In 1204 King John ordered the Irish justiciar Meiler fitz Henry ‘to construct a strong castle’ in Dublin. The immediate purpose was to provide a ‘fit place for the custody of our treasure’, as well as ‘a suitable place for the governance and, if need be, the defence of the town’.1 In time Dublin castle became the centre of the government and administration of Ireland. Thus began what became known as ‘castle government’, the symbol of English rule in Ireland for the next 700 years. Through the years controversy has raged over the impact of this rule on Ireland. Nationalists have consistently condemned it and unionists have always supported it. In more recent times these divergent views are best represented by G. H. Orpen on the unionist side and Eoin Mac Neill on the nationalist.2 For Orpen the Norman invasion was the remedy for all Ireland’s ills, which were largely the result of failure to develop the institutions of government associated with civilization elsewhere in Europe. Mac Neill insisted that pre-Norman Ireland had developed petty states sufficiently advanced to provide the necessary basis for economic as well as civilized growth. More recently medieval historians have come to acknowledge that so far as law, government and administration are concerned, the English invaders brought to Ireland institutions which have lasted through the years and are still the basis of the systems in operation today. Politically there may have been bad results, though it is necessary to accept that Irish politics was largely influenced by the same kind of social and economic developments that affected Europe.
World History
