Padraic O’Neil’s Editorial Historie of the Irish Atrocities and Religious Concerns, Part I: Clontarf

Padraic O’Neil’s Editorial Historie of the Irish Atrocities and Religious Concerns, Part I: Clontarf

The death of Brian Boru at Clontarf in 1014 combined with the adulterous antics of a minor Irish Chieftan marked the end of prospects for an independent Irish nation. The resulting conflicts and vulnerability invited opportunistic intervention from abroad. It was a predictable pattern with the usual consequences.

The history of conflict in Ireland extends back far beyond the coherence of the often-referenced, but relatively recent, ecclesiastical records into the murky and mythical past of the Celtic tribes. The various tribes and clans saw themselves more as independent entities, occasionally joining together in greater or smaller units for the sake of resisting invasion or resolving profound questions about who owned the ugliest bull in the neighborhood and other equally urgent disputes. They saw themselves as unified only in the sense of a common right to occupy national space. To an extent, this vague concept of nation made them both tolerant of foreign culture and vulnerable to organized assault, but for thousands of years, the tribal Irish culture successfully resisted and/or assimilated invasions.

In 1014, invading Norse and renegade Celts landed at Clontarf, north of Dublin, intent on the subjugation of the Irish clans. They were met and defeated by the forces of the warrior King, Brian Boru, then aged 71. The invasion force that arrived in a hundred ships withdrew in ten, the last time that Ireland could have been considered a united, independent nation.

The story of Brian Boru is a story of intense ambition. Hyperbolically reported to have personally killed “a hundred men in a day,” Boru was neither totally diplomatic, nor especially a nice guy, but he was an effective leader who organized united opposition to the Norse invasion. In a pattern that has come to seem almost inevitable for the Irish, however, through treachery, fourtune, or both, the battle deprived the Irish of their reigning monarch and insured that there would be no orderly continuation of a national government.

Depending on the account, a force of Norse warriors, either escaping from the battle or following directions from an Irish traitor (or both), discovered the elderly King Brian with a small contingent of bodyguards behind the battle lines, where the Norse swords immediately struck down the High King of the Irish. The killers were quickly overtaken, and by one account, the man whose hand had brought down the King of Ireland was tied to a tree with his own intestines for execution, but the damage was done.

For better or worse, following the death of Brian Boru the Celtic tribes never again achieved effective unity. Despite the victory of the combined Irish forces at Clontarf, the death of Brian brought about internal conflicts between competing Irish leaders. Even in defeat, the Norse thus insured that the Irish would remain vulnerable to attack for the following 1000 years.

Padraic O’Neil’s Editorial Historie of the Irish Atrocities and Religious Concerns, Part II: Baginbun

In historical terms, the attack was not long in coming. Following Clontarf, the Irish Chieftans enjoyed the freedom to squabble among themselves while squandering the opportunity to prepare for the inevitable. The English were busy making faces at the Normans across the channel, but that would not last. Once the dust settled from Hastings and the Normans got their priorities adjusted, they started looking around for things to mess with.

In 1167, Dermot McMurrough, an ambitious minor chieftan and self-styled “King” of Leinster, got involved with the wife of Tirnan O’Rourke, a neighboring chieftan. Whether by force or cooperation is not clear, but by one means or another, the lady ended up in the company of McMurrough while husband Tirnan was out of town on a pilgrimage.

This turn of events annoyed Tirnan. He got an army together, recovered his wife, and gave Dermot the option to hit the road or join his ancestors. Discretion being the better part of retaliation, and the lady possibly not being supportive, Dermot took the opportunity for travel abroad.

Dermot may not have been so popular in Ireland anyway. There was little prospect of making a comeback without some independent backing, so he appealed to the English King, Henry II, for redress in return for opportunity. In and of itself, this was not something that alarmed the Irish. It was common practice to go around making temporary arrangements for allies in all kinds of disputes. That was nothing new. It was also common for the Irish to be too preoccupied with their own affairs to predict the potential long-term effects of English intervention, and there was some justification for that attitude also. On the whole, invaders had been either repulsed or assimilated, or both, and the threat was not a serious historical precedent.

King Henry, however, saw some possibilities in an Irish connection. At the time, he was busy trying to convince Louis that the move to England did not necessarily leave Normandy up for grabs, and he didn’t have resources to mess with the Irish. He did, however, grant Dermot permission to market his cause in the English kingdom. Dermot made connections with an enterprising soldier of fortune cooling his heels in Wales after some bad press, Richard de Clare, Earl of Pembroke, also known by the World Warfare Association trade name of “Strongbow.”

According to legend, Strongbow hacked Strongbow Jr. to death for retreat from a battle. Whether the legend was more than marketing hype is another fair question, but the legend certainly reflects the popular conception of Strongbow. He was not a man of delicacy and refinement. While he seems to have had a reputation as a shrewd and courageous warrior, his aggressiveness and occasional lapses of diplomacy had earned him King Henry’s disapproval.

On the down side of a bad streak, Strongbow needed little encouragement to go adventuring over the Irish Sea. He hesitated to immediately involve himself personally in the Dermot McMurrough enterprise without express royal authorization, but he quickly assembled a force of well-armed knights, cavalry, and archers to undertake an expedition on his behalf while he waited for the royal thumbs-up that would come a few months later. Thus accompanied, Dermot returned to wreak his revenge on the uncooperative Irish Chieftans.

Strongbow could have cared less about Dermot McMurrough’s domestic difficulties. Like King Henry, he saw opportunity in Ireland. It was nothing personal against Ireland. It could have as easily have been Scotland or France. He just wanted an empire. He was a bit over the hill and politically maladjusted to challenge any national entities, but he had a personal army and the killer instinct. All he needed for conquest was an inside track and royal approval. Dermot McMurrough provided both.

In May of 1169, the initial Strongbow contingent landed at Bannow in Wexford at the mouth of a little stream. The name of the stream was Baginbun, inspiring the paradoxical rhyme that subsequently served as one of many epitaphs for independent Ireland.

At the stream of Baginbun

Ireland was lost and won.

Word of Strongbow’s landing got around and the Irish raised somewhat casual forces inresponse. There is some possibility that, in accordance with a long pattern of deceptive negotiation, the invaders offered the opposing Irish the opportunity to join the enterprise in return for a share of the proceeds, another common practice that would have seemed normal at the time.

Either in surrender or as a gesture of cooperation, part of the Irish force relinquished their weapons. The response was to break their arms and legs and throw the unfortunate victims off the cliffs at Dunmore.

This gesture made an impression on the Irish Chieftans. They should probably have recognized the danger represented in the incident, but in fact they continued to look for opportunities to promote their own interests by way of cooperation with the prevailing force. None of them had the independent capability of opposing the English, yet they were persistently suspicious of their neighbors and jealous of alliances. In most cases they conceded to the invaders for whatever immediate advantage might be achieved. They did not see it as disloyal. They saw it as a kind of competition among themselves.

The Strongbow invasion established characteristics that have remained consistent throughout the subsequent history of relations with the English. The English repeatedly engaged in predatory occupations of Irish territory. Deception and brutality were the operating standards for these invasions. And finally, the Irish have done their part by a sometimes well-meaning but myopic disregard for the lessons of the past.

Padraic O’Neil’s Editorial Historie of the Irish Atrocities and Religious Concerns, Part III: The Pale

In 1171, King Henry became concerned by Strongbow’s success in Ireland. Ordering Strongbow back to England for an accounting and pledge of loyalty, Henry then prepared his own expedition and set out to make his presence felt in the Irish nation

The legendary inability of the Irish to support common objectives has been exceeded only by the consequences. Perhaps the ancient Celtic admiration for individual valor, self-reliance, and the personal perfection required of its leaders has achieved the curiously ironic result of impeding defense against a crafty, morally flexible, and organizationally adept enemy. Regardless of the morality of historical events, no culture in history has exceeded the ability of the Normanized Anglo-Saxon to organize and adapt for the purpose of dominating other groups. Even the predatory Romans reserved the that extent of rxploitation for the subjugation of slaves.

The Strongbow invasion initiated trends that have remained consistent throughout the subsequent history of relations with the English. The English repeatedly engaged in predatory occupations of Irish territory. Deception and brutality have frequently characterized these invasions. And finally, the Irish have contributed by failing to establish and/or maintain effective goals and leadership. Regardless of fate or the success of English duplicity the effect has been hundreds of years of nice tries.

The legendary inability of the Irish to establish and support common objectives has been exceeded only by the consequences. Perhaps the ancient Celtic admiration for individual valor, self-reliance, and personal perfection required of leaders has achieved the curiously ironic result of impeding defense against a crafty, morally flexible, and organizationally adept enemy. Regardless of the morality of historical events, no culture in history has yet exceeded the ability of the Normanized Anglo-Saxon to organize and adapt for the purpose of dominating other groups. Even the constantly contentious Romans reserved such thoroughly destructive exploitation only for slaves.

The Irish traditionally considered warfare as a contest between honorable and fully prepared opponents, even to the extent that an attacker should have the decency to adequately inform the attackee of the impending conflict and to make accommodations if the attack was not convenient for all parties involved. It was difficult for the Irish to cope conceptually with opponents who attacked without warning, could care less who got hurt, told the truth only if it was convenient, and would just as soon poison opponents as meet them in battle.

In addition, the Irish saw no great harm in nominal English rule. So what if they allowed Henry to be King of Ireland? At the time there was still plenty to go around. As long as they kept their personal positions, they didn’t really object to the relationship. Henry toured southern Ireland and established a royal governor. The local Chieftans pledged nominal allegiance with no real intention of relinquishing any independence. Finding not much to complain about, Henry returned to England to attend to more urgent matters, more or less satisfied with the state of affairs in Ireland.

The Resident Irish and the English invaders settled into a general routine of moderate conflict, but as Strongbow’s English forces adjusted to their Irish conquest, they suffered a common fate of intruders in the culture. They began to adopt Irish identity.

They also brought with them a significant cultural accident, the Catholic religion. As it happened, this was not inherently a problem because the Irish themselves had embraced Catholicism a few hundred years earlier through the efforts of the ubiquitous St. Patrick of Dublin, and the Irish were pretty free-wheeling about their religious tolerance anyway.

Irish Celts, or Gaels (derived from the Gaelic language), didn’t really care whether you prayed in a Cathedral, a church, a synagogue, or Stonehenge, as long as you didn’t insist on indiscriminately imposing your religious views on others. The conflict of Catholics and Protestants in Ireland was imported, not theological, an accident of history and economics, not a condition of religion. Protestants suffered along with Catholics to whatever extent that they could not establish a convincing commitment to the crown. The Irish conflicts have never been as simple as Catholic against Protestant, but that will become more clear.

To continue the saga, however, not only was religion not a problem at the time of Strongbow’s invasion, but it was one of a number of cultural factors that encouraged fairly rapid assimilation of the English invaders into Celtic Irish culture. As long as things went on pretty much as they always had, the Celtic Irish were fairly accepting of their new associates.

The invading English quickly became Irish. The area of English influence receded to a nominally fortified area around Dublin known as “The Pale,” a term borrowed from heraldry, meaning an enclosed space.

The problem was not Religion. The problem was that the Irish seemed to be taking over.

The de-Englishization of occupying forces did not sit well with the English Crown. The object was to extend English sovereignty to Ireland. Henry had granted approval to undertake an enterprise that would establish English influence in Ireland. The object was not to send English to Ireland to join the Celts and create a new culture even better equipped to resist English sovereignty.

The result was another visit by the King to Ireland in 1190, with the objective of renewing the direct acknowledgement of sovereignty from all significant Irish leaders. As usual, this wasn’t necessarily a problem for the Gaels as long as it meant no significant changes in their usual affairs. In fact, problems really centered around the cultural group of the Strongbow invaders, now the “Old English,” who felt that if anybody had a right to rule Ireland, it was them.

It was in these circumstances that religion became a factor, not because of any disagreement in Ireland, but because of disagreement in England. The protestant English King, in constant conflict with Catholic opposition, concluded that not only was Ireland not sufficiently committed to support of the English Crown, but the invaders were taking the Irish off in a dangerous direction. A nation of Catholics was cause for concern, but a nation of Catholics directed by English Catholic dissenters was entirely too dangerous.

The most expedient solution protestant King Henry could devise was to try to restrain Catholic influence by restricting Catholic culture and installing Protestant English administrators. These measures were not directed at the Irish as a cultural or even political unit. They were directed at Catholics as a political unit, just as a modern day government might replace officers of another party with members of its own. Although the rhetoric of politics and religion often characterized the heresy, blasphemy, and corruption of other religions, the truth is that ideologically, various religions often coexist peacefully, and peacefully coexisted in Ireland until politics and economics became issues.

The persecution of Catholics in Ireland included not just the culture of the original Celtic Irish, but also quite deliberately, the Catholics of the later Strongbow invasion, Catholics assimilated into the Gaelic culture. That is, the English Crown was intent on persecution of English as well as Irish as a political expedient and called it a religious issue, a time-honored tactic, not just of English politics, but of politics in general.

It was in these terms that the issue of Catholic and Protestant conflict was defined. The Catholics, by virtue of prevalence and the perception of a threat to the English Crown, became associated with native Ireland and the nation of Ireland, to whatever extent it existed at the time. The Protestants became associated with the English Crown and the subjugation of the native Irish, but it is wrong to think that Irish Protestants never suffered similar discrimination, and it is wrong to think Catholics in England always received much better treatment.

From the beginning of the English involvement in Ireland, the troubles were never strictly a question of Irish against English or of Protestant against Catholic. It was always a more complex relationship of English Protestant against English Catholic, not in Ireland, but in England, and not because they could not abide each other’s religious precepts, but because they could not abide each other’s politics. In the final analysis, the English transferred that relationship to the relationship with Ireland, which sometimes became a question of Parliament versus the Crown.

Padraic O’Neil’s Editorial Historie of the Irish Atrocities and Religious Concerns, Part IV: Limerick

To greater and lesser degrees, the fortunes of the Irish nation followed the fortunes of English Catholicism, mostly to the detriment of the Irish. The split of Henry the Eighth from the Catholic church in 1530 resulted in discrimination against Catholics that was magnified and endured even more persistently in Ireland. The triumph of Protestant-controlled parliament over the Catholic crown resulted in the devastation of Catholic Ireland by the army of Oliver Cromwell in 1649 and Establishment of a separate English protestant state in Northern Ireland as compensation to soldiers from the protestant armies.

Many of the inhabitants of the area were violently removed , some relocated to desolate areas of Galway to the west. The Irish had the additional misfortune of persecution even from English Catholics who found another political expedient in demonstrating solidarity with English Protestant politics by persecuting a Catholic faction. What better target than the ominous Irish, but the fault of the religion was hard argue, so they had to be made into perverse deviants distinct from English Catholicism. Nobody ever seemed to entirely buy into that argument, but it wasn’t really necessary as long as the population remained under control.

What had originally been suspicion of unfavorable political connections had now been established in the English political psyche as inherent opposition and violent intentions, complicated by the extensive presence of relocated English immigrants in Northern Ireland. Because Protestants ruled England at the time, Northern Ireland was a state of Protestants, but more importantly, a state of English Protestants.

If England had been in Catholic control at the time, Northern Ireland would have been a state of English Catholics, and the conflicts would involve English Catholics against Irish Catholics instead of Irish Catholics against English Protestants. In the remaining majority of the nation, Protestants of native Irish background (such as the Presbyterian descendants of immigrants from Scotland) and Catholics coexisted peacefully and were sometimes persecuted equally. Cromwell himself recognized the benefit of religious tolerance. Cromwell’s protectorate had nothing in particular to gain from persecution of Catholics. The concerns were royalist sympathies and armed insurrection.

The Gaelic Irish were encouraged by the Catholic King James II and provided support for James in the contest for the crown with William III. Despite the defeat of James at the Battle of the Boyne in 1690, with the help of French military advisors and officers, resistance continued in the south. Confusion generated by the sudden death of the commanding officer from canon fire in the middle of a successful charge resulted in a retreat to Limerick, from where the Irish under Patrick Sarsfield repeatedly fought off attacks by invading English expeditions.

Hopelessly out of supplies, however, Sarsfield accepted a settlement a day before the apparently unrevealed arrival of reinforcements from France. With what might be characteristic Gaelic principle over opportunity, Sarsfield stood by his word and refused to renew the conflict upon arrival of the French forces. In the infamous ceremony that followed, many of the Irish warriors marched from their ranks into exile rather than continue living under English rule

In fact. once the English were able to reestablish their forces, the settlement agreement was abandoned and additional restrictions were placed on the Irish. By then the Irish resistance had been contained, and Sarsfield achieved historical renown as either one of the most gallant warriors or biggest fools (or both) ever not to succeed in a national struggle for independence.

Some speculation been expressed to the effect that Sarsfield must have had a personal interest in negotiating a settlement so close to the threshold of victory, and likewise whether it would have been possible to have remained ignorant of the French ships approaching so close at hand. Aside from the obvious response that the nature of communications and the situation made ten miles or a few hours formidable obstacles, by all accounts Sarsfield repeatedly put his life on the line for the Irish cause.

What Sarsfield gained personally by capitulation is hard to appreciate, since he went into exile and died in the service of a foreign army. In any case, the results of Sarsfield’s efforts are curiously consistent with a pattern of snatching compromise from the jaws of victory represented by such notable examples as Hugh O’Neil and later, the “Abraham Lincoln of Ireland,” Daniel O’Connel.

What was it about the people and situations that resulted in negotiation of what would be remembered as failed results? A cultural attitude? An English strategy? Certainly the English profited from various manipulations of Irish psychology, including the attempt to attract Irish leadership and nobility into some sense of unity with (and deference to) English aristocracy. In some cases, English leaders quite simply and literally poisoned their opposition, either fatally or to a degree calculated to weaken their resolve, a practice that continued prominently at least through the Napoleonic wars. In any case, Sarsfield relinquished the essential national authority, and the English, always the opportunists, were not long in taking advantage of the concession.