The Great Turning Points of British History by Michael Wood Read Free Book Online Page B

Scots. This marked the beginning of the future Henry II’s adult career. When he returned to Normandy, his father, Geoffrey Plantagenet, Count of Anjou (whom Matilda had married in 1128 – he was 11 years her junior), invested him with the duchy, as being his by right of inheritance.

1171
Henry II invades Ireland
JOHN GILLINGHAM
    On 17 October 1171 an armada of four hundred ships put in at Crook on the south coast of Ireland. That day, for the first time ever, a king of England set foot on Irish soil. Henry II landed in force, intending to make the Irish recognize him as their overlord. He stayed six months, long enough to change the course of Irish history. Writing only twenty-five years later a Yorkshire historian, William of Newburgh, in a chapter that he entitled ‘The Conquest of the Irish by the English’, summed up the impact of Henry II’s expedition thus: ‘a people who had been free since time immemorial, unconquered even by the Romans, a people for whom liberty seemed an inborn right, were now fallen into the power of the king of England.’
    Not surprisingly, the whole episode has given rise to fierce controversy. Was it, as Irish nationalist tradition held, an invasion by a malevolent English king? Or had Henry II gone to Ireland, as the late Victorian historian J.H. Round put it in 1899, ‘because her people were engaged in cutting one another’s throats; we are there now because, if we left, they would all be breaking one another’s heads’. Or had he been reluctantly drawn in because he needed to retain control over his own most turbulent subjects – a number of lords of the Welsh Marches who were on the point of carving out independent territories for themselves in Ireland? One English chronicler reported that the Irish themselves asked him to come to their help against the most powerful of those lords, Richard de Clare, later known as Strongbow.
    Three things are certain. The first is that 1171 had begun disastrously for King Henry II. He was at Argentan in Normandy when a New Year present reached him in the shape of the news that as darkness fell on 29 December 1170 four of his knights had killed the archbishop of Canterbury. Stunned by the knowledge that his own angry words had precipitated the murder of his one-time friend, for three days Henry refused to eat anything or talk to anyone. Whether genuine or feigned, this display of grief reveals Henry’s awareness of the damage done to his reputation by the widely held assumption that the killers had acted on his orders. During the following months he sought to save his honour, even offering to submit to the judgement of Pope Alexander III and, if need be, in person. It soon became clear that one of the cleverest moves he could make was to play the Irish card. By going to Ireland he could both create a cooling-off period and pose as the Church’s champion, bringing ecclesiastical and moral reform to a backward province.
    The second certainty is that the logistical preparations for Henry’s expedition were massive. Supplies for the fleet arrived from all over England, including enormous quantities of food for the troops, and luxuries such as silks and no less than 569 pounds of almonds for Henry and his courtiers. Gloucestershire alone sent five carts, four wagons, 3,000 spades, 2,000 pickaxes and 60,000 nails, while Winchester provided 1,000 pounds of wax for candles and to seal documents. Economic development in England meant that its king disposed of military hardware – ammunition, armour and castles – on a scale that none of his Celtic neighbours could match. As a consequence, Henry II approached the conquest of Ireland with confidence.
    The third certainty is that Henry’s preferred solution to the problems posed by men such as Strongbow was to take the whole of Ireland into his lordship, irrespective of the views of the Irish themselves. After all, the Irish, in Henry’s eyes, were both thoroughly uncivilized and in no position to