Background to invasion
The devastating wars of the British nations, which had seen Edward I invade Wales and then Scotland in the 13th century, left Ireland largely unaffected.
However, Edward, the Caesar of Britain, had inherited the English Crown's claim to be Lord of Ireland, along with the rest of his estates. Irish gold contributed to his campaigns in Wales, 3,000 Irish men invaded Scotland with him, and while Irish grain fed his war machine, Edward never visited the island himself; indeed no English king did so between John and Richard II.
Significantly, and for the first time, the grant of Ireland to Edward: 'provided that the land of Ireland shall never be separated from the crown of England...', and so left it forever a part of the Plantagenet estate.
Anglo-Norman lords had settled in Ireland in the 12th century and never left. Its landscape now featured Norman castles and abbeys, just like the British mainland.
With the king of England so distracted at home, it came as no surprise that many English lords equally stayed away from their Irish estates, allowing the gradual reassertion of influence by the native Irish princes and kings. It was into the middle of this vacuum that Robert the Bruce dispatched his ambitious brother, Edward, in 1315.
For all the devastating completeness of the Scots victory at Bannockburn in 1314, Robert I, King of Scotland, knew that it was only a battle that he had won there, certainly not the whole war.
A year later, his claim to the crown of Scotland had still not been recognised by Edward II, King of England. Bruce and the Scottish nation also knew there was always the possibility that before long another great army of English knights and Welsh archers would come lumbering up over the Tweed.
'...Ireland shall never be separated from the crown of England...'
All his instincts - strategically sharp as always - told Bruce he needed to hit the English while they were still on the floor, and hit them where it hurt. The war was taken over the border into Northumbria, now subjected to raids of unsparing ferocity. For over 20 years the Scots held the initiative in northern England, terrorising the population and carrying off their goods.
And then in May 1315, Bruce did something much, much, bolder. His brother, Edward, landed a formidable Scottish army, at least 5,000 strong, near Carrickfergus in the north-east of Ireland. In effect, this opened a second front in the war against the English empire.
Robert had smoothed his brother's way by writing a remarkable letter to: 'all the kings of Ireland, the prelates and clergy and to the inhabitants of all Ireland, our friends'.
The Scots would come, he said, not as invaders but as liberators, for: 'our people and your people, free in times past, share the same national ancestry and are urged to come together more eagerly and joyfully in friendship by a common language and common custom'.
What he was proposing was a Gaelic alliance, across the Irish Sea, 'so that God willing, nostra natio - our nation - may be restored to her former liberty'.
Published: 2001-05-01
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