Kingship, Lordship, and Resistance: a Study of Power in Eleventh- and Twelfth-Century Ireland
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Trinity College, Dublin School of Histories and Humanities Department of History Kingship, lordship, and resistance: a study of power in eleventh- and twelfth-century Ireland Ronan Joseph Mulhaire Thesis submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy (2020) Declaration I declare that this thesis has not been submitted as an exercise for a degree at this or any other university and it is entirely my own work. I agree to deposit this thesis in the University’s open access institutional repository or allow the Library to do so on my behalf, subject to Irish Copyright Legislation and Trinity College Library conditions of use and acknowledgement. _______________________ RONAN MULHAIRE 2 Summary This thesis starts from the premise that historians of medieval Ireland have interpreted ‘power’ in a very narrow way. As chapter one illustrates, through a review of the historiography of Irish kingship, the discussion of ‘power’ has, hitherto, amounted to a conversation about the ways in which the power of the greater Irish kings grew over the course of the eleventh and twelfth centuries (at the expense of the lesser kings). Engaging with the rich corpus of international literature on power, as is done in chapter one, reveals the sheer complexity and vicissitudes of ‘power’ as a concept. Many writers and thinkers on the subject have identified resistance as a means through which to view power relations, and it is along these lines that the rest of the thesis runs. Chapters three and four are concerned with the subject of resistance; with regicide and revolt, respectively. Both mine the Irish annals. Quantitative research carried out strongly suggests that regicides were declining in Ireland between the battle of Clontarf and the arrival of the English a century and a half later. The number of individual regicides in six annal collections – Annals of Ulster, the Annals of Tigernach, the Annals of Inisfallen, Mac Carthaigh’s Book, the Annals of Loch Cé, and the Cottonian Annals were totaled and tabulated. Controls were used: homicides; instances of dearth, disease and supernatural occurrences; weather-related events; and non-obit ecclesiastical events (following Colmán Etchingham’s methodology in Viking raids on Irish church settlement in the ninth century). This apparent decline was then discussed in the context of the burgeoning international literature on the subject of violence in history. Connected was the position of non-royal lordship. It is commonly argued that the petty kings, over time, came to be downgraded to mere ‘lords’ (denoted by dux or toísech and the like). In theory, this might therefore account for the declining regicides – there are simply less kings to kill. 3 Chapter two, some of which also revolves around quantitative research based on the Irish annals, concludes that there is no sound evidential basis for this oft-propounded trope. This has been acknowledged, to varying degrees, by at least two other authors – Katharine Megan McGowan and Paul Mac Cotter. Nevertheless, issue is taken with some of their conclusions. Chapter two further argues that the reason we see an increase in references to non-royal lordships in the annals is because of changes taking place at the level of lordship, probably connected with a change in settlement patterns. It looks to analogous changes taking place elsewhere in Europe, particularly in France and Germany. This chapter also suggests that a better way of understanding the centralising processes of the late- tenth through to the late-twelfth centuries is offered by seeing Ireland’s high-kingship as evolving along imperial lines. There is some strong evidence to suggest that the most powerful overkings at this time were thinking about their power in terms of imperium, and this evidence is proffered in chapter two. Though revolt is a feature of life in pre-invasion Ireland, there has been little in the way of systematic study thereof. Chapter four seeks to redress this imbalance. It engages with the phenomenon of revolt at two levels – revolts against the rule of an individual king and what we might term ‘popular’ revolts. As regards the first level, much of the discussion revolves around revolts denoted in the annals by the verbal-noun impúd. It argues that the adoption of a new term, coupled with the decline in regicides over time suggests two things: that patterns of resistance were changing in the century and a half between Clontarf and the invasion, and that the ways in which resistance were being thought about was also evolving. As regards social antagonisms and the like, chapter four concludes that patterns of popular unrest in pre-invasion Ireland bore remarkable similarity to elsewhere in Europe in this period. This thesis concludes with a discussion of the ways in which kingship was legitimized in medieval Ireland. Any suggestions vis-à-vis avenues 4 for further research are dotted throughout the main body of the text, as and where relevant. 5 Contents ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS…8 CONVENTIONS…11 INTRODUCTION…12 CHAPTER 1: THE CONCEPT OF ‘POWER’ AND THE STUDY OF IRISH KINGSHIP…23 1. Power and the historiography of Irish kingship…23 2. The concept of power…34 2(a.) The dimensions of power…34 2(b.) The problem of ‘essential contestedness’ and pre- conceptions…39 2(c.) ‘Power’ applied…41 3. Power relations…46 3(a.) ‘Power over’ and ‘power to’…53 3(b.) Resistance…55 4. Authority…56 5. Conclusion…58 CHAPTER 2: KINGSHIPS AND LORDSHIPS IN PRE-INVASION IRELAND…60 1. The accepted convention…60 1(a.) The evidence of the annals…62 2. Lordship…70 2(a.) Varieties of lord…105 3. ‘Imperator Scotorum’…118 3(a.) The concept of ‘empire’ in continental Europe…120 3(b.) Insular conceptions of ‘empire’…123 3(c.) The tenth century…128 3(d.) The portrayal of Brian in the Cogad Gaedel re Gallaib…133 3(e.) Further evidence for the imperial idea…138 3(f.) Concluding remarks…143 4. Conclusions…145 CHAPTER 3: REGICIDE IN THE ELEVENTH AND TWELFTH CENTURIES…148 1. A right to resist in legal and advice texts?...149 2. Resistance and regicide in the saga literature…155 3. Regicide…161 3(a.) Methodology…167 3(b.) The data…172 3(c.) Causation…181 3(c.)(i.) The ‘Civilizing Process’…188 6 3(c.)(ii.) The Peace and Truce of God…196 3(c.)(iii.) Irish church reform…209 3(d.) The significance of this decline…212 4. Conclusions…214 CHAPTER 4: REVOLT AND DISSENT IN THE ELEVENTH AND TWELFTH CENTURIES…216 1. Terminology…216 2. Instances of impúd in the annals…221 2(a.) The Síl Muiredaig revolt of 1093…222 2(b.) Diarmait Ua Briain’s revolt, 1116…224 2(c.) A divided Munster…226 2(d.) Ua Conchobair’s troubles…228 2(e.) Conflict within the Uí Briain, 1153…231 2(f.) Divisions in Desmond and further conflict within the Uí Briain…233 2(g.) The revolt of the Ulaid, 1165…236 2(h.) Mac Murchada expelled overseas, 1166…238 2(i.) The English in Thomond, 1197…240 2(j.) The use of impúd in the Irish annals…241 2(j.)(i.) The act of ‘turning’ in French sources…244 2(j.)(ii.) Other ‘new’ terminology in the annals…249 3. Causation…252 3(a.) Popular revolt in medieval Ireland?...261 3(a.)(i.) Social tensions?...270 3(a.)(ii.) Conspiracy and assembly…277 3(a.)(iii.) The language of dissent…278 4. Conclusions…287 CONCLUSION…292 1. Legitimising kingship…292 2. Summary…305 APPENDIX 1: LORDSHIPS & KINGSHIPS…313 APPENDIX 2: REGICIDES…325 APPENDIX 3: HOMICIDES…344 APPENDIX 4: DEARTH, DISEASE, & THE SUPERNATURAL…381 APPENDIX 5: NON-OBIT ECCLESIASTICAL EVENTS…384 BIBLIOGRAPHY…401 7 Acknowledgements I wish firstly to acknowledge the funding I received as an Irish Research Council scholar (2015-18). I wish also to thank my supervisor, Prof. Seán Duffy. A better supervisor would be difficult to find. A chat and/or cup of coffee was typically the best cure for the doubts and anxieties that accompany projects like this. I am grateful for all the proof-readings, advice, suggestions and, by no means least, replies to ‘urgent emails’ sent at ungodly hours over the course of the last four years. Other academic debts have accrued over the course of this degree, too. I was privileged to attend Old Irish classes with Prof. Damian McManus. All of the staff of the medieval department have offered advice or assistance in some form or another – Dr. David Ditchburn, Prof. Terry Barry, Dr. Immo Warntjes. I wish to thank, in particular, Dr. Peter Crooks for his invitation to participate in the ‘Tyrannous Constructs’ workshop held in Trinity College in May 2016. Finally, though not a medievalist, I wish to thank Dr. Ciaran O’Neill who first piqued my interest in power theory and offered advice and reading suggestions long after I had finished his undergraduate module. It has been a pleasure getting to know all of my fellow postgraduate students over the last four years, but it would be remiss of me not to single out a few in particular for especial thanks: Lynn Kilgallon, John Tighe, Brendan Meighan and Eoghan Keane. A cup of tea and a moan really can cure most of a postgraduate students’ ills. Other friends, based in Dublin, provided a welcome distraction. Mike McNamara, Rob Shanley, Eoin McAuley and Dave Brown were all sources of encouragement and laughter over the course of the last four years (and more, in some cases). 8 Long before the IRC scholarship made city centre accommodation feasible, the Pierce family were kind enough to put me up out in Rathfarnham. The debt I owe to them – without whom, none of this would have been possible – is hard to put into words.