There can be little doubt that the establishment of the new English lordships in Ireland saw a massive building programme of castles. Clearly the two things were connected, but exactly how is less obvious. It has often been assumed that castle building was part of the actual winning of the land, which is seen as a single act of military aggression (‘conquest’), and the castles as inherently military in conception. One of the difficulties of writing about this period has been to avoid the two words ‘conquest’ and ‘colonisation’. These are words loaded with nine-teenth-century overtones, especially in the context of Ireland, which beg questions about the nature of the English lordship and the reaction of Irish kings and people to it.
These are words and ideas which go back a long way: they represent a view which starts with Giraldus Cambrensis, who wrote his account of the period very much as though it were a coherent conquest, to be approved of and extended. In chapter 38 of his Expugnatio Hibernica, Giraldus gives his prescription for ‘how the Irish people are to be conquered’ (Scott and Martin, 1978). He calls for special preparations for battle, emphasising archers and light cavalry, and also for castles to be built according to a strategic plan of advance:
For it is far, far better to link together slowly at first castles set in suitable places and proceed to build them gradually, than to build many far apart in all sorts of places, unable to help each other in a systematic way or in times of necessity.
Castles would then provide one of the means of conquest and of holding down a rebellious native population.
In this view Giraldus has been generally followed: in his vision of the strategic plan of conquest, in the place of castles in it, and in the role of castles as protection against internal rebellion. It is, however, worth noting that his anonymous contemporary who composed the chanson de geste about the English in Ireland, the so-called Song of Dermot and the Earl, did not share his views. He mentions castles very rarely, nor does he give a picture of hostility between Irish and English as such; his fighting is between lords of different areas, irrespective of their place of birth, and, indeed, Diarmaid of Leinster is one of his heroes. Nor is Giraldus elsewhere a particularly sympathetic or reliable observer of the Irish scene. We should not follow his prescription blindly. We must look at castles to ask ourselves whether there is evidence from them of a strategic plan for a single conquest of the island or whether the fighting which accompanied the seizure of land (if it happened) was long-drawn-out, evidence of widespread resistance, or whether we should think of a war to displace one ruling aristocracy with another.
The first thing to strike us is the military weakness of the majority of the sites, compared to their Anglo-French contemporaries. The earthwork castle, in particular the motte and bailey, while not actually obsolete in England and France, was certainly old-fashioned. It belonged essentially to the world of before 1150, yet we find it being used as the normal castle form in Ireland, even for castles on demesne manors of major magnates. Of the major stone castles, we have seen that there were serious military weaknesses in a number. Although Carlingford, Dunamase (in its second English phase) and the royal castles at Dublin and Limerick were strong, the rest were not. We cannot attribute this to being the reaction of the lords to Irish incompetence in siege warfare. Whether the Irish were good at it or not in the late twelfth century, there was nothing to say that they could not learn. The lords facing the Welsh, who had a similar social structure, certainly never underestimated their siege abilities. It would have been madness for the lords in Ireland simply to assume that any Irish weakness would continue. We must conclude that the magnates often felt quite confident of their future security.
If many of the individual castles show military weakness, there is little sign of an overall strategic pattern or plan. The sort of distribution that Giraldus called for is simply not visible in the record. The military aspect of castles is seen mainly in their proliferation along the borders of certain lordships. This cannot be the result of strategic planning and conquest, but follows the stabilising of the lordships; it happens at the end of the process, not during it. Castles here represent a shield which some lordships needed, but not others, depending on the situation outside their borders.
Behind the shield, Giraldus called for castles to be built, not only to a strategic plan of conquest, but also to hold down the countryside in the face of likely rebellion, or resistance from the bulk of the Irish population. We should see blanket coverage of a lordship with castles, acting together as Giraldus called for. This is most obviously breached in the lordships of eastern Munster, where either the lordships were very weak or else they saw little need for widespread defences. In the lordships of the east of Ireland, the areas behind their border shields fail to show the density of castellation we might expect. This is particularly so of Leinster, where we can actually see who built the castles. If they really faced the likelihood of widespread rebellion, it is difficult to see why the holders of less than half a knight’s fee should have thought themselves immune. The Irish may have been snobs, but hardly to the extent of not attacking lesser tenants. Nor can we see the systematic building of castles at points which would be considered as strategic pressure points. In particular, the idea that we might see the lines of advance across a lordship in the distribution of chains of castles does not correspond to the evidence.
The two campaigns of the Justiciars between 1210 and 1216 are instructive here. Along the middle Shannon and south-western Meath, it was a question of the restoration or reinforcement of English control of the area in the face of attacks from disaffected Irish lords excluded from power by their kinsmen. In cooperation with the existing Irish lords, on either side of the Shannon, the Justiciar suppressed the ‘rebellion’ and asserted his control with the construction or restoration of castles. In 1212, the aggressive campaign to move into southern Ulster, spearheaded by the building of Clones castle, was a failure. The local Irish forces combined against the English and destroyed the castle. Constructing a castle alone would not ensure the establishing of power in an area.
A castle might serve to hold land already won, but that would be all. The land was won by battle, by a coup de main, or even by agreement. Opposition to the establishment of English lordships came from the Irish kings and aristocrats who had held the land before. The pattern of their castles does not indicate that there was any real fear of rebellion from the bulk of the Irish population in an area after the initial seizure of the land and displacement of the former lords. When there was a military threat to the English regime, it came from forces outside their lordship, as seen by the measures to reinforce the borders of Meath, Oriel and Ulster. The castles which were built to be militarily strong are equally instructive. Dunamase and Carlingford were built by English lords who were hoping to intrude into the established ranks of their contemporaries: William Marshal, inheritor of Leinster through his wife and royal patronage, and Hugh II de Lacy, Hugh I’s younger son. Dublin and Limerick were the work of King John, part of his attempt to assert royal power in Ireland beyond the weak position established by his father. All may have been directed more at their fellow English than at Irish lords.
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