weakness of the royal power, and on the other the danger of their position, conspired to give their settlement an intensely feudal character. Our poem, as we have said, shows us the lords of Meath and Leinster, respectively, enfeoffing their followers to hold of them by knight service, and these became, it should be noticed, the “barons” of Meath or of Leinster, a term which in England was only found in the border palatinates of Chester and of Durham. These barons were encouraged to construct castles at once as the best defence against those sudden raids in which the Irish were wont to indulge. In accordance with the policy of the Romans in their day, and with our own at the present time, when extending the borders of the Empire, the shrewd Gerald strongly urged that the country should be opened up by constructing roads through its wilds, and then held by fortified posts, or, as he expressed it, by castles. Writing within twenty years of earl Richard’s landing, he had already to lament that the Irish had learnt from their foes the use of the bow, and had so greatly improved their tactics that the easy victories of the early invaders were no longer possible: by castles alone could their successors hope to hold the land.

In the conquest of Ulster we have, perhaps, the most striking exploit of the whole invasion. Accomplished by individual, and indeed unauthorized, enterprise, it was not complicated, as in the south, by native co-operation or royal interference, but was carried through by the reckless daring of a single adventurer and his band. With two and twenty knights and some three hundred followers, John de Courci set forth from Dublin, about the close of January, 1177, to conquer the kingdom of Ulster. Eager for plunder and the joys of the foray, there had flocked to his standard those adventurous spirits who chafed beneath the strict rule of the governor, William Fitz Audelin. In the depth of winter they hurried forth, and reaching Down by forced marches on the fourth day from leaving Dublin, were enabled to seize it by a _coup de main_. Masters thus of the capital of the land, they had also secured a maritime base invaluable for their further operations. The Irish, stunned by the suddenness of the blow, had fled, carrying their king with them, and the adventurers were soon revelling in the plunder they had sought. In vain the natives, rallying from their flight, endeavoured to recapture their lost stronghold. Like the garrison of Dublin when beset by Roderick O’Conor and his host, John and his handful of followers sallied forth upon their foes. Giraldus shows us their leader as he lived, towering in height above his fellows, a man of war from his youth up, whose only fault was the martial ardour that led him, when the battle raged, to forget the general in the soldier, as he charged headlong on his foes. Mounted on his famous white war horse, he now performed, as usual, Homeric deeds of valour, lopping off the heads and limbs of his enemies with a sweep of his tremendous sword. The Irish, though beaten at length, attacked him again in the summer, only to experience again defeat at his hand. But so desperate was the struggle for the land that in one of his battles he was left with only eleven knights. With their horses slain, and without food, the little band fought their way, for thirty miles, through their foes, and made good their escape. By sheer hard fighting ‘Ulvestere’--now Down and Antrim--was at length virtually subdued and then ‘castled’ by John. In time there rose on every side those strongholds of which the crumbling ruins long bore witness to the harassed lives of the alien lords of the land. Dreading the perils of the cloud-swept glens, and creeping from rock to rock within sound of that troubled sea, the “Barons of Ulster,” in their eyries, perched on the basalt crags, wrought about the land a belt of conquest of which we have the noblest relic in the wild glory of Dunluce. Their heirs still lingered on, four centuries later, clinging “in great poverty and peril” to the lands their ancestors had won. The Savages, the Jordans, the Russells could still be recognised by their names, but we read of the “Fitzurses, now degenerate, and called in Irish McMaghon, the Bear’s son.”[353]

Like the proud lords of Leinster and of Meath, John de Courci had his feudal officers, his “constable” and “marshal,” his “seneschal” and his “chamberlain.” Ulster, in fact, had duly become a typical feudal principality. Essentially obnoxious as such a development must have been in the eyes of the English Crown, its weakness in Ireland compelled it to temporize, nor could it find any better way of checking this growth of feudal power than by playing off, in Ulster, the Lacys against De Courci, just as it played them off against the Fitzgeralds in the south. Thus was initiated that policy of see-saw which, in practice, has always been, and is still, pursued. A striking passage on the subject in the quaint Book of Howth is not inapplicable at the present time, when the prospect of that steady government which Ireland so badly needs seems as distant as ever.[354]

By reason that the Irish heard this alteration and change of governors, they did wholly swear never after to obey to the English men, and said, ‘Seeing that themselves cannot agree, why should we condescend to them ever after? For seeing that they cannot love each one and other of themselves, they would never love us that is strangers, and their mortal enemies. Therefore let us take part together, and do that which please God we shall; and first, here is in Connaught some of their knights, and if we get the upper hand upon them we shall the easier win the rest.’

‘Divide et impera’ was the policy adopted, and the spirit of faction which the nobles seem to have imbibed from their Irish neighbours was thus encouraged by the Crown. This system may be said to have lasted down to the days of Elizabeth, to be succeeded, in the 17th century, by the new rivalry of Catholic and Protestant, Cavalier and Roundhead. But still the island was allowed to become the battle ground of parties, favoured now, in turn,, by England, according to the government in power at the time. But never, perhaps, has this unfortunate system been more recklessly or disastrously pursued than since Mr. Gladstone’s bid for the votes of the ‘Nationalist’ party.

Although Giraldus has been bitterly assailed for criticising with no sparing hand the undoubted failings of the Irish, he showed, we think, on the contrary, far more fairness than might reasonably be expected from a writer in his position. But he did far more than this. It might indeed be truly said of him ‘Rem acu tetigit’: he boldly gave the reasons why the conquest of Ireland was a failure, and added frank and shrewd advice as to its government in the future. Even as we have been often told that Cromwell would have settled the Irish question, had only his ‘thorough’ policy been relentlessly pursued, so Giraldus justly reminds us that the first flood of conquest was checked by Henry II., when the work was only half done, and that Henry himself, in like manner, only put his hand to the plough to turn back at once and leave the work to others. Those others, again, were commissioned only to be recalled: the strong centralized administration that was shaping the English realm was never organized in Ireland; the Crown harassed, but it did not govern. The four prophets of Ireland, he wrote, had duly foretold that the island would not be mastered by the English till the eve of the day of judgment. If he accused the Irish of shiftiness and treachery, as the failings that accompanied their natural quickness, he sternly rebuked his own countrymen for despoiling their native allies of their lands, and wantonly insulting the native chieftains when they came to pay their respects to John as lord of Ireland. He even charges them with being corrupted by their intercourse with the natives into sometimes imitating their treachery. That this charge was not without foundation we learn from the French poem, which gives a spirited description of the action of Maurice de Prendergast--one of its heroes--when he brought his ally the king of Ossory to the English camp, having pledged his word for his safety. The king of Munster urged that his rival should be treacherously seized, “E li baruns, san mentir, le voleient tuz consentir.” But Maurice, indignantly denouncing their contemplated breach of faith, swore by his sword that he would cleave the head of the first man who should dare to lay a hand upon the king.

It is chiefly, I think, because his evidence is fatal to the idle dream of an Irish golden age that the evidence of Giraldus on the state of the country has been so bitterly assailed. For my part, I believe his statement as to the corruption in church matters to be entirely honest, and deem them in accordance with what we know from other sources. In his curious sketch of the lay ‘ecclesiastics,’ with their long flowing hair, and with nothing clerical about them but the absence of weapons, he touches one of the worst abuses from which the church suffered in Ireland. The very see of Armagh itself had been held for at least two centuries in hereditary succession by lay chieftains, and the practice had spread widely to the degradation of the church. For half a century, indeed, before the coming of the invaders, efforts had been made at church reform; but the initiative had come from England and from Rome, and little encouragement was given by the native rulers themselves. Nor will those who are acquainted with Irish society in the past reject as improbable the statement of Giraldus that the clergy, though greatly distinguished by their chastity and fervent devotion to divine service, were apt to spend their evenings in drinking somewhat deeply. But even to this he is careful to add, there were found honourable exceptions. The important fact to be remembered is that, if Ireland had once been a centre of Christianity, a bright star in a heathen age, its church had deteriorated, not advanced, amidst the ceaseless and murderous strife of native rule.

To say that the Anglo-Norman settlement, with its conquest, or rather half conquest, of the country, proved a blessing to Ireland, is a proposition that no one, probably, would care to maintain. Why this should have been so is one of those fascinating problems that must ever arouse the speculation and stir the interest of the student. The far earlier Scandinavian settlements in Normandy and in Eastern England have little in common with the exploits of Strongbow’s daring band. Sicily in every way affords a closer parallel. Nearer in time to the events we have discussed, its conquest, also, was no less essentially a private enterprise. What the sons of Tancred had accomplished in the south, the children of Nesta well might hope to bring to pass in the west. Indeed the adventurers of the 11th century had faced a task, to all seeming, harder than that which confronted the adventurers of the 12th. Some might hold that the Norman race was no longer in its prime, that its great conquering and governing powers were already impaired. That its enterprise was less ardent, that in England it was settling down, is, no doubt, the case: from the turbulent regions of Wales adventurers were still forthcoming, but the pioneers of Irish conquest were not supported by that inflow from England which was needed for so great an undertaking, and which, in earlier days, would probably have hastened to their support. But this was only one among the causes of the great Irish failure. Sicily, like England, fortunate in its kings, was fortunate also in that position of isolation which enabled its Norman conquerors to work out their own destiny. If only Ireland had enjoyed the same geographical advantage, if it had been far enough distant from England, its invaders might, in the same fashion, have established a dynasty of their own, and have quickly accommodated themselves, with the marvellous adaptability of their race, to those native ways to which indeed many of them did, ultimately, so strangely conform. It is now recognised that the kings of England did not, and could not, become true English kings till the loss of their Norman possessions drove them to find in England their true home and country. Giraldus was right when he urged that his friends should have been let alone, or the royal power, if brought into play, exercised in full force. One can, indeed, imagine what might have been the fate of England, if, half conquered by adventurous bands of Normans, she had then been half governed, from abroad, by a Norman duke.