Traditionally, Ireland’s Viking Age is held to have ended with Brian Boru’s victory at the battle of Clontarf in 1014. Brian was already 50 years old when he became king of Dal Cais in Munster after his brother was murdered in 976. As a younger son Brian had not expected ever to rule, let alone become Ireland’s most famous high king, but he soon showed that he had a real talent for war when he defeated the Limerick Vikings in 977. The following year Brian defeated and killed his brother’s murderer, Mael Muad, the overking of Munster. In 984 Brian began to extend his power outside Munster by imposing tributary status on the kingdom of Osraige in Leinster. He campaigned almost annually until in 997 he forced the Southern Ui Neill high king Mael Sechnaill to recognise him as overlord of all of the southern half of Ireland. There was the briefest of peaces before Brian, his sights now set on the high kingship itself, went back onto the offensive against Mael Sechnaill. Finally defeated in 1002, Mael Sechnaill resigned his title in favour of Brian and accepted him as overlord: it was the first time anyone other than an Ui Neill had been high king. Two more years of campaigning and every kingdom in Ireland had become tributary to Brian, hence his nickname boraime, ‘of the tributes’.
Brian’s achievement was a considerable one but he did not in any meaningful sense unite Ireland; outside his own kingdom of Dal Cais, he exercised authority indirectly, through his tributary kings, and he created no national institutions of government. The obedience of Brian’s tributaries was not assured and he faced, and put down, several rebellions. The most serious of these began in 1013 when Leinster allied with the Dublin Vikings against Brian and called in an army of Vikings from Orkney and the Isle of Man. It was this alliance that Brian’s army met and defeated at Clontarf, now a suburb of Dublin. The octogenarian king was too frail to take any part in the fighting, but a Viking who had fought his way through the lines killed him at the moment of victory. Lacking any institutional foundations, Brian’s hard-won hegemony immediately collapsed. Mael Sechnaill recovered the high kingship but the Ui Neill stranglehold on the title had been broken. Competition for the high kingship became intense, spurring developments in government as rival overkings sought to exercise direct rule throughout their dominions. The big losers were the ordinary kings who lost their royal status. The title n tuathe went out of use and was replaced by taoiseach, meaning chief. Kings also adopted the theocratic principle of divine ordination common to other European monarchies, so that it was no longer necessary for the king to be, or pretend to be, of the same kin as his subjects. A conquered king could now be deposed and his lands annexed by the victor. In the process kingship became more territorial in nature, but before a national kingship could develop Ireland was invaded by the Anglo-Normans.
In 1155, at the instigation of the archbishop of Canterbury, Pope Adrian IV (the only English pope) issued the bull Laudabiliter, authorising England’s new king Henry II to conquer Ireland in the interests of reforming the church there and granting him the title Lord of Ireland. The Irish church had been slow to recover from the ravages of the Vikings: the priesthood had become hereditary, many bishops and abbots were laymen and monks lived openly with their concubines. Native kings such as Muirchertach Ua Briain of Munster had already taken up the task of bringing the Irish church into line with Roman Catholic practices, but their progress had been limited. One of the successes of the reformers was the setting up of a regular diocesan structure for the country. In the process, the archbishop of Armagh was given primacy over the Irish church (in 1152), so ending the archbishopric of Canterbury’s long-standing rights to appoint bishops to the Ostman towns. Thus Laudabiliter was part of Canterbury’s campaign to recover its lost influence. In today’s terms, the papal commission was the equivalent of a United Nations resolution authorising the use of force, but Henry was not interested; he already ruled lands stretching from the Scottish border to the Pyrenees and there was nothing in Ireland worth fighting over. The bull lay forgotten about until one of Henry’s own vassals, Richard FitzGilbert, popularly known as Strongbow, won control of Leinster in 1171. This created a potential threat that Henry understood only too well. Henry held his French lands as a vassal of the king of France, but with the resources of the kingdom of England at his command he could defy his theoretical overlord whenever it suited him.
World History
