Henry II, Strongbow and Ireland
But then, as now, Henry had more urgent things to do than get directly involved in an obscure island west of England's shores. On the other hand, Diarmait's appeal had presented him with a windfall too good to turn down. So he gave Diarmait permission to recruit help from among his barons.
This is when the trouble became big trouble. For Diarmait promptly went shopping for mercenaries among the nastiest and greediest possible bunch of knights. These were the Anglo-Normans who, around the 1160s, seemed to be on the losing end of the war against the Welsh princes of Gwynedd.
They had lost castles, land and peasants. They were in an ugly mood and they were looking for somewhere to recoup their losses. Enter Diarmait.
Spread the word, the likes of Robert fitzStephen and Richard fitzGilbert de Clare (known to his friends, and especially to his many enemies, as 'Strongbow') must have said: 'Forget about Wales; forget about those unpleasantnesses in the mountains and valleys. Come west young knights. Ireland will be a piece of cake. It's said that the natives are primitive. But the pastures are green. So what are you waiting for?'.
Within a year Diarmait had his throne back in Dublin. But he also now had an army of Anglo-Normans who weren't about to go away now that the job was done. In fact, from the beginning, Diarmait had known this. He not only expected but wanted the likes of Strongbow to stick around, lest his old enemies get ideas of booting him out again.
Robert fitzStephen was quite right when he told his followers that Diarmait 'loves our race; he is encouraging our race to come here and has decided to settle them in this island and give them permanent roots...'. And Diarmait even went to the trouble of marrying his daughter to Strongbow to make sure that the alliance had staying power.
Their agreement spelled out that if none of Diarmait's sons survived (and one had been blinded, another been taken hostage, another was illegitimate), then Strongbow could even inherit the throne of Leinster himself!
'The Irish kings did homage to Henry as they would to any High King...'
At which point Henry II suddenly sat up and took notice of what was going on in the west. He had meant to use Diarmait's appeal to get a foothold in Ireland.
What he had inadvertently created was a monster: a colony of Anglo-Normans, who answered to exactly the kind of jumped-up superbaron Henry was busy sitting on in every other part of his enormous empire.
So in the winter of 1171, Henry crossed the Irish Sea himself, coming with an army big enough to give the likes of Strongbow serious second thoughts. It was then, in the wattle palace of Dublin, that he took the homage of all the six Irish kings, including Ruadrai Ua Conchobair.
And though everything that happened afterwards in the sad history of England and Ireland wants to say this was the moment when Ireland lost her freedom, no one at the time saw it that way at all.
The Irish kings did homage to Henry as they would to any High King, building the ritual hall through which they entered as his men, promising him one of every ten of their cattle hides in tribute.
And they saw him not as imperial conqueror at all, but as their protector against the Strongbows and the Anglo-Norman barons.
Published: 2001-05-01
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