Ireland in the Centuries

coming of the dioceses

2010-09-29T09:32:00.001-07:00

coming of the dioceses

In 1111 the Irish Celtic church overburdoned with Bishops and Abbots and most of these men were not actually consecrated as priests but were laymen with wives and children living in a monasterial communal setting.
A commue of Christians more or less with a main monasterial structure established by St Patrick and Colum Cille.

Armagh, Derry, Clonard, Kells Clonmacnois, Cong, Emly, Glendaloch among many the rest scattered over the country.

Each of these houses maintained their own local juridiction according to the whims or ideals of the current Abbot or Bisop along the lines of the old chiefs and family heads.
A sort of local government structure prevaling based on clientship and kinship.

Thre was no known central ecclesiastical government in Ireland.
There was no general guidlines or order [ordain].

Bishop Gilbert of Limerick laid out a simple instruction for Bishops and priests for all Ireland and presented a diagram of structure in the form of a pyramid or diamond overlapped by a second diamond which more or less creates the Star of David.

These divided one pyramid into Christ at the head and below himthe Pope his Vicar with Noah.
Than the scale of ranks and order of the clergy to the trioka division of society.
Those who pray, those who plow and Those who fight.

One pryamid triange diamond is headed by the bishop the other by the Abbot monastery.

The Bishop heads the ecclesiastic government and the abbot monk is to pray to serve God not to minister tothe laity.

This triest of Gilberts expects the traingle dioceses to be territorial, fixed and numbered and the Bishop episcopate subjed to the Pope in Rome.

This explaination was the case of the Synod of Rath Breasail in Tipperary presided over by Gilbert, a papal legate with the leadership of Malchus of Cashel, a monk of Winchester and the ArchBishop Cellach Sinaich of Armagh.
The king of Munster Muirchertach [Mortaugh] OBrien along with clergy and laity with 2 objectives in mind,
to injoin good order upon laity and clergy under the Bishops rule;

The Bishops were freed in perpetuity from the authority and rent of the lay princes to which Muirchertach to show good faith granted Cashel to the Church in 1134.

The second objective to establish Ireland into territorial dioceses.

That intent of the Synod was to divide the country along the old
Melisian kings division of Leath Cuinn and Leath Moga with Armagh and Cashel as ecclesiastic primates of the division.

These halves to be subdivided into 12 dioceses as Augustin had been instructed by Gregory I the Great in 595 AD and was recorded in the lost or unfound Annals of Clonenagh[nach] as discribed in Bede s Ecclesiastical History account .

Of the original consept of 24 diosceses, 17 were finally in vogue with Connacht assigned 5 more making 22 eventual territorial diosceses for Erinn.
Dublin and Clonmacnois were left out.

This Synod although enacted was not implimented sucessfully as the old coarbial familys resisted giving up their established hereditary control for the new order of Bishop and Monk Abbott.
Jurisdiction by territory not princly ajudiction.

The personification of this struggle between Clann Sinaich the heireditors and Malacy of Armagh the Monk and installed Archbishop.

He brought in his fellow monk Abbot Gilla M Liac from Derry Abbey who with the new papal legate Cardinal John Paparo replaced Malachy who died in 1148 at Clarvaux France.

In 1152 they held the Synod of Kells to complete the changes of Rath Braesail.
The dioceses system was finally installed in Ireland proving not the 2 halves with Armagh and Cashel but 4 Archdiocess.
Armagh, Cashel, Tuam and Dublin.
Provincial Archdioceses each having subdioceses.
12 for Armagh
5 for Dublin
15 for Cashel
8 for Taum

Other work completed at Kells was the abolition of Simony and usury
Prohibition against robberies,
sex irregularities,
defective marraiges,
payment of tythes regularly and promtly.

Lay control was discontinued and the princes and chiefs no longer to be paid rents by the monastery or themselves retain inherited rights to the abbot positions.

Roman cannon law replaced the old personal juridiction of each house to that of ecclesiastic order.

The Irish persisted even so in their marital practices and hereditary insistance and continued in ignorance and superstition.

This resistance to new ways and changes led the popes in Rome to desire the political subjection of Ireland to the English kings in order to further the Roman consept of religious prosperity among the Irish.

judi donnelly
copyright May 2010

addendum @ Criocnaigh

2010-06-11T10:00:00.000-07:00

Addendum Loc Ce Annala

In the last decade of the Gaelic Control of any part of Erenn on Little Christmas Day New years Day Aeda m Donnchada m Edmund O Ceallaig [O Kelly] died.

A noble brave man and he was buried at Cil Finnbuide at Athlone Rosscomain.

Aed Geinlech m John m Conn O Neill was surrendered to Aedh Hugh ONeill by Maguire the Earl of Tyrone and he hung Aeda O Neill son of the O Neill that a travesty to all Tyroen.

Cormac O Neill Hughs brother son Brain Corrac died.

Richard Bingham took an emmence army to Slaib Aeda where they burned dowqn the monastery of Maigin [Moyne] ,the monastery of Abrat na Rath Bron, the monastery of Ros Seirce,
broke down castles burned houses and corn.

The president govornor Bingham then went west to Tirawly County Mayo to Baile Easa Caoile of the Hi Fiacrach lands and made camp there at the waterfall of the sheep.
At this time some kerne of the army of Clann O Domnail [O Donnell] went out to burn Walter Burkes corn and macWilliams foot was stuck off by them from which wound he died.

This was Uillaim Caech m David m Edmond Burke.
Bingham went up to Conmaicne Cuile.
Bingham sent an army against O Ruaice in March to Muinter Eolis Liatruim [Leitrim ] to prey 10,000 cows.

By 1595 George Og Bingham was killed at Sligech by Ulich Burke m Remond [Redmond] and the town of Sligo was given to Aed Ruad m Aed dub m Magnus O Donnell.

In 1599 Mary o h' Iginn, daughher of Tadg Dall o Higgins, was born.

Brian Og m Brian m Ruaidre m Tadg m Ruaidr Og mac Diarmada[Dermott] lord of Maig Luir and Airtig and Tir Tuathal of the Gaeidel of west Europe died on 28 January 1636 from recuring bout of Dysentry .

He was at Ata Luain Counsil at the time which in 1636 was styled the Inqusition of Stafford to prove the title of this king to County Rosscommain .

In the habit of St Dominickwhen he died.

He was 33 1/4 year as king of Maig Luirg his own country .
At 53 years he died and is buried at Claun mic Nois on Februay 1 1636 St Brigdi Day .[St Brigid].
where 20 Lords had been buried before him.

A small pox outbreak killed many of the people that year.

On the 4th day of March 1648 Aed M Brian m Ruaidri m Diarmada died at Grainsech na Manach
[Grain cheif of the monks].

The charateristics of true prince as expected ,and attibuted to Brain Og at his death in 1636.

Lord of Maig Luirg

for he had dispenced most of the ollams and poets and men of science and visitors, companies and strangers to, innocent ,devout persons, and to pure orders, to paulpers, to widows and people of little property.
To the deaf and blind and the poor of God, to chiefs, princes and great champions.
To nobles, minstrels and to great seniors.
The maintainer of every sort of right, justice and good custom.
The expeller of every evil wrong and injury .
The subduer of the sinful and iniquitous.
The augmentor of every good and of every great property possessed of a great deal of knowlege, wisdm and learning,
Of acuteness, bravery and valour, the energy vigour and constant bounty .
The man who purchased the most odes, poems, and good eulogies in his own time.
The supporter of the maidens, innocents, and orphans.
A man who kept a general guest house for all who frequented it in the time of their want and great destitution.
And it is likely that he obtained the reward of his humanity and of his good heart from the Trinity for every doctor and divine says that when life is pure, so is death pure,that one will obtain the suitable reward beyond.

On the 4th day of March 1648 Aeda m brian m Ruaidri mac Diarmada died at Graisech na Manach.

Annala Locha Ce

Postaildeir

CRIOCHNAIGH

Judi Donnelly

copyright 9 June 2010

sourse:
The Annals of Loch Ce, a Cronicle of Irish Affairs from 1014-1590 AD, translated William Hennessy MRIA, McMillian and Co., Cambridge/London, 1871

IN WRITING THESE PIECES OVER TIME I HAVE TRIED TO BE SURE THAT FACTS PRESENTED ARE IN FAIRLY REASONABLE CRONALOGICAL ORDER BY ERA AND EVENT.
I HAVE ALSO TRIED TO BE SURE THE NAMES AND NICK NAMES ATTACHED TO PERSONS IS CORRECT.

I JUST FROM MY HEAD WITHOUT CHECKING ENTERED IN PARENTISIS THE NICKNAME OF TOIRDEALBACH OF THE CONNER HOUSE AS BEING [TURLOUGH OF THE WINES ] WHICH IS NOT CORRECT I CANT FIND THE ENTRY TO TAKE IT OUT.

TURLOCH WAS ONE OF THE O DONNELLS AND IN AN ENTRILY DIFFERNT CENTURY THAN TOIRDEALBACH SORRY.

IF ANYONE READING THE MATERAIL FIND ANY ERRORS IN FACT OR NAMES OR PLACES PLEASE FEEL FREE TO CORRECT ME.

IT IS SO NICE TO HAVE A PUBLISHING STAFF WITH ALL KINDS OF RESEARCH AND IMPLIMENTATION TOOLS BUT WE POOR PEOPLE GO WITHOUT THAT DONT WE, JD

Thegreat O Neill

2010-06-10T09:44:00.000-07:00

The Great O Neill

Aed m Mathew m Conn bacach O Neill know in history as the Great O Neill was born at Dungenain Castle [Dungannon] in county Tyrone in 1550.

When he was 8 years old his father Mathew was assasinated by his half Brother Shane M Conn who had been excluded from his inheritance right of the ONeillship and Earlship by the influence of the bishop of Conner under Eliazabeth and his father Conn Bacach.

Conn had been created the first Earl of Tyrone and had married Eleanor Fitzerald daughter of the Anglo lord of Kildare.

When Mathew was killed [marbad] Elizabeth who had come into the crown as Queen at her 1558 investure, had the child removed from Dungannon and taken to the Pale in Dublin where he was raised till 18 years.
He was than invested with his fathers title Baron of Dungannon by the Queen
Hugh ,as he was called in his Norman name was loyal servant of the Queen for most of his adult life providing miitary service to her.
He was well schooled in Engish manners. Wore English dress and had forgotten his gaelic speaking the English tongue.

A policy established by Elizabeth to civilize the 'wild irish' by depriving them of their language, culture and knowledge still apparent today.
This red headed young man educated as an English nobleman and ward of Elizabeth I , mentored for her by Sir Henry Sidney of Kent was taken to Sidneys castle to mingle with Englands lords and powerful families.
Dining with diplomats, conversing with English literatai.
By the time Hughs uncle Shane had been killed by the McDonells of Antrim,Aeda was a civilized Englishman ,fluent in English not Irish and intent to inpose Engish ways on his fellow Irish which endeared him to the Queen.

When he retured to his Dungannon home he joined the Britsh Army to help put down rebellions against Elizabeths attempt to conquer Ulster.

He was a member of the Irish Parliament in Dublin pale and was a supporter of planting more English colonists in Ireland.

In the meanwhile, Hughs uncle Shane, brother of his father Mathew, sought for himself the title and powers of his father Conn Bacach and the old title of O Neill as well as chief of the O Neill clanns.

Born in 1530 Shane had been fostered by the O Donnellys.
Probably at Benburb in Tyrone or BallyDonnelly on the Armagh side of the Abainn DubhUisce.

He was therefore foster brother of the O Donnelly clann children.

In 1559 he organized a rebellion against English administration in his home province of Ulster at the garrison built there to keep the Irish enemy in control.

This was mostly unsuccessful and Shane finally submitted to Elizabeth at London arriving with a legion of yellow clad spearmen and gallowglas troops.

He decried his lack of education and civility as his reason for rebellion.

He was reinstated to his Irish lands by Elizabeth but was soon back on the March to undermine his nefews position as heir to the Earl of Tyrone title.

He claimed his ancestors were kings of Ulster
'Ulster was theirs and shall be mine'

He conducted expeditions to Fermanagh and Armagh but was defeated by the Queens forces once more.

In the end his Irish rival O Donnell of Tir Connail defeated him totally at battle from which he fled to the macDonnell faction in east Ulster, Antrim ,for aid and this camp killed him instead along with his companion Dudley O Donnelly.

Shanes head was sent to Dublin and mounted on a pike at Dublin Castle for 4 years.

This slaying was probably ,although unproved, a planed coalition operation to get rid of him ,although it has never been established, the sourse of his assassination is probably that the English L.L. Sidney, a mentor of Hugh had given the mcDonnell a good offer to kill Shane.
Who again like other Irishmen of note, had an inborn sense to trust his own blood kin.
That they would do him no harm.

Shane was the oldest of Conn Bacachs sons and born of a ligitimate state in cannon law .
His mother had been properyly married.

He had been declared the O Neill by his clansmen at Tullogog near Cookstown where he was inagurated.

He was not happy to be just the O Neill but wanted as his right, as such ,the desirable title of Earl of Ulster as granted under the surrender and regrant his father Conn had made with the crown under Henry .
Shane was a bit of an imbiber often suffering extensive hangovers which he treated by having himself buried in sand up to his neck.

He had challenged Calvech M Manus O Donnell in 1562 and imprisoned this fellow lord taking for himself the affection and love of Calvech wife Cahterine O Leary.

Calvech O Donnell was the child of Manus by his wife Eleanor McCarthy and his south Eoganacht Munster clann.

At his meeting in Londson with Elizabeth who always held a fasination in her virginity for robust, handsome and forceful men ,restored him through the Peace of Drumcree, his claim to the O Neillship for his submission and acceeded to him an investigation to the parentage of Mathew his brother, claiming himself as the ligitimate cannon law heir of his father Conns possessions, titles and rights.

The English govenment, to control Shanes appeals to France and Scotland to enforce these rights, established a garrison of English soldiers at Derry: and with the alliance of O Donnell and the English and the gallowglas, Shanes forces were defeated at Farsetmore leading him to proceed to the macDonnells in the east who simply murderd him.

He was attainted of all his natural inheritance and holdings in 1569 by the English parliament and the O Neill title banned.

His 12 sons were thus landless and feared by the English still as they had redshank connections.

The Red shanks were higland Scots and isle Scots usually employed in the summer season as mercinery soldiers.

These men were in kilt as the tartan of their tribes and hence called Red Shanks by their bare leg.

There situation at home in north Scotland west, was one of poverty and overpopulation and a breakdown in their own lordships.

Mcleans, mcDonalds,Cambells ,Mac Quarries, Mac Leods.

They were 'buanated' on the local populations for 3 months by the gaelic lords of Ulster O Donnell and O Neill under contracts.

For good relations the gaelic lords took Scots wives from the Argyll [Argill].

Conn O Neill being at the first with his marriage to Mary macDonald in 1530 of Islay and Kintire. Later Earls of Antrim and the Route of 330,000 acres.
Mary brought with her dowry to conn 300 galloglas troops.

In 1587 Hugh was granted the controversail and contested title of Earl of Tyrone. What is now the 6 counties area of north Ireland.

This after he had been summoned to London and the Pirvy Council over the murder of Shane O Neills son when this son told the English that O Neill was negociating with the Spanish king.

He defended himself by discribing the ancient govenrment among the tribes of Ulster and was aquited with a warning and given the coveted title of Earl .

He after traveled again to London to 'shop' for furniture and accessorys and a supply of lead for his castle roof at Dungenain.

At age 37 O Neill was well on his way to controlling his own land.

At 43 O Neill again came to the aid of the crown against his fellow Irish lord ,Aeda Maguire of Fermanaghs when he feared the loss of Fermanagh to the English.
O Neill assisted his brother-in-law Sir Henry Bagenal who had married his sister.

Maguire required the help and alliance of AOda Ruaid O Donnell of Tir Conell, son of Finola Mac Donnell and Aeda Dubh mac Aeda Ruaid I O Domnaill, prince of Tir Conaill.

This Hugh Aed Ruaid being the same as had been kidnaped at raith Mullen by Sir Perrot who induced the young teenage lad into a ship in the harbor bearing wine .
Induced him to drink and took him to the Castle tower in Dublin where he was kept prisoner for 4 years till 1592 when an escape was finally executed with the help of Hugh O Neill.

Hugh himself was wounded in this Fermanagh skirmish and 2 of his sons had sided with Maguire and O Donnell against him and his English allies.

He had ambiguity between his English alliances and loyalty and his gaelic blood and the old Gaelic order vs the new Tudor order.

In his old age he was finaly persuaded to defend Gael over the English and was invested O Neill at Tullogog in East Tyrone the last invested O Neill before the fall of Old Ireland at the Battle of Kinsale and the 'Flight of the Earls' and the untimely death of the Virgin Queen in 1603.

At age 43 Mathews questionable titles from Conns pact were invested in Hugh Aed m Mathew m Conn making him the Great O Neill.

The English and Irish held their breath to see which of these titles was most dear to him.

In 1595 at age 45, he committed himself finally to defend the Gael.

He made an alliance with Aed Ruaid O Donnell then still a young 25 or so, united the Ulster tribes under his command building a new well trained well equiped army of 6000 men and in June annialated his brother in law, Sir Henry Bagenall English force winning a spectacular victory at Clontibet in County Monahan.

The Irish fighting furiosly but with skill and disapline.
A new factor in Irish insurgencies.

O Neill was defined by Elzabeth as the best man of war of his nation.
His fellows well trained soldiers and the best man of territory and revenues in his kingdom.

She proclaimed him a traitor of the crown and called him her monster of the north.

O Neill himself distroying the castle at Dungannon to keep it from English hands.

The contents removed shipped away to secure locations.

O Neill and O Donnell than sparred for time and to appeal to catholic Spain for support. King Philip 2 on the throne.
This king of Spain who had suffered the loss of his armada in 1588 was anxious to have vengance against the English.

However, the kings plans were tharted by mother nature the 1596.
The flotilla was unable to land in Eire and again, a 136 fleet with 13,000 marine forces aboard was broken up in 1597 by fierce storms off the Irish coast.

The two sides were preparing for war and Butler, Earl of Ormond and commander of the English forces as L.L. and O Neill parleyed across a stream in Ulster.

O Neill advised the L.L. to remove his troops from Ulster and the rebellion woud cease.
Ormand in reply demanded O Neills two sons beside him as hostages.
O Neill refused the guarantee.

The L.L. reminded Hugh of her Majestys generocity to him and O Neill replied,
'Her majesty never gave me anything but what belonged to me'.

The air of subservience to the Crown entirly gone.

O Neill by this time, was the husband of Bagenals sister Mable who he had married 4 years previously in 1593 as part of a peace settlement.

She had finally left the Earl on infidelity of this 43 year old man.
She walked to her brothers home where she died.

Luck of the Irish on O Neills part, mid life philander that she claimed him to be.

The Great O Neill pg 2

O Neill shortly thereafter beseiged the English garrison at the Blackwater Ft near the Yellow Ford ,
Ata Bui Lis Dubh Uisge, Tir Eogain

Bagenail led a relief column or 4000 English to attach the beseiger.

O Neill had 5000 and when the battle came on 14 August 1598 the Gaelic troops had amunition made from the lead never put on the roof of Dungannon castle.

The English column a mile long crossed open ground of bog and wood and O Neill skirmished and harrassed it from either side beyond the trees.
The Irish guerrilla style was successfully applied as they ambushed and than disapeared into the wood and bog.

Bagenal in typical English stiff upper lip fasion kept marching forward while the column was falling apart under the Irish attach.

O Neill set long trench traps to impede the English calvary.
These often a mile long and the trench warfare was born in the rolling hills of central Tyrone.

As the English approached the beseiged fortress O Neills spearmen advanced from the surrounding hills and O Donnell attached the Engish column from the flanks.
The English were stunned ,confused and could not regroup.

As the commander Sir Henry Bagenal advanced a bullet struck him in the face and he was killed instantly.

The Battle became a rout and half of the 4000 troops of the English were killed, wounded or missing in action.

It was Englands worste defeat in Ireland ever.

The Battle of Yellow Ford became famous throughout Europe and King Phillip 2 of Spain and the Pope wrote their congradulations in letters.
O Neill now was in command in Ireland.

As the victory spread to the south Ireland also rose in Munster.

The OBrien and McCarthy defying the rule of their overlords Norman Old English ,established their own districts as did the Oconnor delagates in Connacht.

However Elizabeth refused to compromise with the Irish enemy and her 'traitor' O Neill.

She began to call for a massive army to reinforce her troops in Ireland and the humiliation the crown was suffering from O Neill establishing a hostile kingdom on her western island.

O Neill again wrote to Phillip 2 of Spain asking 6 or 7 thousand spanish soldiers to be master of this kingdom.
He prepared a list of principles for which he and his client army of Irish were fighing.

He wanted freedom of religion practice for Catholics,
The top admininstration of Eire to be of the Irish race not English,
The lands confiscated from gaelic chieftains be returned,
Irish freedom to travel and trade as any other having the same rights as Englishmen.

The Queens advisors told her O Neill meant to become monarch of Ireland but the Irish saw him differently as trying to create Ireland under a well trained army .Disaplined and well organized. Funtional under a set of national principles.

They visioned the island at their own direction and under the council of Irishmen.

O Neill himself coined the consept of' HOme Rule 'an Ireland which ruled its own affairs but was loyal to the English crown.

The early consept of Griffith Sinn Fein party in 1900.

In 1601, 24 Spanish ships entered Kinsale Harbor 13 miles south of Cork.

21,000 Marines were aboard.

At this landing Hugh O Neill was 300 mies north in Tyrone at Dungannon.

The English under Mountjoy were at Kilkenny and he immediately took his army to Cork.

O Neill and O Donnell in order to counter Mountjoys impending attack on the Spanish at Kinsale, the invaders, were pressed by this situation to defend this ally needed to win against the English, were sent into a pattern of a forced march to the south sea of Ireland.

Mountjoy built a Cork force of 6000 men to eject the Spanish.

Knowing that if the Spanish prevailed all Ireland would rise against them and their tenious hold on the island.

In November following the impetious young O Donnell, the more cautious O Neill followed.

O Neill evaded the English and their Irish allies attempt to intercept him on his way south and they arrived safely ,if weary, at Kinsale.
The Combined Ulster troop about 6,500 men.
the English 7,500 troop battle ready.

The Spanish installed in a fortress on the coast were supplied as noted with 21,000 marines.
The Irish forces therefore had some 21,000 men or more than the arrayed Engish force.

For 3 weeks these two armys camped, waiting.

O Neill finally ordered an attack .
A predawn stike Christmas Eve Day.

The move was uncharicteristic, for the reserved slow and unrattled O Neill ,to go to such boldness but it is speculated he was persuaded by the young restless ODonnell to forgoe his usual caution.

O Neill was 51 years old.

On this morning as the dawn rose to thunder and lighting overhead, 3 Irish divisions armed with muskets opened fire on the English.

The English ordered a calvary charge againts their center.

The O Neill divisions suddenly broke and in the face of this direct horse charge the infantry fled and were chased down.
A rout was at hand.
The English marveld at the miraculous victory.
The fighting had gone on for an hour.

Hugh O Neill marched his shattered army back to Ulster.
O Donnell who had lost his way before the dawn attack tried to hold the retreat.

The Spanish soldiers encamped in Kinsale shipped out and O Donnell was sent to Spain with letter to the New Spanish king ,Philip 3.

He decried the king for landing at Kinsale so far away from the ONeill country that forced his troop to march 100 leagues[300 miles] in the dead of winter through the enemy country.

This had been the tactical error made by O Neill intent of honor in defending the troops of Spain against the English intent of sending the Spanish back to Spain.

If he had remained deployed in his own country and held Ulster, allowing the Spanish at Kisale to defend themselves or leave, the outcome of Irelands future would have been different.

The desire to send Red Hugh as an emessary also an error of personal desire to trust.
The same quality and belief that led Shane O Neill to his death among his kinsmen the Mac Donnell and Michael Collins in 1922.

Perhaps an outgrowth of christain training from childhood.
To have Faith.
To Believe.
To have honor to hold Respect.
To have the love and loyalty of the audience.
The same emotion which lead Elizabeth to call him her traitor when he had rejected her as his sovereign lord.

Elizabeth being a woman ,once denied, fell no more into the trap of trust where the Irish chieftains had heard a wispering hope in their hearts.
Whose voice they heard and welcomed when the dark midnight is over watch for the breaking of day.

Aed O Neill believed.

Within a year his emmessary to Philip 3 was poisoned in Spain.
He reallized the game was up.

His well disaplined army was shattered.
They had qualms about dying for this lord.
Dying for Irleland in the far of province of Munster.

Mountjoy, to accent his victory, marched his victorious men into Ulster.
Went to Tullogog Hill the tumulus on which generations of O Neill provincial kings had been invested and inagurated and shattered their stone chair.

[Its ramains now in the National Museum at Dublin].

In March 1603 ONeill submitted to the Crown and terms of settlement were signed at Mellifont Abbey in Louth.

Elizabeth died at this point and O Neill wept for the old Queen.

The great O Neill pg 3

Again a softness in the Irish character ,a dreamer of great ideals and an understanding of feeling able to make the whole people connect with the spirit of fairy,
The awarness of other worlds and the story ,the Tain ,of their race as well as the Holy spirit of impractical christian reserection and heaven and angels and prayers which took away from them the hard involuable callousness to life expressed by Cromwell.

the Irish gave quarter the English not.

As sullivan was an ally of O Neill in the South ,the English attacked Dunboy Castle in Bantry Bay.
Donnal O Sulliven the lord of Beare.

The castle was shelled over their heads by the English artillery and the O Sullivan contingent was foced to flee with the men woman and children left of the far souther tuath.

ON the New Years Eve day of 1602 he set out from Glengarrif in retreat with 400 fighting men and 600 women , childern and servants.

In their flight they had not been unable to take food and again trusted in their fellow Irishmen along the route to sell them provisions and provide shelter for them..
The Lord Suillebain had lots of money from the Spanish king.

However as they passed north through BallyVourney over the mountain out of Kerry and than through Duhollow to reach Lis Carroll,
John Barry attacked their rear as they crossed the ford and they had to fight this skirmish lossing some of their men.

The lord went on to the Ballyhoura Mountans, encamped a night at Ardpatrick.
Than to Glen Aherlow in the vast Galtys.
They could not buy any food and had to exist on herbs and water.
The men were oppressed with fatigue and hunger.

In their early march they had tents but these were somehow lost and they had to rest under the open night January sky and the bitter cold and wind of this season.

When they crossed into Tipperary fighing their way here amongh the English enemies they were forced to comandeer food supplies by stealing.
The chief maintained a strict disapline however and so they were able to make slow and bitter progress .
His wife had with her a two year old child baby boy but she could carry him no futher and intrusted the child to faithful dependents who were able to rear the child and after send him back to his parents the O Sullivans in Spain.

After 9 days the troop came to the Shannon River near Portland in north Tipperary and were able to stop for two nights.

They were pursued all the way from Dunmboy on the Beare peninsilla by Carew the English general who was bound and determined to annialate them.

In their midst however they had a skilled boatmaker, O Hoolahan, who directed them in the making of carraghs of boughs, ozier twigs and horse skins.
Eating the horse flesh they created 12 boats from the twelve horses skins and were able to cross the Shannon river to the west bank at the last moment with the sherriff of Tipperary, Doanagh mac Egan, at their back to attach them.
O Sullivan was able to kill this agressive man ,owner of the Redwood castle and many of his men.

They landed in O Kelly country and had to defend themselves in continous skirmishes.

The wounded had to be abandonded to a certain death if found.
The reamining party had to enter houses along the route and take any food they could lay hands on. Bringing such to their starving companions.

At Augrim they were attacked by Engish Captain Henry Malbie and O Sullivan placed his men so they were protected on all sides but the front where the enemy troops had to pass on foot though a soft bog.

Malbie went forward and was killed and after a bitter fight O Sullivans men were able to free themselves from the attacking English force.

They went onward over Slieve Mary at Castle Kelly and through the Burke terratory where the people harassed them to prevent them from obtaining provisions.

In west Roscommon they conscealed themselves in a thick wood near Ballinlough but they were to get no rest there as Burke and his people were trying to surround them in the morning and kill them all.
The march was resumed through the night in a tempest of sleet and melting snow.
They were pursued by mac David Burke but he dared not come to close quarters with them.

They arrived at another solitary wood and the people there were freindly .
They lighted fires for warmth and refreashed themselves.
They than crossed the Curlieu hills to the river Buill [Boyle] as the river entered Lock Ce.
The troop of refugees had endured insufferable suffering and hardship.
they avoided the roads and went cross country by rugged rocky ways walking all the time for any horses left could not indure this terrain.

Snow as falling and drifts were in the mountains and many were overcome by fatigue ,hunger and sickness.

They finally reached the territory of O Ruairc of Brefney and the O Ruairc residence ,Leitrim Castle, where they were kindly welcomed at the mansion.
The trip had been two weeks a troop of 1000 persons and on arrival at Leitrim ony 35 remained.
18 armed men, 16 servants and one woman.
Later some stragglers arrived in pairs or threes and all the rest had either perished or were left behind wounded ,sick and fatigued.

The troop later was able to make its way to O Donnell and this lord assisted them in getting passage to Spain.

A portrait of Sullivan Beare was later made in that court and now hangs at Kildare Street Heraldry museum.
A handome ,solitay, narrow chined man looking down on the museums computer lists of soidlers who had served in the armys of Spain, France ,Austria and elsewhere.
I found the name of my own family in the France Brigade.

In the south at Dunboy the rebels were still in the hills with plans for a rising.
Carew turned the countyside into a desert in chrateristic English desire to annialte the Irish enemy, born or unborn, in or out of the graveyard.

Sir Charles Wilmot and his English regiments overran all Beare and Banty distroying all they could and the peninsella was totaly wasted.

And Carew caused the entire country of Kerry, Desmond,Beare, Bantry and Carbery to be left wasted and uninhabited. any who could witdrew their cattle into the east and north of county Cork.
The Rings of Kerry lay in Gods care.

ONeill was broken the land depleated and famished.

His life was in danger from the Engish intrigue and on 14 September 1607 ,Hugh Aed m Mathew m Conn O Neill with his allys from tir Conaill along with their familys were spirited out of Ireland from Rath Mullen on Donegals Loc Swilly for France.

They would never return again to Ireland as the famine escapees 2 centuries later, left Cobh harbor at Cork seeing the spires of St Annes fading behind them as they sailed for the 10 pounds paid passage for the new world.
As yet not having the lady of the harbor to greet them at Bedlow Island in the East River river harbor of NY.

The new king of England James I Stuart with his parliament promptly echeated the entire O Neill and O Donnell holdings and created the colony of Ulster Plantation.
Bringing Scots and English settlers to colonize the north.
All dependable prodistants completly loyal to the Crown.

King James deported 3000 officers of O Neills remanant army to Sweeden.
O Neill himself was not welcome in France and proceded to the Netherlands.
He was finally able to make his way over the Alps through Provence and Switzerland to Italy and Rome where he was welcomed by POpe Paul V who provided him with a small palace and a stiphend.

O Neill reamined in Rome for the rest of his life unable to obtain any military assistance to recover his land and titles from Spain, France or the Vatican.

10 years later in 1517 the Great O Neill died there.
He was ony 67 years old.
His body was intered at the Janculum Hill at San Pedros Church.

No history was made of his family there or what happened to them or the Sweedish exiles.

ONeill had married 4 times divorcing his first wife Catherine ONeill.

He married Joanna Siobhan Mc Donnell who bore him one child Alice O Neill.
She was a daughter of Brian macDonnell of the route in Antrim.

He married Mable Bagenal at Dublin .later She left him.
And finally Katherine Magennis who went with him to Rome.

His mother was Siobhan Maguire.

O Neill had been made a beggar by his uncle Shane.
Beholden to the Queen of England for his survival as a child and young man.
He was than a beggar of the crown for most of his adult life .
Securing his position by subservience and doclity.

In his internal desire to become gaelic and to free his county he again begged assistance from the great kings of Europe who sent him pittance without respecting him as an equal.

In surrendering once more and accepting terms he again became beholden.
Beholden even for his escape to Rome by adherants and spys who spirited Himself and his loved ones away from the grasp of those intent on distoying him.
In Rome he died ,again a beggar, supported by the Pope and the Church 59 years a Beggar at the Gate. Solomans own child.

In Ireland now king James Stuart, child of Mary Queen of Scots, systematically displaced the Irish peasants with good presbyterian settlers and staunch members of the Chursh of England established by king Henry 8 to succeed in divorcing his wife Cathernine ofAragon mother of Mary a daughter and Henry desired a son.

The settlers were out to make money. They built towns established shops exploted Irish tribes and exports.

By 1622, 13,000 settlers had migrated to Ulster alone and some 100,000 had come to the small province in the north by 1640.

In the southeast as far north as Louth and the Boyne River Ireland was already planted with English settlers and Norman Lords as the Viking Norse and old English now in country for some 700 and 400 years respectivly.

The Connacht lands were parcelled out between the O Connnor desendands and the Norman Burkes.
Thomond and Luimnech areas still held by the old O Brien and in the far south the McCarthy More lands in Kerry.

After Mountjoy and Essex had driven out the Spainish from Kinsale they shelled with cannon the Irish ally Sullivan Beare distroying the castle over his head.
The O Sullivan march north to safetly was a bitter end to the once secure and noble green pastures nestled comfortably in the great western ocean filled with cattle, and self contained.

A people quick to gain knowlege understanding and security now lay at the mercy of the gall, the foriegner, the invader-- helpless to resist.

The stucture broken and their history lost with their music, arts and now the language and Faith in God.

And thus they remained for 3 centuries under the iron rule of England and her army including all the punishments man can indure until 1850 when the great hunger drove them reluctantly to the slums and prejudices of the new world anglican america.

Ireland still in 2010 stuggles to find its way in their own land .
To sing its own song in its own tongue and to restore to itself, Irishness.

Judi Donnelly
copyright 14 June 2010

sourses:
For the Cause of Liberty, Terry Golway,Simon and Schuster, NY, NY ,2000
Oxford Companion to Irish Histroy, S J Connolly, Oxford University Press 1998
A Consise History of Ireland, P. W. Joyce,
http:// WWW.libraryireland.com

The west of Ireldn prt 2 pg 1-3

2010-06-10T09:42:00.000-07:00

1550- the Gaels
The West of Ireland

When Aeda m Mathew O Neill was Born in 1550 the Earl of Clann Ricard along the Old Kelly territory of the South Shannon ,demanded RosComain be surrendered to him by Tadg Buide OConnor but O Conner did not give up his town.

The Earl went with his army to Tobuir Ailbe and the fort of Ruaidri m Tagh m Diarmada and in 2 days and nights took the fort.

This place was a place full of cows, horses , arrows, ordanance and music and wine were plentiful in Mac Dermots fortress.

It was well populated by men from Cul Maile to Sliabe BuiDuinn and from Bel Ata Achaid to the Sionuinn[Shannon or Sinon].

The Earl of Clannricard took Diarmaid with him as captive to Clauinn Connmaid.
Muilennadam was captured by Brian m Ruaidri m Diarmada and he and his brother Cormac with Maoilruanaid preyed Corann.

Tadg Carrach m Donnchada of Corann paid the 100 marks to redeem Muilen-na dam but the mac Diarmada sons Carried of the spoils.

In 1551 the upper Munchind [the maidm na muincinde] were defeated and given to Jordan [T'sintan] [m Buide m Sean m Walter mic CiarDealba [Costello] by Ruaid Muirchertack m Diarmada.

The Irish within the west were prosperous in the second half of the 15th centrury .
Their lois and forts were overflowing with cattle and wine.

Good drink and food and good sport prevailed and usually a prey was hardly missed as the cattle rustlers from up the road were later revisited by the cattle rustlers from down the road and the cows went willing back and forth with a few princely hostages for guarantees.

Children were born and minimal controls made and the Normans settlers in the countyside ajusted to acting as the Irish natives, started making deals through cattle.
Rising out and buring the crops and demanding surrender of the various castles of each other and if successful, distoying the same.

Even though some were killed on the field of battle the death was considerded honorable and did not distroy the solidarity fo the tribal group or their wealth ,or thier chiefs ability to deal and make treaties with the perpetrators of these field deaths.

Geneological records were kept and most knew the line of descent of most of the surrounding peoples as well as the lands they occupied.

Each sept was kept under a overlord prince.
Diarmada, O Neill, O Connor ,Burke, Fitgerald,O Donnell, McCathy, O Sullivan ,Reilly and o Ruairc, O Toole add o Byrne, and of course the O Kelly .
Muirchada overlord of all Leinster.

The Annals of the Churches recorded all the deaths of important persons and their Abbots and Bishops and the major battles of the countryside known to them.

The young Edward 6th, son of Henry 8 ,died after only 6 years as king of the Saxons in 1553.

At this time these friendly regularly held preys of cattle and burning of crops with at times ,large serious Irish armys came under a prince usually his sons, and war was made between major tribal divisions.

Such as the 1555 army of the sons of Ruaidri m Diarmada ,Connor and Brian, who took an expedition to Crutonn O Maine- the O Kelly lands, taking a large prey and burning the countyside and on this prey Connor took a sickness in the field and in a week died of it.

He was a celebrated noble of that country and admired for his daring and prowess.

In this 1555 expedition the monastary of Buill [Boyle Abbey] was captured by this Brian m Diarmada and the Abbot captured.
He ,Tomaltach m Eogan m Diarmada m Diarmada son.Brian a relative of the Abbot Tomaltach.

Brian than terrorized Coill Feachtna at the Rinn Points.
He than placed himself in the hands of mac Diarmada the provincial king under whom he lived.

The father and son team than set out to recover the preyed herds from Flannagan and his allys and the army went against Diarmada.

But the king and his son Brian recoverd the herds and the Army was defeated and routed.

In this instance a slaughter arose and 100 men plus this prince led under Flanagan his son Edmond m Edmond m William Flannagan was killed.

In that decade a war was held beteen the Ceallaig [Kellys].
Donncahd Redmond o Ceallaige and Brian m Maolsechlainn O Cellaige with a band of men and 80 mercinarys [gallowglas] burned Baile Lios Dalon Lais, the O Kelly residence, and they disturbed the entire country from the Suca River to the Sinainn and in response to this the O Ceallaig m Ruaidre mac Diarmadas and his kinsmen came with a large force west to meet the rampaging Brain O Kelly who was slain at the battle.

Tuath outbreaks and depredations customary in the western country.

By the time the Great O Neill was 10 years old and he had been placed in the wardship of Queen Elizabeth in Dublin the entire west of Ireland from Donegal, the Mayo down through Galway ,and the Kelly land of Roscomman to Athlone and on into the Limerick territory of O Brien, a continious 10 year activity of raids and counter raids battles and cattle preys went on between the Clann O Connor , Dermott, Burke et al.
Demolishing and terrorizing the country for 100 or 200 miles.

This occupation to internal dispute left the future final ruler of Ireland fall to foreign administration with an ingrained childish caution and desire to be safe which he did not overcome in his own personality until midlife and which affected his decision to attack at Kinsale and even to leave Ulster safety to defend a foreign troop for Spain.

In 1568 mac Diarmada king of the whole Clann of Maoilrunaid died.
He was Ruaidri m Tadg m Ruaidri Og King of Maig Luirg and Airtech and Tir Tuatail and chief of the whole territory of Cann Maoil Ruanaid.
Both lay and ecclesiastic.
Abbot of Trinity Island on Loc Ce for 23 years and 19 years chief of all the Clann Maoil Ruanaid territory.

A man noted for his generosity and learning and upholding of right and justice under the law of the old books.

Knowlagable and skillful in science. A knight of his own right in fighting enemys and pirates [Danaraib].

A prince who had dislayed traits of charity humanity and intelligence from infancy too death without envy or malice.
He died in respect and love from all.
Poets and ollams, patrons and priests.
The poor and widows.
Strangers, orphans ,the ill ,and pilgrims, guests and exiles whom he had touched in life.

He spent 1/2 year at MacAire Connact for 12 years regardless of the disapproval by the foreigners ie: Norman Anglo Burks and the Gaeidel and other knights.

This camp of the son of the chief, kept near Sgeitn na Gcend um Furaran nGar um Iomaire Moige-- the Moy--hOi[Ai].

But the great respected Diarmada died of an inescaptable desease [either old age or small pox ?].

His body was honored on the Rock of Mic Diarmada and interred at Trinity Island monastery on Loc Ce in the sepulchre [ nadlucad]of former Abbots, his ancestors.
He was 68 years old.

After his death the Clann MaoilRunaid suffered evils and their power and prospertity was ruined.

The Brugaids, farmers and Boitachs, herders were impoverished.

The patrons and professors and AirChinnig [admininstrators of daughter churches- Oireinnigs], and many princes, nobles slain.

The Gaels of the West pg 2

The Gael and Gaedil and Saxon and Albanach had a general war and Magh Luirg, Magh Ai ,Airtech and Connacht from Loch Aillinne to Cam s'rutm were wasted entirely.

Cold famine theft, violence .rape ,desacration and oppression ruled Connacht.

Many left or where banned but foreigner and native high and low went away to
Tir Amalgaid
Tir Fiachrach
Lower Connmaigh
Clann Richard

they went seeking refuge.

Toirdelbach m Eogain Mac Diarmada was consecrated the new king of the territory and ordained under the church, assembly and laity and ollams.

The west continued in depredations .
Taking of preys by its ruling familys and by 1571 when Hugh O Neill turned 21 years of age in the English courts ,an anglizied prince of Tyrone, a great war erupted between the Diarmada faction ,decendants of Tadgh vs desendants of Eogain who employed 300 Albanach galloglas and they drove out Ruaidris decendants to Mainech country [Kelly] distroying much of the dwelling of Magh Luirg.

In that year Edward Fitton Deputy of the king called in Connacht
The 'President' came into Connacht with an army of the Queens forces,the Earl of Clannricard and Ulich an fiona, the Sill Ceallaig [Kelly] and Clann Donnail of Wicklow ,Captain Collier and Patrick Cusach and the rising out of the Gaelen.

Fitton was at Ath Luain and when O Conner Donn, Diarmaid m Cairbre went to meet him the President made him a prisoner.

His son Aed and a handful of choise men went to Ata Luain [Athlone] by ship and bought Connor Donn out of his captivity by stealth.

He hence hired 800 Albanachs and the Connors combined together in an expedition.

They burned PoBal ,Caech ,Crutonn ,Cetronn, and brought great herds of cattle from upper connacht.

Fitton came with a great army to Machaire, Connact. Took Baile an tober [tobair] and Riabach Castle which the President distroyed.

The preying, depridation , cess and fighting the large Queens army continued and O Donnell, Aed m mic Manus came to EasDara baile and combined with Eogan mac Diarmadas sons.

They attached the fort and Brian mac Diarmada at Clann Fagartaig Capturing 2000 of his cows and his horses.

Brain hence complained to the President Fitton and the Deputy came with the English Army to Clann Conn Maid .

This army of Brain m Diarmada nation and the English proceeded to Bealach Mointe and from there the Sherriff with a band of Gaeidel went out in front of the English army to attack the Buile.

In 1577 Sligig [Sligeach or Sligo today],was hotly fought over by the forces and clanns under mac Diarmada vs the English.
All of the northen and lower Connact tribes including h'Enry Niall Conallach[Connelly] the O Neill.

In that period the late 1570s, violence was done within families to the extrme.

When the mag Uidir [Maguire] Cu Cuinacht, Hound of Connacht, induced his grandsons Brian and Donnough Og
[Donncada] to hang Sean, the son of Donncada which they did.

But in that same year 1578 a great Irish council was held at Baile Ata Cliat [Dublin] which was attended for 5 weeks by Brian m Ruaidri mac Diarmada and Domnaill m Tadg m Catal Og where they were both recieved.

The meeting known as the Comairle [Council] do Erenn.

The meeting was attended by such notable chiefs as Aed o Byrne of Clann Duibsit ,the Dorcey.

William Burke went in to Gailim [Galway] to make a peace with the Engish and had guarantees from the maer of that town.

But before he had gone in ,a perpatration upon Cloinn Ricard by Willam Martin and 2 soldier bands with him and these along with the saxon apprended William Burke and his people were even hung by the Saxon and he himself put in prison regardless of the mayors guarantees.

Shortly the lords son and Toirdealback m Donncahda O Brien were also hung.

These hung on Corpus Christi, Beautiful Thursday, the 26 of May 1581; and William Burke ,the Earls son, on Saturaday 3 days later ,29 May 1581.

In that year the Battle of Lisbon was fought by king Phillip of Spain under the command of the Duke ofAlva ,the Dalbuige ,guardian of the Spanish.
4000 men were slain at this battle and Lisbon taken for King Phillip 2 of Poirtengel [Portugal].

An army of Scots was sent to lower Connacht by Malbie and was formerly the sons of Domnall Ballagh m Comnail o Conner Sligig and Cathal O Connor with all the forces of Cabrey, Gallowglas and servants but the Albanch won the day and many chiefs and lords of the lower Connacht area were slaughtered that day of their defeat.

The Scots than broke the Castle of Mag OGadra and O Ruaircs new town was distroyed at Druimalaire in Leitrim as well as his residence.
Druim da Eitair was distroyed by o Ruairc himself to keep the saxon from possessing these.

Captain Malbie the Saxon governor of Connacht had hostages of Connor Sligeach.

Malbie then marched to Ulster and demolished Leibir Strait Ban.

O Neill thus broke down the Strath Ban to keep the Saxon from occupying it and Malbie had come to the aid of O Donnell in his fight with O Neill.
But O Neill won and many were killed.
200 or 300 besides their leaders the mac Suibhne and Aed m Modarda.

These fell at the hand of Toirdelbach Luinech m Niall Conallach, the hi Neill.

The Gaels of the west pg 3

The Ballaig cille S'gora Castle was struck by lighting and Sean Ruaid m an Filed, red John son of the poet, was killed by it along with horses and cattle and the church steeple was broken by this lighting.

The Justicar put to death 18 heirs of the foreign rulers in March at Baile Ata Cliat, Dublin and than this year 1581 ended.

In 1582 Mary Burke daughter of the Anglo Oliver, Ben [wife] of the blind Bishop died 200 years after the continental orders came into Ireland to reform the old concubining Celtic Church.

When her brother Richard m Oliver Burke died .William Burke by his own proclaimation declared himsef the MacWillam in 1598.

The centralized church of St Peter still stuggling with 'the drive'.

Connallian the Rock of Connaill was in powe at the time.

The Irsih and Anglo continued on their set path of killing each other and their own.

The son of Connor Donn, Turloch {Toirdelabach] m Diarmaid m Caibre died and was intered at the 'mound of the romans' Duma na Romanach at Roscomainn.
A much lamented prince of Erenn.

In that period the English custom of Dueling took hold of some of the nobility of Erenn and at one point personal satisfaction was concluded between Connor m Corann m Concobair Failge of Offaly, and Tadgh m gilla Patraic O Connor of Offaly held at Balile Ata Cliat in which Conor Failge was killed by Tadg m gilla Patraicc.
As noted the Irish tended to be quick learners.

McCarthy Mors son Diarmaid in south Kerry took a band of soldiers against Suillebhainn at Beare on Bantry Bay with an alliance of Saxon soldiers.
But Sullivan defeated him.

Fratricide rose amongh the Anglo Burkes the only other one remained in folklore was the 1 AD killing by king Concobair m Nessa of Niose of Uisnech one of the 3 sorrows of Erenn and in Lays of the Western Gaels.

They distroyed the entire country over it.

Sean Piroid [Sir John Perrot] was made Justicar and a govorner for Connacht was sent with him by Elizabeths Court.
This was Richard Bingham[ Bingaim].
They both came into Ros Comain made the son of Connor Donn their prisoner..
But his cousins came and gave them 3000 pounds to guarantee his peace and they gave the Justicar another hostage,
Brian m Suibhne son of Domnall left at Roscomain in chains as securty for Aed m Connor Donn.
They than went to Gaillim and were met by mac Willaim [Burke] and he gave them hostages from his kin.

They than went to Limerick [Luimnech] from there to O Ruairc in lower Connacht which is in the north.
Plundered the Corann and took Cathal Og m CathalDub m Donnchada [Donnagh].
The chief there at that time was Aed m Cairbre m Donnagh.

John Peroid then went into Ulster and brought out Toirdelaback Luinnechs son who was than the O Neill.

Eleven lords ruled Connacht son of the Anglo and the Rest part of the O Conncobair family.

Carraige mic Diarmada the Rock of Diarmada.

This govorner Bingham had no respect of Ruaid defence took into custody the sons of Walter Fada Burke and sent them in chains to Ata Luainn.

The English Saxon attacked the Scots in the Glenns ofAntrim and Rose the ingen of O Neill.
She was the wife Conn Calabach O Domnail [O Donnell].

The albanach were put out of Erenn by the Saxon.

John Peroid declared a session of Parliament at Baile an Cliath and all the worthy men of Erenn attended.

At this parliament the sons of Maoil Mauid and Edmond [Emann]Dorcha, son of O Donnell m Murchada mac Suibhne were hung.

The passes through Erenn were leveled by the Saxons and a tribute of an ounce of gold on every quarter ecclesiastic or lay, was placed in the province of Connacht.

Sean na Muaide [RugMoy] tigerna Clainn mic Eogain .Conn m Art m Niall Conallain O Neill was killed [marbad] by Aed Conconnacht mag Uidir son of the Maguire and Felim Dub m Niall m Conn o Neill was marbad by Sean m Maguire.

Garrett m Garrett m Garrett Fitzgerald died in England.

Antwerp in Flanders was conquered by King Phillip 2 of Spain
from the Flemmings and the Saxons.

h'Enri na tuad m Garrett m Garrett mic Garrett Fitzgerald came to Erenn with the Baron of Delvin with power from Queen Elizabeth.

The young earl brought the bodys of his father Gerald, Lord Offaly, silken Thomas 11th Earl of Kiladre and his brother and these Fitzgeralds were interned at Kildare.

Alastar m Somairle [Alaster] Boide [mc] Meg Domnall was killed by the English and his head carried to Baile an Cliat.

Judi Donnelly
copyrigth 9 June 2010

sourse:
Loc Ce Annals 1014-1590, Willam Hennessy translation ,Vol 2, London 1871, several publisher, ie: Parker and Co., Oxford

The WesternGael prt 1 pg 1-3

2010-06-10T09:41:00.000-07:00

The western gael prt 2 pg 1

By 1588 a new Justicar was appointed by Elizabeth one Williamfitz Willian who distroyed any quitness in Erenn .
He was at war not only with the enemy Irish but with his own Anglo party.

Additional Bishop John Lynch was approved in 1583 and reamined as Bishop till 1611 when he resigned.

This Bishop was heredical and wicked in Oilfinn, his See.
He resided at Grainsig at MacAire.

In this year the o Reilly sons [Raghillig] went on a prey of the relations.
The sons of Toirdelbach O Raghillig overtook them and a battle was had over the cattle and they recovered the prey from Edmond.
20 of his men were killed along with Eoin Og m Eoin Mic Toirdelabach who was killed by Edmond O Reilly.

In Gallim the Saxon continued to hang sons of Rebel Irish.
Cathal m Toirdealbach mic Diarmada , Cedach m Connor Ruad and the son of Mac Conmac all hung together and the Donncada m Felim Buide along with them.
All of noble birth and pledged by that alone to defend the land and peoples of Erenn and thus the Irish enemy by birth.
They were born to it.

Domnall mic Domnaill of Aed O Gallcubair and his people went on a prey against the people of Conn m Calbach Og O Donnell.
Mac Calbach Og was killed and the O Gallcobair,John O Gallager m Toathal Balb, John Og m John m Felim O Doherty[Docairtaigh], the perpetrators were both apprehended by mcWillim the Justicar and taken to Dublin in that year 1588.

A Spanish fleet came to Ireland and some 9 of the ships were lost off Mumna and Connacht and the Saxon killed any of them who were not drowned and took the spoils coming ashore from the wrecked ships.
Gold ,Siver and goods.

The offical reports of the Irish secretary of state ,at that time Geoffrey Fenton, showed more tham 18 ships had wrecked.

At that time the whole southeast provence of Leinster was in the control of the Queen.

The Justicar master William Burke took a hosting to Connacht of all the men of Erenn in his comand except Ulster still held by O Neill and distroyed the country from Ath Luain to the Eirne [Erne].

The year showed a bountiful harvest in grain and O Donnell took 3000 cows in a prey against Aed m Calabach O Donnell who was then killed at Tir Aeda by the son of O Neill.

In France the Duke of Guise was killed by the king of France. Part of the kings family.

At mag Eo [Mayo] the English sheriff, master Browne [Brun] and Domnall o Dalaig took an expedition to Irrus depreciating and killing, but they were overtaken by Richard Burke , son of the Devils hook, and Walter, grandson of Shane Burke in Balla termon and the 300 Saxons were defeated by their fellow Norman Anglos, Old English ,and the Sheriff Browne and Daly were both killed for their trouble.

A prey was conducted by the O Neill, Niall m Tordealback Linech, by invation of Nial Garb m Conn m Calbach O Donnell to take the cows of Eogan m Dean O Gallager and they obtained great amounts of cattle with the combined efforts of O Donnell ie: Niall Garb and the O Neills.

They were resisted by the Clann Suibne but O Neill defeated them and returned to west Uslter with the spoils.

It is inetersting that the Loc Ce Annals discribe Niall m Toirdealbach [Turloc of the wines] as the O Neill in 1588 and not his father as the history generally continues the O Neillship directly to Hugh m Mathew the Queens prodigy, on the death of Toirdealbach as no other heirs were apparent.

Robert Dillon the sheriff went again to Oriel.

Maguire and his chief taken prisoner and he was defeated in this foray by Brain m Aed Og Mathgenain [Mahon], native ruler of the Airgealla territory, Armagh, Louth, Monahan et al., who defeated Dillon the English sheriff.

Tadg Flaithbertaig the prince of Bertaig son of the Murcahda sons went on an expedition to Connacht and they were overtaken by the Saxon English with choise troops and the muniter [people muster] of Murchada na tauth were defeated and Tadg Og killed with 100 of his men.
Edmond O Flaithbertaig was put in prison at Gallim and hanged at Easter week.

The clann William broke down the castles burned the crops and demolished the Baile Ata Letair in May and then laid waste to the land west to the Atlantic coast.

The Corann was plunderd and tir Oilelen by O Ruairc.
Tir Fiachrach plundered by O Ruairc Himself.

His son Eogain went to Macaire Connali by foot to the church of Cill Tolltog but they had no calvary to run of the cows and when returning were come across by the county sheriff, Richard Mapother and the Clann Dubgaill with 2 batches of soliders on the road to Sen n do [m] nuig botar.
Sen domnaig , old dominion road ,or now called the shankill church road at Boyle Barony, Rosscommon.

The Irish on this occasion routed the Saxon English to the Caisill [castle] Miadacaion where the English had their drums and standards taken from them by Eogain O Ruaircs muinter.
The O Ruairc footmen, the Oglaigh, the buind Baile an Doire Laithtrim [Leitrim], Cloine Muire and Baile na Nagiole.

Ricahrd Bingham, the President of Connacht continued to hang the clann William Burke- his fellow Englishmen- Anglo Old Norman English, on behalf of Elizabeth and those he did not hang he set at war with the Queen.

This also the policy against Clann Domnall O Donnell and Conner Don and muinter Flanagan and O Ruairc and the decendants of Eogain m Diarmada. The Irish enemy at war with himself and the ruler of England Elizabeth Boleyn Tudor.

Bingham also drove into this war Brain Laignech and the muinter Airt in Connacht.

When the Justicar in Dublin finally heard of these murderous unjustified hanging and attacks by Bingham he came to Gailim but brought no army.
Bingham remained at Ath Luainn planning how best to continue ruining Connacht province.

At this time a contest over the lordship of Oirgealla [Oirgialla] Oriel] arose over Mag Mathgamna, the plain of gamna, between Brian m Aed Og Mahon and Aed Ruaid m Airt Maoil.

Aed Ruaid went to Dublin to get a decision from the Justicar and council on the territory of Oirgealla ,the plain of gamna at Dartraoi [Dartry]

The Justicar gave him the lordship and sent 6 companys of soldiers, 600 men, to claim it for him.

Aedo O Mahon went with his cattle and creights to his own land and the 2 fought and ruined the country between them.

In this year Don Antonio, Portugal kings brother was refugee with Queen Elizabeth after his brother the king was killed by Turks.

Don Antonio had been banished by king Phillip 2 of Spain who took Lios Buinne fort, Buind Lisbon .

'Elisdabed[Z=sd][d=th] sent 15,000 and 15,000 more ,some 30,0000 men to Lios Buind and distroyed the outlying country .
The Spanish forces came out to them and 1,800 English were killed.
These under the command of Sir John Norrey ,Essex, and Sir Francis Drake.

The king of France was killed by a friar James for his killing of his family member the Duke of Guise.

The Justicar William m Willian thence went forth to Gallim and made a peace there with Murchada na Tauth.
He than went to Sligech and Roscomain where he made peace with these leaders O Connor and O Kelly and thence to Ulster where he made peace with the Clanna Neill.

The Western Gael part 2 page 2

The Earl of Ulster, being Tyrone, went on a prey against Cathain and took 1200 cows.

Simarly John O Neill and his cousins took the cattle of Cormac the baron of Dungannon. Cormac m Mathews son and brother of Hugh O Neill the Earl of Tyrone.
When Hugh Aed heard of this plunder of his brother Cormac, he went to Fermanagh and carried of 2000 cows from the sons of the o Neil and John.
He divided these and kept 600 cows for himself as his share.

When James the Friar summarily executed the King of France for killing his relative, the chief of Navarre [NaBarra] and the chief of Premuinte [Peidmont- [both of these words are gaelic words]
the duke of Savoy the Duibce Saue both claimed the kingdom ofthe Fancs for himself.

Elizabeth sent 10,000 men to assist Navarre and Phillip 2 of Spain sent an army to assist the prince of Peidmont.

27000 men were kille at the battle.

In Ireland Eogain m Brian m Brian mic Eogan O Ruairce and Rose, ingen of Aedafinn died on the third day of Christmas week.

A week before Christmas William Caech m Jordan m JohnDub and his companion William m John Meiler Ruad were killed on Sliab Muire by Donnchad m Edmond Bodar O Cealaigh [Kelly] .
2 weeks after Christmas the Justicar came to Gallim with a large army.
He concuded peace with clann William Burke and Clann O Donnell .

The Earl of Tyrone Hugh O Neill came into Feruib Manach [Fermanagh] and arrested Maguire and took Aed O Neill Geimlech m John O Neill with him.
O Neill had in mind to distroy this Aeda.

And as such, the volatile year of 1589 ended as it had begun with great takings of 1000s of cows from one tuath to another and consistant intrigues among the Irish and Norman lords over power and status.

While the Church dutifly recorded in their Annals all the deaths , gossip and disruptions in their communites, between vespers.
Leaving if nothing else ,a good dictionary of middle Irish spelling these clerics and scribes being mostly decendants of the Gael themselves, continued to records in the native tongue rather than in the prefered Latin of St Peters Rome.
Over the phonetic Engish of the new English army, and this has done us a great linguistic preservation service which unfortuantly the Gaelic population itself has not mastered once its despersion and loss of the level of comman speaking and learning it had at the 16 century.

The Clerics also kept good notes and input on continental happening especially in France and Spain and noted for us in their writings of these European plans although the information was probalby not known at all in the general populous outside of small experiances they had by soldiers in the continental armys who had come back sureptitiously into the country to see family, or had sent letters from far off posts.

These disperced Irish did however manage to keep good track of the risings and disturbances in their home provinces and were well prepared to show up at home from the continent to defend their island.
None of it sucessful.
More to the reason that they were very much outnumbered by their advesarys .
There were never enough of them to die for Ireland .

Even with a consentrated effort to provide hovels full of healthy children in every generation the paucity of the purse led these prodigal sons to become just that.
Out of control, wild ,sentintals on the hills, cattle rustlers ,rapparees, emigrees ,and the oglaigh, loyally following a client chief and the prince to the bogs and byways of christain plots lined with white pebbles and bearing the title holders to genetic sharing of some collective grave as the carns or tumulus of old bore out their ancestors to the other world.

The world of joy. The sida and the happy faeri all powerful spirit of land and sea and life.

Judi Donnelly
copyright 9 June 2010

sourse:
Annals Loc Ce 1014-1590 AD, Ordinance Survey, Dublin Stationary Office , 1939 edition , tranlation William Hennessy, MRIA

The Tudor Era 1500 pg 1

2010-06-02T09:51:00.000-07:00

The Tudor Era 1500 pg 1

As the Tudor era began in Ireland under Henry 8 and his father Henry 7 at 1500 AD about 1/3 of Ireland territory was occupied by the English.

Louth, Meath ,Dublin and Kildare and the kings highway through the county of Carlow linked 7 more English shires ,
Kilkenny, Wexford, Waterford, Tipperary, Cork, Limerick and Kerry.
11 Counties and the port towns of Galway, Carrickfergus and probably Cork were in the control of the Englishry.

These areas were in proximity to the Gaelic Irishry which sujugated the settlers to constant raids and the English were hard pressed to defend their holdings.

The king required his subjects in both England and Ireland to maintain weopons for their defence .
An English bow and arrows .
Every knight and squire to have supplied his yoemen a Jack- leather coat, sallet -helmet, and bow and arrows.

Every able bodied man age 16-60 were required to give military service to defend their country.

The gentry of the counties and shires were the keepers of the peace and required to make a regular muster of their subjects to keep them ready for defence agains the kings enemys ie: the native Irish.

Each landlord was required to keep an archer on horseback [a knight] for every 20 pounds of land he held.
Local tax to pay a wage to a watchman called a ward to watch and resist the kings Irish enemys and rebels.

If th English governer proclaimed a muster 1000 men could be called up.

These general hostings against specific Irish lords were usually about 2 times a year.
These campaigns usually lasting about 40 days.

Additionally, fuedal lrods could collect 'scutage' from their tenanats to hire troops.

The English society was an organized warlike society and proud of military tradition.
The English patron saint of this tradition was St George.

This formatable English troop maintained its tight contol of their forces at the Battle of Knockdoe refusing to jeprodise the English goods to the vanguard of Gallowglass troops on the grounds of lord Howths disagreements of 'Hazarding English goods to the protection of Irish Blood.'
The gallowglas being Scot/ Norse hirelings from the Ilse which shows clearly the haughty superior racial prejudice the English race retains.

The English bow had gained high respect in the previous centuries 100 years war in France and the Irish weopons were no match for it.

Irish calvary in 1500 rode without stirrups with a javelin overhead.
A short light spear to be thrown.

The Kerne had no armour and only a small bow with only half the reach and penetration power of the English longbow.

In 1500 gaelic Ireland was still heavily wooded and its marsh lands and mountains not very penatrible.
These lands could not be held as easily as the coastal plain and river vallesy than constituting the English lordship holdings in Ireland.

The Gaelic clanns were adept at exploitating their local terrain and the English, unfamiliar with these guerilla movements, wereaoftimes beaten by ambuscade or finding no enemy to fight with as the Gael had disappeared and melted into his bogs and mountain fastnesses.

The Irish usaully campaigned agaisn the Anglo Nobles from Easter to Michale Mass.
Conducting raids as much to plunder the much richers Englsih settlers to relive their own clann penury as to expell these foriengers from the country.

These skirmishes and hostings continued through the 1500s where frequent hostings of volunters or citizens armys of the English were out agains the Irish enemy and the town buisness shut down due to the fact that all were in the field elsewhere with the mayor and baliff and citizens and govornor, the kings deputy.

In 1521 the lord Surrey Tom Howard sent out all the officers, clerics and personell against o Carroll and O Connor , leaving no man at home.

the English L. L.s were given a salary for their services to the king but expected a lord be required to pay their bodyguards out of their own wages of about 500 pounds a year.

In addition to these large armys of the Deputys ,the English frequently hired kerne and gallowglas for their campaigns and often kept these as a permanant brigade in their pay.

The Pope still maintains a Swiss Guard of this type of estate or household militai as does the US White House Secret Service force.

These twice yearly hostings or summer campaigns went out all over Ireland taking in such places as Carrickfurgus, Carlow ,Cork ,Galway, Athenry, Kilkenny ,Limerck, Wterford in 1510 and on.

These hostings, military operations conducted against the Irish enemy, not progresses of friendship.
In 1534 a major Gaelic rebellion in Ireland promoted Henry 8 to diploy a major army expedition to Ireland compared to Richard 2 campaign in 1399.
The Tudor attempt to subdue the Irish as Richard had created more unrest in Ireland and a new grouping of English militarists came to power as the new English forerunners of the Assendancy elite and Plantation.

The Tudor Era pg 2

In 1514 a great O Neill host lead by Art m Aedh went into Trian Congaill and burned Mag Line and plundered the Glinns ofAntrim east of the Bann river.

They were met with the army of Mac Uibilin, Richard m Rugraide with an Alban troop and an allied O Neill army.

Art m Aedh O Neill the lord of Inis Eogain died at dungenainn [dungannon] and Art m Connn o Neill was made king of Inis Owen to replace him.

In the west this same year o Domnaill confiscted the Dunlis cattle from Garrett Mac Ui Bilin and gave the cattle to the sons of Walter mac Uibilin.
Domnaill than pitched his camp around Sligech for Brigits festival, 1 February till Whitesun time. [the 7th sunday after Easter].

Eogain m Donnall m Eogain O Connor killed his half brother Cathal Og m Domnaill m Eogain Connor most treacherously in 1514 and 3 days later was hung by O Domnaill and in south Connacht the Burc family, Anglo/ Norman too killed each other. cousin vs cousin in the monestary ofRath Branduios.

There was a distructive contest between the Fitzgerald Kildare Earl Garrett Og and the Laigis O Morda.

The O MaghCastle was distroyed by O Neill and O Neill of Tir Eogain defeated Domnaill hi Neill and Art O Neills decendants taking their horse armour and men.

Fitzgerald of Kildare hosted against Raighilligh[Regillig]and broke the castle of Cavan. Reilly.

Aed m Cathal O Raigillig [Reilly] was killed and a great number of his chiefs.
In that same year James Butler {buitler]
allied with O Cearbaille and they hosted against Piers Butler[ Piarrus Buite] and burned the trian Medonach-- the middle third --in Tipperary.

O Domnaill plundered Gailenga in West Meath as far as Cruacan where many were killed including Oruadain.

O Neill in the north had a victory over his relatives, Aed m Domnaill o Neill and Conn m Niall m Art taking their horses armor and apparrel adn kiling many fotheri people
and he had the undisputed lordship in Tir Eogain.

War arose between him and O Donnell and each engaged mercinary soldiers.
They camped in view of each other and made a peace at Ard Stratha and they gossiped their children.

Inis Eogain [inis owen], cenel Moan, and Fermanach were left with O Neill and his son ,a hostage with O Donnell, was sent to O Neill.

The mac Uibilin sons were slain by their reltive .Walter mac Uibilin and that country was preyed and burned by the sons of Niall m Conn and Aed Buide.
Garret of Kildare burned Ui Conail in south Mumain [Conell] and the o Brien [Briain] and his chiefs assisted the sons of Earl of Desmond [desMumain] or south Munster.

O Domanaill put a fleet of boats and loingships on Loc Erne and stayed at Inis Ceithlenn ,Sgeillend or Iniskillen.
He plundered Cuil na Noiren.

These northen raids by the two great northern Lords O Donnell and O Neill continued across the norht and west in the following year 1515 as the same internal frey in the lordships both Gaelic and Anglo/ Norman continued across the south west.

As the other old ruling families fight each other in the field to obtain power and control of the lords and septs and privilege went on to Alexanders command 'to the strongest'.

Aed Ruad O Donnell took castle of Sligeach after he befriended a French pligrim to Patricks Purgatory who sent him in return for his hospitality a ship full of ordinances with a castle breaking cannon.

o Donnell went before the castle and demolsihed the town and took the castle.
He than went to Tir Oilellas and took the castle of Culmaile and loch Dergan ,and DunnaMore.

He must have run out of ammunition as he took prisoners and went home to Donegal.

He held Sligech for 13 years when Tagh Og mTadg ed O conner took it from O Donnell.

the Leim ui Banain castle of O Cerbaille [Carroll] was taken by Fitzgerald.

O Donnell went on two raids into Tir Eogain that year as well and the first quarter of the 1500s was taken up in Ireland by fighting across the land between each other and between the old English and between the Old English and the Gael.

The Tudor Era pg 3

In the rebellion of 1534 when Skeffington an old man very unpopular at Court, was sent to conquest Ireland and subdue the rebels he had many difficulties getting to Ireland withthe designated force of 1500 men and this part of the conquest took 3 months .
He arrived at Lamhbay on 15 October 1534.
Of the force on hand, no weaopons there with which to fight the kings Irish enemys.

In the interim the Irish had captured the kings ordinances at Dublin Castle.

Food for the men was in short supply and the rebel forces policy were a scorched earth policy.
Tthe plague raiged once more and a viril desease known as the 'sickness' which caused sweating.

Skiffington himself lay ill for 12 weeks of this and when he took the field in March 1535 his health was broken and he died that December in his 70's.
He could not rise before 10 am and was to weak to carry on more than 2 hours.
The Army had not been paid.

Some soldiers hence deserted and were absent without leave.

The Army mutinied and after the win of the British standing army at Maynouth Castle, stonghold of Garret Fitzgerald, the army was finally paid.
The Army henceforth reamained as part of the military/ civialn coalition rule of Erinn for the next 400 years.

The Army now became a way of life and provider of the English soldiers living.
Service in Ireland became a part of his career.

The Irish rebellion of 1534 was succesfully engineered by Garrett Fitzgerald ,9th Earl of Kildare and his son Thomas Lord Offaly in their oppositon to Henrsy 8ths ecclesastic policy.

The Earl was discontent.
Lord Thomas resigned as vice Deputy in defiance of Henry on June 11 1534,but the arrest of his father Garrett in London on 29 June sparked an armed rebellion by the Old English and their gaelic allys.
On 27 July the Archbishop of Dublin was murdered and the city of Dublin put under seige.

battle was finally joined in 1535 at Maynouth castle which fell to Skeffingtons English artillery within 10 days.

The garrison surrended to the English under bribe and were summarily executed.
The expection of trust of the Engish in future was know cynically as
the 'pardon of Maynooth'.

Kildare himself who had obtained the name Silken Thomas when he rode into Dublin with 1000 men .
Riding to St Marys Abbey His horsemen wore a silk fringe on their hats.

When the old Earl was arrested Kildare took revenge on the English settler killing them wherever found.
If an Engish person fell into rebel hands.he was sumarily executed.

Kildare went out with his army in the counryside atacking theButlers.

He took the Castle at Tallow and in mid August had a skirmish with Ossory where a truce was concluded.

O Neill arrived from the north with reenfocements and the Butler holdings along with Ossory were plundered.
Mac Murrough ,O More, O Connor and O Byrne were clients of Kildare and remained in his service.

Thomas now retuned to Dublin with 15,000 men and these broke into Dublin but were driven out.
They seiged Dublin Castle which was defended by 50 English gunners.
He had not enough English artillery or ordinance to hold or capture Dublin.

Kildare tried to intercept the Howth landing of this army but Skeffington succeeded in getting to Dublin and Skerries.

Kildare withdrew to Maynooth and began a scorched earth policy.

When Maynooth surrendered, much to its misfortune, Kildare was refuged to his Gaelic allies.
He surrendered on 24 August 1535 under assurances that his life would be spared.

He was got to the Tower and executed for Treason at Tyburn 23 February 1535.

And so the word of the English once more given and unkept.
Like the later trust of Mick Collins who said he would not be killed in his own home territory ,was gunned down and left Ireland in the division of political and territorial limbo where it remains this day.
Both collateral damage to their own honor and dreams.

The tudor Era pag 4

In 1536 the plague stuck againaand small pox and a flux and a form of distemper 'na fearta'Known as the Fever.

The battle continued between the native and the foreigner and between membesr of various clanns.

the O Ceallaig was slain and Donnchad m Edmuin was appointed to take his place a Tigerna of Tir Maine.

The sath Connacht cheftains took battle against Richard Burke at the request of Bishop Barrett driving the country herds of cattle before them to the termon lands of Oirem Coirim followed by the bishop who took the cows to the Army.
But they would not give honor or santuary at Drum da Eithigar.
Leitrim was burned and distroyed.

The lord of South Connacht was procaimed o Conchobair and this was Tadhg Og m Tadg m Aed m Toirdelaback O Connor .
This lord was usaually called .
Mac Domnaill mic Muircertaigh as ruler of Siol Concobair.

This new tigerna with his ally the son of Cathal Og O Connor went on expedition to Clann Goisdelb to Cill Colmain their town where was Rugraide m Goisdealb who came out to them bring them a coat of mail and putting himself in the hands of o Connor who took him as hostage back to Sligeach and later recovered the full ransom for thisAngo lord { costello].

A long war went on between O Domnaill, Nial og O Neill and M Uidhir [Maguire] Aed Maelmorda, O Reigilligh .
The Clann Suibne and O Baigill warlike and valourus lords came ,as it was their custom.
Teh great Army set an encampment at Dub and Drobais and after their supper they sent out watchers and sentineals against an attack by the Connor muster assembled at Sligeach.

The first watch was done by Baigill and the second by Aed Buide O Dommaills men.
At dawn the two forces find each other and Boyle thinking they were from th O connor enemy rushed toward them and went unguareded into the Buide force where he was hacked to death.

He was mourned greatly by paulpers and orphans ,the infirm and the ollams whom he had always assisted this Nial O Baigill.

O Donnell moved to the river Gitley pass and Connor was going to that pass to meet O Donnell at the Fersad Rannas in Liggin pass[ promintory of the pillar stone].
A place where the Formorchaib warrior of that name was killed by Luglamfada, a Tuatha de Danann mythological persona in 2764 AM, and part of the irish bardic mythology of the Battle of Tuired which was fought to release the men of Erinn from the cess tribute collected by the Formor.
This ford was near the sea tide and while the tide was in the 2 Armys sized each other up.

O Donnell had more men than OConner and had alligned his forces in order and set up a great gun he had.

O Donnell crossed the ford and from the opposite bank, undefended at lower Connacht,the 2 forces engaged a battle.

At this conflict Maoileachluinne m Tadg m Ruaidri of Clann Donnchaid was shot at with a gun.

O Donnell goes from there into the county of Brain OConnor for 3 nights distrying thecorn and burning the towns and moors.

Donnell crossed the stand of Traigh Eothuile near Ballysadare and westward to Tir Faicrach Muaide distroying more grain and corn and the townand property, seizing the large herds of Sliab Gam

They seize the daughter of Walter Burke along with her husband Eogan ODubda cattle.

Thecattle were so many that they sold for 4 cents a bonn and sometimes less than that.

O Donnell than started for home in Donegal wearing the battle garb and movign quickly.

He was attached in his retreat but not seriously.
He did not demand submission from the chieftans of Connacht which was unusual.
The m William Burkes were at war over the lordship.
Richard Bacach ,the lame, m Uilliam was proclaimed ruler.

And thus all Connacht was disrupted from the southern clanns to the Burke land Norman conquest and to the Kellys of Galway and Ata Luaon and Rosscommain and the hi Maine o Kellys and on north to Dairmadas Maig Luirge of the mac Dermotts and on into Dongal where ODonnell, Aed himself conducted preys and raids and burning over the entire country.
In Mumster the justicar Lord Leonard came from the Pale and attached Dermott McCarthy in the year 1536.

In the North O Neill Conn made a host into trian congaill distroying and plundering the north country and his son made a prisiner at BelFeirste [Belfast].

In 1537 the O Domnaille decc [died].

Aed Dub m Aed Ruad m Niall Garb m Toirdelback an Fina O Domnaill.
Lord and tigerans of tir connail Lower Connact Ferara manach Cenel moain < inis Eogain alogn with submission from magh Luirg mac aire Connacht clanns Con maig and Tir amalgaid Conmaine cuile Goisdelba cul of Finn int eh west and inEast ireand
clann aed Buide teh Ruta [rpute] Oirecht ua Chatain all tributary to o donnell and Tri Conaill and Clients tot his prince. decendant of Colum cille and of teh Race and nation of
Gaedelglass teh Gaeidil Glaiss in irhs the ccaei ga eid il.
He died as amonk of St Francis at Duin na Gall.
his son magnus O domnaill withthec ounsel of teh Conallach and comarba of ColumCille was elected teh new O domnaill ruler of ctir conaill.
mangus Odonnell raided lower connacht distroyed teh corn and burned Tir Fiachrach and Cairbre teh luigne adn teh coraan and Tir Oilellas.
all chiefs submitted toteh e new O Donnelly in 1537 Ad.

includign Cuconnacht m cuconnacht mbrian Lord of FEara manach athe mag uidir f teh race of tehCollas whose decenadants are teh maguries the Oreillys mac mahon mac kenna et al.
TehGaeidil under teh tir Conaill leadership of Aed Ruaid I donelly then mmangus O donnell a confederation of westerna nd ulster r ladns and chiefrs tains wer held as a government of theGael by teh o donnell clann.
Hencemost of west of Shannon Ireland and west Ulster and central ulster under the Oneill was held inGaelic order inthe old manner of chieftanships and submission election of roydamnas in each house from the eligible male sons of that house.

gaelic was the primary language and crops and cattle were plentiful.
where inthe east meath ,west meath , Cork, Wicklow, ildare dublin louth soth of tehrRvier Boine the Desmond and Tipperrary lordsh9ps wer all old english conqe4ustsd.
South kerry and the mac cArthy more holdignas as wella s teh o Brien tauth in thomodn all still in total gaelic possession in govermentment adn culture except teh Burkser cand calre lands the only west of Limberk Sahannon ladn held by Norman Lords.

The tudor Eara pg 5 rewrite it blanked out damn windows

By 1449 Aed m Cormac m Ruaidri m Diarmada, Abbott of Buill, Lord of Clann Maoil Ruanaid died [decc].
and he was not begrudged the lordship of connact for the extent of his bounty and nobility and gifts and wages he had distributed.

Ruaidri m Tadg m Ruaidri Og mac Diarmada [Dermott] was inagurated king after him .
This Ruaidri extended a Christmas invatation to a convention of poets and ollams and lerned men of Eriin.

his good son MaoilRuainaid m Diarmada also distributed the annual invation schoo, in the example of his father and he had under his goverment tributes to him of close or distant territories.

Some 13 tributary clients in all.
Their cess being paid in cows of a set amount and additionally their were cows acquired by prey from uncooperative clanns like the Phillip mac Goisdealb [mac Costello of Mayo] and the Dubgall Gruann[smart mouth Dubgall] ancestors of the Mac Dowell of Connacht.

All these spoils and cess were distributed by Dermott to the poets and ollams in Erinn at St Stephens Day Festival.

All these septs and chieftains of lands, clients to the Diarmada kings.

Thus the peace was kept west of Shannon in the Connacht area and in the north west by the O Donnell and in the Central and east by the O Neill and the old manner of rulers known to the Irish since its earliest memories.

The people and the nobility having a share in the running of the land as well as the application of mighty force as achieved by such princes as O Donnell a O Neill, O Diarmata and OBrian inthe souht as well as intermitant periods of such control still, by the o Connors of Connacht.
In the east and southeast and places contoled were Ango lords ruled some of them adopted the style of the Gaelic chiefs as did Kiladare and Desmond and in the west Burke.

Hence by 1550 Ireland remained basically a Gaelic run show which neither Henry or his daugthers could understand or overpower and to the English, Ireland remained the fearful 'Irish enemy'.

In 1550 Aed m Eogan Caech OConcobar Donn, was deposed by the Earl of Clann Richard Saxanach Burc of the Anglos tribe west of Shannon, who created Diarmaid M Caibre m Eogan Ceach Tigerna of Connacht .

A power by Irish custom and standard, he did not have as the proper way pick hold the kingship or chieftainship of any land and office was elected by a counsil and the people ,the duine, and the nobles of the derbfine.
This was the electee.

Hence in the Irish custom there was no opposition to the ruler who was acceptable to all and appointed and inagurated by them at assembly not brought to power by the sword or autocratic effort not such as was customary inthe Anglo English establishment ruler only his own tuath and fine coudl do that.

There was no individual right to be king that also selected fromthe roydamna those required by blood and ability to hold top office and these princes also elected in like manor for inheritance positons at the religious monasterys Abbots and Deans.

With the coming of cannon law from the continenet and Engish common law for the Norman Anglos in 1200 the old customs and loss of the brehon fell ,and disention arose creating physical violence between factions to acquire power rather than the old form of chieftenry.

the holding of this old resistant power was clearly discbribed in the modified applications of such princes as Aed mac Diarmada and o Donnell and O Neill who asserted authority by holding as well as the old client relationships and submission of septs, kinship loyalty ,a strong military power supplimented by foriegn mercenary troops, the galloglass with whom they fear if not respect and order throughout those parts of ireland still under their control.
ThePax Erinn if one will.

There control and activites separate from and deviod of any outside influence.
They were in effect autocrats but with inthe confines of their own tuath and sept acceptance of their rule.

If not acceptable the tuath did sometimes seek help from the Engish forces now avalialable disperced and displace the and appoint a new king from the roydamna of the tribe.

The Anglo in turn learned from the Gael and they incorporated in Ireland of the new pofilation into the gaelic way of thinking was and remains a most inscrutalbe to the Engish ruling or otherwise who simply could not understand the 'Irish enemy'.

The Celtic Church part 3 pg 1-3

2010-05-29T08:09:00.000-07:00

The celtic church part 3 pg 1

The Church continued its ancient quest for reform and in 909 AD William, Duke of Aquitaine ,forrunner of the famous Eleanor ,Queen of Henry 2, the lion in winter, in the 1100s began a monastery in Burgandy near Macon which he called Cluny [cluni].
which could mean anything from flatterer to August, or our slang interpretion of a person off their rocker-Luny.

William itself can be written as Villi or Uilli, Am being in the Gaelic, time.

the' V 'can also be written as a 'B' making Uilli, billi a listed ancestor from north Spain,Gallicia in 1000 or so before in BC era.

The Cluniac monastery set out to create morality and devotion amongst these German Burgundians using the practical applications of education, independence and disapline.
Organization to recify the laxity and darkness of the church in these 900 AD years.

They desired to free the clergy from the contol and influence of the secular society.

They stuggled against marriage and concubinage amongh the clergy and a powerful natural desire to be suppressed in religion.

They resisted the feudal land system absortion of Church lands which had been acquired over centuries from the princes ,nobles and lay bequests and a faithful laity.

By 900 after 500 years of conversions the Church possessing vast land estates all over Europe.
In effect landed propioritors.

The high kings their rivals in this respect acted to control this church wealth by patronage.

Investing Bishops, appointing relatives, favorites and partizans to Church offices as rewards for services, or simply payment from the highest bidder.

Cluny elected to cleanse these practice from the semibarbaric Mo Con in Burgundi and the movement was accomplished because it had a following of lay persons and simple minded peasants and soldiers willing to act on its suggestions and this establishment, moving westward of some 300 daughter houses across Europe to bring uniformity to its mission.

All the daughter congregations under the rules of the administration of the Bishop of Cluny in Burgandy.

This continental establishment of ecclesiatic dioceses under a central authority as opposed to the 6th to 11th century establishment of independent monastic orders as in Ireland under their Abbot who could be a lay person or a consecrated priest or bishop and as under Irelands hereditary rules was always a comarba of the founder of the monastic order.

the Celtic church part 3 pg 2

Ihe Irish order of the Mass was different fom the continental liturgy.

In Ireland as on the continent in 900 AD the level affecting the church was the general world organization of its members.

In Ireland pious monasterys such as are represented by Tallaght in south Dublin under the Cele De responses to the previous centuries became more secular.

Their finances in control of the laity and the clerics both priests and clergy and many monks becoming married and entangled with women and subsequently children.

The 2 factors of daily life again gaining rule over the spiritual asperations of man, sex and money, inspring reformers.

In 1000 AD the Abbot ,comarba, heir, of the founder and the Aircinnech head of daughter churches, part of the congregation, had the rule of a secular lord and indeed he usually was a decendent of a pagan chief and lord and his family held both office and property from one generation to the next.
The land and title stability did not set well with feudalism which more or less broke up ancient land rights and allotted title to a right by contest 'to the strongest', as Alexander the Great had willed in 300 BC.

Under this monastic system the manachs [monks] were tenants of the church land held by the Aircennech and the scolog [young scholars] were farmers ,laborers and cottiers.

These tenants claiming termonn of the old monastery with the priveleges, exemptions and rights of the monastery of old,as accorded to the ecclesiastic proprity, by the tigerna and princes who gave the title for it.

The largest monastery Church usually had a number of priests, a school under the Ferlegind with assistants and scribes.

Hospitals oftimes attended by Celi De who had obtained worldliness with knowledge and their church lands oftimes had a disert[ hermitage] where the deoraid [pilgrim] lived in seclusion with the ancient tradition, piety and ascetisim.

The Lay Abbots ,althought religious men, who had the good of the Church in their thoughts, still maintained ,as of old, their revenues and administrative powers of hereditary succession within their own lay family.
The Irish and continent both acted to retain control of the riches and property of the Churches to which law and custom were machivelian being manipulated.

The Rule, since the Faith established by Padrig in Irleand, was that the Abbott succession selection should be made from the kin of the founder- here ,the Sina were part of that kin of Patrick as was Benegus his immediate successor.

If a qualified kin was not found, the rule required the selection be made from the kin of the king or prince who had granted the land on which the monastery was built.

As such the selection to replace the Archbishop ,Primate, comarba of Patrick when Malacy Morgair challenged the old Sina inheritance and none could be found to succeed for that lay facility where the rule requiredd a successor from the family of the noble who had donated the land of the monastery-- in this case, Gilla meic Liac o Donnelly of the house of O Donnaill [O Donnell],ligitimate heir, comarba of Colum Cille O Donnell prince of Donegal.

Both decendants of the Ui Neill of the house of Niall naoi m Muigmeadoin ,decendant king of Mileid, child of Brogain and Bille[the tree].

In 1096 Irish time ,a great panic was incurred giving a spiritual fear in Ireland over the predicted mortality to come upon them from ancient times.
To avert this prediction the chuch commanded a 3 day fast in general for Wensday to Sunday each month along with an ortdinary fast every day till the years end.
This to commence on the feast of St John the Baptist, August 29th, the date of the decollation of John.

This occurring at the time of a bisextile [leap] and an extra linial month embolismal year at the end of a cycle.
This being the 19 year cycle of the moon, Metonic cycle.
The Blue moon, which in 1096 was a universal calendar during these fasts.

To avert evil and death many nobles and princes granted lands to the Church and its clergy as well as alms and other offerings and this to save them from the Fires of Vengenge'.

Daily prayers are appionted.

These prgnostications of doom had various names for the Fire Dragon.

Roth Ramach-- paddle wheel
Scuap a Fanail--broom of Fanad [the north] Donegal.

This to fall with particular vengance on Ireland and its men.

It was said that Mog Ruith [slave of the wheel] an Irish druid at Rome and Gallalee was the person who severed with the ax the head of the Baptist and put it in a basket for the daughter of Herodias wife of King Herods brother Phillip .
She had been given any boon she asked for from the king as she had danced for him at his birthday party and Herod had put Jonh in jail when the prophet chastised him for desiring the wife of his brother.

This taking place while Jesus was preaching and when he was told he went forth to a disert place and later divided the 5 loaves and 2 fishes to fed the multitude which followed him.

Ogam epigraphs at Druimlogan, Waterford ,and Lamogree at Kilkenny name a divine ancestor as being Rottaic {Roithraige, the Desi.*
The Roith being the wheel.

In ancient pagen heathen culture the Rothramach- wheel paddle- was a sacred instrament used in religious services by the Mog Ruith the priest.
These were the warning of the apocrapha and prophecy and the prophesy damning the entire population of Erin in 1096 AD.

Prophesy of calamity to Ireland after the St Johns Day August 29th were told by Adamnan and Columcille and Bairle Moling and these relative to the date of John, may very well have fortold the Great Famine of the potato crop in 1845 AD announced almost surepticiously on August 8 1845 by the Irish press.

Imtheachta Moigh Ruith was schooled by Scathach who also figured in training Cucullain in 1 BC and gave a time John was killed and Cuculainn ,a young knight in the Red Branch at Ard Macha.

In the recorded year of 1000 the panic had gone to the continent and the people there were in great numbers on Pilgrimages to Palestine to atone for the beheading and the crusifiction and these developed later into the Crusades to resorte the old city of Jerusalem still again in the modern era.

* Desi= breath fairy

The Celtic Church part 3 pg 3

When the vikings came ,Bangor had to be abandoned and its last abbot comarba was Oengus Ua Gormain.
He lived in the south at Lismore in 1123 AD.

Mael Medoc's mother's brother made a settlement where the lay monk retained the property and Mael Maedoc recieved the Church with the ecclestiastical rights and privileges.

Mael Maedoc was hence recalled from the south too become bishop of Coindire [conor] and the abbot of Bennchar and there he built a new monastery founded on continental ideals of centralized bishop admininstration.

Around 1127 trouble in the north lead the Bishop Abbot Mael Maedoc to leave the north and return to Munster where he founded a Kerry Monastery ,Iveragh.

On April 1 1129 Cellach of Armagh died at Ard Patrick Church in Munster.
He was later buried at Lissmore and Donnall of Sin, son of Urichertack was made comarba as the old custom required and he held that post of comarba of Patrick till 1134 when he died and at that time Cellach Sin O Donnellys Brother Niall was appointed.

For 5 years the struggle between Malacy Mael Maedoc and his followers Mail Muire of LissMore and the Popes Ligate at Limerick, Gilla Espuci, worked to take the customary inheritance from the Sina and in the end the reformers, men from th south, with the help of Donnchad ua Cerbaille, king ofAirgialla [slaughter hostages] ,succeeded in placing Mael in the Abbotship of Armagh.

Mael resinged the victory to Gilla meic Liag [Gelasius] the comarba of Colmcille at Doire.

Malacy continued his work to reform the Celtic Church with his friend and mentor Bernard Abbot of Clair Vaux Abbey in France ,who had endoctrinated him in the Cistercian philosphy over both the Celtic and the Geramn Clunaic thinking.

He was successful in bringing this order into Ireland in 1142 with the establishment of Mellifont Abbey in Louth and in the next 5 years, 5 daughter houses of Cistercian teachings were established on the island.

Some 4 months after Malacy,s untimely death at Clairvaux ,on 2 November 1148 where he had gone in hopes of catching the new Pope Eugeneus, in his quest to recive palls for Irelands dioceses,
St Bernard composed a biography of his life and works on the request of the daughter house at Suir Innis lowqnaght and Abbot Congan.

He died as Archbiship of Bangor and his friend and perhaps kin from Derry, Gilla meic Liac continued as Archbishop of Armagh, comarba of Patrick until his death on March 27 1174.

He as well, remembered by his brethern in an Irish written biography Acta Sanctus.

These 2 men ,along with Mael Muire Abbot of Lissmore in south Leinster were successful in their lifetime effort to reform the old Celtic church of some 700 years and bring it in conformaty to the continental episcopate cannon law system of central order and admininstration against seprately being controled by the churchs and independent rules of each order as well as the practice of concubinage and marrarige and inherited right to offices and lands in possession of Abbots.

In the new order, still in place today, the control of all aspects of the church was under the central control of the Pope in Rome, the Vicar of Peter an elected pontiff.

All lands , funds and orders belonged to the Church.
Inheritances were turned over to the Church by the breathern.

Consecrated priests ran the orders and bishops and lay funtion was elimated from christian order.

Muirchertach Ua Lochlainn, king of Ireland ,gave his protection to the lands of the monks at Ibar Cind Tracta [Newry] at about 1156 the contract witnessed by important nobles of Ireland.

Gerpoint Abbey in county Kilkenny was granted lands by Dairmait us Rian [Ryan] chief of Idrone for a daughter house of the Cistercians at Cell Lainne [Kilkenny] and the grant confirmed by Leinsters king Diarmait mac Murchada who also granted lands to an Augustinian Monastery at Ferna [Ferns] 1160-61 before the Normans came.

Cannon law was brought to Louth as well by mac Murchada in 1166 when he granted lands there in the norht-outside his Laigen realm -to the Bishop of Louth ,Aedan ua Ceallaigi[ Kelly]

Baile Dubgaill [Bally Doyle], for a priory of all Saints in Dublin.

In 1168 Donnchad ua Cerbaill, king of Oriel [Airgialla, hostages of slaughter] was marbad by one of his servants.

He was an ally of the reformers and a friend of ArchBishop Mael Maedoc. He gave many gifts of land and equipment to fund the reform churchs and monasterys and was very active in the reform movement.

Lorcan Ua Tuathal, born in 1128 and a hostage of mac Murchada at the age of 12 was sent to Glenda Locha monastery and at 25 became Abbot of that facility in 1153.

He was consecrated as a Bishop of Dublin in 1161 and was deeply affected by the atrocities of the Norman invasion 8 years on.

Laurence O Toole trying to negociate with Herny 2 and on behalf of his king Ruaidri ua Concobar, died at Eu the water in Normandy on 14 November 1180.
Nine years after the chiefs and kings of Ireland had submitted to the English king as Lord of Ireland.

He worked diligently during his tenure to make the new religious orders in Ireland work.

His tomb there became a site of pilgrims for many years.
He was eventually consecrated as a saint on December 11 1235 from an application made in 1191.

And so, with the coming of the continental church into Erinn and the diocene system of centralization and uniformity ,the conversion church of St Patricks movement of 432 AD came to a close in 1142AD.

After a life of 700 years, with the establishment of Mellifont and its daughter houses, by the Abbot reformers and the provincial chiefs and kings and the ruling high kings themselves in the early 1100s a chapter of Irish life was again closed and the book hidden away as all there previous chapters lost to the bards and myholgical tales.

The church had its noose around the Irish neck some 25 years before the famous deflection to Wales of Murchada to bring the mailed Norman knights to reclaim his secular position as King of Laigen taken from him by Ruaidri O Connor as had been repeated some ancient centuries before when Maon returned with his French Gae to renew his rights in the kingship of Ireland.

Maon Liongsech Labraid M Cairbre ,son of Aengus Olmucaig in 703 BC.

Ollam Fodla than high king of Tara and all Erinn.

Judi Donnelly
copyright 29 May 2010

sourses:
Sourses for the Early History of Ireland, Vol 1, Eccesiastical, Kenney, Columbia Univesrtity Press ,1929
The Irish Church, Aubrey Gwynn , Four Courts Press, 1992
Holy Bible , King James version, World Publishing Company, NYC

celtic church 700-8-- part 3

2010-05-27T09:45:00.000-07:00

The celtic church Part 3 pg 1 700-800

Through the 700 and 800s AD era the celtic church of the islands expanded its mission on the continent and when Pipin the short, son o Charles Martel deposed the Merroving kings and in 745AD was crowned at St Denis by Pope Stephen 2.

This Francish king lead his army to Italy against the Lombards who had welcomed Columbanus the Irish monk, to found Bobbia and began the alliance of the Carolingean monarchy and Rome.

When Pepin died in 768 his 2 sons succeeded him, Charles and Carloman who died in 771.

Charles of Lander known as Karl der Grosse or Charlemagne, was crowned on Christmas Day 800 AD by Pope Leo 3 as the Roman Emperor.
Wherein the great religious movements of the 200 ADs extended from the Irish controlled monasterys.

Dionysius Shrine just north of Paris became the important monastery of St.Denis.

It had been there through the Merroving time and the Caroligne and was a patron of the west Francons.

h'Ilduin was Abbot from 815 to whom Dongal an Irish inmate composed poems.

Ilduin was confidant and chaplain to Louis the Pios, king of Francs who asked him to tranlate the writing of Dionysius and to write a life of St Denis in 835 AD.

This biography ,Acta Santorum, the conversion of St Paul, and martydom of Paris who had written 4 theological treatises,

The Celestial Hierarchy,
The Angelic Choir,
The Ecclesiastic Hierarchy Grades of the Church,
The Divine Names the Nature of God and his relationship to created things,
Mystical Union between God and Soul.

Also translated by Johannas [John or Sean] an Irishman teacher at Charles the Balds Franc Palace school in 858 AD, were 10 letters written by Denis to Cais the monk,
Letters to the Bishop and the evangalist John amongh others.

These ideas developed from Plato, teaching of Proclusin 411-485.
The time of Patrick.

The Irishmans translation of the Greek to German of these writings accepted these as the principles of true christian philosophy.
He was called in German court circles in 860AD
Johannes Eriu Gena.

His first important translation was

De Divisione na Turae ,done in dialogue form
Constitution of the Universe- the Nature Creating and Created.

God the origin of all things. The alpha and omega and God the end distruction of all things which also incorporates Rationaling [principles that the mind, intellect is God Himself speaking through thought to man].

These reflected Seans studies of Virgil, Pliny, Augustine, Boetius, Martianus, Capella ,in Italy Jerome and Ambrose all Latins.

Along with the treatises of Dionysius, Epiphanius, Gregoria of Nissa, Macsamus the confessor of the Greeks,
Johannes also wrote in the German a French or Latin compilation of the Life of Boethius in 868 AD.

A homily on the gospels of John [Revelations], on the old testament writing in 877 AD.
Several poems. Some to King Charles the Bald and his queen Irmintrud.
The Angelic and Eulogys to St Denis.

Althugh the wine flowed freely at the Court of Charles and his Irish monk, the elemental designation of Saints and Scholars rose around these exiled Irish missionarys throughout their 600-900 sojourn at the courts and monastery establishments on the continent.

All discribed as Irish exiles going forth perhaps under some sort of rejection by their own nations rather than as voluntary pilgrims.

Those records of status indured but express always the restictions of the island imposed on others who sought to go beyond and at times forced by survival necessity to depart Ibernia to achieve their notions and ideas. Seaking of several locations to complete their purpose of being.

The Celtic church held its own in Europe. Crossing the Rhine establishing St Galls monastery in Switzerland .
Teaching the chilldren of Kings and continental nobles in the style St Patrick had taught them and Colum Cille had sent his monks to the Scots.

Always their desire to share the enlightenment they had and to study and learn and to think.

There scholarship was inexaustable and their desire to asthetic communication with spirt or substance held over from druidic teaching and their mystical inablity to worry about the mundane things of life coupled with the Irish rank and file peasant volunteer practically, created for them and their followers and for the Ilse from which they came a distinctive national identity which they retained throughout the westward migration to th new world and indeed through the end of World War 2 when assimilation became the norm and the old elemental cross breeding of basic Erinn with the other races they came in contact with, created a new race once more and still in progress of the followers of St Patrick and the Druids and the ancient kings whereby the yearly celebration of St Patricks Day, on 17 March, hearalding the coming of the vernal equinox of the Easter date contoversy reveals the ,

'Are you Irish'

and the response,

"Today everyone is Irish'.
And the feis and the drink and good will in song continues.

The celtic church 700-800 pg 2

Germany the eastern part of the Carolinge Franconian Europe a Saxon family came to the throne under Henry I 919-937 AD.

Thus the 3 Ottos from 936-1002 followed by Henry 2 or St Henry who ruled till 1024 AD.
[In Ireland the battle of Clontarf ejecting the Norse was fought under Brian Boru and the old Maelsechlainn king restored after his death, died in 1022 Malachy I, the last Irish king without opposition].

About 899 the old Irish Scholars disappeared from the continental scene and the religious people aspired to hold the germanic tribes to piety rather than learning.

These missonarys went away from France into the Rhine valley, Lorraine and upper Germany.

However the persistant trial of the Irish towards asceticism lead them to inclusion in Germanic religeous houses as hermits walled up and penatant.

These cells were similar in nature to the 'disert creats' of Ireland and where somewhat a premonition of the rather English consept of solitary confinement of prisoners and the insane.

The Geramn schottenklosters were founded at Ratisbon.
St James 1090, Wurzburg 1134, Nurnberg 1140, Vienna 1155, Eichstatt 1183.
Kelheim getting their inmates monks from the western isle.
These klosters under Benedictine rules.

Pope Innocent 2 organised the Klosters into congregations and chapters and these Irish monastic bishops made their presence felt in both Poland and Russia.

Ireland now in these centers of 800 and 900 AD, sent not only its monks to Germany but funds to support the mission.
Itself than under raiding attacks from viking Norse.

The donations probably as much a desire to preseve these riches from Norse confisaction as to promote religious purity.

Of old days a monastic house was establihed at Glastonbury in Somerset England on a hill.
Perhaps an old inagural site or tumulus where the Irish had settled in the 300 ADs.
This Glaston remained till the 600 period when the region was conquerd by Saxbns who were christain and therefore left the place intact.

Patrick, his heir Benignus and St Brigit all visited Glastonbury.

William part Noramn part English was raised there at the monastery Malmesburi and became its Abbot and Archbishop of Canterbury in 909 .

In Germany the monastery of Waulsort was chartered by Otto I, Holy Roman Emperor under Benedictine Rules to be heir and abbot of Irish pilgrims ,devoted to care for foreign pilgrims usually coming from Ireland to serve God.

The Archbishop of Cologne, Bruno was Ottos brother and his Acta was written by Ruotgen after the Pantaleon monastery was founded by Bruno.

Marianus Scotus a cronicler Moel Brigete, born in 1028 went to the Mag Bile [Moville, Down ]In 1056 .
The Abbot banishe d him from Ireland and that maybe the major reason for the exile status of continental pilgrims.

He went to several monasterys in France and was finaly walled up as a penatent at Fulda the taken to St Martin at Metz where he died in
1082.

He left us a cronology of the Leith Cuinn from ConnCetCathach to Flann m Maelsechnaill and 916.

The rest of his folios deal with the
Craetion to the Incarnation,
the Incarnation to the Assestion,
the Assention to 1082.
as an incluse. Written in insular.
The fact that the penitant in Germany was able to aquire information to write these leabars and geoneological tables, indicates that insulars were not treated as prisoners for any crime even though they had been found guilty of some infraction and banished from their own country by their own abbots or some times inthe instance of princes or chiefs by their own people being pilgrims in preference to being beheaded to be got rid of.

Mac Robartaig[ maic Roarty]
or Rafferty of Donegal, custodians of the old Cathach of O Donnell cormarba of Colum Cille and Kells in 1062.

The celtic church 700-800 pg 3

The monk Mauricius established a mission at Kieff in Russia and they gave him a consignment of furs which were sold to complete the monastary of St Jammes at Ratisban.

The Kloster was after given over to German abbots and the Irish ejected by 1515.
They returned to Ireland or to the Scots.

Liber, Leabar is the period the celtic Church came to a close in the 1200s.

Many manuscripts of Irish work were in the deposits of the German monstic collections.
Gall in Switzerland and Bobbio of the Lombards lying amongh the greater collection of old irish and latin texts.

The secular medieval librarys cataloged much of these monastic collections, naming the monastery and location and some learned societys in the 1800s were compiling volumes of these cataloges of old MSS.

As was in the miracle technological invention around 1500 in the Tudor era of the printing press, came the Rennisance, The Enlightenment and the Rerevolution for peace and perfection.

As the leabar became a reality, controled only by capitalist venture and an ability to read and write- changing completly the state of the peasant, the state of serfdom ,the state of dependance, the state of ingnance in all fields.

Mankind released to learn to use his intellect .

His contact through the brain with the all powerful God Himself.
This now in the 21st century further empowered by the new computerized system, culmination of the leabar and the library as this understanding of science and technology creating the radio, the television ,the radar, the telepone, the exray, the electricity, the auto with the aeroplane, the political impact and directional difference of the modern war like weoponry ,all created by the brain- the intellect and the book.

Perhaps now going into reverse with the new computerized system a copilation which works by its own technology control.

Control of knowledge control of thought, control of application and freedom taking away from the liber its copyright and its public access to a narrower , harder to find and incomplete informations system not inclusive of learing and thought.

As man may have reached the limit of his own intellect and ego is that he is tolaly unable to solve the problems he has created as in the current April/May 2010 oil drilling at 5000 feet below the sea floor into the very artery of the Devils blood now flowing forth with death and distruction as the engineers and technology and capitalism and government strive to save themselves from their own inventive snooping.

Still mankind has the ability to kill far advanced over his ablity to save and quest he goes to God and Jesus to save him from.

As the Anglicans and the Pilgrims and the Puritans have long now, 600 years, been out to kill the Devil and demolish Hell they may well have succeeded this very date in watching helplessly as Gods creatures die before their eyes.

All things considered great and small.

At the mercy of the rule of economic capital. Corporate big profits and its coherts around the world ,counting to the dollar recovery of deep well drilling for oil, the Oilen, the Island.
As Jesus said in dying for their sins on the cross 2000 years ago,
'Forgive them Father for they know not what they do.'

Judi Donnelly
copyrigth 24 may 2010

sourses:
The Irish Church, Aubrey Gwynn SJ, Four Courts Press, 1992
The Sourses for the Early History of Ireland, James Kenney PhD,Columbia university Press , 1929

The Celtic Church part 2 pg 1

2010-05-24T09:18:00.000-07:00

The celtic church part 2 pg 1

In the 500s the old Church became almost excusively monastic.

Where the earlier establishe christain Church had accepted the pagan shrine or the raith of a prince in the 68 years since Padraig had set out to bring the Irish tribes Christian ministers, the Irish people had converted from the old Druid understanding to the acceptance of Jesus as the son of God and spritual leader.

The men of Ireland gathered in small groups to contemplate and pursue this new teaching and than their cells were constructed around an outer place where they had solitude to pursue their thoughts and discussion without disburbance.
Such was the monastery.

One of the oldest such gathering places was Mainister Buite [Monaster Boice].

St Buite Bronaich is said to have died on the day Columcille was born 521 AD making his monastery foundation old at that date.

The Monastery located in Luoth nere Drogeda in the lands of the Cianachta Breg, the tuath of Buite.

The Buite monastery reamined intact till the 12 century and had 2 high crosses and round tower.
One cross being constucted by Muiredach m Domnaill Taniaste having the successive rights to the Abbey of Ard Macha and Ard Maer of the Armagh Church.
He was taniste of the south Ui Neill. The comarba of Buite m Bronaigh. Head of the counsil of Bregas men both lay and cleric.
Muiredach died in 924.

Monastic Buite was a daughter church of Padraig and part of the paruchia.

Enda established a monastery on Aran Island at Galway Bay and his pedigree seems to be in the martyology of Tallaght.

He was a teacher. Some of his students reputed to be Finnian, Ciaran of Cluan Mocca Nois, Brendan of Cluanfert and Columba of Hii, Cluain Iaid and Clonard [Ara].

Fineen spoke of Heaven and hell with an angel regarding the passage of death and the judgement and the pain and punishment of Hell all of which was sung in a bardic Eulogy.
Doomsday and the judgement of the people of Ireland.
He himself died of the Yellow Plague in the Island of Indeirc in the Shannon River.

Further down the Shannon river, as it passed the low lying oftimes flooded medows and pastures on its banks ,the great grandson of Nial 9 was a fugative from his father Tuathal Maoil Gharb, Ard Ri.

He came down the Shannon with 9 men and inlisted Diarmait CerBeil to build the little monastery at Ard Tiprat,the high well.

This beceme Cluan moccu Nois
Medow of race of Nois.

Ciaran its founder became one of its leaders of ecclisiastic rule in Ireland . Its League of Christ and its cain[law] governing over half of Ireland.

Cluain was able to incorporate Connacht in 744 and 814 and sufferd many upsets from the Viking Norse.

It did however survive into the post Viking centuries and the internal anarchy of the 10, 11 and 12 centuries, playing an important roll in integrating the Gailic and Latin learning and preservation of old Irish records.

Leabair na Uidre [Book of the dun Cow] relating the adventures of Cucullan and Medb in the first century AD or BC and Rawlinsons 'B' text The oldest MS in the Irish language.

Clauin mac Nois rests about 8 miles north of Athlone in county Offaly on the east side fo the Shannon.

Ciaran himself, son of the wright 'Mae inTsair', died after 33 years in his career.
Born in 510 AD he founded the famous monastery in 540-55.
Alledgedly on the death of Mael Garb Ard Ri.

Ciaran enjoyed in his short life the making of many maxims and legends indicating a magic property to his dun cow skin which he had taken with him to Finnians school. Probably as a bed roll.

He united fox story ,his corn grinding Quern, and his mothers dyeing operations of Cloths were woven into legents and folklore.

He had contact with foreign merchants who brought wine to Clauin moccu Nois.
Stories of wolves and sacred fires and miricles, of life reserections and the jelousy of his fellow saints were reported to have caused his death.

He died after only 1 year at Clauin at age 33 on the 5th of September about 543 and is buried at Cluain.

He had been confessor to Diarmait Cerbeil, Ard Ri.

Confession and repentance were major features of early church evangalism.

Visions and miracles were deamed as part of Gods plan.
Everything coming from God.

Most of the founders of monastic orders were ajudged to be Saints and an acta or life Biography was kept of them by their brethern.
Some written centuries after the founders death.

A 550 recording of the Liffey, Lugaid Moccu Oiche of the Corcu Monahan who founded the Druim Sneachta [Ridge of Snows] south west of Monahan town.

He was called Mo Lua and his second foundation was at Leix near Kyle.
Claun Ferta Mo Lua
[medow graves of Mo Lua].
called in English Clonfert Mulloe .The land of the Osraige.

There were from these several daughter churchs.

He was also associate by birth with the Ui Fidgente of Limerick plain Neighbors of the Ui Conaill Gabra [ray of profit].
Their patron saint Ita.

His life gives personal names conditions and customs of monastery life.
Discribing herding and pigs, calves, the distraint of cattle, butter making , the use of mills, heating water by plunging hot iron into it, various surgerys, the condition of captives held for ransom, and journeys of religion leaders setting out to found a church.
Pilgrims, confessors , poets, officers cutting the forest and the saints aversion to women.
Mo Lua died in 609.

The text does not reveal his burial site to be at the origianal Druim Sneacta but says he stayed at Cluainferta and that would seem the logical burial place as his mother was from that area of Ireland.

The celtic Church part 2 pg 2

Ard Stratha near Straibain in Tyrone was alledged to be a daughter church of Patrick.
He ordained Mac Crea of Slane the Bishop and by 500 the mission came within control of Eogain of Dal Meisicorb of Laigains royal house.

Most of the monastic foundations were created by the nobility of Ireland. Hence the consept of hereditary ownership, and direction as their inherent ancient right.

Usually the festival date to remember a saint and founder in the monastary system was the date of that persons death and these were dutifly recorded like a cemetary registry in the annals we have today.

This compilation of death dates gives us a calender of the various saints when the church offers a Mass or memorial for them.

This memorial custom was aslo picked up by the lay congregations in naming their children after the saint on their saints day giving the child in effect 2 birthdays .
The day of the actual birth and the death day of the patron saint. whose name the child was given.

The custom is still strong among the Spanish adherants and South America and Spain where children have saints day celabration which is very important to them and their extended families.

In 664-65 the Great Plague stuck the island and the churches and left the monasterys desolate of monks and teachers.

Fechin of Fore died from this devistation of Yellow Plague which accured in the lifetime of the famous Adamnan, cormarba of Iona at that time.

Whether this was Yellow Fever spread by the misquito or a version of the Black Death remains an area for medical research.

A famous saint who lived in that era, and a contemporay of Fechin of Fore ,was St Moling Geinemain Molling or St Mullins in Carlow the monastary of Ros m Bruic or Tech Moling.

There seems no date for the establishment of this monastic order in the Laigen and much of his story was folklore and tales of the people rather than an acta sanctorum.
He was said to have obtained the resmission of the Boroma from the high King.
But these legends put a light on the social and moral condition of southeast Ireland in the 10th and 11th centurys long after Moling had died around 697 AD.

Boyle Abbey in county Roscomain ,all small abbeys and churchs founded beteen 5-7 centuries [400-600].

With the coming of 700 period some of these houses had fallen into laxity and wordliness and reform was desired against the decay of spirituality.

The 'disert' was esatablished and pilgrims could become recluse and be part of the church work.
The Church was becoming more purist.

Leaders arose to promote the reform ideal and the Celi De [client of God] became a part of a reform movement to lead a puritanical monastic life and live by the rule of Mael Ruain.

There were gatherings of Reformers at such churchs as Tallaght where they were the entire monastic body.

They also had a stong following at Armagh.

This church of Mael Ruain, who died in 792, was a devote of Ruadan who had cursed Tara and its king Diarmaid in 559 Ad.

Tamlachta was formed there in the last quarter 775 AD ,which was formed by the foster son Cong mfota 'the tall' and the present Luas train shows both names as its destination in the Redline to south west Dublin.

The Tamlachta was apparently formed as a hospital.

The martyrology of Tallaght .The martyology of Oengus and the Stowe Missal all originated there and the religions rule of the Celi De as established contained all the regulations of the 8th and 9th centuries for the Irish Church which later were compiled.

By 795 however the Norse began raiding of Ireland and by 840 they had established a permanent settlement at Dublin, 5 miles from the Tallaght monastery.

By 1000 the only trace left of this monastery and Finglas at north central Dublin were the Celi De [Culldees].
Few in number.

The Tamlachta rules covered all the phases of monastic life by these Celi De reforms.

The Celi De were all ordained where the monks were frequently laymen and clerics.

In Ireland ,as different from the contintal church the monastic system was parish church as well to serve the people surrounding it.
Whereas in Europe a monastery was secluded and detatched and withdrawn from the community as the great hilltop monasterys and places such as Monte Cassini in Italy.

The rules of Celi De governed devotion, confession ,penance, abstenance, fasting, foods and eating, works and educatation ,titles and the relations between church and the lay population it served.
The rules also included superstitions, magic and ideas.

the Celtic church part 2 pg 3

After the Great plague of 665 a catalogue of the saints of Ireland was prepared in the 750s.

These put into 3 catagories

431-544 350 Bishops under Patricks leadership .
France, Roman, Britons and Irish ,all using the same liturgy of the Mass keeping the same Easter date and recieving women consorts
[the spiritual marraige].

544-598 300 saints Bishops and priests, different liturgy, different rules of life, one date for Easter,tonsured and refusing woman minastrations

Order of 598-665 100 saints ,many priests, living as hermits, different liturgy, different dates for Easter, differnt tonsures ,woman are not mentioned.

By 1166 the martyrolgy of the Ui Gormain which Mael Muire Ua Gormain composed at Knock in Louth when he Mael, was Abbot in the reign of Ruaidri Ua Concobair, high King.

Gilasius comarba of Patrick [Gilla Meic liac] from 1137 to 1174 when he died on 27 March a former Abott of Derry Abbey .

This sung to music as the old bards had sung to the harps at the raith and palace of the princes.

Gilla died and 4 days later Mo Chaidbeo Abbot of Peter and Paul monastery in Armagh secumbed as well .

5 years after the Norman landing in Wexford and 3 years before De Coursey arrived from Kinsale to conquer old Ulaid east of Bann today Antrim and Down couties.

The Church at Knock [Cnoc na Segan, Hill of the Ants, was finished and consecrated by Ua Morgair, Patricks successor, and termon lands assigned to it by Donnchad CearBaile [O Carroll] at Lugmad[ Louth].
The church and monastery were part of the reform movement after 1150 in which Mael Maidoy Ua Morgain [St Malacy] was a primary leader along with his secualr lay supporter Donncadh O Carrol, king of Airgialla.

The church of the Knock became a cannons regular of St Augustine and was part of the design to bring the Irish calendar into harmoney with the continental christain practice.

The martyrology of Donegal within the Four Masters History of the Kingdom of Ireland prepared by OCleary brothers of the Fransican monks
at the Donegal monastery in 1628 and later translated from the Irish by our prolific and dedicated John O Donovan .

The Felire n Naom nErenach ,Calendar of Saints, the official title of the martyology of Donegal compiled by these dedicated monks after the Abbey on Donegal Bay was shelled and the monks made homeless by the new English attach.

Leinster in Latin, the Laigen, had a historical habit of producing contraversial figures and one of them known to us as Columbanus born about 530 AD and educated at Bendchur [Bangor} in Ulaid than a new monestery founded by Comgaill. Company of Gaills.

At the age of 50 in 590, Columbanus set out with 12 companions on a pilgrimage through Britain and to Gaul and thence to Burgandy.

There he established a retreat at Annagrae forest and later 2 other colonys of religion near Luxeuil and Fontane.

These monks were controversail and attrached so much attention that the king of Burgandy Thiery ,finally sent soldier to accompany the troublesome foreign missionaries out of the country and back to Ireland.

Columbanus however was allowed to move to the other courts of the meRoving ian France,
Clothaire in Neusrasia ,and Delbert in Austrasia.

He than sailed up the Rhine to Switzerland were he crossed the Alps to Milan where he was welcomed by the Lombard King and Queen who gave him land in the Apinnines valley near Genoa where he founded the monastery Bobbia in 598 AD.

It is here the controversial monk was buried.
Columbanus insisted on the monastery rule by Abbots as in his homeland of Ireland in its administration where the bishop had only sacradotal funtion.

He introduced the practice of private confession still used today and rendered much penance.

Bobbio over the Centuries following became a great library of classic literature and the stuggle for hearts and minds between the Roman and Celtic Church system was part of his legacy.

His letters and epistles were controversial and vigerous and written in Latin .The then primary language of the church and Europe.

This monk was well read in classical literature; familiar with Vergil, Horace, Ovid.

He had correspondence with Greagory the Great, his contemporary, with whom he started the Pashal controvery over the Irish and Romans determination of the date of Easter.

Unlike most of the early Celtic Church communications, Columbanus letters and thoughts seem to have been preserved.

The only rule of the Celtic church still serving was that compiled by Columbanus who remained Irsih in all things throughtout his continental mission.

He was brash ,bold ,contentious, puritanical, and vigerous.

The Easter controversy arose over the date of the celebration and Reserection of Christ the Pasch.

'Caisc' in Irish for Easter from the P celtic.

This date of the Pascha or Passion was an important part of church calendar funtions.

Where the Roman Julian calendar gave dates by the solar year, the Jewish calendar was lunar and had 354 days.
Their calendar updated from time to time by putting in an extra month and addition or subtaction of a day here and there.
Arbitrary ajutments made by the Sanhredin which always selected the lambing time as Nisan.

This was finally settled on as being the month just after the Vernal equinox which would be our April.

The early christains accepted the Sanhedrain arbitrary determination of Nisan as the crusifix anniversary and also obsered this first day of every 7 of the week as a holy day to commemorate the Reserection of Christ- the Pasch.

By 2 AD the Pasch was celebrated on the Sunday following the 14 Nisan in the west but in the east 14 Nisan was still the accepted date of the Pasch.

These Eastern observers were excommunicated around 300 AD for this practice of observing
Quart O Decimans.
Briinging the matter to crisis.

The Counsil of Arles in 314 and the Counsil of Niaea in 325 ruled Easter must be uniformly celebrated on the same day worldwide.

The date to be decided by ecclesiastical authority [as the old Sanhedrin] as determined by the church of Alexandria Egypt.
That the chief science center.

With the disintigration of Roman society in 400 and decentralization, disagreement arose between Celtic Irish/ British Church and the Continental Roman Church .

By the 6 century, 500 AD, the 2 churches having been isolated were using different methods to deterime Easter date.

The Celtic Church retaining the old long forgotten practice.
The date of the vernal equinox differed.

The Celtic defined the equinox to be March 25 at about 664 AD.
The contintal Roman church placed the equinox [when the sun passes the tropic of capricon on its yearly return north] at 21 March the date we use today.

The celtic church celebrated Easter on the 14 Nisan and were denounced as
Quarter o Deciman.
The Irish lunar cycle of 84 years and the Metonic 19 year cycle of Lunar months.
[The blue moon year].

The cycle determined by the Greek astronomer Meton- 235 Lunar months = 19 years solar.

Th lunar calendar drawn up by Meton at Athens in 432 BC dividing the monthly lunar cycles into 30 days or 29 days each, putting in 7 intercalendar months every 19 years.
The blue moon calendar.

Columbanus opened this discrepancy in 632 when some Irish accepted the Victoria dates and the north chose the Petrie tradition date resticting
Easter to 25 March-April 21.

As the 2 factions disputed the date of Easter, the Synod of Whitbty in 664 concluded the Arguement which the Irish church lost.
The king of Scotland Owea accepted the argument of Rome and
The Celtic Ionian church withdrew to Ireland .

Adamnan in 685 the cormarba of Colm Cille of Iona adopted the Roman Easter date.

In 710 Nectan king of Picts acepted the Roman Easter dating.
Later Cornwall abandond Celtic Easter and later Wales.

The victorian Alexandria date of March 16-April 22 and 15 March-21 April as the dates in which Easter was to be celebrated . Syncronization of the Julian solar calendar with the Metonic lunar calendar shoud be repetative.

It is clear none of them knew what they were doing.
Neither Roman,Egypt or Irish.
And they still dont.

Judi Donnelly
copyright May 23 2010

sourse;
Sourses for the Early History of Ireland, James Kenny PHd., Columbia University Press , 1929

Celtic church pg 1-6

2010-05-20T09:55:00.000-07:00

The Celtic Church pg 1

In 5 or 6 Century BC a sailing vessel was sent out from Carthage in North Africa in the person of one h'imilco to explore the western coast of Europe to which he sailed up along the coast of France ,Spain and Britain.
Past the Phonecian city of Gadir at the Pillars of Hercules guarding the Mediteraen from the waves of the great and mighty Ocean full of monsters.
And the hard north wind flowing over them out of the ancient mountain chain once called O estrymnis [O es trim nis]. And beneith the North South running mountain chain ,islands rich in tin, lead and minerals.

These coastal people proud and skillfull in sailing an already famous skiff.
A craft constructd of skins sewn together in which they sailed at high speed over the vast deep of the coastal seas.

This little currach or coracle still in use along the Irish Coasts.

From the main coast of the continent, a 2 day journey in this skin covered coricle brought its sailors to the Sacred Island ,Iverni [Her green wash].
[Everj] as the isle was called by the ancients.
Lying in the waves full of green verdure and inhabited by the h'Ierni race who dwelt all over the island .
A pre celtic people.

h'Imilco a Phonecian ,a semetic people from the east mediteranian, discribed the coastal sea as lazy, no wind, full of sea weed .

Oftimes a sail was of no use where the currach could skim along over the seas where pine built sailing ships lay dormant in these seas.

The inhabitants of Sidon and Tarsus were drawn to these north regions to obtain tin an alloy to copper, to create the much prised Bronze.

These deposits found not in Iverni but in Cornwall at Wales, Spain and Brittany called the 'Cassiterides' or tin islands.

The trip from south Ireland to Cornwall was an easy journey and trade went on between the Ibernia and the Cassiterides.
Probably in fish and other food stuffs for the miners.

Ireland produced no tin.

She did have gold and was chief sourse of this mineral for western Europe in the era before Christ.
It is probable that control of this lucrative trade was much desired in Rome in its quest to buld an empire.

kassiseros = tin

The Greek h' ellens were also making long voyages in the east and founded in 600 BC Massilia -Marseilles colony.

The Focaen = greek aryans
Fonician = tarsus semites.

These may be the hated Fomore noted as oppressive from the sea in ancient Ireland lore.

Pytheas lived in 300 BC, the time Ugaine Moir m Eacaid Badoirn was king of Erinn.
Father of 25 children and married to the daughter of the French king Ceasair Chrothach. As recorded in the cronicles of Ga-alan.{Ray to land]

Pytheas wrote conserning the OCean which was an important geographic work about the time of the Death of Alexander the Great in 320 BC.

Pytheas left for Gibralter and sacred north. He cirumnaviagted Britain and went north across the north sea to Thule [Tule], the Shetlands and Scandinavia.

He also explored the Baltic and Jutland coasts home of the h'An siatic league traders.

His expedition was scientific taking anthropological notes as well as compiling geography and making astronomical observations.

Although he does not mention Ireland itself in his observations, he does establish a' YNYS PRYDYN '[Inis Pridin] or Priteni ,Cruithnech or Picts a Welsh people.

He distinguished the Pretanica from the Celtica and said the Celt were not Iberic.

This new era or h'ellenic age was the begining of state supported scholarship ,colleges of learning and students schools.

Alexandria of Egypt , major Harvard of its day.

The Pytheas compilation of works were lost along with most of the other scholarly studies of the era.

Timaeus, a Sicilain historian,
Erathostenes the Alexandria librarian,
h' Ipparchus a Rhodes astronomer and geographer all lost.

But briefs and other inacurate books as the history of Polybius and Poseidonius, founder of the school at Rhodes as are today Rhodes scholars, these too lost.

By 20 BC Diodorus Sieulus a Greek Sicilian, contempory of Julius Ceasar and Augustus ,wrote a 40 book history of the world till Ceasars Gaul conquest from 58-50 BC.

Ceasar makes little notes on Ireland as he busily conquests Gaul and the continental celtic tribes but he does name h'Iber nia the small 1/2 size island west of Britain.
Hibernus being the latin for wintery.

Strabo a Greek from Pontus ,names the island Ierne [ Iepvn-(Ierin) in the Greek].

Ireland consisting of the people the goidels, as being savage and canabalistic and sexually uncontrolled.
Having relations not only with other women but their mothers and sisters.

He discribes the sailors report the island to be bearly habitable because of the cold that leads the natives to a wreched existance.

The Irish Cronicles record truely a sexual laxity in Erinn at this time of the change to modern christain time but the court and people are discribed as comforatably sheltered, fed and intrenched and if anything somewhat bored with their happy existence.

Eocaid Fedlimid mac Fionna m Fionn of Laigen
who produced 6 daughters ,one of whom was the famous Medb of Connacht lands, and her sister Clotha named after the 3 Fates Washerwoman who had affairs with her triplet brothers the Fineamas. Lotan, Nar and Bres producing a child, Lugaid Riab n Derg.
Not known which of the triplets fathered him.

However he than produced with his apparently young mother, the child
Criobtan Nia Nar 12 years king of Ireleand in the transition time from Before Christ to Anni Domino.

If the irish were suffering as Strabo the distant Greek discribes they are certainly enjoying it.

the celtic church page 2

From earliest times the island of Erinn had trade relations between themselves and the continental Gauls exchanging their wools and hides for great quantites of wine from western Gaul and Brittany .
A product Ireland could not produce but used in great quantites.

This ancient wine trade route went back to the Bronze Age and neolithic times and created a close cultural association with the Iverni people and a European influence for Ireland.

This trade in drink was probably part of the activites involving this exchange of Irish goods for wine and if that could not be had for the arduous trip by currach, slaves such as Patrick obtained and taken back to Erinns shores.

Some 400 years after the event of the birth of Christ in Jerusalem and the continued trade in drink between Erinn and the continent, the Roman conquest and Romanization of Spain had been completed.

The schools and writers of Spain were latinized.
Latin the language of learning.
The Gaul and nobility of western Europe clamored for the Roman education .

Italy Spain and Gual formed one people and one civilization encompassing the region today known as France Spain and Italy.

Public schools were in wester Gaul at Poitiers, Touluse,Bordigala [Bordeaux] among others.

These schools of the Pax Romana were secular and out of christain Church control. Imparting to their students pagan traditions, literature, philosphy and grammer.

In the 400 AD period the Roman Rhine defences collapsed and the Germanic tribes moved over the border lands into Gaul.

Alans, Sueves,[Swedes} Vandals crossed the Rhine in 406 AD.

In 413 Burgundaians and Visgoths, and in 430 AD the Hun ,greatest in terror.

In 451 the Huns swept the country to Orleans.
Public order was broken.
Civilized societys broke down.
Roman public administration became disproportional as the whole of Gaul was dominated by 485AD by 3 barbarian people.
The Francs in the north and center, the Burgundians in the southeast [provance], and the Visgoths in Spain and the southwest.

By 507 AD the north Francs overran southwest Gaul.

None of the public schools survived and the private church schools also fell dormant in this disintigration of the Roman hold on western Europe.
Through these tumutious European breakdowns the Scott came back into Britain on raids and trades, and amidst these practices, Patrick was at 16 ,brought across the Irish sea to Ulster to be sold as a slave to one noble Irish Mulcu and sent out to shepard the pigs and sheep of this petty Irish lord.

As said ,the young man was brought with 1000 others who may have been refugees.
All escaping the exactions of the invading Huns and Germanic tribes fleeing for safety across the continetal coast to Britain and Ireland as in later wars and centuries.
As to the huuman costs.
Most of the learned and cultured men.

The world of the 1, 2 and 3 centuries of the AD era was civilized and interdependent.
Holding to a Latinized language and culture under the military control of the Romam legions.

Because Ceasar had conqued the British island , western Europe included that island and well, with the exception of the far north Scotti and the Atticotti people and the Pict and the Irish tuaths, were united as one unite under Roman control.

This broke down in early 400 AD and the Roman continental state perished leaving its refugees and displaced people.
Brtitain and Ireland became their refuge as this distruction passed over the continent and finaly to Rome itself when Atilla the Hun sacked Rome from the Alps.

Rome was sacked in 406, and 455, but it fell in history when the German commander Odo Vacar killed commander Orestes, deposed Romulus, Orestes son and procliamed himself head of state in 476 AD, 800 years before the American state was founded in 1776.

The last inagurated Emperor of Rome was ended and the Germanic miltiary commanders took over the administration of the Roman Empire.
To continue in name and theory through the Germanic state in Europe kown as the Holy Roman Empire.

The runing of the city of Rome itself and the provinces of Italia were left to the Church and the old provincial tribal rulers as they had been before the Republic was born.
Before the Imperial Eagle flew over the streets.
Before the invasions of Greek colonist to Sicily and the mysterious Echtrucians and the boy Patrick with his learned family of refugees transported from great Britain to Ireland either as an indentured servant or an out and out slave by the sympathetic rulers and nobilty of Erinn.
Kin and decendants of Niall naoi gial lach .

Lords all, princes and scones of great families, confident in their own right and abilty to hold their own land against the most disaplined forces Europe could command as they did once more against the Norman the Anglo, the nazi, and now the Euro.
always in league with the Devil and the Church. The Druid and the dollar and master of the song and the drink through it all.

The celtic church pg 3

The Irish Annals record Patricus, a Latin name ,as coming in Ireland in 432 and dying in Ireland in 461.
If this is correct Pat died at age 42.

He had been in service in Ireland for 6 years till 438 as a herdsman in Ulaid east of loch Neagh at a place now known as kil Ultach.

However the 432 date of arrival is more likely the date he returned to Ireland as a Bishop which does not reveal his age or how long he had been gone since his escape and sojourn in France and England.
He served as Bishop and missionary in Ireland for 29 years and died as they believe an age of 68 or so which would have made him about 40 when he retured to evangelise the Irish.

He left as a young man of 22 years under stress and deception sailing off 200 miles away from Ulaid with a cargo of dogs.

He went after 2 years on back to Britain .
He was made a deacon there and later created a bishop and sent to Ireland.
This was probably part of his Britain hereditary family right and he was not subject to the chair of Peter at Rome but his own paternal parish.

Patrick lived poorly in Ireland as a Bishop and he tried in gaelic to bring the christian faith to the noble Irish.
St Patrick was believed to have recieved his eccleiastical training in Gaul at a monastary.
Perhaps where he landed in southwest Gaul when he fled Ireland by ship after 6 years of indentured servitude.

Early rules of the newly established mission In Ireland preaching doctrine to a pagan people.
Certain practices were allowed.

A cleric who was married was recongized.
Rome tonsure was not necessary,
clerics were to be inmates of religious houses.
Rules for collection of moneys were established for the ransome of
captives,
no alms to be accepted from pagans.
christains were forbidden to consult witches and soothsayers
penitance was light,
Clerics from Britain must have proper credentials to act as priests.

The many refugee christains fleeing from the Tuetonic invasion thus returned in the 900s when the Viking persecuted the Irish churchmen who fled to the continent.

The Irish and British churchs were peculular to the continental practices and this by the 7th century the 600s, designated the Celtic church.
This designated alliance remainded for the next 150 years and the Church in Ireland developed its own ecclesiatic system dealing always with their British christain Brethren along the eastern boarder of the Irish sea and those in Brittany.

Beyong the Celtic buffer state, Tuetonic kings ruled who were pagan or some christain.
The missionarys retained a close reltionship in Ireland and in west Britian.

A monastary of Candida Casa,
Enda of Aran,
Finnian of Moville[ Mo Bile in Down],
Tigernach of Clones,
Eogan of Ardstaw,

alumni of Candida Casa school.

Early Britain also subscibed from the casa.
In 500 AD Irish christain seats as ,
Buite m Bronagh.
Finnian of Clonard,
Maedoc of Ferns,
Brendon of Clonfert
studied in the british sphere.

Diffent from the early continental church based on the administration and sacred funtions resting in the Bishop- episcopus.

The Irish developed a separate monastic system.

A small church surrounded by a community of monks or nuns living under ecclestic disapline, administering to the people.
Or a hermitage where a hermit monk was joined by disiples and grew into a large monastery around the founding hermit monk the anchorite who was cannonized.

An autocratic far reaching power was vested in the Abbot.

The Bishop had only dignity and sacramental powers unless he was also Abbot.
The Abbot was, by secular law and popular acceptance, heir, comarba.
He inherited all property, power, dues, privilages which had been accorded the founder.

He was a blood relative of the founder. Or if none exisited, to the family who had granted the monastic land. Usually the local noble or princely family.

Where the original saint founder founded several churches these became a league or congeregation -- a paruchia.

The mother house church, the place of the saints 'reserection' ie: death, is where his body is buried.

The monks of all the churchs in the congregation made up the familia or muinter of the saint.
The saint of the mother house of the tuath became the patron saint of that tuath bringing the interests of the state tuath and the monastery closely together.

Partick of Armagh,
Colum Cille of Iona
and Derry.
Ciaran of Clonmacnois,
Finnian of Clonard,
Comgall of Bangor,
Brendan of Clonfert,
Maedoc of Ferns,

seven saints and founders of early monasterys. All Abbots.
Most of the monastery buildings and records have disappeared.
Only the 'acta sanctorum' legends of their founders and famous men have been preserved.
Perhaps a list of Abbots, church dues, and monastic rulers.

The Acta Santorum and biographys of these ecclesiatical figures are now only availabe in complilations of latin centers.

A few Lives of persons like Brigit, Colum Cille ,Columbanus and Patricks Confessions come down to us but most records and writing of the early monastic communities are lost to history.

the celtic church pg 4

The monastery system usually composed of the secular population and churches dwelt together on monastic lands .The churches were for the people and their kin.

The Irish mind at the introduction of monasticism was primarily lived for centuries on paganism and popular legend,heros, folklore built into the Irish language.

Stories such as Geinemain Molling ocus Beathae contained a personality and magic application to the personages and recorded some old religious beliefs and ideas of the general populous in the legends and acta of the saints.

The old hero myths and Emainia and Tara were updated with the new heros of Armagh and Kildare.

By 563 some 130 years after the general conversion and establishment of the semi independent monastery system the Celtic Church was balanced by the advancement of the O Donnell clanns scion Colum Cille ,Dove of the Church.
This prince of the royal Ui Neill line, great grandson of Conal Gulban a son of Niall Naoi Giallach who had with his 2 brothers Eogain and Enda conquered northWest Ulster as sword land and created the kingdom of Ail e ach.{Desire his agreement].

These family princes were roydamnas and Colum was fully qualified to be elected as high king of Ireland in his own right.

This young prince founded Daire Calgaich Calgaich-Oak wood at Derry in 546 AD and at Offaley, Daire Moy at Durrow and later his most famous estatablishment and mission at h'II or I island called I Ona, an island 80 miles North East of Ireland and a mile from the island of Mull off the Scot coast in 563 AD.

The mission to convert the Pict nation.

The pictish north of Scotland accepted the Iona mission to bring the gospels and the establishment of daughter churchs all over Scotland.
40 years after St Columbas death in 597, around 637 ,a mission was sent from the Iona monastery to the English of North Umbria.[York}

The Iona clergy and brethern dominated north Ireland, Scotland and Umbrian religion for a century until the Easter Contraversy arose and the north Umbrian king Oswiv, at the Whiteby synod in 664AD ,declared for the Roman Easter date thus ending the monoply in religious practice of the Colum Cille monks in England.

At Armagh the Patrician committies arose to restore their prominence at the expense of the Columbans.

In 717 King Nectanof Scotland, who was of the Romans faction, drove out the Ionian mission.

But Iona remained the primacy of the Columban foundations across Ireland and Scotland well into the 9th century[800], when it was attacked and plundered by the raiding Viking Norse.

Colum Cille is buried there in accordance with the policy of the monastic foundations to bury their founders at the monastery.
The comarba of Colum Cille moved to Kells.

The Ionan community remained till the assention of Kenneth m Alpine to the Pictish throne in 844 AD as in Ireland the League of Columban churchs remained as did Patricks foundation till 1199 AD.

[Kenneth M Alpine's daughter was married to the king of Ireland Aed Findliatha and was the mother of Niall ,his second son ,who began the O Neill Line].

His life and times and mission were well recorded by his brethern abbots at Iona.

Cuimine Ailbe 657, and Adamnan 679,both wrote his life story which leaves us a clear persona of the triad of Irish saints;
Patrick, Colum cille and Brigit.

Colum was of course, a poet as well as Abbot and his Amra [eulogy] was composed by the chief poet of Ireland Dallnagaill as Colum presided over the Dail at Druim Ceta at Mullard [Daisy hill], Limavady, co. Derry which was held to achieve the release of Scandlan Mor, prince of Osraighe from the High King.

He achieved peace between Irishmen and the Irish colony of Umbria ,and to protect the filid from banishment.

Colum the prince was able to negociate settlement to all three controversies.

The great body of folklore that grew up around the monasterys and the Lives of the Saints express these folk and common beliefs and desires and social conditons surrounding the centurys in which they occured.
The charachter of the monastery itself is revealed along with the history of the eventually 200 monasterys established in Ireland by the time of Henry 8.

The folklore also acted, whether wittingly or unwittingly, to preserve the beliefs, superstitions and mysterious miracles of the old pagan Druidic culture. Hence incorporating the past into the present in telling and retelling these legends and stories.

In Ireland sainthood was understood of the people the duine or muinter, the betach, as well as most of the upper class nobilty ,as being acheived by ability of the person in holyness to preform magic or miracles.

The person having santifying grace was not achieved by either virtue or holyness but was more or less inborn.
The child born as a saint was accompanied at his birth -like the eastern buddah- by some kind of supernatural sign and he was able in childhood to preform miracles or other feats not usual in a normal child.

He was more or less the equivilant of the old Druid medicine man in pagan days but now serving a beter cause, Christ.

The element of agents between man and God applied and prayers to a saint long dead or the virgin Mother of Christ also long dead ,to intercede on behalf of a person trying to achieve salvation.
To be saved and the theory of salvation by association is quite stong in the early Celtic Church as well as the consept of predestination after included in reform prodestant churchs as Calvin brings into the new religion ancient pagan consepts as does the biblical discription of the announcements of Elizabeth, Lazarus and Mary regarding the conseption with their children ,John the Baptist and Jesus the Christ.

The early Greeks also in their study of the acceptance of the being as a supernatural presence, make their determination on the validty of Jesus as the Messaih on the consept of his heritage-geneological background and ancestors, and his pre destinational mission which Jesus himself expressed.

He ,like Patrick had the call. The vision and the mission laid out for them not by their own thought and brain but that of the Spirit of God Himself.

The holy plan of a superior guide and hence the culmination of life lines to the past and the future through the process of birth ,rebirth and genetic knowlege.

The paths set by God and nature not to be disturbed by man as all life especially human life had a God ordained pre destinal plan.

The Irish had this, and in the ancient world understanding of this eastern principle, isolated for centuries on their cold northern island made great effort to hold on to this geneological heritage just as the British and now the Americans work diligenlty to distroy geneological records.
Not only in the western world and Europe but the deep reserves of ancient tribal Africa and the far east now under anti family communism as the state religion.
The new world Indian tribes of both north and south America and now probably the distant ancient tribes and the aborigines of Australias detached continent.

In Ireland the tendancy of, indeed the legal right, and insistance on hereditary rights to bishopricks and abbeyships and deanships and poet ships and bardships and kingships and the undersanding of reprodution to achieve the continuity was constant in the celtic acceptance of the christain faith lasting well into the 12 and 13 century when these Irish rights were extinguished by the continental Norman orders now in place and the Romanization of the Church to a unified order under the leadership of Peter and Paul as it reamins today 800 years on.

celtic church pg 5

It was habitual and desirable in the early Celtic Church for the ancient custom of fosterage to be practiced where young boys were sent to the church school for their education and boarded there.

The Patrichii paruchia was well developed by the saint himself who established daughter churches throught ot the Leith Cuinn territorys.

However the church was poor at Armagh and in 734 relics were taken on circuit by the comarba to encourage the faithful to contribute much needed donations to the Armagh upkeep.
Patricks pence was made a permanent feature and by 814 after the conquest of the eastern area by the O Neill forces a 'maer' was established in each district to collect funds as discribed in the Annals of Ulster from the document,
Liber Angeli, book of the Angles.

By 995 the Leabar na Ceart [Book of Rights] established an entitlement of a normal tribute in gold from the converts made by Patricks ministry.

Possibly some of the reason Brian Borough had laid his ounce of silver on the alter at Armagh recording by the dean of that time in the Book of Armagh.
This liber Ard Macanus compiled by FerDomnach who died in 846 produced an offical edition and records and memorandia on Patrick.

There are probably 200 more eccesiatical biographys regrding the life of St Patrick and as many reguarding Colum cille.

An interesting history of survival of this book of Armagh, as many of the old records of Ireland seem to have lead as adventurous a life as the people within them.
The leabar was put under safe keeping of the records and the family of Mac Maoir Muire or Wyre [Wire] took possession of the documents.

When the new English arrived to plant Ulster under James Stuart in 1607 the family was disposessed of their land.
The book was kept with them till 1680 whnt the last maoir Florence mac Moyre had to pledge it [pawn it] for 5 pounds to get to London to give testimony against Oliver Plunket the Archbishop of Armagh who was subsequently condemned and put to death in 1681.
Mac Moyre was to poor to recover the Book .

By 1707 the Leabar Ard Machanus was possessed by Arthur Brownlow of Lurgan.
By 1846 the Reverend Francis Brownlow put the book in the library of the Royal Irish Academy.
It was studied by Dr Graves and offered for sale by the Society in 1853 directly after the Great Famine.
Dr william Reeves purchased it and sold it the following year to Archbishop Beresford of Armagh for the library of Trinity College.

Reeves died in 1892 with the Armagh book still unpublished.
The Royal Irish Society Academy brought the manuscript to Dr John Gwynn where it was finally published in 1913, some 15 centuries after it was begun by the comarba of St Patrick at Armagh Cathederal.
The original document written in old Irish which was the customary scribe in before 800 AD.

Patrick first sucessor was Benigus.
He with Cair nech were instramental in preserving the old Irish law of the Senchus Moir to make this law conform to Christain precepts.
This done by commission between Patricks disiples and the Ard Ri.
Laegaire m Niall Naoi Giallach with the men of Ireland who by Patricks miricles had accepted the Faith.

The Commission of 9 revised the Filidecht ocus Brethemnas ocus Recht.

Laegaires fate was sealed when he was killed by the servants he had given to the Lagin to by oath
'the Sun ,Moon, Water and Air, Day and Night ,Sea and Land.'

He tried to exact the old Borume tribute laid on Leinster by Tuathal Tech Mar in 79 AD for the death of his daughters.

Laegaire was returned to the north and buried at the royal raith of Tara standing facing south with shield and spear agains the Laigen who had been his enemy for all his life.
The grave in the outer south east dyke.
[Is it even there todaY?}

CELTIC CHURCH PG 6

Contempory to Colum Cilles establishment of Calgaich Doire Abbey in Donegal there came into being in the Liffey valley of the Laigin the Cell Dara, church of the oak [Kildare].
At that time a monastery having separate facilites, women nuns and men monks.
The Church having a screen betwee the 2 sexes.

The foundress Brigidae her latin name in Irish [Brigit].
She is buried under the high altar.
Her mother a bondswoman Broicsech ,was a daughter of the Dal Bronach of the Dal Concobair of Meath.
She was well respected as Abbyess of this former pagan place under the great oak tree.
A patron of child birth, poets, and men of learning.

The nuns kept a perpetual fire going at CellDara.
She as the patoness of the Laigin and was hailed as
'Mary of the Gael'
and was respected by all Ireland.

The Patricians at Armagh particularly favored her and a church there was dedicated to her.

Kildare survived and was respected till the 1200 coming of the Normans and reamins today a religious center where it has always been.

Brigit in the Irish was a transition from pagan thought to christian martyrolgy as an early saint.

The early days of Irish literature after the conversion dedicated itself to composing hymns, religious treasties ,or the litergy, books of prayers, books of devotions.

Most of the grand old bardic eulogy was neglected or only sung in private while the Irish consentrated on absorbing and creating the new Faith and promulgating it amongst the people.

Social conditions, land ownership ,hereditary rights ,laws and custom in the old kingly provincial world were preserved in church life and the general ministry to the people who were only required to accept the prayers, devotions, instuctions, and the various singular Abbots.

Each Abbey and monastic establishment maintaind its own docrine and customs.

There was no universal ideal and as such the secular belief of each old provincial state was incorporated into the early christain Abbey/Monastery state.

The first 200 years of the new Faith in Ireland established itself in separte Abbeys and monasterys throughout the land where each of the founders later are cannonised as saint and usually buried on site.

The Abbotship thus handed down heriditarily to one of the decendants as usually the land and buildings were donated by their family, holdings of the tribe.

This steady isolated state of the Celtic ways and ideals persisted after the establishment of the system and was not disturbed until the Viking Norse came into the country from the North Sea to plunder the riches they saw being collected in these establishments.

By 835 they were able to hold all the sea coast and ports in both south and north Ireland and an accomidation was made betwen the Irish chiefs and the Norse for the next 200 years which continued after the battle of Clontarb with the than christianized and crossbred children of the Norse and the Irish .

The Norse by than establishing their own cathederal churches but tending to listen to the directives of Canterbury in England rather than the local Irish who did not emit any central ideal of adminisntraiton.

The consept of take care of your own and leave your neighbor alone still prevailed in the Irish character as it does tody.

Judi Donnelly
copyright 17 May 2010

source:

Sourses for the Early History of Ireland, James Kenny ,PHd., Volume I. Ecclesiastical, Columbia Universty Press, 1929

1450-1500 pg 1-4

2010-05-13T09:47:00.000-07:00

1449-1500 AD

When Richard 2 landed at Ben Edar [Howth] in July 1449 with a large and pompous retenue and army, indentured by the king to Ireland to recive the entire revenue of Ireland and salary of 4,000 marks.

He first wrote to the Archbishop of Dublin, Mey to meet him at Bray south of Dublin on August 1 to go with him on a hosting against the Irish of Wicklow.
Instead Richard went north to Ulster arriving at Drogeda about 22 August where he recived some of the Irish chiefs; McGuinness with 600 men, horse and foot, MacMahon 800.
The two o Reillys with 700 men.
McQuillan of the route with 800 men and a truce existed between young Richard of York and 3000 soldiers under these Chiefs of the Irishmen [Yryssmen].

On 27 August Henry O Neill m Eogain of Tir Eogain came into Richards camp by an indenture.
The son of Eugenius [Eogain or Owen] ONeill, captain of his nation, with full power for his subjects and man of the Earl of Ulster de Burgo, agreed to resore all the deBurgo possessions occupied by himself his family or his subjects and give to the deBurgo Earl the Ulster bonnacht owed him.

He agreed to war at his own expense against any rebel Irishman of Ulster and to provide Duke Richard 500 horse, and 500 foot for any wars Richard wanted to conduct in Ulster.

He restored the Fews to John Bellew an English heir and agreed to pay tithe and restore the Church its property.

The prince of York promised O Neill for all this, that justice would be done under the English laws.

Henry O Neill gave Duke Richard 600 well fattened beeves in homage and took an oath on the gospel and a gold cross to obey these terms under eccesiastic censure ;ie: the threat of excomunication.

The o Hanlons, chiefs of Oriel came in as well as some Anglos such as the Earl of Desmond in the far southwest and the Berminghams of Carbury.

Richard than moved against the Wicklow Irish accompained by a force of Ulster Irish and the English of Louth, Meath and Dublin.

Ruaide OBryne who submitted agreeing along with an oath to be a true servant of the king to wear English clothes and learn the English language.

McMorrough chief of Leinster came in and even though Richard was acknowledged Viceroy and the Captains of Ireland had pleged their loyal support for the Crown the English of Ireland felt these submissions must be taken with a grain of salt as the Irish nation now in control of the whole country with only Anglo pockets of their old 1200 ancestors onslaught and takeover of the countryside.

Such old demesnes as the Roche, Barrys and Courcys now held small possessios in Cork whie the poor English of Cork and Kinsale and yougal were powerless to redress these Irish greivances.

Some of the complaints of the Anglos were the practice of coyne and livery against them by their own Anglo marcher lords.
[and they did finally achieve this freedom as established the US with the 1776 Constitution forbidding the quartering of troops on the populous].

The abuses of contracts with puplic theives who recieved a penny for every plowland and a farthing for every cottage in the baronys to eliminate these theives who could lawfully be hung.

In 1450 however the Drogeda parlmiament was in finacial crisis as Richard, Duke of york was unable to recieve payment from England to run his office which he was doing by selling some of his Irish lands.

As the English administration stalled in 1450, to come up with enough money to pay the men and keep the government afloat the Clergy finally gave the prince a subsidy.

The Macgeohegan rose in Meath .A few Irish captains and a fellowhip of English rebels.
Burned Rath More and other villages. Killing and burning the inhabitants.

Richard of necessity ,had to return to England and the situation of law and order in Ireland was not good.

Lord Suffolk was than accosted on the high seas, murderd, beheaded and his body thrown ashore at Dover.
The Bishop of Salsibury taken from Mass in his church and murdered .

Richard was recalled to England landing at Anglesey and marched to London.
Richard was in England than till he was defeated at Ludford Bridge in 1459.

He had in this year of 1454-55, been Lord Protector for Henry V when the King was ajudged to be insane.

But with the defeat by Lancasters force he fled to Ireland.

While Ricahrd was in England his Deputy Ormond-Butler allied with the Earl of Desmond, conducted campaigns against the Irish enemy taking the Castles of Owney and Limerick County from O Mulrian. The castle of Leix from o Dempsey and rescued Bermingham from Irry a prisoner of OConnor Faly.

Ormond than got the submission of OFarrell and a tribute of 9 score beefs [90] and O Reilly came to him at Fore in county Cavan and Mac Mahon of Oriel submitted.

He than held a meeting with Clanna ONell in which Henry O Neill divorced Mac Willis O Connors daughter and within the month the 62 year old Ormand died on 23 August 1452.

He was succeeded by his son ,the Earl of Wiltshire ,a member of the English Court Beauforts, and the Butler interests thus changed sides from the Yorkist to the Lancasters.

Wiltshire appointed John Mey Bishop of Armagh, his Deputy in Ireland.

1450-1500 pg 2

After the death of Richard of York on December 30 1460, the English ruling the country continued to arrive with well armed men and archers to make war on the enemy Irish.

When York left Ireland to fight for the English throne, he left Kildare in charge as his deputy to govern Ireland.

Kildare was made Justicar by the counsil and appointed by Edward IV in May 1461.

The Yorkist cadre of officals were banished. The Ormond Butler faction were staunch leaders of the Lancaster line of Red roses.

However the 6th earl was restored in 1475 and made attempts of despiration arriving in Ireland with a great multitude of Englishmen who distroyed Waterford but they were defeated by Desmond at Pilltown near the Suir River.

The kings brother Duke of Clarance was appointed L.L. in 1462 with Roland fitz Eustace as his Deputy who brought with him 300 archers paid from the English exchequer.
But Roland did not last and in 1463 the Earl of Desmond was appointed Deputy.
Desmond held office till 1467 .

The annals discribe this fitzGerald as successful in war, handsome, learned ,eloquent, hospitable and generous ,and an oppressor of vice and theft.
He was a great patron of poets Irish .
He spoke Latin, English and Irish and his Irish tenants in his Desmond Earldom were predominant.
However his tenure was marked by disturbances in Meath and Ormond fought against him and a feud ranged between the 2 Anglo lords.

In Leinster the OBrynes defeated the English.

The restrictions on hand between the Irish and Anglo were relaxed in the south and west of Ireland at Cork, Limerick, Waterford and Yougal.
Anglos now allowed to trade with the native Irish.

In the west o Donnell vs Bourke mcWillians allied with the Lord Deputy Thomas, Earl of Desmond.

However Edward 4, the king, sent a deputaion under John Tiptoft earl of Worchester to Ireland in 1465 with an armed force which brought as well as archers and foot, artillery.

They did not however go to Desmond. Thomas fitz was left in charge in Ireland.
In 1466 at an expedition to Offaly his forces were defeated and he was taken prisoner.

This weakened his hold in Ireland and the oBrien of Thomond invaded his territory and subjugated the Irish in both Desmond and Ormond and conquering the clan Mc William Burke in Connacht and forced Limerick to pay tribute.

OBrien died shortly thereafter and the king apointed Worcester as Deputy to replace fitzGerald.
His 700 Archers to be brought from Beaumaris.

Worchester and Kildare made efforts to get on together in 1467, but when an Anglo Irish parliament met at Drogeda in Feburary 1468, Desmond was warned by his friends not to go there.

The Drogeda first act was to attaint the Earl of Desmond, Kildare and Edward Plunkett of treason felony alliances and fosterages with the Irish enemys of the king and giving the Irish horses ,harnesses and arms.

It was believed this hostle vengeful action was inspired by Edward IVs Queen, Elizabeth Woodville as she did not like Thomas.

Sir John Gilbert also accused the treasurer Roland fitz Eustace of telling Desmond he should be king of Ireland as the whole land would obey him.
He however was not able to prove this accusation and had to flee of protection to oConnor Faly- an Irsih enemy who was than openly at war with the kings forces.

Desmond himself was treacherously arrested at a Dominican Friary and executed and beheaded on 15 Feburay 1469.

The country and western Europe from Rome to the sea was filled with Sorrow at this murder.

Desmond was dead. Kildare in prison, Ormond exiled by the Lord Lieutant worchester [Tiptoft] represntative of Edward IV of the house of York.

The Earldoms covering a great swath of south east central and western Ireland attainted to the king.

Thomas' Brother Garrett, by June had amassed a force to avenge his brothers execution and came into Meath with 20,000 gallowglasses
[Norse Hibernian Scots from the isles].
He burned wasted and distroyed it and Eustace released Kildare from prison.

By the time Worcester arrive to stop him Garrett had been joined by OConnor Faly, O Donnell, Kavenagh and their men and others who came in to him.

Kildare was overpowered and a peace was made with the Deputy Worcester.
Along with his affinities and allies Garrett however continued his raiding burning Fetahard and distoying and wasting Tipperary.

O Reilly made a raid into the old tuath of Louth but was defeated and killed along with 300 of his men.
The resisting forces mainly men of Drogeda having this success continued raiding into County Cavan.
The senechal of Ulster along with some 500 men of Lecale were killed by Conn O Neill.

In Leinster the king had exorted Kildare to keep his peace but Kildare could not as the king would sent neither men nor money and the soldiers of Worcester were unpaid.

In Desmond the Irish rose as a body against the Geraldines and OBrien crossed the Shannon in raiding the east.
Garrett was left without allies save Cormac m Donough mac Carty of Carbery.

The new Earl, James Fitzgerald of Desmond was attacked by
Garrett but the young boys mother was in alliance with any Munsterman she could find and she was able to acquire support for her son from Murrough, O Brien, McCarty More, who campaigned successfully against Garret fitzGerald and finaly James' title as Earl of Desmond was secured at Cork with consent of laymen and clergy.

In 1470 Worcester was recalled as England was again in crisis over the throne.

Edward and Earl of Warwick were at loggerheads.

Warwick attached England from a base in Calais France and in August of 1469 had taken the king prisoner.
But he hesitated to despose and kill Edward IV and by 1470 Edward was again in charge.
In September of that year a new attack was made in alliance with France .He landed in the east of England and was joined by the Lancaster
forces.
On October 1470 Edward sailed away to Burgandy and Henry VI [6] of Lancaster was reinstated as king.
But Edward returned in April of 1471, captured Henry VI and on Easter Sunday Warwick was defeated and killed at Barnet.
Queen Margaret of the Lancaster forces ,who landed from France at Weymouth on Easter Sunday was defeated and her son killed.

York was reestablished as king.

In Ireland these disturbances did not have much effect except in the Deputy Edward Dudly.
[Dudly a Scot was father of Mary Queen of Scots son James Stuart ].

He left Ireland and Kildare was elected the new justicar by the Anglo Irish counsil.
Worcester was executed by the Lancasterians and the new king Henry VI approved Clarence as Lord Lieutenant but Kildare remained Justicar of Irish affairs and the Armagh Irish firmly held the yorkist side and struck a coin.

'Edward dei gratia Rex Anglie et dominus Hibernie'

1450-1500 pg 3

There was again disorder from the enemy Irish under Kildares surzanity ship.
He attacked mac Mahon, O Kelly raided West Meath but was defeated by the local Anglos.
Saggart and Esmond o Toole made peace.

'Harolds county' in south Dublin mountains was in rebellion and no
Anglo dared go there in fear of their lives or being made prisoner of the Irishmen.
The town of Saggart was burned by the O Toole and OBrynes.
Mac Murrough overran County Wexford .

In autum 1473 Sir Gilbert Debnenham along with James Norris were sent by king Edward to Ireland to establish the Guild of St George, a force of 120 mounted archers, 40 horsemen with 40 pages [grooms] to be paid by a customs grant and commanded by 12 honorable persons from Dublin,Kildare, Meath and Louth.

The Anglo counsil and settlers as it had for the past 2 centuries continued to beg the king of England for men money and a royal person to hold the conquests they, the great perpetrators of most of the Irish resistance by their constant demand of protection from England and their total control of any government and counsil activity.

They were constantly requesting a Lord of the Royal Blood be sent as both Henry 2 and John arrived to govern the Irish chiefs in submission along with archers and troops and the money from the royal treasury to pay for these and the forced return of all absentee grantors to Ireland to defend their lands at their own expense.

They had visions of 1000 archers and 100,000 marks a year to sustain themselves and the colonial holdings in Erinn.
But Edward did sent on 18 August 1474 one Thomas Danyell [Daniell]who was retained with 100 archers and 120 men to be paid by the English exchequer.

Kildare was replaced as Justicar by William Sherwood Bishop of Meath an old enemy of Desmond.

O Donnell of Tir Connail made a circuit of Connacht, Longford and Kilkenny Barony and the Anglo Dillons and Daltons of west Meath came in and made peace with O Donnell who then went on to Offaly and Kildare where O Connor Faly joined him.

A campaign was held against them by the Anglos of Meath and that province was again wasted in the fighting.

When peace was made o Donnell retired to the north via Athlone.

In 1477 Munster was at war in an internicene feud of the McCarthys and the south was wasted by Gall and Gael.

In 1477 the Deputy Sherwood went again to England for help and 200 more archers were sent back to Ireland with him,
'for the public good and relief of the land'.

When Clarence was put to death for treason and siding with Lancasters in February 1478 the Anglo counsil in Ireland reappointed Kildare as Justicar and Sherwoods tenure was ended.

But on 10 March 1478 the king appointed the duke of Suffolk for 20 years as L.L .
He however never took office and Kildare remained in effect Justicar as the Anglo counsil in Ireland and the yorkist king in England vied for control for the lands and resourses of Erinn.

Edward Iv appointed his new born infant son L.L. but the child George died within a year and the king substituted Lord Henry Grey with 300 archers and 2000 pounds from the exchequer and the Irish revenues.

These archers to be ready for muster from north Wales by August 19 1478.

When Henry Grey arrived in Ireland the constable of Dublin Castle and the Prior of Kilmainham garrisoned the Castle against him and refused his admittance going so far as to break down the entrance bridge and the sheriff of Dublin and Louth defied his writs and the chancellor Sir Roland fitz Eustice left with the Great Seal.
Grey shortly returend to England faced with the recalcitrance and defiant reception leaving in place as Deputy Sir Robert Preston ,Lord Gormanston.

This exodus to England by the LL was followed by Kildare fitzGerald and his supporters.
The Archbishop of Dublin, the prior of Kilaminham and the prior of All Hallows all given safe conduct to come to the king from Ireland.
These all thought to be sane men in the centurys before Sigmund Freud definded the skitzophrena and bipolar mental states.

The king issued his judgements and proclaimantions in the disputes allowing Greys Drogeda parliament to stand and Kildares Nass parliament was annulled declaratory of his pleasures for all said land of Ireland.

In May 1479 Richard, Duke of York, than 4 years old was appointed Lord Lieutenant.
Lord Gormanston the Deputy for this minor aged heir arrived with 40 archers and 20 men of arms.

Kildare still a player in this paradise of good government for Eire was finally given an indenture from the king on 5 May 1481 with 80 archers, 40 horsemen and 600 pounds a year from the Irish revenue.

Kildare continued in this period of Irish history to acquire allegiance and alliances with all the Irish chiefs of the south and midlands were committed to himn and owed him rents formerly belonging to the lords of Meath and Leinster.

This reamined in effect till the coming of the Plantation and new English in 1500 AD.

1450-1500 pg 4

In 1483 Edward Iv died.
His son Edward V became king but was deposed and replaced by his uncle the Duke of Gloucester, Richard III, who tried to check the powers of the deputy in Ireland Kildare.

He conserned himself immediately with the condition of Ireland.
He apppointed his son L.L. and dispatched William Lacy as negociator.

The king also sent the Bishop of Annaghdown,Thomas Barret a Welsh liege as an ambassador to the English Rebels.

He was allowed the power to accept the allegiance of the Earl of Desmond the young James son of the murdered Thomas.
But Barret was instucted by the English king to convince the young Earl not to marry without the kings advise and he intended to provide young James with a fitting wife.
The bishop was to induce the young man to abandon wearing Irish array but to wear English clothes.

A wardrobe of gown, doublets ,shirts, hose ,hats, trippets, and a gold collar was sent with him to give the Earl Desmond as soon as he promised to wear them.

[this author was given an Irish cap of green wool at the Irish fest in America from her daughter who said she would buy the item if i promised to wear it. My Irish hat was worn on the Irish side of town in north Erinn and my Dutch cap on the Anglso side and both hats were considered looking like a tourist].

The bishop was also instructed to try and convince Kildare to bring Ulster into the kings possession as his brother in law was the Great O Neill.
He also hoped O Donnell and O Reilly would come in from their Donegal strongholds.
All this scheming came to no frutation as Henry Tudor heir of the Lancaster claims ,supported by France, landed at Milford Harbor in August 1485.

On 22 August Richard III was killed at Bosworth and Henry took the English throne as Henry VII [7}.

Henry appointed his uncle Jasper Tudor ,the Duke of Bedford, L. L.
kildare to continue as Deputy.
With the Lancaster recovery came a return of the Butler Earls to which Garrett fitGerald ,Earl of Kildare married his 2nd daughter to Piers Butler cousin and heir of Ormond.

In 1487 a 10 year old alleged to be Edward ,Earl of Warwick ,son of Clarence and the Anglo community accepted this.
But in fact the real Warwick was in the Tower and was executed in 1499.

This child was in fact Lambert Simnell ,child of Thomas of Oxford.

All the Anglo magnets of Ireland and chief government officers accepted the boy as the true prince.
Sent messages to Edward IVs sister the Dutchcess of Burgandy and on 5 May 1486 a force of 5000 German mercenary soldiers landed in Ireland under command of the Earl of Lincoln [not Abraham].

The Butlers, Waterford City and the Archbishop of Armagh, Octavian del Pelatio, stuck to the Lancaster king Henry 7 .

On May 24 the Simnell child was crowned at Dublin with Earl Lincoln as witness and all the Anglo magnets and ecclesiastics.

The Dublin Parliament ordered the hostle town of Waterford to assist the child king to his province of Munster.
The town refused ,denounced Simnell and their allys the Butlers and OByrnes resolutely held out.

On 4 June 1487 the Geraman troops with a body of Anglo and some native Irish forces sailed for England where they were met at Stokes on 16 June and roundly defeated.
Simnell captured.

At the end of the year Kildare and Dublin submitted to the king and in June 1488 Sir Richard Edgecomb was sent to Ireland to grant pardons made by the king on 25 May 1488.

Henry had little other alternative as the Anglos to a man outside of the southeast Butler territory were upholding their Yorkist inaugurate Simnell.
with Kildares numerous alliances of the native Irish military support he would have needed an overwhelming military force to hold Ireland.
Anglo lords and Irish chiefs united in purpose and alliances for the cause.
The Tudors were in no position even with German Hessians to hold the country of Ireland which in all probability would have been lost to the throne.

King Henry VII was able to secure Desmond when James was killed by his brother John and his Brother Maurice was given licence to the Desmond land and granted office of constalbe of the castle of Limerick for life.

Lord Roche [Maurice] was allowed to keep Cork county and Cormac macCarthy of Muskerry and Florence McCarthy of Carbery were given grants of English law and liberty and pardoned of all offences.

The Pope issued a bull including Ireland conserning the right of seccession .
Edgecombe landed in June at Kinsale taking the oath of Lords Barry and Courcy and the Town.

When Edgecombe arrived at Dublin he had to wajt for Kildare who finaly arrived with 200 horsemen and established himself in style at Thomas Court.

Negociations began and Kildare was strenghtened when James 3 of Scotland, ally of Henry Tudor was dead having been murdered on 11 June.

In July 20 Kildare agreed to take the oath of allegiance to the king and to resist any plots or assist any rebels he had knowledge of.
Homage was done by Kildare and the other lords with him and oaths taken at Mass.
A teDeum was sung and a dinenr held.

Edgecombe than gave pardons to the heirs of Drogheda and Trim and took ship for England from Dalkey.

In 1494 summer King Henry 7 appointed his second son Hugh Tudor as Lord Lieutenant in September .
Sir Edaward Poynyng Deputy and a good and sufficient army accompanied by a great personage.

Poynings landed at Howth on 13 October with 700 men and went on an expedition north against O Donnell and O Neill.

A conspiracy was contrived between O Hanlon and Kildare and the Drogheda parliament attainted old Kildare for treason.

He was arrested in Dublin ,27 August 1495 and sent to England on March 5 1496, to the Tower.

Poynings had passed acts subordinating the Irish parliament to English approval.
No Irish parliament to assemble in Ireland without the express consent of the deputy and counsil and approved by the king and council in England.

The Tudor era had begun .

Necessity allowed Kildare to be returned to Ireland in 1496 as Deputy.
He later became L.L. for a shortw hile before he died.

Judi Donnelly
copyright May 11 2010

Sourses:
A History of Medieval Ireland from 1086-1513, Edmund Curtis, Barnes and Noble Inc., NY, 1968

A History of Medieval Ireland, A.J Otway-Ruthven, Barnes and Noble Inc.,1968

Edward dei gratia Rex Anglie et Doiminus Hibernie.

1400 AD

2010-05-10T09:48:00.000-07:00

1400 page 1 of curtis

Gerald FitzGerald ,3rd Earl of Desmond ,died in 1398.

He had been old English Anglo ruler of that Desmond kingdom for 40 years since 1358.

Earl Gerald was sensative to the Irish nature and their cause and their language and history and was a great champion of Irish verse.
These to be preserved in the Irish manuscripts and he was considered a traditional poet.

He was eulogised in the Annals of Clonmacnios as a noble man. Beautiful, cheerful, easily accessable, charitable and a cronicler.
He was a hero to both Gael and Gall and would rise to save Ireland on an enchanted steed from the waters of Loch Gur.

The old English Earl had 2 sons , John and James.
John died by drowning in the River Suir in 1400 but young James was raised in the Irish manner and was fostered to Conor OBrien with a deposition from a Royal licence to do so againt the Statues of Kilkenny forbidding the practice.

John left a son Thomas FitzGerald.

With the event of the Irish restitution under the lapse of the Lancaster kings to hold the land, the old Gaelic Order became secure as it recovered the English lands as an exodus of Anglo Ireland was beginning where tenants of the king , labors and lesser aristocracy set in motion a return of Anglo Stock to England rather then endure the war at the Ireland around and against them.
The Priest and holders refused to dwell in the Gaelic speaking parishes and the replacement of English freeholders with Irish tenants by the absentee grantor lands.

The rural population became Irish once more as the Irish were able to indure harsher farming breaks than the Anglos and were better suited to local wars as fighting volunteers.

Both the tillers of the soil and the learned departed scholars, lawyers, theologians, all left as Ireland had no Anglo University and they went on to Oxford, Cambridge and Paris.
These departunres of the Anglo were one way with no return.

Even the aristocratic Gael left Ireland .
such personsa as Mathew Ua Eogain ,Archdeacon of Devonshire on Loch Erne went of to Oxford to read and lecture for 14 years a student lecturer.

The Anglo Irish still demanded a royal prince be sent to Ireland to protect them from the English Irish and in 1401 the King Henry IV Lancester, sent his 2nd son Thomas as Lord Lieutenet were he reamined till 1413.
Thomas was 14 at that time [26 years in 1413] and his lieges were the Burgesses of Dublin under mayor Drake with their Black Flag of the city.

They marched against OByrne at Bray and killed 500 of them with the boy prince present in Ireland.
Several irish chiefs submited to him with honorable terms:
Murchad o Connor Faly
Donal O Byrne
Eogan OReilly of Ulster
Eochy Mc Mahon [Maon],

and Mahon was granted the land and lordship of Farney in Monahan for his faithful liegeship to a young prince for a yearly rent of 10 pounds.
This land formerly granted to the Pipards by the English kings was now granted to an Irish chief under English law.
This only a liberty for his lifetime.

Later Farney was granted in perpetuaty by James Butler Ormond L.L. in 1425 to Bernard Mac Mahon , captain of his nation, and his brothers Rory and Magnus.
This is part of the old Irish lands of Oriel later Airgialla ,under the Mahon and O Carroll kings and chiefs.

The boy prince left Ireland leaving the runing of the Anglo colony to James Butler, 4th Earl of Ormond.

James Butler in alliance with his brother Thomas le Bottiler, who was called Bacagh or Bacach the lame, and was the prior of Kilmainham monastary and the second of the campaigning at Callan in September 1407 as it was a great victory over Taig O Carroll a Gaelic revivalist.

He was reputed to be of great account and fame in both Scotland and Ireland and was son in law the the 'White Earl', James Butler, his adversary.

The young prince Thomas of Lancester returend to Ireland in 1408 to make war on macMurrough and enforce the absentee acts to reside on their granted lands and to bring into Ireland 2 English families from every parish in England to plant Ireland.

However his servants came to blows with Gerald of Kildares servants and the young prince arrested Kildare [fitzgerald] put him in the Castle at Dublin and fined him 300 marks.

However the prince was bored with his many duties and departed for good in June 1409 at age 22.
He was made Duke of Clarence but was killed in France at Beaige in 1422 aT Age 35.

1400 pg 2 curtis book

The English Anglo Saxons held scorn and fear for their Scots, Welsh and Irish neighbors on the islands and were upset by the celtic bards who inspired Celtic Resistance [ rebel songs of today].

John Stanley was a Lord Lieutetant having neither mercy or protection for clerics ,laity, men of science, poets ,and subjected these to cold, harshness and famine.
Luckily Stanley died on June 18 1414 and the poets felt they had rymed him to death after Stanely had plundered O h Uiginn at the hill of Uisneach in Meath.
Niall o h Uiginn satired the L.L. who died only 5 weeks later.

Lord Furnival ,Talbot dispoiled many of the Irish poets including the famous O Dalys in 1415.
John Talbot was Lord Lieutantt for 6 years from November 1414 at a salary of 4,000 marks paid by the Exchequer .
He was 36 years old and a born soldier dying at Casllor in 1454 at age 76 years.
He had been Annoited the Earl of Shrewsbury and in Ireland set out to crush the 'degenerate English' and clear the frontier.

He was severe to both Norman Anglos and Irish Gael on his expeditions noted in the Annals as more wicked from the time of Herod.

He plundered Leix Oriel, Kilkenny of m Bretahnach [Walsh].
Hung Thomas Caech of the Geraldines.
Plundered the O Daly poets of Meath.
He carried on a runing feud with the Anglo Irish.
Married to Maud Neville a desendant of Theobald de Verdun he claimed the lordship of west Meath and through his lineage to de Valence, Wexford which was allowed by the Crown.
Reginald Lord Grey de Ruthyn having died in 1440,

Talbot arrested the Earl of Kildarde and Christopher Preston of Gormanstown in 1418 at Slane and charged them with plotting agaisnt him with the prior of Killmainham.

He was popular with the lessor Anglo folk and praised before the king for his activity against the English rebles and Irish enemy.

He had campainged againt O More, Mac Mahon, O Reilly, O Farrel, O Connor, and O Hanlon and in Ulster he cut a path threw the wood of 2 leagues wide to accost o Neill.
O Neill Beg, Magennis, Maguire and o Donnell, all of who sued for peace as did the southern lords.

Maurice Keating, chief of his nation, yielded to peace.
Rebel English and trusted by the king that he was.

The country at that time was, among the Anglos, not happy with the return absentees and they were not popular among their own people.

1400 pg 3 curtis book

The Earl of Ormond -Butler was head of the Patriots party which resisted the dominering of the Vicroys appointed by the king and asserted the rule of Ireland by the Irish -meaning the Anglo Irish basically.

In 1418 Art Kavenagh mac Murrough died.
He had made a peace with the English after ruining the English colonys and creating restoration of Leinster provincial kingship by swordland conquests.

He was succeeded of his 2 sons, Donnchad and Gerard, by Donnchad who in May 1419 was arrested ,taken to England and put in the Tower for 7 years.
Later returned to Ireland under 'terms'.

He was allowed to keep the award of 80 marks that had been awarded to his father in 1372.

He was recorded in the king Henry V records as,
Donatus More Cavenagh mac Murchad, Chief Captain of all the Leinstermen, king of Leinster province.

As the records were still kept in Latin with some words such as Murchad being the old Irish for Murrough and Cavenagh being the English of Cavenach.
The king being addressed in the English venacular as the pronunciation of the Irish 'C' as the Greeks also wrote 'keltoi' as the pronunciation of a celt.

Donnchad was returned to Ireland under the custody of John de Grey, under troop guard.
Donnchad however on his release to his own country was in arms the follwing year.

MacMurrough raided Kildare ,exacting tribute from Wexford of 240 marks.
The Anglo Irish parliament sat at that time and passed such legislation as the forbidding of serving men and laborers to leave Ireland without a licence, subject to arrest.

Forbidding the sale of corn, iron ,salt ,or food to the Irish enemy.

Coyne and livery became a treasonable offence along with marriage, gossipric, fosterage with the Irish enemy, or to entertain the Irish Rymers Bards, outlaws, and fellows who came in their Keryashtes [Creaghts].

By 1431 the parliament forbid the Anglo merchaants and lieges to attend Irish fairs and markets anywhere in the Magery, the Machaire plain of the midlands and pale.

Eogain O Neill raveged Louth and collected 'black rent' from Dundalk in 1530.
Then went off to Meath where he gave stiphends to,
Caluach O Connor
O Malloy
O Madden
Mageohegan
O Melaghlin

all of whom were than his clients.

The rebel English Barons of Delvin ,the Plunkets, Herberts and West Meath English submitted to O Neill.
These de Lacy Barons .

Meath at that time full of walled town, castlelands ,English colonies.

In 1432 Eogain was innagurated king of the province at Tullahoge on the Flagstone [now gone] where assembled the bishops and sages and in September of 1432 went to Dundalk but was attacked by Sir Thomas Stanley, captured and taken prisoner to Dublin, London and finally the Ilse of man where he died in Stanleys demesne.

Meath,Dublin, Kildare and Louth were by 1435, what was known as the Pale, was very much inhabited by enemys and rebles of the king .
Of its 140 castles, only 2 were thus left Carlow and Tullow.

Kilkenny, Wexford, Waterford, Cork, Limerich ,Tipperary and the kings castles had been distroyed.

Armagh and Tuam were lost to the Irish.
Only Galway ,Athenry , Carrickfergus and Ardglass being in the possesion of English forces.

Young Henry V engaged in a new French war, had neither money nor men to spare for Ireland.

Lord Welles ,Lord Lieutenant in 1438, was replaced,in an undistinguished service by his deputy the Earl of Ormond Butler in 1441.

He was the acknowledged leader of the Anglo Irish.

He was leader also of the Partriot party for Home Rule for Ireland and a bitter enemy of Lord John Talbot the unionist leader.

The Butler Home Rule faction however prevailed and Ireland submitted both native and Anglo to the leadership and control of the Great Earl who held an aristocratic power over Anglo and Gaelic chiefs where native rule prevailed till 1534.
A bulkwark of great persons in the Butler, Geraldine and Burkes and the Home Rule oligarchy.

The Desmond Earldom in the south held allegiances and land between Norman and Gaels making most of the province of Munster including the o Sullivans and mcCarthys and others, oweing miitary service and rent to the Desmond Earls who in turn afforded protection and security.

The old gaelic customs of Chief vassalage to provincial kings and a 5/5ths tuath unity was accepted by the fuedal Anglo lords and incorporated into the agreements not only with the Irish but their fellow Anglos such as the Barrys ,Roches and Barretts, and Geffery Cogan who granted Earl James Fitzgerald of Desmond all the Cork possessions which included the 15 manors of Cairraige Coirce Barony including Shandon and its bells and the service of the Barrymore free tenants.
These included the castle of Cardigalire commanding Cork harbor.

Earl James held the Munster ports of Limerich, Kerry, Cork, 1/2 of Waterford and the Decies.
The Decies were granted to Earl James son ,Gerald who began a long line of Fitzgeralds there.
The Earl also restored a number of old norman castles, Askeaton, Imokilly, Connello and many Abbeys.

This earldom of a million Irish acres was confiscated by the Crown in 1583 and recorded in the Elizabethan Inquisions.

These Earls reigned in the manor of old Irish provincial Kings controlling the populations of the Gaelic state and the Anglo Settler English through a combination of the feudal and Gaelic orders and customs.

The Ango Earls imposed the old Irish custom of Coign, livery ,carting carriage ,lodging, coshering, bonnaght and such long ago established in Gaelic order.

In 1446, the disliked and violent Lord Talbot, Earl ofShrewsbury was again appointed Lord Lieutenant and Earl of Waterford and granted regal barony rights over the whole south east coast from Yougal to Waterford all Crwon lands.
He had confronted the 'degnerate English' for 30 years and at a time parliament in January 1447 he had inacted prohibitions of Englishmen wearing the moustashe [crombezi].
He had been a good soldier and had scatterd Irish Anglo and brought rebles to heal but he had very little of constructive talent.

When Talbot left Ireland he was replced by Richard ,Duke of York a 37 year old heir of the Mortimers, Earl of Marchs Ulster, Trim and Connacht.
An heir of de Lacy and de Burgo and a decendant of Brian the Great accoring to the Irish.

He had more or less been granted the post as an honorable exile for the most dangerous man in England against a Lancaster rule of Henry V.

Richard Duke of York charmed the Irish to his banner of the White Rose of York as a fine organization of his party to regain the throne of England abondoning Ireland itself to the Home Rule Patriot party of the Butler Ormond Earls.

Richard, born in 1411 ,came into the Duchy of York, the earldoms of Cambridge and Rutland and March when his mothers brother Edmond Mortimer died not leaving a child to inherit.

Richard inherited the Mortimer lands in Englnd, Wales ,Uslter, Trim,
Leix, Connact.

The consumate landlord at 14 years of age.

In the ensuing years Richard renewed the LL in Ireland but his head was in England and as the mid century wore on, the War of the Roses occupied the 2 islands and their Duke when Richard was ingloriously defeated at Ludlow and the Lancasterian faction of Royalty continued to hold the throne of England.

Richard returned to Ireland honored by Anglo and Irish alike as sort of a messiah or king over their island.

1400 pg 1

As 1400 dawned and a new Irish century began the Gaelic chiefs held much of the land of old.
They were however not forceful enough in their own right to create a unified provincial century.

Some 13 or 14 gaelic families with their 4/5 or 3/5 or 5/5 territories of the confederated tauths but never achieved sufficient alliances to expell the powerful Anglo Norman lords holding the swath east on the south and east in the country.
Desmond, Ormond ,Kildare, Wexford attached to the kings own Pale and the resiliant Earldome of Ulster in the Beal Feist area and Carlingford Lough.

However in this state of petty alliances and small raids and warfare peace was restored sufficently that the much needed agricutural and pastorial pursuits of the country could operate.

In the rich soil held by the Anglo lordships, farmed in tillage by the old Irish gaelic peasant on the land ,tenants to his Norman lord enough grain was produced to create surplus for export producing revenues for the Royal Treasury.

Cattle-Sheep were kept more for their wool and hides than a meat supply and these animals provided a lucrative trade of the gaelic lords and the less fertile lands.
The forests of Ireland were still plentiful in their suppy of wood products and timber and the countryside netted a substantial harvest of animal skins of squirrel ,fox ,otter and hare ,while the sea itself provided a larder of great shoales of herring coming yearly into the coastal shelf waters of the Atlantic from the Baltic Sea.

The rivers too abounded annually with the migration of sea salmon and lake trout.

In the late 1400s England and Spain fishing fleets lay off the coast paying the coastal communites for fishing rights.

For all these exported raw materials Ireland imported the comforts of salt to presurve meat and fish, and its nemesis. the Wine of Spain Portugal and France.

The traders were usually Anglo merchants at seaside towns who held licences from the king and there guarde few being availabe to the Gaelic chief.
The Anglo also in addition to holding a monopoly on profitable trade export import also placed its partizans in government to privatise and monopolise the royal administration of new Lord Lieutenants and the Castle on their behalf.

From 1420 to 1440 the postion was held by Lord Butler, Earl of Ormond the successful Tipperary based Anglo Irish home of Walters created by King John in 1200.

The Butlers however were opposed by the Earl of Shrewsbury, Sir John Talbot and his brother Richard Talbot, the Archbishop of Dublin in the first half of the 1400-50.

This rivalry for contol and power in polictics split the colony force in Ireland between the English civil war of the Roses fought for 30 years from 1455-1485 over the English throne.
The Red Lancaster Rose backed by the Ormond Butlers and the White York Rose of the Edawardians.

King Henry V Lancaster was deposed and defeated in 1461 and Sir John Butler of Ormond was defeated at the Battle of Pilltown in Tipperary in 1462 by Thomas Fitzgerald the 8th Earl of Desmond and becoming the most powerful Anglo Irish lord in Ireland.
He was appointed in 1463 by the new Yorkist king Edward 4.
.
He was a popular leader and created many alliances with the gaelic chiefs and lords acquiring great power by so doing.

This creating of alliances against the will and command of his king Edward 4.

The pale English complained against him for using Coyne and livery on them to support his forces and the king interfered taking away his royal authority and appointing Sir John Tiptoft, Earl of Worcester as govenor and L.L.

He was know as the butcher for his cold calculating execution of the kings enemies.
He accused Desmond and his brother in law earl of Kildare of treason by their association with native Irish.

He called the 2 lords to Drogeda and had them summarily beheaded on Februay 14 1468 , St Valentines Day.

The country rose in rebellion against this and forced king Edward to recall Worcester.

In 1478 the 8th earl of Kildare ,Garret More [big Garret] Fitzgerald was appointed .
He resided at his castle stonghold of Maynooth and set out to secure absolute control.

Fitzgerald was able to secure power in the pale and as L.L. he controlled the Irish parliament and members of the kings counsil.

He was a proponent of the Yorkist cause and remained loyal to the Yoirkist king.

However the internal English fued over the Crown continued and with winning the battle of Bosworh field in 1483, Henry VII of the house of Lancaster-Tudor House was crowned kIng in 1485.

Kildare did not acknowledge this corination but took into Ireland a nefew of Edward IV, Lambert Simnell and on May 24 1487 had him crowned King of England in Dublin,

Simnell returned to England but was unable to secure his title and in 1491 Fitzgerald again took in a renewed yorkist claimant Perkin Warbeck, and tried to place him on the English throne.

However this candidate was defeated in 1492. To which Henry 7 dispatched to Ireland Sir Edward Poynings L.L. in 1494.

Poynings was a masterful soldier and a good admininstrator and summoned an Anglo Parliament at Drogeda.

This parliament revived the Statuies of Kilkenny, proscribing Irish law useage and custom ,but could not continue the restriction of the Irish language as Irish was now the common tongue in the island.

English spoken only in the pale and in trading towns.
The Pale was enclosed by a 6 foout ditch barrier to keep out the Irish.

The parliament forbid the holding of any futher parlimanet without the consent of the king and required royal approval to consider all legislation before it could be passed by the Dublin legislative body.
If the king did not appove passage af any measure it could not be made.

In effect taking away any parliamentary control or self governance.

Poyning felt Gearoid Mor Fitzgerald was allying himself witht the north Ireland O Neills.
He had Kildare arrested and imprisoned for treason.
This seizure caused large scale rebellion by the Irish and the Crown was unalbe to resist.

Henry 7 restored Earl Fitzgerald in 1499 and he remained L.L. till death in 1513 and was succeeded in the post by his son Gerald Fitzgerald.

When King Henry 8 came to power in 1509 he continued the policy of non interference in Ireland.

Over time, Henry reversed this policy established by his predecesor Henry Tudor 7 of Lancaster, and the fortunes of Erinn were again to be radically changed for the worse.
Under the Lancaster dynasty Ireland was completely submerged once more by the new wave of English invaders under the reign of Henry VIII and his daughter Elizabeth I.

The 1500 rose up as a century of subjugation of the Gael in his own land and the extinction of the Gaelic order on the Island.

The second half of the 1400s was still dominated In Irelands south by the Normans Anglo lords who had however Irishised both their way of life and their thinking and allegiances mostly through the bedroom politics of intermarraiges withthe native lords daughters making the children of such unions both English in lordship and Irish in sublordship and accustomed to respect in both races and communites.

Hence the island began a reconstuction of itself once more as it had during the Viking incurcians which gave it a new color and flavor distint from England but aborbative of that culture and ideals as well as the old Gaelic culture and beliefs.

This amalgamation was also inclusive of the new Church which they both belonged to, adhearing to the techings and desires of universiality of Rome but keeping a slight awarness of the old Celtic Church in its recesses of the countryside in pilgrimages to places like Croach Patrick and adoration of the lady and other little chapels on the hillsides dedicated to various worship and saints of the old days.

An intentional effort was made by both Anglo lordships and Gaelic lorships to keep the peace and to keep their own demesnes and power over their own subjects.
This intent was often thwarted by the settlers who were constantly adjuring the king in England to send help and money to protect them from their advisarys real or imagined ,the Irish enemy and the English rebels.

They have of late all moved to Belfast where they continue to beg the Queen ofEngland to send her troops to protect them from imagined or real dissadents.

The internal sparing and the general 50 year attempts to hold their own gave both factions the upper hand and they were sucessful in ruling their holdings as lords of that holding more or less in the old way of the Gael.
There was,even though the parliaments of the common man tried to prevent it ,trade, food for all, shelter, warmth, communication and a sense of well being among the people of the towns and the countryside that all would be well with Erin at last.
A feeling perhaps not to well founded by neglecting the problems of the continental and English world to the east of their snug little island home.

Judi Donnelly
copyright 10 May 2010

Sourses:
A History of Medieval Ireland 1086 to 1513,Edmund Curtis MA LittD Trinity College ,Barnes and Noble Inc, 1968
A History of Medieval Ireland , A .J. Otway-Ruthven,
Barnes and Noble NY ,1968

The State of the Church Middle Ages

2010-05-03T09:34:00.000-07:00

The state of the Church Middle Ages

The State of the Church in war torn Ireland by the time of Henry 8 was discribed as near total breakdown and disorder.

There was experssion of religious decadence .

Two of the root causes causing this development of this deterioration in religious order and rule originated in the Statues of Kilkenny, clauses 13and 14 which forbade native Irishmen to be Bishops of Cathederals or paid priests in any religious order and communites among the English.
The Irish were requred to obtain a grant and licence to live and work in an English area.

This created a legal culture and psycological barrier between the Anglo nations and the Gaelic nation that was divisive and discriminatroy and detrimental to christain life.

It negated charity and cooperation in spirit or in fact.
However the old Irish acceptance of Love as a mediator continued on it merry bedroom way through these 3 centuries of English/Anglo occupation and intermarriage created assimilation on social levels.

This acceptance of love as a treaty between the separate cultures was also incorporated into the Church stuctures of the old gaelic insistance on herieditary descent and dynast in the church order encouraged cleric marriage and at he abandonment of the reform celibacy of the synod of Kells era [1151] and the adoption of the Roman cannons.

Although the cannons had instituted election of Bishops and ecclesiastic posts the hibernic/gaelic familal control of diocese parish and religious houses continued well into the 15th Century.
Heredity was endemic in Tuam province and at Armagh provincial See ,and was generlly widespread in Gaelic Ireland.

In Fermanagh diocese of Clogher the ruling family of the Maguires secular princes and the cawell ecclesiatic family were in union by geneological connections and controlled the relationship of church and state for Clogher diocese.

These two families controled the See for the century. One of the other of them holding the See offices.

Art Mac Cawell was Bishop of Clogher from 1390-1432.
Pierre Magurie 1433-47.
Ross Maguire 1447-83.
Eugene mac Cawell 1505-15

All persons of these intermarriage ralationships between these two powerful Fermanagh families and had been created from the marriage of the Bishop ,Brian mac Cawells[1356-58] daughter Joan to the archdeacon of Clogher Maurice Maguire, the GReat Archdecon in the 1300s.

Their son, graduate of cannon law from Oxford University, became Archdeacon in sucession to his father Maurice and later appointed Bishop of Clogher in 1433 by the Pope.
This appointment in succession to his uncle Art macCawell.

The great Archdeacons second son became Abbot of Lisgoole an Augustinian house and the 3rd son after graduating Oxford ,proir of the Ausustinian house of Devonish.

All 3 of these church men married and had childern in the 1400s.

Pierce Magures son held important diosene positions. Edmond Archdecon and dean of Clogher.
William, a cannon of Clogher and Abbot of Lisgool.
Turlog, prior of an Augustine house of Loch Derg.

The family there held most of the Clogher dioceses positions in the Maguire/Calwell household and some of them like Bishop Ross Maguire had 10 sons and probably daughters as well and one of them.
Cathal Og Maguire ,cannon of both Clogher and Armagh[clogher dioseses is now merged with Armagh diocese] and also the rural deanery of Loch Earn was the chief compiler of the Annals of Ulster and therefore famous.
He had 12 children and on his death in 1498 the Annals noted he was a
'gem of purity and a turtle dove of chastity'.
It is not known if Cathal had been ordained through is eccleastical carrer or had reamined a layman.

However there was no social stigma to the concubine [clerical marriage] children who under cannon law ahd illigitmate status whereas a lay marriage child would be considered ligitimate even though the parent had ecclesiatic positons.

The religious orders of monastery and friary were also deteriorate and lax in disapline among the members.
Frequently the monasterys were a sort to Block house in the wars against the enemy Irish.

It is to be remembered that since the demise of the Celtic Church under Gilla Meic Liac its last Bishop of St Patricks order at Armagh all the continental religious houses were continental establishments.
The Cistercian, Domincan, Augustinians, Carmalites, all from England in origin and connected to the mother houses in their own nations.
The orders were corrupt.

Central authority was lax if enforced at all.

The general chapters were unable to control or reform the Irish Chapters such as Mellifont.
The ordedrs did not follow thee rules.Many did not even wear
the habit and petty hatreds and disentions still existed between the two nations of Ireland Gaelic and Anglo.

The Papacy was of little help in furnishing leadership for the orders. Oftimes appointing abbots who were foreign and not even members of the house to which they were appointed and sometimes lay people as well.

The monasterys still in the control of the great families who viewed the religious establishement as part of their property and therefore putting their own relatives in contol and command of these houses.

The houses were sparcely occupied by actual monks and brothers.
Some houses being as little as 2 monks on duty inthese massive stone fortresses.
Hore Abbey being one such.

The decline was also accompanied by the use of Benifices by the Popes which became a major finacial undertaking.
Its aim now financialy expedient to the central Roman Papacy rather than to the advancement of religious or spriritual understanding.

Rome was universal ,Ireland insular, and the Rome runing by Irish princes of the church after Benifices rather increased the abuses of Ireland and encouraged them.

The calendar of entries in the Papal Registers relating to Great Britain and Ireland of Benefices being awarded to gaelic Ireland up to 1492, show a majorty of Benefices being awarded to gaelic Ireland.

The system itself was abusive and contributed to continuation of abuses.

Hereditary succession for all ecclesiatical offices in Gaelic Ireland was common and encouraged by Papal coopertion to be continued.

The papacy itself devised legal ruling in cannon law to get around the law forbidding a son succeedign his father.

This was done in the case of the Clonfert deanship which by hereditary right belonged to the mac Egan family, by appointing an intermediary to hold the post temporarily.

This a process of trust to a third party known as collation whereby it avoid the impending blood ie:the cannon law confering illigitimacy on the child of an ordained priest, a sort of wardship to overt under the surzanity of the Pope.

The obtaining of Benefices from the Pope also intailed a set process of petitioner accusation against current holder at Rome and a comand the punishment for these alleged crimes removed from the Benifice.

A Curia was appointed to try the accused.
If the charges were proved the holder was removed and the petitioner collated to the post.

In its later days the petitioner often attempted to fix the court by suggesting to the Pope suitable names for appointment to the judgeships for hearing the case- practice well adopted inthe new world and the Rupublic of the United States- still subjects of back room political deals to post and eite group for election and appointments to judgeships as well as the political and civil service posts.

America is a nation of immigrants and free expression of religion.

The Curia in Rome also had a habit of appointing incompetent people to head the orders and houses.
And these abbots and directors totally unable to either understand or take and interest in the jobs they had rather more interest in the reliable papal stifend and permanent comfort in this life.

The Papacy also permitted the policy established in the conquest days of 1200 AD in appointing well wherever possible, English clergy for Irish sees.
These English bishops frequently maintained an absentee address rather becoming suffrigen Bishops in an English or Welsh see.

In the parish of Dromore in the north, John Chourles was promoted by the Pope in 1410.
He reamained a suffrigen in Canterbury England till he died in 1433.

A second bishop of Dromore was appointed and 3 more absentee English religious persons were appointed by the papacy.
A Carmelite from St Davids in Wales and an Augistinain friar who lived in Durham England.

In 1454 John Mey excommunicated Owen O Neill, wife and son ,and the clann for taking church lands, hindering of Archbishops visitation and ejection of eccological officals tenants.

Armagh dioscese of the interhibernicos[ the Irish priests] were put under interdict and ONeills subjects and son Sir Henry were released from their ecclessiastial allegences.

When at a later time [1525] Charles O Reilly was absolved by Arch Bishop George Cromer from the excomuniction by the Church for offences against Church property and tenants he had commited at Julianstown,he took an oath to make restitution [geas] and his penance the payment of 2 cows to the upkeep of the old Armagh cathederal. A pilgrimage to St Patricks Purgatory or Our Lady of Trim. A money donation to the poor and 15 recitations of the Office of the Blessed Virgin.

The Church, under ArchBishop Mey in 1455 commissioned Henry m Owen ONeill to take action against concubines of the priests.
Their property to be confiscated for the repair of Armagh Cathederal. The rest ONeill could keep for his work.

In Waterford an Anglo/ Irish area, created the same prohibition against priests wives and concubines where it found they were to be striped of their clothing and put naked in the jail.

ArchBishop Mey in 1455 allowed that the ArchBishops of Armagh as successors of St Patrick had a right to a cattle inquest the first born of the beasts.

This demand was challenged bythe keepers of St Patricks Book and Bell [Sinaich] who said the right attached to their own heritage only.

Henry ONeill however saw to it that the current English ArchBishop of St Patricks recieved the proscibed tribute.

When one of the Culdees, John McGeeran of Armagh killed Niall Mc Gill Acrai, a lay person defending the land and crops of the Church at Armagh the ancient custom or eric honor price were due fromthe killer and the 2 deanerys of Armagh were responsible for the actions of the perpetrator Culdee.

The Cathederal and officials of Armagh city were responsible for seeing the fine was paid.

When Nelan O Neill complained to the ArchBishop in 1530AD that some ecclesiastics were fasting and ringing bells against him, which was spiritual blackmail throughout in ancient and modern Irish history, was that if the person fasted against Ate when the fasting person did not he was at the mercy of the revenge of the Saint who had been afforded these personafied by the persons then fasting and the bells tolling to bring down the spiritual vengance.

This idea of a spiritual revenge brought to bear on the persons challenged by a fast was prevelent in 1845 at the time of the Great Potato Famine and again invoked recently at the Maze Prison by the Hunger Strikers of 1981.

The Irish themselves since 1200 and the carrying out the continental orders and cannon law sought to regulated their sexual habits to the universal norms of the Church.

They had the Church marry them and settled down to one partner for life over several.
They asked frequently for dispensation in cases of Affinity and consangnuity.

The ecclesiastic Court followed Cannon law,sat at regular session at St Peters in Drogeda or Termon Fecklin hearing cases for the Anglo Irish of :outh as well as the county people who were Irish.

The Irish by than were also town people having trades as cobblers [shoemakers] glove makers, and other skilled trades and there was a high degree of intermarriage between the Anglo Irish and the native Irish people and much culturl assimilation.
These courts heard matrimonial cases and testimentry [wills] cases.
caring subject such as annuling marrages, valadating marriages, separation of bed and board, recognizing lay marriages ie: bringing togeter with out Church Blessing.

These courts would validate these marriges even though they were not blessed by cannon law and are still accepted in Canada as valid marriages productions of French Quebec.

Malicious gossip and slander cases were frequent as were prejudices and abusive language.

The punishments of the ecclestical courts were usually a money fine and a public penance and court costs.

In Gaelic Ireland the parish often follwed the ancient family lands of the tuaths.
The old monastic termon of these parishs allowed hereditary coarbs and erenaghs to continue to keep parishes, chose their priests, and control the economies of the diocese as well.

The Laity played a vital roll not only in the gaelic parishes but in the coletereal land manors and the town where the parishes were matched to the fuedal tenures.
The Anglos also kept a proprietary right to chose the incumbent minister priest subject to the Bishops approval.

There was within this period of decline the uplifting to the instruction, ancestor of the Cote Chism, the Iqurantia saceri dotin explananing the mystery, the unity and trinity ,and birth, death and resarection of Christ.

The Sacraments to win salvation for every individual sinner,
The gospel of Charity and love,
the 7 works of mercy,
the 7 capital sins,
the 7 virtues,
and the 7 sacraments
all taught and discussed inthe medieval church and parish.

Sermons, Statues ,Pilgimages played a larger part in devotion than did books.
S'maoin te beatha Chriost'' is the Irish translation of the Tuscan Fransican thought to be St Bonaventure of the latin 'Meditaion Vitae Christ' was a popluar book all over Europe and Ireland was linked in the mainstream of medieval spiritaul life.

The most rewarding devotions that of habitual meditation on the life of Christ.

The court Poet ,Bairds, unique in Ireland culture werr professional in eulogizing the mighty and any family of subsequence had its duanaire in the family which gave an incite into the thinking at these times.

Ireland functional under 2 nations and 2 cultures nationses and LInguae from the 1200s to the Reformation of the 1500, some 300 years under an English colony and a continental Catholic Church all of which the Irish assimilated and by doing so lost their own individual history and identity which today remains scattered and incomplete in several languges thrughout church records, tax and court rolls, university systems ,and old book sellers.
Some in the medieval English whichis merely a pronunciation of Irish or Latin words and not English at all. Or in forms of Church Latin or in the different ages of Gaelic print, inclusive of some Roman and French word endings.
Words like Coolgne giving the English pronunciation of Cuil and the French ending of gne.

In the Middle Ages period Irish names which had meaning were also changed into a English pronunciation form as they heard the name.

Naill thence became and it is said Nell 'Ai' in gaelic being pronounced as the long 'A' or the 'ey' sound.

These names are also converted by the church into a latin version making such people as Gilla ,Gela sius. Gela being the sound as they heard it of Gilla although the 'I' in Gaelic is usaully the long 'I' as said in Ireland.

Although the two nations Anglo and Irish were both committed to the usual doctine of the christain Catholic faith in Jesus Christ.
the were al endemic war with each other as well as engaged in internicene disputes within their own separte cultures. Oftimes to the death.
There was still a spirit of culture and order out of socail chaos and the Irsih church did successfully achieve an enduring diocese, parocrial system which remins today in the modern world not only in Ireland but in the countries to which the Irish were disassembled by war poverty and famine.

the chucrh overcame the difficulties through the centuries and which continued on its catholic coruse through the Reformation of 1500 and the printing press which revolutionized- as the computer is today- the whole enlightenment of the masses.

The Old English of Ireland, the Anglo Irish and the Gael remained unusaully commited to the cannons ofRome and the structue of the continental church in counter to the Reformation.

the church of St Patrick and Columcille overrun by the Church of St Peter in Rome and continental Europe, overridden by the Reformation and the establishment of a Strong Assendancy Prodistant Order, remains in Ireland an insular religion of parishes and local communites but rural and town city and village both prodistant and catholic somewhat reflective in culture of the old fine and tuath. The old clachan the old commune sailing along in both cultures withthe modern economy and technologies and world about Britain still uniquely Irish.

Judi Donnelly
copyright 30 April 2010

Sourses:The Church in Medieval Ireland, John Watt, University College Dublin Press,1972

1350-1400 pg 1-4

2010-05-03T09:30:00.000-07:00

1350-1400 AD

1350 began with the appointment of the Justicar Rokeby to fight the resistant Irish in the Wicklow hills south of Dublin.
All Leinster, south Connacht and Meath where the old Irish lords held fast to their recovered lands.

Rokeby began his reconquest in January 1350 at KilKenny making a passage to Cork and then through Meath back to Dublin.
Holding Assizes and having military scirmishes with the Irish to keep the kings peace.
Both the English settlers and the Irish of Wicklow Mountains submitted to the Justicar and elected their captains from the Archbolds, Harolds and O Byrnes all who swore to keep the peace.

The province of Leinster was of particular interest to the kings peace because the lands were held by Edward 2 for the minor heir of the Earl of Pembroke[Strongbow].
A great counsil was held at Kilkenny to produce ordinances in the kings name and the provision of English law not Irish law to decide disputes and to advise the lords responsibility to proved for their own defence.

The contents of these ordinances were later to be enacted into the Statues of Kilkenny in 1366.

The Irish continued to be rebellious of the kings law and peace and towards September 1352 Rokeby began a full scale campaign against Mac Dermot Mac Carthy Lord of Muskerry and Dalhollow, cousin to the king of Desmond.

1000 men of both English and Irish and the Justicars men were joined by Cormac MacCarthy and sons over in favor of the English kings forces.
Colonists were resettled in the Lee Valley and Conal MacCarthy granted lands of Mac Dermot who was driven out holding only Dulhollow.

Rokebys efforts were sucecessful and the Irish were happy to hope he would be repointed.
He campaigned again the Laigain against the OBryne but the Irish formed a Confederacy under Muirchertach mcMuro in 1354.

He retook Leinster and drove out the English Colonist.

A truce of regrant was held by Rokeby who had a sure defeat from OByrne
in Wickow.
O Bryne continued his war against the English.
The O Nolans of Carlow rose as did O Kennedy in Tipperary, O Connor and Dempsey in Offaly ,O More in Leix.
All rose in defiance of English rule and in July 1355 Rokeby was relieved and Maurice FitzThomas, Earl of Desmond, took up the rule of the Irish at age 62.

Rokeby returned with more men and engagedments were had with the O Toole the O Brynes the O Nolans in 1357.
The Justicar attempted to reconquest Munster as Desmonds lands were also in the wardship of the king because of the minor state of his heir.

Thus all of south Ireland was in disturbance between the Irish enemey and the English attempts to subdue them to the rule of the king of England and to hold the lands to English tenants and lords.

The Irish counsil fellows and enemey openly at war
Subsidies granted to fight all these Irish chiefs and lands held by the King.

When Butler recieved the Justicar in March 1359 the wholde southeast was in disturbance as well as the midlands.

All the Irish captains were prepared to resist the kings force.
OByrne, O Toole ,Kavenagh, Mac Murrough O More ,O Connor O Melaghlin, O Shinnagin.

In 1360 the government forces had turned their attention to Munster basing their campaign at Kilmalloch and proceeding on a campaign in south Connacht.
In all the Irish successes the king of England Edward 2, engaged with a War with the French, advised the English colonists he ahd no men or money for them in Ireland.
In the west the O Conor princes battled among themselves for control .Some times fighing under liege to the Burke lords and some against the English.

All told the Connacht province was totally wasted as Aed m Toirdelbach O Connor rode the country.

The O Rourcs of Brefne wared against the O Connors and amongh themselves as did the O Donnells at Tir Connail.
These princes and cousins often both, fighting against each other to the death for power and control.

Most cows and sheep and crops distroyed as they raged over the countryside.

Aed m Ruaidri O Neill died in 1353 and in Muinter Eolais the chief Tadg m Ragnaill was slain by the sons of Jeffery m Ragnaill.

In 1354 the Clann Aed Buide sided with the foreigners of Dun Delgan[Dundalk]
Aed o Neill and and a great slaughter occured agaisnt the Irish.

In 1356 Aed M Toirdelbach O Connor the king of Connacht was killed by Donnchad Carrach O Cellaigh[Kelly] with the clann Baiad to revenge his wife,Seonin Burke ,as the king had commandered her affections forcibly.

They were killing each other in family.
The O Donnells were kiliing each other as well.

In 1358 Aed O Neill defeated the Airgialla and the Fermanagh.

The Cenel Connaill was severly defeated by Cathal Og O Connor[Conchobair]
at the Battle of BelAtha Segnaigh with a great slaughter.

Aed m Brian M Brian mac Aed Buide O Neill slew Muirchertach m Thomas O Floinn, Line heir of Ui Tuirtre and Murhcad Og m Mathgan na Ragnail, heir of Corcu Baiscinn was killed by the Sil Briain as others and so ended the first ten years after the Black Death in Erinn and the Southwest along with the Southeast of Laigain and the Meath midlands fighting the colonists and the kings rule ,and the west of Shannon Connacht, and the Ulster Irish Connaill ,and O Neill fighting amongst themselves with death the major prize of their internicene fueds for allegiances.

The peasants and farmers if they survived the bubonic plague were now harassed to death by their own miriade of princes fighting each other.

In 1360 Edward 2 sent his third son Lionel who had married the daughter Elizabeth Burke, daughter of the Brown Earl Willam m Burke to Ireland.
The king ordered 64 absentee lords to accompany Lionel in person or by proxy and ordered the English sheriffs to pronounce all Englishmen with land grants in Ireland were to go to Ireland with all their power to dwell on their lands and defend them where as if they did not these lands should forfeit to the king.

The king ordered the Irish government ie: Anglo government at the Castle, to arrest shipping and forbid the export of any provision these to be brought to Chester and Liverpool ports in England.
Horses, stone masons and carpenters were being gathered to
go to Irealnd for the English forces.

On July 1 1361, Lionel was appointed Lord Lieuteant of Ireland.
He sailed from Liverpool in September 1361 with his army under command of Lord Stafford ,an absentee landlord himself with a third of Kilkenny.

Lionel immediately launched a campaign against the Irish at Wicklow Moutains.

McMurough the acting king of Leinster, was arrested and died in jail.
OByrne was not mentioned or O Toole.
Lional set up his capital at Carlow on the Barrow confluence that he could strike the East Wicklow Mountains or the west O Mores, OConnors and others on the east Leinster borders and the Meath lordship under Melaghlin and others.

The kings exchequer was located there at Carlow and tables and chairs were brought by land from Dublin.
Carlow had been burned regularly by the Irish and the Exchequer representative Robert Hollywood was not comfortable as Karlak [Carlac] was a fronteer of the Irish rebels.

In 1362 after some of Lionels men hdd been lost in fighting the Enemy Irish the king ordered repalcements of 100 Welsh archers and 100 spearmen to be sent to Ireland.

In that year of 1361, a third appearance of Bubonic Plague further weakened the colonial settlements and the debt and rents of the people owed to the king had to be cut by 1/4 and later the people were further pardoned all debts to the 'people of Ireland'' for the losses they had sustained because of the wars to pursue the kings honor and to renew his rights and the salavation of the land of Ireland against the kings Irish enemys'

In 1362 in September, Cathal Og O Connor ,son of Feidlim O Conner,
The Connacht kings son ,raided west Mide burning the land before them along with 14 churches and Cell Cainnig [Kilkenny].

This expedition was at BaileinTobair Bridge, the town of Brigids well . Ballintober Barony ,Rosscoman county.
The king continued to allot money and men for Irish and to fight the war.
These were paid soldiers not volunteers or clients like the Irish defending their land .

Campaigns were fought in Leix against O More and the elusive resitance of the wicklow OByrnes but the war went badly for the English and Lionel returned to England leaving his deputy Ormond .

18 months later the Statues of Kilkenny was passed by Lionels parliament

1350-1400 pg 2

Statues of Kilkenny which were a codification of the Ordinances passed by the Anglo Irish Counsil at Kilkenny began with a very definate preamble which innumerated the conquestors use of the Irish dress manner of riding ,language and their forsaking ofthe English language, dress ,fashion, laws and usages forsaking these for the customs of the betagh[Irish subjects] having even married among the Irish enemies and made alliances with the Irish enemies forsaking the kings alliances and laws.

the spirit of the statutes was made to forbid the alliances and marriages, gossipred[godparents for children] fostering of children, concubinage between English and Irish all must speak and write the English language English custom English fashion English riding and dress and prohited the admitance of any Irishmen to the English cathederals or collegiate churhes of the English monastic benifice or religious houses of the English and forbade the admitance of Irish minsterals considering such players spys and the use of Irish hair styles.

All of these adoted from the earlier ordinances passed by the counsil since the 1290s.
Brehon law was forbidden or the appointment of mere Irish to municipal office.
The statues also dealt with defence and military prohibitions as the game of hurling was forbidden as a game to be played by training soldiers of the king or the coiting game but these men were to occupy themselves in archery and lance throwing and other 'gentle games' of arms.
The Statues planed to war with the Irish and to continue war until the Irish enemies were fully distroyed or pay the cost of the war and fines for contempt of the English.
No parleys were to be held with the Irish but by leave of the Court and with presence of the kings sheriffs and the Irish were forbidden to occupy the lands of the English against the will of the lords of that land [ie tresspass].
The English were forbidden to stir up war.
The punishment life and limb, forfeiture of lands and the English are forbidden from keeping kerns or idle men in their lands[ vagrancy ,or Irish living in the woods.

Clauses dealt with the fixing of prices in the towns.
Most of this was simply codification of earilier ordinances passed by Rokeby or Lionels times in Ireland.
At the time the statues were passed they did not cause much of a ripple in the country as these codifications were already acts of the counsil and others from the past 50 years and perhaps eariler than that.

They acted mostly to cause aparthied in law if not in fact between the two races the Anglo settlers from England Norman coalitions and the native Irish or old Hibernia Irish already there when the Normans came.

The statues were mostly ignored by the population and gossipric contined as did marriage and other associations forbidden by the rulers far off in England.

With the implamentation of this codification into law by the English of their dispise and hatred of the Irish, Lionel left for England where he died a few years later in 1367.

Truly an example of the saying old men make wars young men fight them.

Eliabeth de Burgo heiress of Connacht and Ulster through her Anglo father William m Richard Burke had preceeded her husband in death dying in 1363 leaving an infant daughter as history repeating itself.

King Edward appointed Maurice FitzGerald Earl of Desmond, the new Justicar on 20 Februay 1367, who immediately summoned a parliament to Kilkenny.

The new Justicar reopened the Court of Comman Pleas in Dublin at Clonmel at Nass and Carlow and later in 1368 at Wexford.

Ireland now had a judicial system of hearings and ajudication in place albeit it the English one.
That relieving some of the petty inland fighting between parties at the drop of a hat.

This court addressed as did the parliaments in Ireland the problems, defaults and such of the Anglo settlers not the native Irish who remained under their own chiefs and continued in their own lands, a separate nation within a nation , forayed out into the Anglo settlements to commit homicides, robberies , pillage and distruction against all.
Monastery, church, castle, towns, fortress and having no respect for God or any person.
Anglo holders conculuded that unless the absentee grantors came with strong force to hold their land they would be lost to the Irish.

The king summoned the Royal Army to Ireland.

The ordinance of the kings ordering absentees to reside in Ireland on the lands they held there resulted in sales of some.

The St Armands Manor at Gormanston was sold to the Prestons.

Thomas de Clares heirs disposed of Yougal and Inchiquin manor in Cork.
The De Verdons sold land they held in Louth and Meath.

As most of these disposal of holdings were sold to Anglo lords already living in Ireland the number of lords present was not increased nor their defence forces.
The English continued to subsidise the kings desire to hold Ireland in his grasp by force.

William of Winsor also had purchased the Inchiquinn lands from De Clare recieved a stifend of 20,000 pounds for his maintainance as Justicar in Ireland.
He subsequently declared lands of the absentee forfeit and obtained a customs duty grant and went to war against the enemy Irish and took Diamont Red Hand Mac Murchada ,the provisional king of Leinster prisoner , executed him and had his successor, Gerald Kavenagh killed.

He accused John de Bermingham of sedition, felony treason, and condemed him to be drawn and hung.

In 1370 attacks against the lord of Desmond Gerald fitzMaurice by O Brien and MacNamara drew the Justicar, known as the Black Knight ,away from his war in Leinster with the Irish to Munster.

The city of Limerick was burned extensively and Winsor stayed on at Adare in County Limerick arresting all the shipping but did not march to Thomond to any war with OBrien.

On Dec. 15 1370 OBrien,and MacNamera , main Chiefs of the Southwest submitted to Lord Lieutenant Winsor at Adair. Agreed to give hostages and pay a 1000 cow fine and in June 1371 the Justicar moved back to the Leinster War as Brian Ua Cinneidigh, king of Ormond, fell by the foreigners and the trouble was now in Tipperary.

He imposed a heavy tax on the Anglo/Irish imposing not only a national levy but local levys. Taxing without the consent and against the will of the countys.

Confiscating as tax ,cranogs of cows and hay from the plowlands which payed 1/2 market price on each holding field.He paid the farmers nothing for transport of this tax to him.

He confiscated the Church tithes, their corn held from the plowland.

The local defense duty was separate.

1350-1400 pg 3

William of Winsor who had purchased the Inchiquin lands from de Clare recieved a stiphend of 20,000 for his maintainance as justicar in Ireland.

He subsequently declared the land of the absentees forfeit and obtained a customs duty grant than went to war against the enemy Irish and took Diarmait'Redhand' mac Murchada the provinical king of Leinster prisoner and executed and had his sucessor Gerald Kavenagh killed.

He accused John de Bermingham of sedition felony treason and condembed him to be drawn and hung.
In 1370 attacks against the lord of Desmond Gerald fitzMaurice by O Brien and MacNamara drew the Justicar , known as the Black Knight, away from his war in Leinster with the Irish there to Munster.

The city of Limerick was burned extensively and Winsor stayed at Adare in county Limerick arresting all the ships but did not march to Thomond to war with OBrien.
On December 15 1370 OBrien and MacNamera , the top chiefs of the south west submitted to Lord Lieuteant Winsor at Adare, agreed to give hostages and pay a 1000 cow fine.

In June the Justicar marched back to Leinsters war as Brian Ua Cinneidigh King of Ormond fell by the foreigners and the trouble was now in Tipperary.

He imposed a heavy tax on the Anglo/Irish. Imposing not only a national levy but local levys. Taxing without their consent and against the will of the countys.
Confiscating as tax cranocs of cows and hay from the plowlands which also paid 1/2 mark on each holding field.
He conficated the Church titles the corn held for the termon lands.
The local defense duty was separate.

The Plague broke out again in 1371.

When the Anglo holders petitioned the King for redress the taxes were suspended and Winsor removed from office.

Men refused to accept the post of Lord Lieutenant of Ireland.
Hence Winsor continued to hold the post.
He held parliament but the king estopped him by forbidding him to seat them and he finally knew the game was up and left Ireland.

In Munster O Breen [Brien] had assembled a great body of soldiers and a rising was held to create a universal conquest of Ireland in 1371.

The kings forces with Dublin, Louth, Kildare and Meath were ordered to stand against OBrien.

Many of this paid army deserted absenting themselves from the kings service without leave even though the wages were not being paid by the king they had no leave to refuse the king his service.

Through the 1370s the Irish continued to conduct operations through the clann and clientship system all over Ireland.
Burning and killing the settlers who were expending their treasure on defense subsidies and money amounts from the king
who demanded his money back and the Irish Anglos were at constant political resistance to the kings demands for return of his advances from the royal treasury.

The English finances were then unsound as they are in America today.
The Irish continued to hold their own for the last 50 years of the 14th century [1350-1399]. against both the English Norman colonialists and the kihgs army and the Black Death.
It is possible the genetic structure of the Irish/Scot held an antibody against the Bacillus that the English and French being of a different racial stock did not possess and the immunity as well as the insular life style of hermitage and clann Irishness gave them a partial immunity to the virilant killer.

The Irish also possessed than, in the 1300s, the great herds of cattle which gave them a high protein diet of milk and beef suplimented with intermitant fish making a health energetic race where the Anglos normal dietcame from the tillage. Eating greater amounts of vegatable products hence having a different immune status as wellas energy level.

All however, were poor not only from the constant waring and feuding. Internicine as well as enterracial, but because the population occupied an island in the sea off the beaten path of international trade.

It was required than to be self sustaining and integrated in its own symboitic reltionships beteen the tribal societys.
Hence clientship and kinship and cattle trading superceeding dependence on outside forces coming.

By 1376 under the leadership of Ormond-Butler, who on August 8 had entered an indenture with the king to serve in Ireland fora year with 120 men at arms and 200 Welsh Archers. Shipping was arrested for Liverpool and Bristol and Chester.

Some left the service for lack of payment and the kings wages but Ormond was empowered to replace these with English born in Ireland at the same wages as the Enlish born soldiers had recieved.

The Leinster Irish of McMurrough, O Nolan, O Byrne, O More, and Art kavenagh who claimed the captaincy.

Art m Dermot m Morg committed himself and his nation of Kenseley [censeley-selaigh- cenncelaigh] Tipperary for which he was to recieve 40 pounds.

Some of the Munster Irish formed as Bishop against the OBriens and recieved wages for this alliance .

As such many of the Irish engaged as the gallowglasses did in mercy service for pay. Hessian armys offered to whichever side offered the most profit and pay as did the later Cromwellian soldier who engaged in conquest and war for the land they won and so groups and kinship capitalization thrived long before it was defined as such by the great universitys and the economists.

The profit motive drove the conditions and allegiance of the day.

The Anglo governemnt in Ireland by which the Justicar and lord lieutanant was always moblile .
Moving its Court from town to town, province to province ,in conjuntion with its miltary campaign.

Although Dublin reamined a cultural town it was not where the government was always found .
Sometimes at Clonmel. Sometimes at Cork or Limerick or Yougal as the old Marchada had to chase King Henry 2 about his realms from England to France in seeking his patronage to restore Laigein and Ferns to him .

The Anglo forces continued to move about Ireland east and west holding military campaigns against the enemy Irish as well as assizes and parliaments to hear petitions and redress disputes.

Dublin Castle may have been built as a government center by king John but the Justicar and Viceroys, with the military forces, moved about the land seeking control of the countys and shires.
And submission of the Irish Chiefs and their forces.

Sometimes the Irish came to the Justicar to seek militay assistance for their own cause against their own family as was the case with the O conors since the 1200s and stil with Turlock O Brien in 1378 after he had been driven out as his right as captain of his nation of Thomond by Bruian O Brian as he had not the help to overpower Brian.

This policy amongst the Irish, of physical force usurpation of rights had taken hold -as the Irish are quick observers- when the Anglo kings themselves practiced this physical force right not only agaisn the Irish tribal chiefs but amongst themselves.

1350-1400 pg 4

On 1 July 1383 Philip de Courtney nefew of the Archbishop of Canterbury was appointed the new Lord Lieutenant of Ireland.
Ships were arrested to transport him [the practice was not to hire a ship for government use but to simply commandeer it and keep it in arrest for the kings use]No paynment was renedered.]

Courtney however had his troubles and the Arch Bishop of Dublin was appointed to rule Ireland.
However by 1385 Courtney had renewed his post from Richard 2 the king, and he kept that office for 10 years till 1395 along witha all the revenue of the land of Ireland.

When Courney landed at Dalkey on 6 May there was trouble in the midlands where Connor O Faly was at war and trouble also in the old Wicklow Mountains of O Byrne and O Toole.

Mc Murrough,O Nolans and ,O Neill who the previous year succeeded in advancing his position in Ulster[Ulaid] was allying with mac Mahon to take Louth the former ORiel lands.

At this point the Anglos were weak and poor and faced with the greater power of their Irish enemies and English rebels assisted by Scot and Spanish enemys and they wanted the presence of the monarch in Ireland to protect them from this fate.

Richard ,now grown and in command of his kingdom, gave a worthy lord of England, Robert de Vere ,Earl of Oxford and sent him out to conquer Ireland and hold it in peace.

the king created him Marques of Dublin and gave him the land and lordsip of Ireland with all its profits.

Courtney was dismissed in violation of the traditional contract for a time oftimes made with the king and the Marquis. Lieutenant
John de Stanley arrived in August 1385.

In April 1386 Robert de Vere had his ships provided to pass to Ireland and he was granted a ransom that had been paid for John a Blois. [apparently the English were able to ask ransom for prisoners they held].

This ammounted to enough to provide some 500 men at arms, 1000 archers presumably Welsh for a 2 year period.

In October of 1386 with an eminent threat of a French invasion of England a violent clash took place betwen Ricahrd and his opponents in which the opposition won putting the royal power in commission for a year.
The king left Westminster and toured England midlands and north to organise a new Royalist party.
de Vere now created Duke of Ireland at his side.
De vere was promoted again to justice of Chester and north Wales where the king drew a great deal of military support.

It was felt in England that the Irish rebels had entered the English university as spys and their expultion was ordered.

However it turned out they were actually innnocent Oxford students.
[The English are noted for Day room abragations as the Irish are noted for stabilty along pretty well suspected of the rising of the moon]
[The one known to be crazy and the other drunkards]

Richard was unable to recover his throne from the parliamentary commission and his campaign against parliamentary forces collapsed on 19 December 1380, at Radcot Bridge and his loyal follower de Vere fled over sea to Louvain where he died in 1392.

Most of the kings allys were executed by the merciless parliament.

The Marquis de Vere goverment in Ireland had to funtion as best it could.

Ormond-Butler and Desmond-fitzGerald continued their fued.
McMurrogh and his troops were against at war in Leinster and again admitted to the peace with OByrne and O Toole.

Ulster Meath and Connacht were still in de Vere wardship till the Earl of March Mortimer acheived adult status.

The parliament condemed deVere.
Annialating his grant in Ireland which reverted to King Richard 2.

The Bishop of Meath was acting as Justicar for deVere and was order to distroy the deVere seal and penants and banners.
De vere was convited of treason to be publicly proclaimed.
All his appointees were dismised.

The Bishop in 1388-89 appointed Ormond keeper forever of Kilkenny and Tipperary court. Thomas Burgo at Connacht.

Thomas de Mortimer, uncle of the child heir ,was finally appointed Justicar and proposals were made to create and revive the Duchy of Ireland for the kings under the duke of Gloucester.

However Thomas Mortimer never took office and when Richard was reinsatted to power he appointed John de Stanley.

The new Justicar landed at Howth [Ben Edar], summoned a parliament at Kilkenny.

However he was unable to attend to this Anglo parliament as O Neill was pressing against the Ulaid colonists.

Neill O Neill Og mc Neill Mor was a prisoner of Stanley who in January 1390 went to Drogeda and Dundalk and on 20 Feburay that year he had an agreement with O Neill where Neill Og was released in exchange for hostages.
The O Neill eldest son, 2 nefews and 4 others.
All children who were taken to the castle at Trim by Lent 1390.

These children hostages were kept by the English till 1402 and were a major reason behind O Neills submission to Richard 2 in 1395.

In the midlands Kildare and the O Dempseys were at war.

The Irish of St Mullin, County Carlow needed to be subdued.

In 1391 the Justicar had a war in Meath and at Munster.

An enquiry was held at Stanleys official conduct and activies and outcome of this inquiry by the bishops, Meaths Bishop was appointed Justicar.

But in May 1392 the Duke of Gloucester was given the Irish purse to lead a major expedition into Ireland with 34,000 marks at his disposal for 3 years to pay the troops.
9,500 of it for his own wage.

Ormond was appointed Justicar in 1392 when Gloucester misuse of funds was found out and the king sent 2000 more marks along with the Bishop of Dulblin and Philip Darty an absentee, to recover his inheritance from the Irish rebels who had recoverd the inheritance from the Anglo settler grants of a cantred west of Suir [Offaly or Offali].

Ormond was defeted at his own court, Cork ,Tipperary and Kilkenny and petitioned for all the land of Offa.

Connact in 1390 was not safe and the Bishop of Clonmacnios was refused escort by the kings sheriff.

O Neill had his army out against Dundalk in the north in 1392 and all of Carlinford penensila was wasted and distroyed.

When Anne of Bohemia, Queen of Richard 2, died on 7 June 1394, the king decided to go to Ireland and ordered all men born there to return.

Exports for Ireland were forbidden.
Yoemen and archers to be with the King by 3 August ready to sail.

The king to recieve all rebels ready to come over to the kings obedience.

Ricahrd sailed from Haverford west in September 1394 with the largest amry ever sent to Ireland in the middle ages.
5000 men at arms plus Cheshire Archers and the forces of the Norman English in Ireland.
Some 8,000 to 10,000 men all told.

This army was comprable to the numbers lead againt the French in the 100 years war.
Richard 2 landed at Waterford on 2 October 1394.

The campaign would be hampered the by heavily wooded countryside where leaves on the trees would hamper the archers.

In October on the 28th, Richard attacked Mac Murrough at Leighlin Wood a principle fortrees of this chief.
They were driven out and mcMurrough submitted with OByrne, O Toole and O Nolan were brought back to Dublin as the kings prisoners.

At this time a decision was taken by the English to remove the exchecher ,long at Carlow, back to Dublin.
The Earl of Nottingham then lord of Carlow and Marshall to Richards forces.
Richard had stated in writing to the Duke of Burgandy that his purpose in going to Ireland was to punish and correct his rebles and to establish justice for his faithful lieges.
He specified Leinsters forts and garrisons.

In 1395 the king was confiscating the cows of the Irish rebels who had come to swear ,submit, confess to their offences ,and recieve whatever punishment would befall them and this did accur on 12/20 January 1395 when the old ONeill gave homage and fealty to Richard at Drogeda and swore to surrender the bonnaght of Uslter.

The king returned to Dublin shortly thereto.

Our rebles who call themselves kings and captains are heard to co heirs of Connact and Munster.

All the army of Ireland but O Donnell had submitted to Richard before he left Ireland.
McMurrough, O Toole , O Nolan ,O More, O Rourc, O Connor Don, MacCarthy, O Kelly, O Kennedy, O Brien, O Neill, O Ryan , and Cennselaigh.
And the numerous subchiefs and septs of the Irish lords submitted to Ricahrd by 1395 AD.
As they had submitted to Henry 2 in 1170 ,two centuries before.

Of the Norman Anglo rebels lords Willam de Burgo of Clanricard,Walter de Bermingham of Athenry were knighted as they came in to The old English.

The English in England decided it took 2 Justicars to run the turbulent county and in 1396 Sir Wiliams Safire, the Chameberlain became Justicar of Leinster Munster and south and young Marsh was left Lord Lieutenant of Uslter, Connacht and Meath and the fragment of separte jurisdition and separte Anglo holdings of the king was kept to the end of the century.

In 1396 Marsh, Ormand and Kildare with a host of gaelic allies marched to Ulster to raid O Neill.
Armagh was burned and plunderd.

They then Attacked O Farrell and O Reilly as they went south of Loch Erne.
The small war of some 100 or 200 men,10 or 12 knights,200 or so archers and horse and 400 lancers in front were the usual forces of the Earl of March who was finally killed by the OByrnes at Kellis town on 20 July 1398.

His son 6 or 7 year old and the Mortimer inheritance again fell into the kings hand.

Reginald Ruthyn de Grey of Wexford liberty was elected Justicar by the counsil of Ireland.

In 1399 Richard had plans to return to Ireland and he had made peace with France and married the French kings daughter.

In May of 1399 trouble continued in Ireland and mc Murroughs lands were forfeited and given to the Earl of Surrey.
These were in Munster and in Meath.

On June 1 Richard again landed in Waterfod where he joined the raid Surrey who had taken prey of local cattle and killed some 162 armed resistors and kin.

Richard marched to Kilkenny and took Conor mcMurrough who resisted after battle.
Richard marched south to Buth Wood in which McMurrow was but on his way the news was brought that Henry of Lancaster had landed at Yorkshire to claim the kingship.

On July 17 1399 Richard abandoned Ireland and sailed from Waterford.
On 29 July he was Henrys prisoner and Henry Lancaster became king of England.

As Ricahrd and his army departed, followed by the Earl of Surrey Ireland was in confusion.

McMurrough allied with Desmond in his war with Ormond-Butler and returned from Munster to distroy Leinster county demanding the Barony of Norrah and his annuity with arreares.

O Neill had a great army in the north and demanded the release of his hostages from English was not part and discharted and there were no English Royal lordship to defend the colony.

At this point the Irish enemy were proud and strong and had great power and no one was there to resist them.

The rebel Engish lords were even problems and oppressive to the loyal Engish lieges more so than the Irish to whom they were accomplishes.
The control ofthe land itself with the Irish outside of Kildare and Dublin.
As the challanges for the control in England,the English parliament on 31 October 1400, All Hallows submitted articles to the king of the necessity of making provision for the safe keeping of Ireland.

on 10 December 1400 John de Stropus was appointed Lord Lieutenant for 3
years.

Judi Donnelly
copyright 29 April 2010

sourses: A History of Medieval Ireland, A J Otway-Ruthven, Ernest Benn Ltd., 19

When the Anglo farmers petitioned the king for redress the taxes were suspended and Winsor removed from Office.

The Church at the change to the Normans

2010-04-23T09:24:00.000-07:00

The Church at the change to the Normans

The Pope Breakspere presented a gold ring with an emeralad set in it to Henry 2 of England as a token of his papal grant of Erinn to England in 1155 AD.

The ring of the Emerald Ilse later placed in the public treasury.

The Pope Hadrian IV, made this ingenious decision from the old customary donation of the Emporor Constantine who donated all islands to the Roman Church.

St Patrick had designated the Irish as the children of Christ and as such the children of Rome.

But in the old origianl conversion of the Irish under their Shamrock to their acceptance of Christ over the old Druidic partheon , they had not trod blindly or faithfully in the Roman mold,but had, under its princes and lay control of the new monastery direction, established a Celtic Church which retained a conbinant of the old princely tuathic reign as well as inclusion of lay personnel.

These separate doctrines were not really accepted in Rome under the myriad of popes and the Roman Church desired to acheive continental reform of the celtic monastic life style and had aversion to its tolerance of a number of sexual pratices that particulartly irritated Romes sensiblities; as well as the larger control of finances and monastery lands.

All of the over 200 monasterys built in Ireland had been beneficited by local princes than ruling. Donating the land, assisting with the buildings. Providing the cleric and deacon staff from its own household and frequently Himself being the chief Abbot of these establishments retaining that part as a hereditary right for centuries.

Therefore, the old Celtic Church bent not to Rome or St Patrick but brought the new religion and its teachers into the Gaelic culture and life style.

Althought this happy arrangment was somewhat disrupted by the Viking Norse raids of 825AD and on, these rapacious sailors more or less were interested in the natural wealth of these monastery houses and the princes holding, not their spiritual exortations and settled into Irish ways themselves.

Frequently these Abbots were chiefs who retained their church office funtions of runing the Abbeys, remained laymen and never were consecrated as priests.
As such they married and had childen.
Conducted their affairs as they normaly would in the role as both leaders, Kings, chiefs, and Churchmen.
These practices serving through the arrival of the Norman forces in 1169 AD.

The 2 main monastery houses were from the time of St Patrick Himself and the ColumCille establishment of Derry in the north west.

Each hereditary coarbs to direct its funtion over their mini states.
These men ,usually direct desendants of the orignial grantors and builders of their monastic sites , taking the church office with the blessing of the doctrine founders.

However the coarbs of St Patrick at Armagh were by 1100AD of the Ua Sinaich tribe.
The ofice being held down in that tribal tuath since 900 or so as a hereditary right.

This also true of the western Derry Abbey established by prince Colum Cille O Donnell [Domnaill, the church Naill]
The comarba post a hereditary right and not always decending to a consecrated priest.

Lay financial control was prevalent in all the monastic orders occuring in the island.
Laymen in Leinster, Cashel, in Munster and the west of Shannon houses estabalished by the princes of Concobar at places like Athlone and Tuam.

By 1100 the idea of reform had taken root in the Irish church itself.

coming of the dioceses

In 1111 the Irish Celtic Church overburdoned with Bishops and Abbots and most of these men were not actually consecrated as priests but were laymen with wives and children living in a monasterial communal setting.
A commue of Christians more or less with a main monasterial structure established by St Patrick and Colum Cille.

Armagh, Derry, Clonard, Kells Clonmacnios, Cong, Emly, Glendaloch among many the rest scattered over the country.

Each of these houses maintained their own local juridiction according to the whims or ideals of the current Abbot or Bishop along the lines of the old chiefs and family heads.
A sort of local government structure prevaling based on clientship and kinship.

Thre was no known central ecclesiastical government in Ireland.
There was no general guidlines or order [ordain].

Bishop Gilbert of Limerick laid out a simple instruction for Bishops and priests for all Ireland and presented a diagram of structure in the form of a pyramid or diamond overlapped by a second diamond which more or less creates the Star of David.

These divided one pyramid into Christ at the head and below him the Pope his Vicar with Noah.
Than the scale of ranks and order of the clergy to the trioka division of society.
Those who pray, those who plow ,and Those who fight.

One pryamid triange diamond is headed by the Bishop the other by the Abbot monastery.

The Bishop heads the ecclesiastic government and the Abbot monk is to pray to serve God not to minister to the laity.

This treatise of Gilberts expected the triangle dioceses to be territorial, fixed and numbered, and the Bishop episcopate subjected to the Pope in Rome.

This explaination was the cause of the Synod of Rath Breasail in Tipperary presided over by Gilbert, a papal legate of 28 years,with the leadership of Malchus of Cashel, a monk of Winchester, and the ArchBishop Cellach Sinaich of Armagh.
The king of Munster Muirchertach [Mortaugh] OBrien along with clergy and laity with 2 objectives in mind,
to injoin good order upon laity and clergy under the Bishops rule;

The Bishops were freed in perpetuity from the authority and rent of the lay princes to which Muirchertach, to show good faith, granted Cashel to the Church in 1134.

The second objective to establish Ireland into territorial dioceses.

The intent of the Synod was to divide the country along the old
Melisian kings division of Leath Cuinn and Leath Moga with Armagh and Cashel as ecclesiastic primates of the division.

These halves to be subdivided into 12 dioceses, as Augustine had been instructed by Gregory I the Great in 595 AD ,and was recorded in the lost or unfound Annals of Clonenagh[nach] as discribed in Bedes Ecclesiastical History account .

Of the original consept of 24 diosceses, 17 were finaly in vogue with Connacht assigned 5 more, making 22 eventual territorial dioceses for Erinn.
Dublin and Clonmacnios were left out.

This Synod although enacted was not implimented sucessfully as the old coarbial familys resisted giving up their established hereditary control for the new order of Bishop and Monk Abbott,
Jurisdiction by territory not princely adjudiction.

The personification of this struggle between Clann Sinaich, the heireditors and Malachy of Armagh, the Monk and installed Archbishop.

He brought in his fellow monk Abbot Gilla M Liac from Derry Abbey who with the new papal legate Cardinal John Paparo replaced Malacy who died in 1148 at Clairvaux France.

In 1152 they held the Synod of Kells to complete the changes of Rath Braesail.
The dioceses system was finally installed in Ireland proving not the 2 halves with Armagh and Cashel but 4 Archdioceses.
Armagh, Cashel, Tuam and Dublin.
Provincial Archdioceses each having subdioceses.

12 for Armagh
5 for Dublin
15 for Cashel
8 for Taum

Other work completed at Kells was the abolition of Simony and usury
Prohibition against robberies,
sex irregularities,
defective marraiges,
payment of tythes regularly and promtly.

Lay control was discontinued and the princes and chiefs no longer to be paid rents by the monastery or themselves retain inherited rights to the abbot positions.

Roman cannon law replaced the old personal juridiction of each house to that of ecclesiastic order.

The Irish persisted even so in their marital practices and hereditary insistance and continued in ignorance and superstition.

This resistance to new ways and changes led the Popes in Rome to desire the political subjection of Ireland to the English kings in order to further the Roman consept of religious prosperity among the Irish.

One of the monasterys most active and promting this reform of the Celtic churches the old Colum Cille Derry Abbey, an order which had maintained its communication with continental orders and ideas,
thanks it many popes since 1099.
Some 18 of these being appointed from the death of Urbano 2,
[Odo of Largery] in July of 1099, in the 69 years of the serving popes to the Norman invasion of Ireland.
[the century concluded with 5 more Popes concluding with the death of
Celestine 3, [Giacanto Boboni] ,in 1198.
23 Popes in the century.

Hardly leaving Rome with a stable reputation.

In 1118 a man called John of Gaeta known as Gelasius was made pope for a year.
gae and ta both gaelic words meaning it is the spear.

He was serving as a monk at Monte Cassino.

These monks were among those appointed because of their dedication to the reform movement. Regection of Simony, the lay church promotions, and belief in chastity. They strove to remain pure.

The presence of a gaelic spearman as a monk high on a mounton top fortified castle monastery might have resulted from the call of Urban 2 to make a crusade, the First Crusade, in 1095 to deliver Jerusalem from Muslim control.

The knights of Templar Francish soldiers served at this Crusade had established monasterys well fortified like Monte Casino all over Europe and the Holyland.

However John of the Sword was frail and elderly in 1118 when he was elected pope of the Roman Catholic Church.

He had stood with Pashal 2 through his trial for supremacy- pope vs king- church vs state -against Henry Emperor of the Holy Roman empire of Germany.

The church pg 2

Henry was a supporter of the reform to eliminate Simoney and clerical marriages but he also espoused to retain the right to invest his own bishops .
The Pope Pashal 2,[Rainerius of Bueda], wanted Henry the Emperor to remove this investiture of Bishops and permit a cannonical election and in turn the Church would remove its claim to land ,property icons and relics belonging to secular power, ie:the king and state .

Ironicially the argument between church and state was not resolved until the founding of American Constitution which clearly states separation of Church and State in its clauses of 1776.

When these proposals were read out at the Corination ceremony the German princes and nobels rebelled and stopped the Corination.
Henry put the Pope and his cardinals in jail.

But Pashal 2 gave the prince his way and crowned him without resolution of the offer and in April 1111 conseeded to Henry his right to invest Church personnel.
Pashal was bitter of his loss calling his award to Henry the 'depraved privilege'.

His colleague and sucessor Gelasius 2 was to suffer for this resistance.
He was put out of Rome by Gregory 8 the then antiPope and was 'on the run' from Henry V, Son of the imperious German Emporor.
The old man died and was buried at Cluny Abbey.

His sucessor Callistus 2,[Guido of Burgandy] , was able to achieve a resolution to the investiture crisis with an Agreement with Henry V in 1122 at Worms.
The Agreement, drawn in Norman England, which allowed elected Bishops to swear fealty to the King and the king ruler in turn claimed no spiritual juridsdiction over the Bishops as elected and no longer invested them with the Bishops staff and ring but instead confered the church lands in his territory to them by tapping his septre.

The cannon elections of the Bishops and Abbots were to be held in the Emperors presence and this settlement allowed the ensuing Popes to return to their Quest for Church reform.

During these times many students monks were establishing themselves in German Europe at communities in south Germany.
SchotlenKlosters such as St James Ratisbond.

One of the Abbots of this house being Christian McCarthy of the king of Desmond house.
This Abbot founded a house at Wurzburg and these early monks left Wurzburg Abbey of St James to establish a monastery at Cashel, home of the Munster kings.

A second house was established at Ross Carbery in Cork in 1148 putting a Benedictine presence in south Ireland well before the Norman knights arrived.
The Savigny Erenagh house of North England was established in 1127.
and St Marys co Cathederal in Dublin in 1139.
Cluny also established a monastery at Athlone by 1150.

All of these continental orders in favor of reform of simony payments and of clerical marriage.

These orders had established a presence in Ireland along with the exisiting old Celtic Church still ruling the religious life of the people and their ruling septs.
The O Donnell tribe continued to rule the Colm Cille, Ionic and Kells segment of the old Church and the desendants of the Benifice appointed his ruler at Armagh by Patrick himself continued to produce the Arch Bishops of Armagh.

About 930 AD the hereditary right fell to the Sinaich who remained coarbs for the next 200 years.
With the death of their own Cellach [Celsus] in 1129 AD he was succeeded by Murtagh of the Sinaich, who died in 1134 and was succeeded in hereditary right by a Sinaich, that being Niall the brother of Cellach of the Sinaich.

However Cellach while Archbishop had taken up a protege in his efforts that being one Mael Maedoc Ua Mor Gair of Armagh.

He had been born to a teacher and had a career as a reformer.

He had been ordained as a priest in 1119 by Cellach and fostered along by the Archbishop steadily till he died at Ard Patrick in 1129, designating young Maedoc also called Malachy as his sucessor. Commanding Conor O Brien, King of Thomond and Cormac Mc Cathy, king of Desmond and all the nobles of Ireland to put this death bed wish into effect.

Malachy had spent time at Lismore when he was driven out of the See of Bangor in 1122 where he met Cormac McCarthy who had also been driven out as king of Desmond.

Murtagh Sinaich had come into the city of Armagh when Cellach died and drove Malachy out.

He, Murtagh, recieved the customary tithe and benefices of the Archbishop .
When he died in 1134 ,he was succeeded by Niall, brother of Cellach.

But this holder was driven out of Armagh by Donal O Carroll king of Oriel and he took with him the staff ,bell and book of Armagh.

Niall died in 1139 and was the last hereditary archbishop of Patricks see although Malachy had been sure his life was forfeit when the bishops and kings and nobles installed him as Archbishop by force saying they were leading him to his death.
The condition he posed to accept the Archbishoprick was that he would be allowed to return to his cloister.
He did succeed in giving the Armagh See its freedom and in doing this to withdraw from Armagh when he brought in his friend from the Abbey at Derry [Gelasius] Gilla mac Liag in 1137.

Gilla had been Abbot of Saint Columba's at Derry since 1121.

Derry was a traditional Abbey monastery and Gilla being its comarba would have been a member of the o Donnell family as was ColumCille the founding prince himself.

Mac Liag remained Archbishop of Armagh through the remaining Celtic Church rule.
Part of the Synod of Kells in 1152 which established 4 dioceses in Ireland. Armagh, Dublin Cashel and Tuam.

He was a close friend and helper of Maedoc ,aka Malachy in his reform work and Malachys attemts to obtain papal recongintion for the Irish sees of Armagh and Dublin.

Malacy in addition to holding reform views was particulary inspired with the teaching of St Bernard of Clairvaux Cisternian Order and was instramental in establishing that order in Ireland when Mellifont was built and dedicated in 1148 AD.

Gilla consecrated the new Cistercian monastery house of Mellifont and remaind as Patricks representative till he died in 1174 at age 87 years making him born about 1087 AD.

If these figures are approximatly correct he became Abbot of Derry at age 44 and Archbishop of Armagh at Age 50.

There is no historical information if he was a married cleric or a married lay man or had children or why he was styled Gelasuis as his name appears on the Brass wall plague at old St Patricks in Armagh now the Anglo service.

He is listed in Hayes records at the National Library of Ireland as a decendant of Donghalach O Donnelly, chief of the name and marshal and as son of Ruaidri.
A child or grandchild of Echtigern a common ancestor of the o Donnells and O Donnellys.
He has also been styled Gilla Mac Liag Ua Branainn as comarb of Colm Cille.
Echdach clanns.

He was, like his mentor Malachy, a beliver in a reformed church where patronage, simony and sex were not present and like Malachy and mcCarthy was instramental in establishing the new continental orders in Ireland in conjuction with the incoming Norman land grabbers.

By 1224 under king John and his son Henry Ireland had transfered the old celtic church into its prevelant order of today.

The Cistercians expanding from Melifont and its 8 daughter houses.
Later 34 ,in 1228.
Carmalites, 13
Franciscan,32
Domincan,23
Augustinian, 26 houses

All English Roman orders from the continent who brought in the gothic architecture, the loss of hereditary titles ,the loss of lay control of church and abbey, the new dioceses territorial orders, and parishes, tithes and the several compositions of Annals now being the only remaining; With renewal of the history of the old order mingled with the new order and the new church now under Roman cannon law and pratice.

By 1224 Luke Netterville, an Engish was Archbishop of Armagh and much of the old tuath 5/5s were broken up and under English fee simple grants to English lords.

In 1170 a debate was held at Armagh. Its consern was that Ireland had been invaded as punishment for her sins .
A calvanistic destiny proclaimation before it was proclaimed the foundation of Elizabethan prodistantism.

In 1171 the church at Rome urged all the Bishops and prelates of Ireland to submit Documents of Submission under seal to Rome where they remain [we hope] in the Vatican archives.
The trial of submission was imposed by the edict that either the bishops and clerics submited to Henrys rule or they would be excommunicated.

Pope on the bench Innocent 3, [Lando of Sezze].

One of the stereotypes and Roman discontent with the Irish in general was their sexual pratices.
Live on the gossip circuit if not provable, as the great abominable Irish vice.

They were reputed to have sex with their step mothers to which children were born.
Having more than one concubine .Often genetic sisters.
Having sex with their daughters.
Eating meat during lent.
Paying no tithe and showing no respect for church authority.

The doctrines of St Patrick vs the doctines of St Peter and St Paul raged on around the dinner tables of papal dining and the remanent nobilty of Erinn.

With the new enforcement and the establishment of the continental orders in Ireland the old Christain establishment known as the Celtic Church slowly submerged into medieval Ireland at the 1200-1600 where it remained a hidden Ireland unreadalbe and unfathonabe until threated with final burial and extintion by the sexual pratices of Henry 8, the Lancaster who need a son and revived the old empire arguements church and state by creating his own Church when the vicar of Christ refused his ambition to divorce his Aragon wife and marry another woman able to prduce the desired son.
Namely Edward 7 , a weak and pampered child who didnt live beyond the age of 15 leaving the throne to the much stronger Elizabeth Boylan Tudor the Virgin Queen, who upheld to the death her fathers right to establish his own church.

Herself died childless.
Leaving her kingdom rights not to another Lancaster rose, but her cousin Mary of Scotlands child James Stuart when she died of old age in 1603.
The stuarts all being catholic kings.

Judi Donnelly
copyright 21 April 2010

sourses:
The Church in Medieval Ireland, John Watt, University Collage Dublin Press, 1972/1998
Saints and Sinners , A Hisotry of the Popes, Eamon Duffy, Yale University Press,1997

1300-1350 AD

2010-04-19T10:27:00.000-07:00

1300 AD pg 1

With the Battle of Faughart and the death of his ally Donal O Neill in 1325 the new settlements lay desolate for decades suffering along with the north Europeans from a famine that struck the continent as well as the Irish from 1315-1317.
This famine in part lingered for many years and was concluded with the Black Death of 1348-49 which swiftly eliminated whole towns almost overnight.
Dublin and Drogeda were depopulated within weeks and the bubonic plague spead through the crowded Anglo Norman villages and towns causing panic and fear amongst the residents who fled where able.
Many leaving the island altoghether and returning to England.

The rural Irish were not so drastically effected on their isolated farmsteads and cabins in the hills.
The Plague and pestilance was a constant mysery to the inhabitants and the constant warfare amongst the Irish and the Anglo Irish and the Norman Anglo continued.

All lived in an unsecure state.

The Norman English were on the defensive if they chose to stay on and little by little the Gaelic power proceeded to recover their country.

The Connors carried on a deliberate internal fued amongst themselves for power when the last acknowledged king of Connacht Rory O Connor himself secumed to the Plague dying of it in 1348.

The English in Ireland were on a crisis level and feared they would be annialated.
They appealed to the Crown for help.

Westminster dispatched an expedition and the king Edward 3, sent his son Lionel, Duke of Clarence, at the head of a force of 1000 in Septe4mber 1361.

Lionel the prince, spent 5 years in Ireland and the statutes of Kilkenny passed by the Anglo Irish parliament on Feburay 19 1355 recongized the plight of the Anglo Irish by codifying colonial legislation forbidding them to intermarry with native Irish, use Brehon law, wage war or make peace with the local rebels.

They being part Irish themselves were more or less kidnapped from the the Irish parent in favor of the English one as the Church later demanded mixed marraige children be raised Catholic.

The Anglos were forbidden to trade with the native, sell them weopons or horses or food.

The Statutes of Kilkeenny also separated the churches, forbidding Gaelic clerics serving in English territories.
Purely an act of religious aparthaid.

Lionel failed to achieve any military success and Royal control was not established in the island.
He depated for home in 1366 and died in 1368.

In 1369 William of Winsor arrived to restore English order and for 3 more years military campaigns raged on the land.

This operation of the Crown was to be paid for by the requesting Anglos who were required to put up heavy taxes.

The grand design to use the misfortune of Ireland to re conquest by the Crown failed and the British Army was only able to mantain local garrisons.
By 1370 the Winsor Army was unable to continue a campaign against the Leinster O Tooles when threated from the O Brien and McNameras of Munster, and Limerick,a key royal stonghold, was burned.

The English government also maintained war forces in France on which it spent the largess extracted from Ireland in the 12 and 13 centuries.

Local Anglo lords withheld money to build up their own private forces.
The crown sought to force absentee lords to return to Ireland by forced passing a Statue in 1368 requiring them to do so or forfeit their lands in Erinn to the Crown.

The absentees sold their Irish holdings rather than return to them or pay forces to defend them.

These surrendered lands were quickly occupied by the Irish.

By 1375 Art McMurrough Kavenagh was again provincal king of Leinster.
The OBriens were invested as kings of Thomond.
The Burgho [Burkes] provided a thin veneer of lordship in Connacht and E Ulster remained almost deviod of Anglo Irish settlements.

This recovery of Ireland by the Irish was put to a halt by Richard 2 Edwards 3rd son ,who came to the English throne at age 10 in June 1377.

He arrived in Ireland subdued McMorrough who sued for peace on 5 January 1395. Richard was 18.
The Murrough submission was followed by O Bryne, O Toole, O Nolan, O Neill and the successful king sailed back to England on 15 May 1395 assured that peace would prevail in the western isle.

But Alas the peace was only for show and in June 1399 Richard sailed back across the Irish sea to renew his fight against the Irish enemy.

The Irish however proved elusive using guerilla tactics, retreating to the wood, living in branch huts and in the bushes like beasts, and when the English finaly came upon them they retreated further into remote and impenatrable fortresses.

Richard however could not remain in Ireland as his throne was put under threat in England by Henry Bolingbroke a Lancaster who had seized the English throne as Henry I in 1399.

This put a stop to English rulers appearing on Irsih shores accompanied by great troops to enforce the decree of the Pope in Rome as "Lord of Ireland"

The Lancaster faction won the war of the Roses and retained the English throne against Richards Edwardian ancestors at York.

This dispute along with Englands engagements in France with the Hundred Years war left the monarchy weak in time, money ,and men for Ireland.

The Norman Anglo colony in Ireland hired their own defense throughout the 1400s.

Kavenaugh renounced his fealty to Richard when the king left.
Gaelic armys matched the Anglo Norman forces and the fiefed lands were lost to the old provincial rule.

The gaels now controlled all but 35% of the island and Anglo landholders paid black rent to gaelic cheiftains to leave them alone.

As the 1400 began the Gaelic lords had their old patramonys from the North Sea to the Burren with only 2 large Anglo Irish territories still existant.
The Earls Butler of Ormond of in Tipperary and south ajoining that the Earldom of Desmond held by the Fitgeralds.
North of Butlers territory the small earldom of Kildare which would prove the most troublesome to the English in future centuries.

In the north the small area of Down and south Antrim known as down and connor compiled the Eardom of Ulster and this with the Pale lands around Dublin for 20 miles held by the king of England.

The Gaelic lords of the day ,the O Donnell, the O Neill, the MacDonnell, the Magennis, in the north;
O Rourke, O Connor , O Reilly , O Farrell,O Dempsey, OBrien and O Flaherty north of Galway bay.

The Anglo Irish Burke in Connacht was allowed Mayo and the area east of Galway and on the far south Atlantic southsea, Kerry still reigned under the desendants of Fingen Mac Carthy.

Wexford remained Anglo But McMurrough retained the S E coast along the Irish sea ajoining the Pale.
The Irish returned to their comfortable secure way of life not feeling threatend by any outside forces and continuing to seek ways to expell the Anglo Norman forces still holding lands in Ireland.

The trials between the O Connor forces and the Norman settlers of de Burgos raged on through the Bruce wars and Felim O Connor was at constant war with his cousin over the kingship of the Province.

Felim sided with the English settlers along with several prominent chiefs OBrien, McDermot , O Kelly they contended with Rory OConnor for the kingship of the province.

In 1316 Rory, who had been invested king was killed at Templetoger in county Galway and Felim thus restored to his kingship arranged to banish the Galls from Connacht.

On 10 Aug 1316 Fedlim and his forces met the Gall force under William de Burgo at the Field of Ath n' Ri [Athenry]* where he was defeated and killed most of his followers as well.
Much of the aristocray of chiefs of Connacht province.
Some 60 chiefs were noted killed at this devistation of the Irish forces of over 2000 men.
Felims standard was joined by all the great Irish houses of the west OConnor, O Kelly, O Hynes O Flaherty, O Shaughneys, O Rourke, Thomond and Meath forces.

The gael charged into this phylanx all day but were driven back by the line of steel characteristic of the Norman field.
Their standard, given Felim by the Pope was finally captured and rather than a rout, the Irish were slaughtered.
They lay buried there where they fell this day in the lonly fields of Athenry.
Like the wind stung rock carns of Heapstown north on Loch Arrow, the men of Erinn wait silent and alone, sentinals on the hill for the call to battle and to destiny.

The country was wasted by the constant fighting and the forces of Connacht were sucessfully eliminated from the Bruce struggle.

In Louth at the Field of Faughart, Edward Bruce was killed at the Battle by the Engish under the command of John de Bermingham Lord of Teth Moy ,in 1318.

With the death of Edward Bruce in 1318 an impoverished state existed amongh the English settlers.
So poor they could not keep the Irish felons and enemys out of the town nor could they repair the city walls.

They recieved an indefinate pardon of lays against them from the king and parliament.
The sherriffs and lords had to be allowed sums of money to quell the disturbances.

In south Dublin the kings lands had been burned and distroyed by the Scot and Irish rebel enemies and the Irish of the Wicklow Mts had risen against the Pale immediately on the arrival of Edward Bruce in Ireland in 1315.

John de Bermingham who had won the battle of Dundalk for the Engish was created Earl of Louth for his services on 12 May 1319 and given Louth as a liberty for life.

The king forfieted the lands of the Scots adherants and rewared his men with grants.

The Justicar was ordered in Feburay 1319 not to pardon any adherant to the Scot.
Roger Mortimer was appointed Justicar and arrived in Ireland in June 1319.
He was allied with other men holding special prior interests in Ireland such as Pembroke, Lord of Wexford.
Mortimer himself Lord of Trim inherited from his wife,
heiress of Gloucester-- their husbands lords of Kilkenny--enabled by marriage to these women.

Hotham was made Bishop of Ely and had an intimate knowledge of the Irishand their affairs.

In 1316 the Popes were at Avignon in France John XXII ,[Jacques Duese] who was a man from Southern France but could not read the letters of the king of France from the norht as at that time France was a set of tribal regions speaking different tongues and holding different customs.

John was the 4th Avignon Pope of the French Popes who sat there for 77 years due to the military confrontations in central Italy and was less spitritual than the Roman admininstation had been.
More conserned with cannon law and set structures for the church admininstation than the haphazard rule of Rome.

At that time Ireland, along with England and north Italy were loyal to the Roman synod where France and Spain were of the Avignon school.

Carlow had been granted to Thomas Brotherton, a half brother of the King, Edward 3.
These were known as the marcher lords and by 1321 they had broken into open war in Wales against the king.
The king began issuing charters of English Law to their Irish tenants and chiefs who desired to come in with them.
Many did but some continued resistance and in Ireland in 1324 there was an endemic war with the Irish of Leinsters Wicklow Mts the O Bryne and the MurGuty.
The Pale borders had to be guarded at Baltinglass and Dunlawn.

In 1324 or so the Anglos were preoccupied with the diversion of an Irish witchcraft trail of Dame Alice Kiten of KilKenny while the occuping lords in the area, Arnald de Poer wared against the Munster Geraldines under Maurice fitz Thomas.
By 1327 this marcher lord fued had become open warfare.

In England the confrontation for the crown continued and Mortimer and Isabel suceeded in deposing Edward 2 and establishing his son Edward 3 in 1327 after murdering the old King.

Mortimer still retained his control of Trim and was able to get Royal jurisicition of de Vernons Meath lands and the Liberty of Louth from
John de Bermingham death[It had been a life right, award for life] in 1328.
He also had control of Kildare during the minority of Thomas fitzJohn which gave Mortimer a tremendous territory in the heartland of Ireland.
Mortimer was finally deposed and executed on 29 November 1330.

In 1327 Robert Bruce King of Scotland again landed at Larne to confront the arms of Justicar Darcy in Ulster.
The Justicar got an emmisary John Jordon m Williams to persuade the Scots king to go home which he suceeded in doing in 1331. Mostly by bribery .

The south lords continued to ride over the fields and countryside with their private armys and ,as was reported to the king ,that Ulster also was in a state of disturbance.

Such Anglo lords as Maurice fitzThomas FitzGerald,
John de Bermingham and the Barrys ,Maurice de Rockford,
John le Poer Baron of Dunoyl, the Butler earl [Walters] and the de Burgos continued to ride roughshod over the Irish contryside through out the south.

In June of 1329 John de Bermingham and some of his kin were killed at Braganston in county Louth by the local gentry who did not want to be ruled by him and had formed a posse comitalus.

The native Irish in all this disention, formed their own separate force under their own provincial leaders and kings.

In 1328 Donnell m Art mac Murrough was made ruler of Leinster but was defeated near Dublin as was the ajoining O Toole leaders from Wicklow.

In Kilkenny the OBrennans and Mac Gilpatricks were burning and raiding and in Tipperary Brian O Brien burned the town.

Mac Geoghegans killed Sir Thomas le Botiller near Mullingar and the O Nolans in Carlow are taking Anglo prisoners and the Justicar Darcy was also fighting the incursions of the O Mores and the O Demspesy.

The king called out the army of Desmond at kings wages and Desmond defeated the O Nolans and the O Mores and recaptured the castle of Lea from them.
Brian Brien who had allied with Desmond at this point killed the sheriff of Limerick James de Beaufo and laid waste to the whole contry side.
The scutage army of Athissel was sent out agaisnt Desmond and Brien in July but were unable to subdue the rebel lords.
Desmond was arrested and charged with aiding and sheltering O Brien and committted to goal but escaped with his coherents.

As 1330 came to an end a revolution had been accomplished by the fall of Mortimer who was exectued for treason in November and his interests in Ireland left to the disposition of The Westminster parliament.

This parliament was anxious to keep the Kings peace and forbade the mainance of any Irishman or to issue pardons for homicides roberries or arson.

Land owners were required to provide for thier own defence and one law was to be observed for both English and Irish.

25 English magestrates were appointed in October 1331 to review the lands of Ireland occpupied by Irish rebels that had been granted to the Anglo invader by the kings of England.

Mc Thomas Desmond Fitzgerald ,Anglo lord had taken up the old ancient Irish custom of 'Cain' which entitled an Irish chief to claim sustance for himself and retenue on his journey among his people.

He maintained a retuenue of Irish kin.

Desmond had founded an 1332 Confederacy with Thomas fitz John of Kildare, John of Bermingham, the Bishop of Ossory, Brien O Brien and some others to establish an independent kingdom in Ireland with a desmond king.

All traditional confrontational ideas.

The intent to establish 4 provinces all split between the marcher Anglo lords.

The plan being Munster and Meath to Desmond,Connacht to de Burgo, Leinster to Bermingham, and Ulster to Henry de Mandeville.

1300 pg 2

In 1333 the earl of Ulster was murdered by his own men.
John de Logan and 2 Mandavilles at Le Ford, now Belfast.

The widow fled with her infant daughter the heiress of Ulster and Connact [Elizabeth de Burgo] child of Willam de Brugo the Brown Earl.

The Justicar went north with an army but was unable to capture the perpetrators who had fled west to the Irish for protection.
After 6 months however the entire country west of the Bann was lost to the Gael and was never recovered during the middle ages.
East of the Bann old Ulaid was left to their own devises.
Anglo lords never again in residence.

Much of the country in the granted possession of absentee lords.

This situation did not lead to prosperity in the land where the Irish had reoccupied it.
Full of free tenants ,farms and burgessess wasted and no prosperity.

The monks in the county were no better off.
No tax was paid .
The property ruined and the lands were deamed to be worthless.
The lands untilled due to the Irish and lack of tenants to work it.

Some of the lordly Anglo castles left in ruins having been burned by the Irish.
The lands west of the Bann were in the hands of the king because William Burkes minor daughter was his ward.

Edmund de Burgo a young son of the old Red Earl and Willam Liath de Burgo the first cousin of the old Red Earl returned to Ireland seeking his opportunity and married O Malleys daughter ,dispoiled all West Connacht, killed many burned and raided and did untold damage.

By 1338 the rampaging son was taken prisoner by Edmund Albanach Burke. A stone tied to his neck and cast into Loch Mask.

Turlough O Connor was thus able to become ruler of Connact and Edmund Albanach and the Colonists expelled from Leyney and Corrann.

This pattern of continious warfare by private armys continued unabated for the 3 Burkes till the late 1340s.
Until the oglaigh were ousted by the bacteria Bubo.

The Earl of Desmond was subdued in the 40s by Ufford who had he died in December 1345.

Rober Darcy appointed Justicar and was followed by Walter de Bermingham who took up the office in June.

Desmond had surrendered with condition of special protection and allowed to go the England to answer the charges of Treason against him.
He was allowed to sail from Yougal with his wife and sons.
He was released in England in Feburay 1348 and in November 1349 was pardoned.
His lands , dignities and estates restored to him.
The outlaw against him in 1345 in Ireland was annulled and he was appointed Justicar before he died in January 1356.

In Janaury of 1348 Bermingham left for England as was absent for 4 months when O Kennedy conspired with the Irish of all 4 provinces. Burned the town of Nenagh and the whole country and all the Ormond castles.
He was apprehended in the spring by the Pursells and hung at Thurles.

When Bermingham retured to Ireland in April 1348 he was imediately engaged in a campaign against the O Kennedys and the O Carroll princes of Ely in Ormond and Breen in Arra.

The Irish were brought once again into submission in the campaign which went on through August 19 and the Justicar than proceeded to Mallow and Cork by November 1348.

As the military position was re established by the Anglo rulers and the Irish were quited a new unseen enemy appeared at the ports of the Irish sea namely the Black Death Bacillus.

1300 the Death

The Black Death Bubonic Plague entered the island in 1348-49 via the ports of Howth, Drogeda, Dublin, Waterford and Cork.

It materialized symptoms of chills, fever, vomiting ,thirst and pain followed by delerium.
The lymph nodes [bubo] swelled painfully in the groin area and the armpits and oftimes affected the lungs.

The desease was transmitted to humans by fleas living on the blood of affected rats of a microscopic bacterium.

It appeared suddenly and was epidemic and highly contagious apparently transmitted from human to human by air once it had entered the body.

It was known as the Black Death because of the appearance of spots developing on the skin from breaking blood capallaries.
The person exibited symptoms mostly quarantined as the bacteria spread was highly contagious.
It can be treated with sulfanamides or streptomycin .

The Plague that affected Ireland towns and villages in 1348 was transmitted from the European pandemic of 1847 appearning in England in 1348 around Dorsetshire through Somerset and Devonshire.
Then to London. Finally engulfing the whole English island.

The Plague first appeared at Howth [Ben Edar] and Drogeda in August 1348 and spreading southward along the coast to Dublin where it is recorded 14,000 men died between August and Chrismas that year.

Death came quickly with the infection and entire towns were completely wiped out within weeks of the appearance of the Plague.
It was reported that symptoms could result in death occurring in 5 or 6 hours.
As an Italian noted you could have lunch with your friends and supper with your Ancestors.

Usually if a family member was infected the entire family, women, child, infants. All were found dead of the Bubonic Plague.

Monasterys and Friarys were hit, all the brothers dying in unison.

All the port towns where shipping had rats from Cork to Galway in the west were deeply affected with loss of life.
Fishermen and sailors were frequently victims and persons who lived by the sea.
The Plague spread inland to New Ross, Kilkenny, Clonmel, Moyley and Rosscommon. It ravaged the Connacht.

Friar John Clyn who kept and annal at that period for the convent at Kilkenny recorded the death of his brethren and secumed himself to the Plague in 1349 at the lenten period.

Cashell was affected by the loss of life within the nobility of their English tenants and the distruction by the kings Irish enemys, who were not as readily desimated by this bacterium as were the Norman Anglo populations.

The country became impoverished.

It was noted that over 2/3 of the English nation had been distroyed by the Black Death but hardly any harm was done to the Irish or Scot.
Half the English clergy died.
Bristol town had a 40% death rate.

English manor houses personell and lords died .Some 2/3 of them desiminated.

After the passing of the second pandemic outbreak of Bubonic Plague,
the Plague broke out again in 1361, 1370 and was still prevelant in 1384.

A fearful outbreak occuring in 1398.

1425 saw the Death of the kings Minister Edward Mortimer from the Death at Trim.
In 1540 Kells Monastery experienced a Plague outbreak and was quarantined from Dublin.

Although the town population of Anglo was halved by the Plague the upland tenants also died by households and the countryside was left without tillage or tenantry.

Edward III was king during the Plague.

The Pope in 1348-49 was Clement VI [Pierre Rogers] who had been elected in 1342 and served till 1352.
This Pope exibited a degree of extravagance and was a charitable man. Loved extravagant entertainments and was viveur[conosuer of fine wines].
He was frequently guilty of reckless spending. Much of the money poured into Italian politics to pay of mercinary soldiers there and to hold the allegiance of Italian politicians.

62,000 people died at Avignon at this Plague time ,the Pope supravising their care, burials and the pastoral care of the dying.

The name Rogers is strickingly English although the Popes at this time were all Frenchmen.
Gregrory XI being the last of these when Avignon was closed in 1377 when Gregory returned the Church home to Rome.
This Pope is also listed as being named Pierre Rogers.

This gap of Popes of the same name and heritage over twenty years from 1352 to 1370 may indicate the old Irish custom of heritage for comarba so dispised by the new anglo governments than holding sway in Ireland.

* The great battle of Athenry where almost 1/2 of the Irish Army of Connact was brutally slain is almost annialated by history and very difficult to obtain inforamtion of in the military operations of the time.
Some appears inthe Connact geneology otherwise it would be completly forgotton like the Bulgarian famine of 1921 and a few other abuses of the human being throughout history.

+ Roger is an Engish name of Norman origin. It means ro ger= famous spear

Judi Donnelly
copyright
17 April 2010

sourse:
A history of Medieval Ireland J A Otway-Ruthven ,U Dublin, Barnes and Noble, 1968
Saints and Sinners, A history of the Popes, Eamon Duffy, Yale university Press, 1997

www.Athenry.ie, Battle of Athenry, By Reagan , Yahoo Search, publication dates not printed out

1200 AD pg 1-3

2010-04-12T09:18:00.000-07:00

1200 Norman rule

In 1171 38 year old Henry 2,Plantangenent, a Norman Franc born in Normandy, arrived with a substantial force at Waterford in October. With knights, foot soldiers and arches to accept the allegiance of the princes and chiefs of Erinn as well as his own errant Norman knights already well established in S E Ireland.

Henry had been king of his far flung empire since 1154 and had actually acquired a Papal blessing for an expedition to Erinn in 1155 when he was 22 years old and had secured the blessing from Adrian I, the Pope in Rome.

Henry Plantangenent was an astute and shrewd leader in his own right and was able therfore to maintain his Angevin hold on the English Island acquired with the Battle of Hastings fought by William the Conquerer in 1066.

Richard Fitz Gilbert de Clare, the 2nd Earl of Pembroke in Wales, called Strongbow, went of to the aid of Dermott Mc Murrough exiled provincial king of the Laigen and succeeded not only in conquering the Hiberno/Norse [Irish Vikings] areas of S E Ireland but marched on to Dublin a Hibernia/Norse kingdom which fell before him on September 21 1170.

The old knight at 40 not only succeeding in holding the Irish coast from Waterford to Dublin but married the provincial kings daughter Aoife and was thus able to acquire a legitimate title to his conquests.

These successes in getting a foothold in Ireland by one of his lessor knights required a response from Henry to uphold his own superior right not only to the allegiance of his Norman knights but his personal entitlement to Ireland itself.

Strongbow Fitz Gilbert submitted to his overlord King and his little kingdom was to be held as a Royal fief.

The Blessing of Pope Adrian was upheld by the new Pope Alexander 3 who pronounced Henry 'Lord of Ireland' in 1172,
advising the Irish Kings and chiefs to peacefully submit to Henrys rule.

Likewise, the Irish Chiefs one by one ,submitted to Henry.
Each one in turn granted his lands and titles once more under the surzanity of the King of England as submission with grant and regrant.

These new land grants were different than the old Irish tuath communal land holdings and tribal gavelkind and were fuedal in nature.
This alone completely overshadowing the ancient communal use and laws covering the land itself.
It included streams, bogs, wood,rivers and inheritance procedings.
The new system was granted in fee simple with tribute and allegiance to the overlord-- the King.

The Irish chieftain came hat in hand removed all weopons and knelt before the King himself with his hands placed together.
The praying hands now used for alchoholic oaths.
These praying hands were placed between the hands of the king.

An oath of fidelity given in the Irish. This called out by a crier in the English and than recorded in Latin in a book by a public notary.

The Oath bound the leader to be faithful to the king and his heirs ,to obey the Royal laws , to be a good a faithful subject and to pay tribute in money fines for failure to keep the oath.

From the point of view of the King submission created faithful subjects of the conquered,
but to the Irish chiefs, submission would grant them security of property and protection at this time. The years of the invasion of the Norman knights, who had simply arrived fully armed ,taken the land they wanted, put up a stone fortified keep and castle and extended their usurpations at will, the submission would give the Irish some relief from these depradations and overpowering assaults.

1200 Norman rule pg 2

The Norman invaders were customarily armed and mailed.
A knight sat a large well mantled horse entirely covered in mail[woven steel] breast ,head ,legs and belly, and carried a 7 to 8 foot lance.

He was followed in the battle plan by Welsh archers with bow and arrow in phalanx formation.

These followed by the 3rd wave of foot soldiers carrying long swords able to divide a form in half and these 2 edged swords.

The native Gael in defence had only a short sword and a hand ax.
Wore no armor , only a light linen tunic and had no ordered battle plan or calvary charge.

The Irish rode headlong ,bereback on a light small horse if he had one into the ranks of the solid wall enemy forces followed by disorganized forays of foot with a dagger like sword and naturally where struck down and defeated.
They were no match for the blitzkreig style coming in from the continent.

The new force immediately on securing a territory put up a stone castle follwed by a continental church [ these were religious men] and often an abbey of nuns.

These forces brought with them a system of politics ,laws and culture with conscious intent to impose their life style on its territory.

These now fortified ,usually 3 or 4 story stone stuctures, were frequently implanted at former church sites and population sites there before their coming.

The barons were greedy and ruthless, restless and not content to have partial ownership of the land the had conquered by physicial force and granted to them for their allegiance to their king, but wanted more and therefore they continued throughout their tenure to raid and confiscate lands with their private castle armys and to implant castles, develope continental church structures to replace the Celtic order of the monasterys ,and to enforce their justice , law and culture over what ever was there before them.

This made the mere Irish ever resistant to non Irish styles as these people remain today. Attached to a mythological ideal of heros, Kings, Fairys ,leprichans, and Liberty while at the same time having been absorbed by birth and location into a more abundant field of foreign poppies.

As Fitz Gilbert submitted and was again put right with his liege he was granted the entire province of Leinster by Henry as a Royal fief to which he also had title,by Will of his now deceased fatherinlaw, Murrough who had died in May 1171.

As Henry leisurely rode with his guard across the south of Ireland to accept the submission of the Roman Catholic Bishops at Cashel and on to Dublin where Henry granted the conquered Norse/Hibernian city a charter and incoporation into the English city of Bristol as these traders and merchants had helped him financially to his succession to the throne in 1154 AD.

Hugh de Lacy being one such investor was granted the entire province of Meath, home of Tara and the old o Neill kings.
De Lacy was also appointed constable of Dublin and Justicar, the represntaive of the royal govenment in Ireland.
[later known as the Lord Lieutenant or Viceroy].

Henry garrisoned all the seaports with guard posts and with his kingly pockets full of Irish submissions he sailed for England from Wexford shore on 17 April 1172.

With Henrys departure the Irish resistance against the new lords continued unabated and the Normans continued to confiscate, encastleate and rule the regranted lands.

By 1175 Richard Gilbert and Hugh de Lacy had sufficiently quelled Irish resistance in the vast territories of S E and central Ireland to allot parcels of land from these Irish lands to their own Norman vassels.

The Norman barons were land greedy never acquiring their fill to own and occupy any land they could grab by force or other wise.

Maurice Fitzgerald was one such Baron .
A backer of Stongbow he was alloted land in Kildare and creating the powerful and long indwelling Fitzgerald family dynasty.

The Normans craved and confiscated the best land leaving to the natives barren windy hill tops, bogs, wood, and scrub lands.

On october 6 1175 Henry 2 and Rory O Connor, Ruidre O Concobar ua Connachta, the recognized king of Ireland ,signed the Treaty of Winsor where the English crown recognized Ruidre as lawful king of Ireland with the exculsion of Leinster, Meath and Waterford which Henry kept for himslf as crown lands.

Rory was empowered as High King of Ireland to collect tributes from all Irelands other subkings and chiefs which included the equal status nobility of Ulter, Donegal, Munster and Connacht; the O Neills the ODonnells , OBriens and O Connors.

The Treaty was unenforceable and led to much internicene strife and war in the gaelic sections of Ireland.

The Irish still held all of N W Ireland, Mayo, Galway, Munster and the Wicklow hills south of Dulin ,undisturbed in their gaelic culture, law and rule.
The Irish order was not physically stong enough to take on the Norman army and the king of Englands forces and simply retreated into their own lands holding them tenuously while the Norman continued to colonize and change the gaelic order in the S E and East sections and midlands of the island.

By 1300 Norman rule was well established from the north channel, Antim Down, Drogeda, Dundalk, Dublin ,Wexford ,waterford, Cork, Tipperary ,Limerick, Longford, Sligo on the Atlantic and the Blaskett islands in the south western reaches of that great ocean sea.

In 1177 JOhn de Courcy captured old Ulaid east of Loch Neagh and the Bann river taking Downpatrick its capital, and establishing garrisons and castles situated at Downpatrick,
[allegedly burial place of St Patrick]
Dundalk, Newry ,Carlingford and Carrickfergus.

When old Richard Gilbert died in June 1176 his only heir was an infant girl ,his child by Aoife daughter of mcMurrough and the entire province of Leinster became a ward of the crown under Henry.

This territory included 12 new counties from Louth to Kilkenny including Meath, West Meath, Offally and Longford touching the Shannon river on their western borders and including the principle ports of Dundalk, Drogeda, Dublin ,Wickow and Wexford along the Irish sea and St George Channel.
The gaelic Irish under the old provincial noble families held all of Donegal, Derry, Colerane ,to the Bann ,south Loch Neagh, Donegal Bay, and south of Lock Erne about to Longford.
The west coast from Clew Bay to Galway Bay, west of Loch Corrib and Loch Mask, east of the Burren to Loch Derg, Valencia ,Bear and Clear islands and the south sea to Cork, Munster and he Wickow hills east of Carlow to New Castle.

These teritories were held in gaelic control by
Cathal Craibderg O Connor- Connacht
Donnough Cair Break O Brien- North Munster ,Thomond
Diarmait McCarthaigh -south Munster and the
O Neills in Tir Eogan [tyrone] to the north coast and the river as west of the river Foyle Tir Connaill of the O Donnells.
Within the gaelic ares of control.

The native Bishops retained their church lands and their dioceses primacy.
There tenants paid their land rents to the Bishops and native Irish clergy not to the king or the Norman Justicar.
These gealic Bishops retained their ancient rights to marry to hold concubines and heriditary office.

In 1180 Laurence O Toole of the Wicklow Hills Tauthal clann ,the native archbishop of Dublin diocese died.

A Norman Bishop was appointed in his stead and the pattern of appointing English bishops over native Irish churchmen was pursued throughout the Norman held territories.

The See of Armagh resisted this effectively and Armagh ,the primate of St Patrick remained in Gaelic Territory .The appointed hereditary post was kept for the next 100 years.

In 1303 Maol Iosa was the last native comarba of St Patricks primal see at Armagh.

This being the inheritied post of the Sinach tribe.

In 1185 King Henry gave the island of Ireland to his son John than 18 years of age.

He kept Cork and Limerick for himself as Crown lands.

In 1200 John than 33 years old arrived in Ireland with his force of anglo norman [Old English] knights to recieve submission of his Irish and Norman chiefs and barons.
John had been investured as king of England in 1199.

John was haughty and cocky showing disrepect and dispise to the Irish chiefs who came to meet him. He was offencive and did not win favor with the old chiefs as he critized their dress, beard and language.
He did not get on well with de Coursy subduing him and giving his conqured Ulaid lands to Hugh de Lacy --the E 'Arls'.

He after gave N E Limerick county to Theobald Walters who created the Anglo Irish dynsaty of the Butler Ormond.

In 1204 he began contruction of Dublin Castle. Construted on the Norman cental court bawn with 3 story buildings ajoining on 3 sides and a central entrance gate with towers and keep on the north.

This stuctrue now used by the Republic of Ireland for government administration offices and a gardai station occupies the famous Dublin Castle tower from which Aed Rudh O Donnell and his companions escaped in the winter of 15 88 or so.

John minted Irish coins, colleced taxes and shired the conquered lands into countys under sheriffs ,itenerant justice courts.
The shire courts becoming the district courts or the circuit court.

In 1208 Johns army proceeded with de Braose from Waterford north to Carrickfergus castle in Ulaid and deprived De Coursy of it. Placing Ulaid [Ulster] under crown protection as crown lands.
John de Courcy started west across the Bann river headed for Connacht and John disinherited him giving the Ulser Ulaid conquered lands to Hugh de Lacy whom he create Earl of Ulster.

By 1209 William de Braose quarreled with John the king and fled to Ireland where he was taken in by de Lacy.

John than landed at Waterford on 20 June 1210 marched to Ulster captured Carickfergus castle and forced Hugh de Lacy to flee.
The lordship and lands of Meath and the earldom of Ulaid were forfeit to the king.

John distributed the lands NE of Limerick town to Theobald Walter who created the Anglo/Irish Dynasty of the Baron Butler at Tipperary area in 1206, A hereditary title.
This title of Baron was also granted to Willian de Burgh [Burke] and Philip of Worcester.

By 1150 the Norman occupied 3/4ths of Irelands best lands, the plains the coast, the river regions ,all under fuedal grants.

These fuedal grants were subdivided by the holding lord Barons to vassels who brought in tenants and settlers taking the status of lesser lords.
Thus the colonization of the island was well in progress.

The native Irish were relegated to the hills, bogs and woods to survive if they could.

1200 Norman Rule pg 3

The fuedal barons frequently set aside an area next the castle as sites on which to found a town.
They were in effect early developers.

Most of inland Irelands towns built on these castle lands can be distinguished where a castle sits on the edge of a town or in its midst often occupied as well by a church or abbey or a friary founded by the newly arrived settlers.
These towns today bear English and Welsh names such as Longford, Hollywood, New Castle, Newtown Abby, and the sites for building the stone fortress castle and bawn were usually at a previous old monastary sites making the areas archeologically important today for study of the old gaelic civilization at least back to St Patrticks conversion of the Druidic society and perhaps even further into the BCE period as St Patrick foundations were donated to the Church by the local kings and Chiefs in possession of this land.

These early towns were trading centers dealing in domestic as well as foreign goods.
Coins and a money economy were introduced and customs duty applied to exported wool and hides bring great wealth to the Royal English Exchecher[treasury].

By 1260 Ireland had been divided into 7 counties under Henry III.
waterford, Cork, Limerick, Tipperary, Kerry, Connacht and Dublin.

In 1306 2 years after the death of the Gaelic King of Connacht, Cathal Croabderg[Red hand] Conchobar, a decendant of king Rory O Connor the entire vast west of Shannon province of Connacht was forfeit to the Crown and given to Richard fitz William Burke by Henry 3, a minor.
His Regent Hubert de Burgh brother of the deceased William.

Rosscomman and Leitrim were left to the O Connors.

The government of England was being run by Herbert de Burgh brother of William and Connacht was effectively conquered by a Norman Army with the Irish goidil unable to resist the battle formation of a shower of longbow and arrows released by Welsh Archers, followed by a calvery charge of mounted ,mailed knights with long lances ,and then attacked by an orderly wave of standing ranks of marching foot soldiers with heavy 2 sided swords.

With this conquest made during the minory of Henry 3, the vast province of Connacht west of Shannon, was forfeit to the crown and granted to Richard mc Willima de Burgh.
The O Connors resisted this takeover fiercely but these decendants of Rory ,disunited and often fueding among themselves ,
no longer held together by the strong hand of Cathal Croabderg who died in 1224,were unable to resist the Norman onslaught as the ambitious young barons crossed the River Shannon in force.

By 1235 only Leitrim and Rosscommon were left to the Gaelic Irish .Carrick on Shannon the joining point.

The Connachta , ancient heritage of the De Danann Treaty with the Melisian invaders of 1400 BC ,became the possession of an English King.

Some 1600 years of independence snuffed out and distroyed to be even further desiminated in the 1500s by the policy of 'to hell or Connacht' instituted by the new invaders.

The old ancient rock piles, collective graves, still visable upon the mountain tops and the great stone fences undateable running up to the cairns on the hill sides and the great lifted cliffs of Mohair as the slowly drifting waters of the Sion Abainn with its flakes of bog oil off into the estuary of the Luimnech ,past the ruined castles and bridges of Athlone.
Witness to a mythological people and past. Of sailors passing by over a great ocean .
Stopping perhaps to bury their dead or to warm by a fire or to roast their silvery herring.

Phonecians perhaps or Egyptians
[Fo ne cian, E gia path]

Builders of cairns on hillsides, constuctors of tumulus and dolmans,
Bards of the sacred and the mundane.

Soldiers of the Sea. Children of Lir and finally the ancient Act of Conn the Connachta.
This Act of Conn, progenator of modern Ireland was no more.

The old wooden raith and palacial homes of the Gaelic nobility rotted away or were dismantled for fuel and the new towering stone impregnable castle ,invinsible to attack, cropped up all over the country.

The barons were greedy for land and desired more than they already had confisacted.

This construction pattern was taken up as well by the natives whose princes began building their own stone fortified palaces and the carpenter was replaced by the stone mason.

A fuedal beaurocracy grew up around the government.
Clerks, sherrifs, law clerks, stewards, records keepers, keepers of the arms, tax colectors, servants.

The Norman additionally brought in their own continental religious orders .The Dominicans ,the Franciscans ,the Cisternains who set up their friarys and abbeys near the castles of the overlord barons.

Most of these new towns were walled.

The Kings of England delagated their powers to the Justicar and town counsilors to provide them with Irish revenues.

An Anglo Norman parliament was devised in 1299 composed of delagates for the shired counties.
The body mirrowed the English parliament assemby at Westminster. Divided into two houses. Lords for the Bishops and the titled aristocrats and the House of Commons consisting of rural and town constituancies.

This parliament constituted in the reign of Edward I.

Edward was given the responsibly for Ireland while still a prince as John had been but took little interest in the island, viewing it as a sourse of men, money and food to provision his army fighting in Scotland, Wales and France.

The Anglo parliament applied English common law in its territories and legisalted against the adoption of Irish customs or habits.

Old gaelic territories meanwhile continued the rule by pobal and oireachtach.
The Irish Chiefs had adopted some of the Norman fighting techniques and Fingin McCarthy in the extreme S W of Irelland fought the Battle of Callann in county Kerry near Kenmare decisively wining a victory against the holders of North Kerry, FitzTomas FitzGerald in 1261.
McCarthy remained undisputed ruler of his territory for centuries therto.

In 1270 the O Donnell held Donegal against the greedy geraldine expansion at Ath in Chip on the Shannon.

The Irish were now about equal in style and battle plan to the Anglo forces and had brought from the Ilse, Norse/Scot mercenary gallowglasses.
First employed by the O Connors to defend Connacht.

Divided by the Norman territoral confiscation these separate kingdoms attempted to united by reviving the high Kingship under the far north Cenel n Eogain and made Brian O Neill king in 1258.
This award however was disputed by O Donnell, cousin to the O Neill clanns and hence Brain was High king with opposition.

However he did make cause on the battlefield with the Norman colonial army near Downpatrick in 1260 where he was killed in the field.
His head cut of and taken to the London tower where it was displayed and that head is still in the possession of the English crown which refuses to give it back to the Irish nation.

Brians body was laid to rest in a unmarked and unremembered grave at St Patricks Old Cathederal in Armagh along with the equally lost grave of Brain Boru and his son Marchada.

The Irish thus were unable to achieve any unity between these scattered holdings, some 5 of them, and tried to offer the High kingship to king Haakon of Norway.
But the old king died in 1263 thus thuarting this plan of inlisting Norse Viking military assistance.

The Plan to bring in outside force was again offered and activated in 1315 when Edward Bruce ,brother of King Richard Bruce of Scotland landed and was allied with Domnaill O Neill,Brians son.

This force harrassed and raided the anglo colony and the great barons pursuing a scorched earth policy which resulted in a famine.

After 3 years Edward and his ally were defeted at the Battle of Faughart in Louth in 1318 and the attmpts for recreating a united kingdom of Ireland to expell the invaders was laid to rest.

No national leader was fortcoming for centuries until the Great O Neill in 1595 rebelled against the Queen, Elizabeth I, and again attempted to inlist foreign milatary aid from Spain resulting in the Battle of Kinsale on Christmas eve 1601 with defeat of the Irish forces; the Treaty of Mellifont of 1603; and finaly the Flight of the Earls in 1607 bringing down in finality the remanant features of the Gaelic order.

However by 1270 much of the confiscated territory was recoverd by Irish chieftains.

The Normans needed tenants to work their conquered lands and to serve the castle needs to which the native peasant Irish and oftimes the chieftains were readily availalbe.
The Irish became servants to the Normans and that for the overlords a more agreeable and managable situation then rebel kern and rapparees and bands of marauders of Irish roaming the land burning and stealing and pillaging and distroying.

Deals were agreed whereby a tribal Irish chieftain could retain his land and people under his control by paying a tribute to the local Baron and offering military hosts to that local baron in times of need.

This deal making oftimes resulted in bonds of matramony between baron and chief creating a new race of people, the Anglo/Irish child of these unions.

Thses children growing up to become heirs to the Gaelic tauth as well as the castelated Manor House.

Baron and Chief of the two races and adopting and intigrating the traditions, customs and manners of both peoples.

The Anglo/Irish like the 900-1000 Hiberno/Irish combinant of Norse Irish relations hence conquered through love and bedroom politics what could not be gained on the battlefield with lance and dagger.

Along with the intermarraige of the lesser noblise of Norman Anglo and Gealic Irish contenders the old gaelic bairdic order of the kings remained intact.
Bardic poetry and some of the Duanaire and Dana of the old Danann society pre Melisian story telling of the Seanchas and the filid of the monasterys and courts and the bairds of the secular nonliterate oral poets merged to create educated, hereditary familys of bards learned in poetey , history, law ,and geneology.

These lesser nobles became the conservators and diseminators of Gaelic Ireland and were much reviled and dispised by the English administrators in Dublin always intent on instituting Royal Authority.

The bards kept alive ethnic Irish consciousness and national awareness and remained a gorse among the fields of Ireland with their stories and tales, music and song, history and family lore. Emissaries and agents of politcal lore.
So much so that Elizabeth I forbid the very harp from being played in Erinn and set her course to wipe out the itenerant bard of Ireland from its highways and drink houses, cottages and haunts.

The Norman meanwhile brought with their continental cults of town and refined church orders, a French offering such as the' Song of
Dermott and the Earl'.

The 1200s produced many French maxims on morals, religious piety, of devotional works much of the literature confirmed and revieved by the order of St Francis of Assisi by traveling friars.
Such outstanding monks as Tomas O Cuinn and Pobab Bocht O hugin ,poets who included both bardic and church lore.

By the unsuing 1300 and 1400 era, the respectable Anglo/Irish familys had absorbed both cultural heritage and politics of the dominant Gaelic Irish culture now held forth in English Language.
Displacing the Norman French and the Monastic Latin and the native Irish, having been forbidden to be spoken by them, by the old English, the Anglo/Irish, these half breed lesser nobles,were usually absorbed within the Gaelic culture and able to adequately create writings by such landlords as Gerald FitzGerald, 3rd Earl of Desmond ,on the heroic saga of Cuculain, in English.

The outstandign servants of the gaelic bardic and poetic traditions thoughout the Norman era did not include the old native metal and gold working jewelry design and illumination technology as this patronage of these highly skilled crafts faded away.

There area not picked up as valuaed by the new baron class who indeed cunstructed their own English style gothic cathederals and brought in the English stone mason to build the pointed arches and gothic windows.

The Norman immigrant craftsman of jewelry and fine metal work also competed sucessfully against the native Irish craftsman which simply died out with the physical death of their artists.
There is also the probability that the conquered native artists were either to poor to obtain materials such as gold and other valued metals and therfore had no material to work with where the emmigrant English had plentiful supplies.
The Norman Barons patronized their own English craftsmen and the old gaelic princes were now not only land poor but homeless and unsupported by their clients.

The intriticate weaving of manuscript illumination techniques were forgotten and no longer taught with the the demise of the monasterys for the cathederal.

One cultural aspect of old Ireland survived in an unbroken luchair not affected by the invasive changes or the landscape ,was music of Ireland.
The Dana went on unenterupted.

The Irish harp was strumed for the new society just as it had been strumed in the old wooden palaces of Tara Hill and the strands of Donegal beach for the love of a beautiful woman.

As Ireland passed out of the 13th century into the 1300s, its culture was intact if scattered and freyed, and its people had ajusted to a new language, a new law ,a new land tenure, a new religious presentation ,and a new king, it remained somehow still distintivly Irish.
mere Irish perhaps but still Irish.

Judi Donnelly
copyright April 10 2010

sourse:
A Brief History of Ireland ,Paul State, Facts of File , 2009

ahern -cowan 2000-2010 pg 1-4

2010-04-01T09:57:00.000-07:00

2000-2010 ahern cowen

The GAA, Gaelic Athletic Association had been formed in 1884 and all Ireland Gaelic football competition was held as early as 1887 covering all 32 Irish counties.

The teams having been paid for by the parish schools with teams of 15 men for the gaelic football teams.

The all Ireland playoffs awarded the Sam Maguire cup. The usual game being played for 1 hour.

The Association founded in Tipperary by Michael Cusack and Maurice Davin at Thurles Hayes Hotel and patronized by the Archbishop of Cashel, T. W .Croke.
Michael Davitt of the Land League and Charles Stewart Parnell were also patrons of this organization as was the Irish Republican Brotherhood in all its centers.

The Association particularly promoted the games of Hurling, Comoge, and Gaelic Football.
Much of Irish physical passtimes going back into the pre christain days. Being known as far back as 1800 BC.

The countrys interest and participation in these sports programs continuing through the parish county system there within the past 150 years alone.
Gaelic football the most popular modern game in the country.
And the Association has continued to be a positive influence amongst the Irish and its leaders.

Soccer has also been imported into Irish sports taking 3 international award cups for the country.

The border is not a factor for players as teams can compete with each other throughout the system and players can join teams in the Republic or the UK.
Hurley [iomanaiocht] is also competatively played at Croke Park with an anual playoff.
The Park, able to hold 90 thousand, is usually packed at events in 2010.
The current Taoisecah Brian Cowen is a member of the GAA and a players of Gaelic football in his home county of Offaly.

Golf has also taken hold in Ireland evolving a large popular following from its original Royal Belfast Course established by Sinclair in 1882.
Today there is a Gofing Union with some 40 duneland courses in the Country.
There are now some 405 golfing clubs on the island.

Ireland has hosted the British Open in 1957,
The Canada Cup in 1960 and
the Ryder Cup in 2006.

The Irish also maintain a rather aristocratic Horse Racing Association and Turf Club under the state corporation founded in 1994.
Although the old Curragh still retains its central position in Irish racing there are now some 27 race tracks working in the counrty and the Layton Races which are beach racing north of Dublin.

The Irish also immediately entered the new motor car competitions in 1903 with the Gordon Bennet motor car race ,an international affair, and by 1920 the Irish Grand Prix was an ongoing consern.

The Irish took part in the Olympic games in 1904-1908 and later native born contestants won gold in track and boxing.

In 2000, Sonia O Sullivan of Colb took the first Irish female track silver for the 50000 meter race.

The north athletes who are qualified to compete in the Olympics can chose to represent either the Republic or the UK.

The only sport still not operated on an island wide basis is Soccer which maintains an IFA [Irish Football Association]in the north and an FAI[Football Association of Ireland] in the south.
However all Ireland soccer playoffs are held awarding the Setanta Sports Cup since 2005.

As the new Taoiseach Brians Cowan[ Comhain] the helper, came into office for the Fianna Fail party to replace the resigning P. Bertie Ahern in May 2008, the Celtic Tiger had been stopped in its tracks by the general recession in the global free trade economy.

Unemployment was rising to some 12 % .
The over inflated, over marketed property values were falling to a more regulated value.

The morgage meltdown ,as it also affected the United States in the wanning days of the Bush Admininstration, along with a high deficits as the American Republican Party continued to ship out men, arms, amunition, trucks, food, equipment etal to their pet war in Iraq.

All with borrowed money from Asian money markets and under a hostile defiance of the UN and US allies.

Part of the democratic campaign to elect the candidate Barach Obama was commitment to withdraw from Iraq and close the Guantanamo Internment Camp in Cuba esablished for George Bushs 'enemy combatants'. a legal condition as yet not defined but in simialary to the British determinantion of 'Irish rebels'.

ahern- cowen pg 2

The Taoiseach responded to the many changes in economic world conditions by recreating and ordering Civil Service cuts, unemployment benefit and welfare cuts, and a general policy of reducing government spending.

Known as the 'An Bord Snip' which also included reductions for his Minsters as well as farm subsidy programs and cuts in transport workers.

He became even more unpopular when his government nationalized the banqrupt banks to try and arrest the complete collapse of lending, credit, and morgage lending.

Ireland was sudenly in crisis almost overnight as the economic storm hit the island.

The country had a 30 billion Euro deficit or maybe it was 30 billion Pounds, it could not repay.

Its credit rating was ziltch and foreign business, many American, simply closed up shop and left the country leaving the Irish government to support, house and feed its laid off workers, domestic and foreign.

An attempt was made to attract north Irish companies to the Haughey dockside International Fianacial Service Center from the more propserous north Irish counties which were showinga high growth rate.

Speeches were given on the new policy of 'Smart Economy' but there was a low, or no, money flow throughout the Republic.

Cowen kept preaching and teaching his National Assets Mangment Agency NAMA regarding the countrys capital and banking.
However continuing to achieve more unpopularity by
cutting Community and Rural Affairs, Gaeltach Affairs, Social Welfare payments, old age pension beneift, and farmer suplimental programs.

The people ,as usual and as always, whether under Prince, or Castle, or Republic, paid the fare.

The Comhain had been born in 1960, a child of Aquarius, to a publican family in Clara Offaly. One of 3 brothers.

He had been a student at the National School [non denominational] but had been a boarded student for higher education of Mount St Josephs College in Tipperary where he was sent at 12 years of age and was able to go to University College Dublin UCD for his law degree.

His father had been a Dail member for Laois/ Offally and the son replaced him in 1984 after his father had died in office.
Brian was than 24 and also served on the Offaly County Counsil Local government.
He remained quietly in these offices for 7 years and was opposed to the FF alliance in 1989 with Progressive Conservatives.

But 2 years later he was a staunch backer of Albert Reynolds bid for party control against Charles Haughey.
Part of the styled 'country and western wing' of the FF, as most were rural deputies.

With Reynold win as Toaisech, Cowan was appointed Minister of Labour.

When Ahern was elected he as appointed Minister of Health and Children in 1997;
Minister of Foreign Affairs, 2003;
Minister of Finance, 2006.

As Taoisech he continues to promote the Lamass FF policy of bringing in foreign investment while continuing to cut budgets and snip snip snip.

He was not successful at the first referenda to secure the acceptance of the Lisbon Treaty in June '08 when the voters rejected integration in a European parliament where all the members would be part of a federal European state rather than separate sovereign nations.

However with much selling and politcal stumping, the Irish electorate was convinced the survival of the nation depended on their being an integral part of Europe and with Brussels concession to Ireland on her internal domestic policy control and her Defence commitments the voters accepted the Treaty in the bi election of June '09.

His relationship with Great Britain and the north have remained fairly unproductive in achieving either a closer unity with the 6 counties or its leaders or the Britsh labour PM Brown.
They both exude self interest and remain in the background rather than the forfront of progess.

Cowen cannot continue his policy of hanging on , cutouts and stagnation which Ireland finds itself in today.

His latest cooperation has been to agree to pay the European Union Irelands fair share of 250 million Euros to bail out Greece, a country he is only 2 steps behind in the same near death default throws

He did however recently convene an Atlantic Conference in January 2010 launching a new Science Technological Engineering and Math Center at Tullamore, Offaly to encourage Irish youth in entering these disaplines.
Part of the 'Smart Economy' advances.

As Ireland presently has 82 McDonald restaurants in the country and the American Corporation has annouced a new Super Donalds in Dublin central area which will provide some new jobs,-
The foreign corporation already employs some 8000 to 9000 workers-, there is hope the 'big mac' will feed the hungry tiger.

No one know if the beef will be imported through the modern Dublin Docks from Americas corn fed cows or if the hamburgers will be made from Irish beef sent to the pound in Great Britain slaughered and returned packaged and ready to fry as is the current milk being shipped off to France to be returned as French butter made with exported Irish milk.

Or if the mall style sprightly retail stores will suddenly sprout fashion chic coats and shirts in Irish wool along with its imported cotton and sythetic clothing and if the fruits stands and shops along the street stalls will have boxes of Irish vegetables alongside the Spanish bananas and beans.

But enough of deValeras ancient self sufficency ideal.

Ireland has never produced a finished product from its natural resoures.

It has over the Centuries, always exported its beef, its wool, its lambs, its leather and its people. Its tweed and its stew and its soda bread and its guinness and its jameson.

The only emigrees who finished the prouct were the Flemish weavers and prodistant settlers who grew the flax, created the linen and the bleaching greens, and the shirt manufacture and the bed sheets which kept the starvation/ fever rate low in Ulster when all else died.

Ireland needs to become at least 50% self sufficent and not dependent totaly on the outside world for its base economy and food, shelter, warmth ,comfort and independence.

It needs to become a tuath again.
Sufficent and competent within themselves alone.

ahern -cowen 2008 pg 3

As the 21 Century came into view in space and time the north settled into political disagreement with suspension.
Every point of discussion was open to breaking down to verbal accusations, or refusal to speak to each other, or under the mentorship of Mother England direct rule.

The unionist demanded the dismemberment of IRA by Sinnfein and assurance that the group would be verifiably decommissioned.

Of course SinnFein, being created by the IRA ,held only an advisory roll in such matters not any authority or power of command.

Many ugly exchanges took place between the Assembly members and representatives, and these spilled over into the common street with sporadic riots, gun fire, and threats.

Trades were threatened and dispised and extremist groups were still committed to violence to expresss their will and point of view.

However the ministate did manage to recreate its civil police force. Disbanding the hated and feared RUC structure and replaced it with the newly styled Police Service of Northern Ireland .

Frequently the new police officers were fending off both Unioinists and nationalist attacks.
So deep in the community socialization was the dispise for the police presence.

The new police force itself did not particulary act to win the hearts and minds of its charges conducting such paraniod operations as raiding Sinnfein Belfast Headquarters in 2002 to see if the party might be using its political status to gather intelligence on the opposition.

For 3 more years confidence building summits were conducted with the parties by Republic Taoisech Ahern and British PM Tony Blaire to help the factions achieve communication let alone consensus.

The Way Forward and Peace and Reconciliationwas slow.
The paramilitary forces, IRA and UDA umbrella groups, stood about the proceedings holding their fire in good faith but reamining at the ready if a go ahead signal were issued by their respective command chiefs.

In Jan. 2005 a bank robbery and a killing attributed to the Provos induced an exited outrageous response aganst SinnFein leadership, along with American Irish circles condemation of the partys acceptance of IRA recalcatrance in decomissioning, and SF was compelled to accost the IRA Provinical leadership suggesting it disband.

The Provos did not disband but listened and in July 2005 the Army Executive issued an end to its armed campaign and ordered all units to lay aside their weopons and to engage soley in democratic politics.

The decommissioning was completed in September 2005 by the International Decomissioning Commission-- General De Chatelain.
Violence ceased.

The recalled Assembly in May 2006 elected
Ian Paisely DUP, First Minister
Martin McGuinness SF, Deputy Minister

Paisley, who had been born in 1926, and was years older refused to serve with McGuinness.

However on 26 March 2007, Paisley and Adams appeared together on TV to announce a power sharing deal that had come about as a result of the talks between the Republic Ahern and the British PM Blair and the 8 political parties of north Ireland held at St Andrews,Fife, Scotland 11-13 October, 2006, which created the St Andrews Agreement,wherein all parties agreed to restore the Assembly under a power sharing formula, with devolution of police and judicial powers to the local north Ireland government within 2 years [October 2008].

This shift had not been accomplished by 2010 and caused a bit of a flurry these past months as a crisis meeting was held at Hillsborough Castle to complete the terms of the Agreement.
Police and justice devolution is scheduled to go online in north Ireland 12 April 2010.

Twelve ministrarial posts were reassigned making the Executive of the north Ireland Assembly 14 members with 108 MLA seats.

The British Army force in north Ireland since 1969 ,38 years on active emergency duty, Operation Banner ended July 31 2007 .
A residual force in barracks at Aldersgrove of 5000 strong.
The deployment to Ulster was the largest operation of the Army in modern history.
763 troops were killed and 6,000 injured.

Ireland will experience more change, perhaps not for the better, when the present Queen of England dies and her son Charles becomes the new head of state.
Bringing to the monarchy once more the command of a male ruler who will probably take a harsher view toward the Irish rebels.

Elizabeth ,born in 1927, just one year younger than Ian Paisley is now 83.

The Orange Order continued to demand it be allowed to parade wherever it willed and refused to acknowlege the authoritt of the Parade Commission causing riots and trouble at such sites as Portadown where it demanded to parade threw catholic residental areas that were blocked by the Parade Commission on the request of the residential residents to which the O.O. gave no credence but its own desire.

As with most street protests- all with TV coverage and international objections- the Order finaly agreed to negociate and the July 12 parade of 2007 was held without community incident.

The Assembly is, and remains seated ,devolved from the Westminster parliament direct rule.

In 2007 or so the UDA announced its para military forces were also complying to the decomissioning clause of the Belfast Agreement placing much relief among the general populous that they too would no longer be a death threat to life limb and security.

Ian Paisley at 8l, resigned his position as leader and creator of the Democratic Unionist Party and was replaced by Peter Robinson of the 50s generation. Post war, born into an era of TV ,cars ,cell phones, electric lights, central heat, showers and toilets indoors, furniture and schooling not established as right in the early days of Ians flamboyant 20s when all these invensions and improvements were exciting and new.

He [Ian]had himself represented the north at the European parliament from 1979-2004 under his Paisley shawl, famous for its sturdy woolen weaving , beauty and practicality.

Today the north reamins. Its fields devoid of the ever present sheep of the Republic and sparcely scattered with a few herd of holstein milk cows.

The 17th century hedgerows lining the narrow lanes all straight and perfectly even, 8 or 10 feet high, guarding the fields and home from prying passing eyes.

The towns remain neat and provincial.
Its businesses open and funtional.
Its churches and grave sites reamin. Each one harboring the ancient and the new side by side.

The border towers and guard are gone.
Only a licence plate on an auto alerts one that this land is not in the Republic of Ireland but is the Uk Ulster Province.

The banks deal in pounds not Euros as do allthe businessess.

The farms are neat and back from the main' A 'roads in the British style.
The'B' roads still alligned with wood and field alongside.

There are no thatch covered cottages or Traveler wagons or horse drawn farm equipment but a large wheeled, large tired, enclosed tractor speeding down the roads at 25 or 30 kms hardly stalling the passing traffic at all.

The old social system of everybody knows everybody and all their business still prevails between the sectarian divided, and the stranger is welcomed and treated with respect.

The ahern cowen 2008 pg 4

The umbrela UDA ,covering under its military auspies, 5 major brigades and under organizations of the

UFF Ulster Freedom Fighters
UDF Ulster Defence Force
UYM Ulster youth Movement
UPRG Ulster Political Research Group

and the ajoining RHD[Red Hand Defenders*] and LVF[Loyalist Volunteer Force] formed from a breakaway group of the ultra violent UFF, remained under the ceasefire agreed by the Belfast Agreement of 1998, but refused to comply with the decomissioning clause.

After the signing of the St Andrews Agreement in 2006, at which all the parties agreed to a power sharing Assembly, a devolution of police and judicial to the northern state government within 2 years, and the stand down and discontinuance of the operation Banner British occupation,
the UDA spokeman, Jackie McDonald, finaly announced the intent of the UDA groups to disband on September 9 2009.
Nine years after the original Good Friday Agreement was signed at Stormont, and 4 years after the final decomissioning of the IRA with the confirmation of the International Monitering Commission.

In 2007 or so the UDA announced its para military forces were also complying to the decomissioning clause of the Belfast Agreement placing much relief among the general populous that they too would no longer be a death threat to life limb and security.

The UVF , remanats of the 1923 Carson formations ,continued to refuse to give up their weopons.
But finaly did so in 2010, bringing a 87 year reign of armed terror to a final seccession and deep relief to the citizens visitors and fellow island residents throughout Ireland.

The nation had begun to incorporate its fixated and gruesome grotesk past into a happier, less mauldin view of the past and its shames and restictions.

Aspiring hope rises out in the siren voice of its expression and uplifitng musical army and like the many sea birds and nesting birds that once claimed the green covered rocks as their harbor from the every wispering sea

Soft as the voice of an angel,
Breathing a lesson unheard,
Hope with a gentle persuasion
Wispers her comforting word;
Wait till the darkness is over,
Wait till the tempest is done,
Hope for the sunshine tomorrow,
After the shower is gone.

Wispering hope, oh, how welcome thy voice,
Making my heart in its sorrow rejoice.

If, in the dusk of the twilight,
Dim be the region afar,
Will not the deepening darkness
Brighten the glimmering star?
Then when the night is upon us,
Why should the heart sink away?
When the dark midnight is over,
Watch for the breaking of day.

Wispering hope, oh, how welcome thy voice,
Making my heart in its sorrow rejoice.

Annonymous

Sing by Joseph Locke / Eamon McCann
Irish Tenors Various Artists
Wispering Hope/Break

*The Red Hand is the central symbol in the O Neill /Donnelly coat of arms.
Its meaning can be obtained from the Chief Herald Dublin.
The clans resent the usurpation of this ancient symbol by the comandos.

SONA CAISE

Judi Donnelly
copyright april 1 2010

sourses:a Brief History of Ireland,Paul State,Facts of File Inc, 2009

A New Dictionary of Irish History ,Hickey & Doherty,Gill Mcmillan,2003

Wikipedia online encyclopdia,
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brian Cowen

Ahern- Robinson -Aleese-celtic Tiger

2010-03-29T09:50:00.000-07:00

ahern

The Irish image of the Shan van Voght, in Irish Sean Ban Bocht, poor old woman, was replaced by a image of the vigour of youth.

Ireland was kissed by her prince and became a beautiful young maiden.

This tranformation had appeared with the event of the technalogical revoultion of the 90s with the practical appearance of computers, mobile phones, fax machines, and other modern inventions coupled with the far sighted policy of the younger men now occupying the executive mininsterial posts and the general endevor to create government policy that would attract these high tech companies and bring investors into the Republic relying on selling its futuristic points of a healthy, well educated, English speaking population, low corporate tax rebates, a secure and stable political situation and a cooperative spirit.

In the 90s Ireland also made a momentous break through in electing a woman Mary Bourke Robinson of county Mayo ,as President of the Country.

Mary was a decendant of the Norman Aristocracy Bourkes who had, like the more famous Fitzgeralds,
Become more Irish than the Irish.

Mary not only combined the French Catholic and the Irsh Rebel she marred an Anglican Church of Ireland member in Nicholas Robinson.

Being born in 1944 and raised under the proscription of attending Trinity because she was Catholic she went to the Bishop and got the express permission to continue her education, recieving a law degree from Trinity, Kings Inn ,and Harvard University.

She was employed in 1996 at Trinity as a professor of Constitutional and criminal law and later as a lecturer at Trinity in European Community law.

She had also been elected to the Seanad in 1969 and was a fierce advocate for Womens right to work in Civil Service. To sit on jurys and to have contraceptives openly available.

Mary sat as an Irish senator for 15 years till 1984 advancing the cause of a new more open and more liberal Ireland incuding the decriminilazation of homosexuality.

Mrs Robinson protested the Anglo/ Irish Agreement in 1985 created by Fitzgerald/Thatcher by resigning from the Labour party coalition and retiring. But was later asked by the Labour party, because of her integrity, to run for the office of President of the Republic.
Still mostly a ceremonial position created to replace the old British Governor General Office dispised by Eamon De Valera.

She ran a campaign against the Fianna Fail Candadate Lennihan.
She recreated the post to a modern image.
Meeting and hosting British royal family with detant.

Triping to the north to meet with national leaders Gerry Adams and John Hume ,and Unionist leader David Trimble.
She hosted the Dalai Lama inviting the displeasure of China and visited the Pope in Rome.

She had served 7 years as President of Ireland and resigned this post in 1997 when she was appointed United Nations Commissioner for Human Rights.

She advanced the better side of womanhood throughout her career and life time embodying the personal attributes of charm, intellegence, principals , integrety, high respectabilty, and upholding the old Irish traditions and emigrees in placing a lighted candle in the window of the Presidential Mansion House as had been done in the time of the secret mass houses and on the shores of the great ocean when men were at sea in their tiny currachs to capture the herring of silvery hue.

She embodied the spirit of the new Ireland as well as the re emerging of an Irish woman no longer shawled and begging by the well.

Her contempory 40s child was Gerry Adams. Not a war baby but a baby boomer born in 1948.
Eldest of 10 children, stictly catholic ,staunch republican.
He was schooled in Irish in Belfast and had an IRB background from 1900 through his family.
His own father ,between baby making operations, had been educated at the Republican university during World War 2 for attempting to kill an RUC man.

A stauch civil righter during the protest days he did lean to the political wing of the IRA, SinnFein.
By 1983 Adams became a leader of that organization.

His beliefs were purely Republican old line physical force ejection of the British government and army from the north of Ireland and a reunification with the Free State/Republic in the south.

The IRA itself was proscribed as a criminal organization on both side of the border and like the old Italian Mafia it had its Cosa Nostra.

With proscription and criminalization came more secrecy and distrust and only fully accepted people were ever admitted to the inner thinking or planning of this remenant of the revolution.

Mary Leneghan McAleese a north Ireland girl,stood for President when Mary Robinson retired and won as a FF candidate with 58% of the popular vote.
3 years younger than Gerry Adams, she had been born in Belfast 1951, of a catholic family which was driven out by machine gun fire in the early 70s.
The family lived in the Ardoyne area.
Her brother, a deaf person ,was beaten by a sectarian attack.

Mrs McAleese was able to achieve success at Trinity College in '75 as a law professor and in 1979 became a journalist for RTE.

she was appointed Director of Queens Universtiy Institute of Profesional Legal Studies in 1987 under much loyalist opposition but in 1994 Queens appointed her vice Chancellor of the University.
The first catholic woman to achieve such status.

ahern pg 2

By 1972 Adams was on the scope of the ever hovering British intelligence operators and was picked up in an internment sweep.
The govennment forces- ie the British field military and the stormont unionist offices and the loyalist paramilitary field men- were at that time holding any person they felt were 'suspicious' or had a 'suspicious connection'.
[quite similar to todays Homeland Security policy in the US].

Gerry Adams was intered under these reactioanary forces and for some reason was flown to London in secret to be interigated by British authorities.

These meeting still secreted from general knowledge 28 years later.

When released Gerry continued his work in the polical wing Sinnfein and was effective in 1983 in convincing the party members that the ballot box strategy was neccessary to their success.

Adams was elected President of Sinnfein at its Ard Feis and won his argument over Ruari O Bradaig of the south, over absentionism in taking elected seats in the various governments.

The old Republicans did not recognise the 1921 partition, North Irish parliament, the British parliament, or the Free State /Repbublican government in the south.

He removed the partys abstention policy towards the Dial but not the Westminster parliament.

Adams had been elected to the Westminster parliament and never took his seat there as Parnell and his Irish Parliamntary Party had in the 1900s.
Hoping to convince the Brisish State to give Ireland Home Rule.

Even with these commitments to political acceptance and participation, the main line paramilitary forces of the north completely ignored these intentions and continued their incesant warfare between themselves .

Killing each other and anyone else who got in their way or appeared rebelious of their half thought out prejudices, bigotrys, or ideas and operational plans. Putting the entire civilian population at risk.

Adams was himself shot in Belfast by 3 Loyalists hit men who fired a volley of 20 shots hitting him 4 times.
His house was bombed his brother shot and his wifes brother killed as were hundreds of other targeted and done away with as listed in the historical compalation 'Lost Lives' prepared by a journalist group.

Adams was however a pivital force in communication between the SinnFein, IRA leadership, SDLP, British government forces, and the Republic.
All secret and all with go betweens and clandestine movements.

The Downing Sreet Declaration of 1993 left Adams the responsiblity of convincing the IRA that the British announcement that it had no 'self interest' in north Ireland affairs and the supportfor the agreement from the old IRB decendants in the US.

Clinton with the aid of his Irish Republic Ambassador Jean Kennedy, issued a visa for Adam's 3 day visit to the US as a courier of messages and good will.

However Clinton later approved the visa for Joe Cahill, old Republican northern chief the US had twice deported.

Albert Reynolds and Clinton had some consensus for the visa and when Cahill was allowed to re enter the US Gerry Adams was able to announce a 'complete cessation of military operations' on behalf of the IRA.

Thus the IRA 1994 cease fire and the inner workings of this organization in its resources and activites were proved workable if abit shadowy.

Gerry Adams continued to be a front man for Sinnfein politics and was the major representative along with Martin Maguinness at the peace talks resulting in the 1998 Good Friday Belast Agreement.

Gerry Adams continues to play a dominant role in SinnFeinn politics today at age 52.
Althought he has taken a less public presence,
he reamins faithful to the principle of political/social party participation and the re unification of the tiny island in the sea.

ahern pg 3

While the 6 counties stuggled with their sectarian and political differences and their physical force enforcments therein, the Republic continued on its trajectory of economic expansion and security begun by Lammass in 1979.

The Bruton reduction of corporate tax obligations from 40% to 20% lured foriegn mega giant international corportations to open factorys and offices in the Republic.
High tech companies were particularly wooed.

The Country was a member of the European Community since 1973 and with the acceptance of the Maastricht Treaty of 1993, it gained entry into continental Europes large market.

The European Union cash tranfer program for development were useful in laying foundations in the Republic for moderinization in construction, Roads ,infrastructure and agrabusiness.

Industry grew but agriculture decreased as young became urban upward mobility workers rather than taking on the old farm.

Industry was producing some 80% of exports and employing 1/3 of the labor force.
A service sector to the economy was born with an accounting of 50% of GDP by 2000.

Public spending was doubled within the country and a booming tourist trade made the retailer and merchant and hoteler flush with cash, much of which was put into the investment market.

Rail was updated and the new Dublin Luas line built.
Dublin was tranformed from a quaint Victorian 18th century archetecture to glass and steel sky scrapers.
Sections of it hardly recognizable to its own natives.
A new harbor tunnel at the dockland was bulit connecting Dublin to the northern side of the county under the bay.
A tunnel as engineringa marvel as the Holland Tunnel under the East River in Ny city .

This economic sprouting was accompanied with a liberization of many old hat and used legal enforcements such as outdated 1860 laws of life imprisonment for homosexual convictions.
Divorce was now allowed.
Contraceptives could be sold over the counter.
The right of abortion in extreme cases was upheld by the Irish Supreme Court but was constested by the public who modified the ruling to allow a subject to recieve abortion inforamtion and to go abroad for the proceedure.

The Church did not openly advise the voters on abortion issue instead advised the faithful to vote their conscience.

Ahern pg 4

Under the Ahern admininstration the Republic continued to grow and prosper and the population of young were able to find suitable work within the 26 counties decreasing the big flood of penuary immigrants to a trickle.

25% of the Republics population were under 25. Well schooled and in touch with the modern world of ideas and opportunities.
Ireland was now no longer a remote outpost of continental Europe but a part of it within a global economy with instant communications provided by high tech cell phones, faxes and computer,TV and air transport.

World issues as well as continental issues became part of the iconoclast of the new Ireland.
The old Irish identity of place and family, of clannish provincial allegiance, was left behind.
Perhaps not to the end game benefit of this new rootless, distant and cross cultured European/American New World Order.
The Defence forces established in 1923 from Free State IRA men had served as a peace keeping agent for the UN in the 60s and continued to assist peace keeper missions throughout the world.

The Republic of Ireland became a member of the Security Counsil in 2002 and accepted the Euro as its base currrency as well in 2002.

In the north the SinnFein party, in conjunction with an international decommissioning body created by George Michell's 6 principles announced the IRA decision to comply with the decommissioning requirement in October 2001.

Splinter groups in the Provincial force however continued to cause violent disruption within this early 21 century period.
Real IRA detonated the Omagh Bomb on August 15 1998 ending the 20th Century.
Such horrendous insidents as the fire bombing of a home by Loyalists killing 3 children aged 8 through 10 years.

The north Ireland Assembly remained suspended.

In June 2002 Bertie Ahern was reelected to his second term as Taoiseach with the largest vote in the states history.

With the coming of the EU and its social/ecomomic practices and its subsidiarys, a new population influx of workers from the continent came into the Island .Particularly from eastern Europe -Poland,Czechoslovakia and others.

The Irish civil service gave up its paternalistic dismissal of female workers upon marriage creatinga new career feminists in the society.

Ireland has regected some of the European incursions into its sovereignty.
Regecting such propositions as the Treaty of Nice which wished to reform institutional structures.

Ireland was warry of European overpowering of its social ideals and practices and its fear of absorbtion by larger states.

The spirit of Saorse still lingered in the genetic makeup of the modern Irishman.

Economic gains did not subvert the old independent tuath completely and the spirit of Ireland could not be sold or bought.

Neutrality, mind your own business, clann remembrances, prevailed .
With the Seville Declaration which reaffirmed Ireland refusal to be subservient to a common EU defence force or 'inhanced cooperation'.
Ireland clearly upheld her right to make her own military alliances and commitments.

The Irish had rebelled against losing their freedom of military participation over the centuries. Retaining the right to join with reigning princes, or foreign princes or even within their own clannish family relationships.

Rioting against consciption in the streets of NYC in 1862 over Presidents Lincolns Draft for the US Civil war .
These refugees and Famine survivors beholden to the Americas for their very life, still fought to retain their collective independence.

They had regected the British call to serve from time immemorial refusing to fight or serve that force within its many confrontations in Europe or in their own country.
Insted going off as Wild Geese of their own free will and inclination to join the continental armys of French kings, Spainish kings, Austria's kings or the Pope in Rome.
But always by their own inclination and will not by force or agreements of governments.

Irish Ministers and people continued to oppose the Brussels EU Headquarters dedication to high taxation and heavy regulation and EU bugetary policy as 'wrong for the country'.

The Irish referendum voted down the Lisbon Treaty in 2008 which was compelling Ireland to change its own policys in favor of an all Europ ean state giving up such long espressions of Irish sovereinty to the Europeans more 'modern' thinking.

Its natural independence oftimes expressed itself in forums such as the League of Nations, the United Nations and the European Commission and Counsils.

The Irish link to America remains strong and the Irish link to Australia remains intact.

Ireland has taken an active part in international charities and development projects in the 3rd world nations and maintains a visable peace keeping mission through the UN while retaining its sovereign right to domestic policy, military alliance, neutrality ,and religious and economic policys.

With the breakdown of family and communal ties throughout the modern world the Irish still retain the sence of belonging to an ideal, a place and a people nestled together in their little clachans and estates and parishes and towns and counties and in their distant emigree connections and the many remembrances of the dead throughout the 40 shades of green.

The Irish nation acknowledges its emigrant diaspora around the world publicly in the Constitution;

'cherishing its special affinity with people of Irish ancestry living abroad who share its culture, identity and heritage'.

The annual observance of St Patricks Day on 17 March around the world as continental ,religous, cultural, and partying, drinking day uphold the Irish presence around the globe and identify as Irish by such symbols as the shamrock, the shillealagh, the leprecahuns, and a host of sentimental and nastalgic songs including,

'Who threw the overalls in Mrs Murphys chowder I can lick the
Mick that threw the overalls in mrs Murphys chowder.

Judi Donnelly
copyright 28 March 2010

A Brief History of Ireland, Paul State,Facts of File Inc, 2009
A New Dictionary of Irish History from 1800,Hickey & Doherty,Gill
McMillen,2003
Everything Irish, Ruckenstein & O Malley, Ballentine Books, 2003
Malachy McCourts History of Ireland,Running Press,2004

Reynolds-Good Friday 1990-1998

2010-03-26T09:24:00.000-07:00

1990 Reynolds-good friday 1998

In February 1992 ,as Haughey was forced to resign over his questionable business deals,
Reynold became Taoiseach with the Progressive Democrats coalaition.

A young man ,60 or so, born in 1932 he had succeded in entrepranarial enterprises and was elected a Teachta Dala from Longford County in 1977 taking up the support of Haughey and appointed Mininster for Posts and Telegraphs and Mininster of Tranport and Power.
He later served as Mininster for Industry and Commerce and as Finance Mininster for which post he resigned over Haugheys business deals.
His entry to the chief leadership post was successful in that he radiated a personality as simple and decent giving the country a faith in government.

He won a new elcection that same year 1992 and formed a new coalaition with Labor's Dick Spring of that party becoming Taniste.
The 2 were able to further the peace process for the north which they pursued actively.
The Taoiseach was able to achieve a good working realationship with John Major the new PM conservative for Great Britain.

And a resulting document know as the Downing Street Declaration in December 1993 opened a passage for Sinnfeins party participation in the proposed peace talks.

The Document between leaders of the British government and leaders of the Republic lead to the 2 para military forces in the north declaring a 1994 cease fire on 31 August.
This after the US President Bill Clinton had allowed Gerry Adams the Sinnfein leader a visa to enter the US despite Great Britains volitile objections.
In the first year he spent as Irish Republican Leader, Albert Reynolds was able to accomplish more in advancing peace in the 6 countys than any of his 3 predicessors of FF Lynch, Haughey or the FG Fitzgerald.

He resigned in November 1994 and John Bruton of Fine Gael succeeded him.

From Dunboyne County Meath ,John formed what was known as the Rainbow coalaition in December 1994 with Dick Spring of Labor and the Democratic Left.

This coalition was not formed as a result of an election but labor simply switched allegiance from the Fianna Fail coalition to the Fine Gael coalition and the Rainbow coalition came into a sort of coup existance without the consent of the mysterious voters known as the people of Ireland.

John Bruton had come to FG throught the old Parnell /Redmond IPP Party of Home Rule.
His background was from a large ranching farm family in Meath and his leanings more to christain democrat than social democratic thinking.

Bruton immediately reduced corporate taxes , which doubled economic output, which reduced inflation and unemployment in the republic.

He turned the budget deficit into a surplus and in Feburay 1995 concluded a Framework Document with John Major setting up a set of guiding principles for an Anglo/Irish/ North Irish relation part of the foundation for the good Friday Agreement of 1998.

He had no social quams in maintaining a speaking relationship with Gerry Adams during his tenure but was upset with the IRA killing of a Gardai member, Officer McCabe in Limerick and the ending of the 94-96 cease fire by the Army Counsil.

John Bruton was not shy about critizing either the Orange Order or the RUC for its aggresive and provocative behaviors in the north or its inflamatory sectarian parades at places like Drumcree where the Order insisted on its rigth to flamboyantly march with full sash and drum through nationalist residental areas.

During his tenure Ireland saw an 1.7 domestic product growth and Ireland was in 1996, Presidnet of the European Union at Brussels.

During his term in office the Consitutional Amendment to the Irish Constitution of 1937 carried in referendum to allow divorce in Ireland.

Albert Reynolds ended an uneasy coalition with Labours Dick Spring and his government was tainted by the Beef Scandal Haughey had been a party to.

However the straw that broke the coalitions back and caused a new election to be held revolved around the alleged sex life of 2 priests who had been accused of child molestation.

When his Attorney General Harry Whelehan obstucted and delayed in sending the 2 accused priests to secular justice,
[the church had long been accustomed to resolving its justice issues within cannon law.
The Pope and the Cardinals trying, sentencing ,and hearing the cases of their own organization members, not the Kings Court or other government established law and order facilities].

Reynolds who had basically established his government on the weeding out of high finace graft and coruption- sacking 8 of his 12 inherited Haughey Ministers on taking office- and strivign to present a face of good government and honest administration was also deepy affected by the Hamilton Beef Scandal Report.

He had lost support of the Progressive Democrats when he questioned their leader Desmond O Malleys evidence to the Beef Tribunal and these confrontations lost FF the first preference vote and 9 seats in the general election.

Again the annonymous ,faceless, conservative Irish voter on the land simply backed away from any sort of scandal or impropriety.
Holding its catholic anglo assendancy social and moral code above all else.

Reynolnd had made a deal with Labour and Dick Spring which allowed him to form a 1993 government which lasted the year till December 1994 when he resigned.

His triumphant accomplishment during that year was the signing of the Downing Street Declaration in 1993.

No election was held at the resignation of December 1994.

A new Rainbow coalition being formed by the oposition Fine Gael leader John Bruton with the Labour partys Dick Spring and the Democratic left people.

The coup government however were the inheritors of the economic boom dubed by reporters 'the Celtic Tiger' and one of the highest GDP rate in the world belonged to Ireland.

FG under Bruton ,although it did hold an interest in the north ,refused to participate in peace and reconsiliation talks until IRA violence ended permanently.

On 2 February with a good ecomomic positon in his grasp Bruton launched the Framwork Document with John Major British PM.

The two however in opening a decommission multi party talks excluded SinnFein political party in June 1996.

John saw the Provos as simlar to the Nazis a similar comparison having been made to the old FG Duffy Blue Shirts para military.

the 1994 IRA cease fire so carfully nurtured by the Downing Street Document accepance was discontinued.

The '94 cease fire ended in Februay 1996.

The uncontrolable wild card of Irish politics IRA Army Counsil had ended the cease fire in Februay 1996 ,therefore making the two goverment leaders for the Republic and Great Britain exclude SinnFein from the all party talks of the Framework Document.

Reynolds Bruton 1990 pg 2

When Kevin Mckenna, Slab Murphy and Joe Cahill sat on the Army Counsil of 12 during the 1994 cease fire difficulties arose in disapline within the organization.
The Counsil expressed a low moral existed among the men.

The twin trails talks were held up by the governments of Great Britain and Republic precluding Sinnfein paticipation or an IRA Provo member being included before the IRA decomissioned its weopons supply.

The Army Counsil was restive and dispondent even though the snap visit of Bill Cinton, President of the US, had helped the two European govenments conviene the talks and include a Sinnfein represntative.

An international Commission was created with Senator George
Mitchell to broker a way to solve the IRA decomissioning problem.

In late 1995 however a burst of IRA killings took place in Belfast of small time drug dealers.

These many strikes were continued through the New Years of 1996.

In January 1996 the IRA Executive of 12 members called an Army Convention to be held in February/March.
On January 31 1996 precluding the disgrunteled rank and file vote to end the cease fire, the Army Counsil of 7 members called off the 1994 cease fire of 15 months.

In south Armagh Slab Murphy had alredy begun building his truck bomb and with the end of the cease fire a go ahead given to smuggle the divise into England where it was placed in the underground car park garage of an office building near Canary Wharfe Tower.

On Febraury 9 at 7 pm it exploded and distroyed the office bldg in which 2 died and causing 100 million pounds loss to an expensive south London comercial property.

The National Security Counsil at the White House was alerted.
From that time forth throughout the Bush Adminstartion, IRA activites were placed in the direct purview of the American White House National Security Counsil and not returned to the STate Department till the present Obama administration.

In July 1997 a new cease fire was ordered by Army Counsil .
No one was consulted or informed. Only a public Army Counsil announcement was made.
This cease fire allowed the setting of a date for the beginning of the twin trails talks which were begun on Septmeber 15, 1997 and were to continue till May 9 1998.
The decomissioning as a prequisit was not reguired.

By Septmber 1997 Adams attended the all party talks at Stormont.
The Unioionst Party refused to attend.

John Bruton was about to hand over the Republic administration to Bartholomew [Bertie] Ahern of FF and England had a new Labor PM
in Tony Blaire who accepted Sinnfeins representative without decomissioning of IRA Weopons.

The talks were progressing with a bit of frustaration and separating needed, conducted by George Mitchell and at last a consensus was reached.

The long road of go betweens ,negociations, communication and acceptance of an ordered process by all finaly achieved an overcoming of the dispossed 1920s reasoning of 'ourselves alone' and 'not an inch' and the reasoning and persistance of George Mitchell and Fr Reid and Manserg of Forieng Affairs.

A 10 year converstation materialized into a 'total and absolute commitment' to the Mitchell Principles.

1 peaceful means of resolving political issues
2 total disarmanment of all paramilitary organizations
3 verification of disarmament by independent commission
4 removal of the use of force and threats of force
5 abide by the terms of an agreement
6 stop punishment beatings and killing in the country or elsewhere

These negociations began on
June 10 1996 and all were admitted but SF until the IRA restored its cease fire which it did by the Army Counsil in July 1997.

Sinnfien was admitted to the all party talks on September 5 1997

Gerry Adams of Sinn Finn
David Trimble of UUP
John Hume of SDLP
Tony Blaire Labour GB
Bertie Ahern FF Rebublic of Ireland

Moderator George Mitchell commissioned by William J. Clinton ,President of the United States of America.

The negociations continued ,with frequent need to separate the parties and come to separte agreements and understandings, until an Agreement was finally reached on 10 April 1998, Good Friday at 5 PM.

The satations of the cross were said. The body of christ removed and placed in the tomb. All awaited the Easter sunrise.

Reynolds bruton 1990 pg 3

The Agreement called for continuance of a British appointed Secretary of State with responsiblity for security.

The Republic withdrawal of its territorial claim to the 6 counties by amending its 1937 Constitution, but retaining an 'aspiration to achieve Irish Unity'.

A British/Irish agreement replacing the Anglo/Irish Agreement of 1985 restating the necessity for cooperation between the govenrments

A British Irish Counsil was established to bring delagates of the devolved Assemblys of north Ireland, Scotland, Wales, Isle of Man, Channel Islands in conference with the British and Irish parliaments

An establishement of a devolved within north Ireland Assembly, subordinate to London, based on power sharing of nationalist and unionist communites with a 60% majority for a bill to become law
Sub committees would impliment legislaltion

Government departments would be run by Ministrys with executive authority

A Civil Forum ,unelected, would address social and economic conserns

British state security to be scaled back

A north south Ministerial Counsil created. Responsible to the northern Assembly and the southern Dail, 'to coordinate and harmonise
transport, agricultue, ecucation, environment, reseach, tourism and culture heritage',

A prison amnesty to be granted within 2 years.

RUC to be reformed

The Irish language to be upheld and Ulster Scot dialect

Fair employment to be provided.

13 major points of agreement for all parties.

A referenum was held on both sides of the border.

71% of voters supported the Agreemment in the north.
Half the Unionists regected the Agreement

The Republic approved the Accord 95%.

An Assembly was created at Stormont
David Trimble UPP First Minister
Seamus Mallon SDLP Deputy Mininster

The Belfast Agreement was made law by the new northern Legislature in
June 1998.

On 2 December 1999, The Dail met in Dublin to amend articles 2 and 3 that the island formed a single national territory and offeed that' the people of north Ireland were guaranted the right to be a part of the Irish nation'.

[Many northern Ireland people now do obtain Republic of Ireland passports to establish their identity as Citizens of the Irish nation]

A united Ireland could only come about with the consent of the majority of Ulster residents.

With the acceptance of the Belfast Agreement at the Special Ard Feis of SinnFein held on Sunday May 10 1998 at the library of the Royal Dublin Society in Ballsbridge,attended by IRA men and leaders from the heros of the 'Balcombe Street Gang'.

331 of the 350 delagates voted to accept the Good Friday Agreement.

Abstence was regected and the Sinnfein party would hence forth accept their elected seats in the northern parliament.

Provincial grass roots rank and file IRA were not so enthusiastic and the IRA did not, without hostility, adhere to the party acceptance of the American arrived at 'deal' and it did reflect most of the American congressional establishment ideals in its principles.

IRA convention held a few days before the Sinnfein Ard Feis, had backed the Adams strategy.

The IRA leadership was at that time in complete control under it Chief of Staff, Slab Murphy.

The IRA was, and remained from its inseption in 1914, as did the UVF,
a military organization adhering to military disaplines, principles and command structures.
It was not a political or social organization.

It remained the Fianna of Ireland. Loyal to its commanders and its militray goals.
The IRA tolerated the Belfast Agreement and gave it leave to take steps.
They did not accept it as final.

As the power sharing Assembly took shape under David Trimble, a first priority was to reorganize the hated RUC.

A new force was created and renamed the Police Services of North Ireland [PSNI].
Sinnfein had called for the disbanding of the hated Royal Ulster Constabulary but in the end it was reshaped in a new quise.

An IRA Convention in December 1998 provided Adams leadership a chance to amend the 1996 Convention to take way the Army Counsils power to negociaate weopons deals.

The decomissioning proposals were made but no one moved to impliment these quickly.
As long as the IRA force held its arsenal ,it held leverage to enforce the Sinnfein political agenda.

There was also a viable and volitile UDA, UVF, and splinter groups of prodestant paramilitary as well armed and much richer than the nationalist physical force command.

The IRA had been the only defence force available to the native catholic Irish for its entire life and full well knew the helpless state its almost annilalated status had faced under the old civil war, the British army Anglo war, the Emergency years, the Harvest operation, and the beginning of the Troubles.

To distroy its now strong ,well disaplined paramilitary force with out equally disarming the massive paramilitary ,regular military ,internal police forces in the north, as well as the Republican Gardai and the Republican Defence Forces would leave it again, Christ on the cross.

Its final decision on October 4, 2001 to accept decomissioning and put its arsenal beyond use when all around its remanant were the forces arrayed against it, along with the international presence of fear and hysteria of its intentions was an act of pure herosim.

A coming forth to convocation.
Prone on the floor before the others to commit to a future in the sevice of an unknown king.

This act placed the whole paramilitary of the opposition forces in a state of shame for its own cynical aggressive faiures.

The priests of the gun became the noviates laid bare.

Judi Donnely
copyright 23 March 2010

A Secret History of the IRA,Ed Maloney,W.w.Norton Co, NY ,2002
Everything Irish, Ruckenstein & O Malley,Ballantine Books,
2003
A New Dictionarty of Irish History, Hickey & Doherty,Gill McMillan,2003
A Brief History of Ireland, Paul State,Facts on File Inc, NY, 2009

Haughey-Fitzgerald Era pg 2

2010-03-22T09:17:00.000-07:00

fitz pg 4-6

The revival of the stultified higher education prosess controlled, since its creation in 1592 with its famous Trinity College modeled on Oxford and Cambridge.

Trinity was completely in the sphere of the New English Assendancy from its founding. Prodestant in curricular understanding and endowments.

It maintained an Anglican condition excluiding not only catholics from higher education but what Chancelor Laud viewd as prodestant dissenters presbyterian sects.
A religious test was required for admission to the student body.

Both Wolfe Tone and Robert Emmet were expelled from Trinity College for exprsssing radical ideas.

By the Union, Trinity lifted its ban on the admission of catholics and by 1830s catholic Irish comprised 1 in 10 of the student body.

The unionist stll retained its strong hold on the Nassau St Dublin 2 teaching by Anglo Irish Assendancy in education , in politics and in economics.

The college having acquired a reputation of producing medical studies and schools in classics and history.

In the north because Trinity discriminated agaisnt both native Irish Catholics and Scots,a Presbyterian Academy was established, the Belfast Academy and Magee College in Derry.

The Irish went of to the continetal Irish colleges in France and Spain dnd finaly the than sothern Irish Parliament established St Patricks College in Maynooth. State funded and a semenary and diocene seminarys were extended throughout Ireland creating a base for lay students as well as clerical aspirants.

As 1845 arrived ,a great controversy over catholic feeling in Great Britain and Ireland when 3 Queens colleges were cerated in Belfast, Cork and Galway opening their doors under the Victorian rule in 1849,
and in 1850 becoming Queen's University of Ireland.
Low tuition fees were applied and vocational courses offered.

This Queen Vick University was critized by the Pope wishing to establish a Catholic University in Ireland on the model of Louvain in France.
This university was established in 1851, John Henry Newman its first rector at Dublin.

William Gladstone propsed a merger of unviversitys between Dublin U, Queen, and Catholic in 1873 but it was roundly regected.

1879 saw a University Education Act of Ireland in which a royal university was enpowered to grant degrees to students who passed their examinations ,giving all a degree.

In 1908, 2 new universitys were established in Ireland the National University of Ireand,[NU] which amalgamate the old Catholic University Dublin Universty, UCD and the Queens colleges at Cork and Galway.

The Maynooth colleges of St Patricks semanary college was amalgamated to the National Federal system in 1920 becoming a full college in 1967.
The old Queens College reestablished as the Queen University Belfast.

The National University system in catholic control provided a good degree education for a catholic professional class producing such poductive personality as Tom Kettle, Francis S. Skefington
James Joyce.

Degrees were awarded to women as well at both NU and Trinity where they were admitted in 1904.

When partition occured in 1921 Queen College Belfast became the leading center of higher education and produced the 1st generation of Civil Rights Activists.

A second northen University was created in the Unionist stronghold of Coleraine a town west of the Bann in 1968.
But it was contoversial for that location being chosen by Stormonts than totally unionist government.

The controrversy was solved by compromise in 1984 when the New University of Ulster was merged with the Ulster Polytechnical and Ulster College of Art with schools at Derry and Belfast.

An effort was made to merge the 2 universitys of the south UCD Trinity College old anglo with the Catholic University failed.

However the catholic church did lift its proscription of catholics attending Trinity in 1970 which had been put in place in the 1940s.

A catholic native population of Young people starved for higher education and acquision of technical skills rose from 19,000 in 1966 to 115,000 by 2001 making reform and modernization necessary by the flocks of students seeking the offering of learning.

National Institues of Higher Education were established in Limerick 1970, Dublin 1976, and were incorporated into the universtity system in 1989.

The 1997 University Act created 4 colleges in Dublin, Cork ,Galway and Maynooth.

In the 70s the Republic continued to expand.

The social welfare policy under FGs Wlm Cosgrave coalition government continued with Labour.

Inflation rose and prices skyrocked with the OPEC
[Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries] united to control the output of the all important energy fuel supply leaving many factories without a means of continued production all over the world .
Little Ireland among them, which eventually brought the Cosgrave govenment to its knees.

The June 77 General Elections returning an FF government under Jack Lynch once more.

fitz pg 5

Lynch abolished some tax payments in an effort to control the economic slump but these measures were not able to control the recession.
Lynch was critized for his weak policy of consiliation with very active resistance and reprisal war now ongoing in the north for its 6th year and he resigned under pressure in December 1979 from the Taoiseach as well as the FF party leadership.

Charles Haughey and Colly vied for that leadership but Charles Haughey, a charismic and intense man, succeeded in keeping a loyalty of networking and the Haughey faction took control of the government with his leadership from December 1979 when Jack Lynch resigned through
June 81.

Although Haughey had expressed a more militant approch to the northern disruption, when he recovered office he conformed to the Partys Lynch consiliatory policy in place since 1969.

He went so far as to present Margaret Thatchers with a quality silver tea set to win her favor.
Totally a waste of money as his perception as somewhat of a ladies man had no bearing on Margarets conservative ways .

Although he oraly balked at the Hunger Strikers neglect by the British and saved the tete a tete attempts between himself and the British PM,
Haughey like Lynch before him and Fine Gaels Cosgrave strove to keep the Republic out of the norths struggle, physically or by international pressure.

In the end it was an American, George Mitchel a Maine Senator who negociated a physical peace between the warring factions.
Great Britain, Unionist and Republicans and created the Belfast Agreement signed by all in 1998.

The north as well as the south was not only engulfed in physical disruption by bombings and shooting, they both continued to suffer a dormant over inflated economy and poverty neither the EE, the British or the internal Unionist or Republic governments could solve.

Emigration began again as the young and the familys were pessured to leave the county for Australia, Europe and the US to survive.

They had no time or resourses for high finance, economic planning, great national causes of political envolvement.
Their goal was only to put bread on the table, to pay the rent, or the farm rates, and to maintain, if not a family structure, a few trustworthy communitys of friends.

The politicians and the gunmen were hence stars, movie stars of the struggling nation and much has been written and defined by their pastimes and ideals.

The Irish people again as they had always been, blanketed and covered to the world and in the own history.
Annonymous almost invisable ,shadowy people, unheard, unloved, unsean and some how invisable in all but the voting returns.

However the country progressed.
Roads were built. Houses were built.
Contraception affected the bedroom of the nation both prodestant and catholic.
The children survived.

A budding tourist trade was established through government control.
An Air Lines established and improved in service and routes.
The farms were working the city and towns peaceful most of the time.

Men wore shoes and hats, overcoats and caps as they came into the markets to buy and sell their cattle and discuss on their streets ideals and problems they were facing.

Marriages and familys continued and the cluchans and cliques in the neighborhood and countryside continued.

The Irish people peasant, obtuse and unknown as he had always been the doer of the tasks. The carriers of stability and daily progress.
Like the peasantry of the world, quietly plodding on. Not having all the answers. Not understanding all the spirits. Not overly conserned with his barbarianisms or lack of proper learning.

Still respectful of the lordship, the learned, the God, the chief, the presentations and confident in his own abilty to pull it all of as they dictated their lights to him and this he did.

Leading both part of the divided country out into todays Civilized Ireland which he, like every other nation on the earth
lacking slate roofs, indoor pluming, funaces, fences, hot runing water, electricity, television, paved roads, buses, trains, funtional supermarkets and town stores, telephones, banks, pubs, hotels and curious people out to examine the stangers and help the traveler along his way.
These in comformity with the nation, the government and his own vision he accomlished ,war, starvation ,deprivation, bombs or no.

Haughey himself a bit of a peasant propietor, but along the lines of a relative of the Queen.

The country more conserned with its own natural affectations, behaviors and graft just as did their emergent brothers before the Rising ,from Famine Ireland ,and transported Ireland to American political bosses and corrupt entrapraneurs .

Some of the richest men in Australia.

The confident government conservative reign of Margaret Thatcher from 1979 when Haughey came into office, than 10 years of fluctuating Irish Republic governments under Charles Haughey, Garret Fitzgerand and back to Haughey who out lasted her by 2 years.
She considered her lords position in politics as absolute and far superior to any other stye of thinking, has been characteristically ingrained into the British Lord society for centuries with blinders on. The strong horse leading the carriage over the cliff.

Margaret whether cyincally or affectionaly know as "Maggie", adamantly refused political status to the hunger strikers clashing with Unionists, Republicans and Nationalist over this intrangent dismissal of her imprisoned victims in the H Block establishment.

she however, in 1980 meeting at Dublin Castle with the Taoiseach Haughey , acknowledged the Irish Republic government had a place in northern Irish affairs.
She, or the Conservatives could hardly allow this when they themselves had a massive peace keeping force in the 6 counties as well as a fully armed border.

A year later she continued her stubborn and adamant refusal to heed prisoner demands as Sands and 9 others died under her care.
Rationalizing as Trevelyan had done in the Great Famine the superior correctness of the British position and propriety in the face of failure.

The provisinal IRA therefore felt justified in an assassination attempt at the Conservative Party Convention in Brighton in October 1984.

In November Maggie totaly regected the New Ireland Forum proposed solutions to the north Irish chaos with her out out out speech.

All out of the question to the British upper class mind of Victorian imperialist right of 'On Britannia'.
She did however sign the 1985 Anglo/ Irish Agreement urged by the 3rd mate force ,US President Ronald Reagan.
This Agreement gave the Irish government a consultive roll in the north that infuriated unionist and loyalists who expected complete backing and conformity from the British rulers to their ministate supremacy.

She had few friends and coherts. In Ireland resented and reviled for her behavior by the Irish and distrusted by unionists
as the early 80s turned into the petty wrangling for power and status between th two party leaders Haughey and Fitzgerald.

Haughey losing the 1981 general election and Fitzgerald becoming Taoiseach till he too was voted out in Election the following year of March '82 over his Minister John Brutons introduction of a VAT tax on clothing and shoes.

Fitzgerald was conserened with amending the Irish Contitution over issues like divorce and abortion.

A televised debate was held between the 2 men in the 82 election campaign to discuss the pros and cons of the Contitution of the Republic.
The economy was hanging on in near chaos and the north was ablaze with shootings, bombings and rapine spite.

When Haughey was reelected and took office in June '82 he was again challenged by the Fine Gael leader and a vote of no confidence in his leadership was brought to a new November '82 elections in which Fitzgerald was reinstated.
Taking office again in December of that year.

During his 6 years as Taoiseach Fitzgerald was unable to successfuly reshuffle the Irish economic state and in 1986 he showed a deficit of 180 million pounds of government borrowing.

Government stocks were sold. Interest rates increased.
He proposed large cuts in government spending which alarmed his coalition partners in the Labour party.
Some 20,000 welfare recipients, women with children, had their payments reduced in implimenting an EC edict to provide equality of treatment.
A general Election was held in February 1987 returning Haughey and Fianna Fail to powers.

Haughey was again returned with FF to high office in March of 87 under a coaltion govenment with Progressive Democrats and Independents split from FF.

The Garett Fitzgerald government under Fine Gael had lasted 6 years and during that time ,no peace or consultive arrangments were held with the northern leaders either prodestant or catholic, nationalist or unionists.

Sinn Fein in this election for the first time in 50 years, ended its abstentionist policy in the Republic. But of its 27 candidates won only 1% of the vote and gained no seats.

During his career in public service ,Haughey developed a program of National Recovery between trade unions and employers called the Social Partnership.

He had a hand in setting up the Diplock Courts in the north of Ireland which gave the trials of suspects of terror or dissident violence against the state to a one judge, no jury trail, and he was instramental in the building and establishment of the Financial Sevice Center in the Dublin Docklands to provide foriegn investment in Ireland.

He was envolved in the Enniskillen bombing extraditions in November of '87 and was subject to much scandal over his financial dealing and high roller life style.
Accepting a large personal loan from the Dunne Stores which wheeling and dealing finaly brough him to tribunal invstigation and his politcal downfall.

A fairyman in dealings and in personal perception he exibited the caution of the machavelian church, the bombstic temprament of an Irish street fighter, the cunning of a master of bedroom politcs, a angel of the family household respectabilty, and a gut feeling beliver in minding the tuaths business in his own region, leaving the neighbors to fight their own battles as best they could.

He conformed entirely to the oringinal Lynch Fiana Fail perseption of danger to the Republic if it involved itself in any way with the fire in the north and perhaps, in the major intrigues and setups and baiting of international military and political planning, this policy may have been well founded .
Ireland did not fall into the trap and retained its indepenadent status in miltary affairs if not in economic affairs.

Haughey, living his Cats Meow life, retired in 1992 with prostrate cancer.
Sold his lavish estate Abbyville and remained with his Wife Mareen Lamass Haughey, his 3 sons and one daughter till death on June 14, 2006.
He was givin a state funeral and press coverage throughout the world.
Many of his ideas and policys not affected during his term in office came to frutation in the late 90s and early 21 century regarding the north and the peace and the economic needs of the island.

In the north, the Troubles [na triobloid] raged on without interference.
The Haughey administration lead an indirect involvment of the Republic govenment in 1986 as an International Fund for Ireleand was set up in the hope brighter economic prospects for the deprived areas of the 6 counties would ease sectarian violence.

In 1987, the Iniskillen bombing soured the new iniciative between the south and north involving the Extraditon of the Suspects from the Haughey goverment.

In the 80s period the ex rebel Gerry Adams from Ballymurphy, Belfast had been in power as a politial figure in the SinnFein political party.
He had been intered as an IRA OC in 1972 .Released and again intered from 73 -77 at the Mazee prison.
He helped reorganize th IRA with Ivor Bell and integrated a political structure for the Provisional IRA while pursuing armed stuggle.

The new IRA now maintaining a 4 man cell stuctue superceeding the old 35 or so unit divided in the civil war period.
Gerry Adams contempory of Charles Haughey became President of SinnFein in 1983 and parliamentary abstention of the party was ended in 1986. He held a British parliament seat for west Belfast from 9
June 1983 till he was defeated by Joe Hendron of SDLP in 1992.

Adams had been shot in Belfast in 1984 by the UFF[Ulster Freedom Fighters- the killing squad of UDA]. John Gregg was convicted and sentanced for it.

The Haughey doctrine of forceful rhetoric not really passing physically into the neighbors fray set a stage for response from nationalist thinkers and leaders, although from different sides of the same church.

Various plans and ideas and restarts offered in news sheet articles. An early form of blogging.
These reports in established papers or TV shows.

The Taoseach was forgiven for the FF standby roll, along with Fizgerald's FG.

These 2 main republican parties for accessorys by their non violent response in the world stage of the death by 'legalized murder' and 1committed Irshmen.
Although the north leaders had themselves done no more.

The Church at last took a backroom stand when Fr.Alex Reid , a Redemtorists Priest forwarded a plan with Gerry Adams towards the end of IRA and UDA paramilitary violence in the north and somtimes fearfully, in the south or the British Ilse.

Fr Reids plan was submitted through back channels, a press editor Tim Pat Coogan, to the Taoiseach office in May of 1987 while Haughty was living the Cats Meow existance in both his private and public life.

The letter sent and written by the priest included with his own formations thought out, the terms the Sinnfein leader Adams would accept for an IRA cease fire.

fitz pg 6

The communication was laid to the south secular executive not only on behalf of the north political/militry nationalist envoy but the Church herself and had been reviewed and endorsed by the Frs order itself and the Cardinal O Fiaich.

The plan had been discussed and thought out among community nationalist figures and key figures in the unionist community.

The Church being still the Body with the resourses, influence and access to power to open a reliable dialogue and to remove the violence from the political dissention.
To create a politcal alternative to armed stuggle and convince the hard men to lay down their weopons.
It was the design of incluciveness of the battle weary and the battle hungry into a nationalist dialogue north and south, that led the presentation to be slipped under the Haughey Taoiseach door.

The Church therefore ,as it had at its old medieval roll as interceptor between such great Irish chiefs as McLauglin, O Neill ,OBrien, O Conor and O Donnell to mediate and accomidate each others views and intents towards ending of the army in the field gathering of the clanns or the call of the mighty chief.

Adams had a separte line of communication with the British forces made earlier in his career. And although the commanders and liasons for that nation over the Irish sea advised Sinnfein that troop withdrawal from, the north Irish wars 'out of the question'.

The army in its wisdom, assured its mentors would not interfere or dictate any settlements between nationals and unionist.
This in itself a great cultural concession of the British to mind their own business, a trait they are not noted for.

Adams put the idea of political non interference to Haughey wanting cooperation from the Republic to hold the British concession to the task.
Adams wanted the British public acknowlegement that the Westminster supreme authority over the north under section 75 of the Government of Irleand Act 1920 would be enforced.

Adams wanted the British concession of any legal claim over the people of north Ireland and viewed this consession be supported to create an intent of withdrawal from north Ireland sufficent to call a cease fire to the than 17 year reign of bombing shootings and state of disruption.

This intended program was all presented by Fr. Reid to the Republic Chief Haughey.
Haughey when he understood the proposals chose to continue the dialoge with the north leaders indirectly through the Redemptorists priest Father Reid.

Rather than any direct discussion with the northern nationalist leader,[he had been bitten by the Arms trail banishment he had endured in the earlier days of the conflit] he chose to continue on the safe path of a go between.

The Reid/Adams approach to a negociated settlement were kept secret from the Irish Cabinate and the coalition Progressive Democrats.
Their leader Desmond O Malley, a consumate foe of Haughey.

This decision to keep his distance caused a crisis at the expulsion when Adams pleaded for Haughty face to face meetings.
Haughey kept his distance as had Lynch before him.

Cardinal Fiaich offered a Maynooth College room for a meeting but the Taoiseach declined.
This putting a brake on an offer to create a break through.

The 12 stepping stones clearly laid out were laid out between the Reid group, SinnFein, the British forces and the Republic.

This concrete plan of 'an Sagairt' could not offset the dialogue crisis but the crisis between Gerry Adams and Charles Haughey was finally resolved when SDLP leader John Hume was able to achieve a settlement to the arms leanth rejection of Adams and Hume overcame Haugheys soul diffence of these.

Reid had kept the SDLP leader informed as his plan went along and Hume like Haughey was cautious in involving diretly with the Sinnfein alliance.

Haughey himself proposed a solution in that he would himself support direct involvment and delegated John Hume as the surrogate go between.
Thus he ,Haughey ,would not have to meet directly with Adams.

Adams was insulted and protested but he was left with no choise.

Haughey insisted on secrecy to the dialogue and his personal ruination if these contacts were leaked.

Haughey than brought into the complicit conversation of Irish leaders and Church implimnetations a northern Adviser in the person of Martin Manseargh who had worked for Foreign Affairs as a diplomat.

In this intrigue for peace a decade long partnership became the ritual with Fr Reid carring written and oral messages from Adams in Belfast to Mansergh in Dublin who analized the material and turned it over to Haughey.

This went on after Haughey had been voted out of office being publicly tried again for his financial dealings and had died.
The process continuing through Toaiseach Albert Reynolds and Bertie Ahern.

The dialogue between Adams and Haughey ,Read and Haughey, continued being a political thought to lean on as Army Counsil continued its camapaining ,intensifing its own operations though the Haughty and Adams reign.
The Unionist paramilitarys responding or taking the lead in killing as did SAS, Special Air Service, under British Air operations.

Continuing their military physical force disruptions ongoing in the north daily and weekly while the Fainna Fail adminstration in the Republic assisted the British forces in curtailing perpetratators from the north by arrests, trial and interment practices regarding the Offences Against the State Act in the Republic and the Emergency Terrorist Act in the north.

The 'on the run' frequently materialized in NYC or HOng Cong or other havens and safe houses a sort of survival of the fitest operation.

The Troubles had become a fixated ,systematic, ordered, predictable ,and accepted state of affairs in Ireland.

Killing over 4000 people during the armed stuggle period of 20 years.

Disrupting the economy of the entire island. Creating fear and frenzy of stereoptyped views of the paramilitary personell.
creating confusion and distress in several churches.
Laying of ground field operations for further paramilitary plans elswhere in the world and leaving the country of Ireland just as it had been politicaly and socially in 1920.

Divided ,poor, fearful and poorly governed by its political and heroic Stars.
And in the elected social network of now peasant proprietors.

Tea was still served in the absolute polite propriety of cups and saucers.
Cookies and cakes arising in prepared array just at the moment of relaxed conversation to welcome and review and end the audience of visitors and conferences.
Now arriving by plane and motor car, bearing cell phones, and laptops and coffins .

The niceties and proprieties of order and good disapline and cryptic fantacy provided over both Nationalist, Unionists, British troop , to the formation of the British troop patrol or the sudden appearance at a funeral of 3 hooded, fatigue garbed men to fire 3 volleys over the crowd and priest to honor a fallen brother.
The press present and recording over all.

The Troubles have become an accpted way of life for 3 generations.

A part of the culture of both the north the Republic of Ireland, the Irish diaspora and the British government, town and country.

The IRA dead in the field are honored as community heroes.
The Loughgal shooting by an ambush groups from SaS in repisal for--

Always the reprisal and the revenge and the ambush and the secret and the eternal fairy of otherworld lurking in the brush or on the highway or in the garden.

And the prayer goes on.

'Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us'.

How well is known the heart of man by the great God above.

JudiDonnelly

copyright 22 March 2010

sourses:
Secret Historyof the IRA, Ed Moloney,W.w. Norton Co, NY,2002
A New Dictionary of Irish History, D.,J. Hickey,J.E. Doherty,Gill
McMillan, 2003
Everything Irish Lelia Ruckenstein, James O Malley,Ballentine Books, Random House Publishing Group,2003
A Brief History of Ireland,Paul Short, Facts on File Inc, 2009