Introduction
Introduction
The Normans are one of my favourite peoples in history. Thus, it was only natural that I decided to do my first AAR on them. I had problems at first when I tried to look for a scenario that would be both interesting and unique, removed from the oft beaten to death scenarios already covered endlessly, no matter how willing people are to read them. With some research, I managed to find what I was looking for, an extremely interesting scenario with a great potential for a good storyline, set in a criminally overlooked medieval society, and a fascinating starting character.
Welcome to 'Across the Sundering Seas', the CK2 portion of my AAR following the adventures of Roger Mortimer, 1st Earl of March, and his heirs, as they attempt to unite the Norman barons of Ireland and Marcher lords of Wales into a rival Norman state to England, to save them from the doom and obscurity that awaited.
Chapter 0: Prologue
A Brief History of Norman Ireland and Wales
In the times between Henry VIII's formalisation of the territories held by Anglo-Norman lords outside England and William I's conquest itself, the lands at the fringes of rule from London, in Wales and Ireland, developed an intriguing, multifaceted society composed of peoples from all across the Angevin realm, coming together to be the shield and sword of their King. They were ruled by barons with the freedoms of a king, prospering on the lands they had conquered from the native rulers.
These marcher societies reached their peak between the end of the 13th Century and the early decades of the 14th Century, and were in the middle of a fascinating ethnogenesis, before they faced disaster and faded into obscurity.
Wales was brought into the Anglo-Norman orbit first. Norman Marcher lords pushed deep into the Welsh borderlands in William I’s reign, overwhelming the Welsh lords of Brycheinog (Brecon), Morgannwg (Glamorgan) and Gwent. A wholesale invasion of Deheubarth (South Wales) followed after the death of its prince, Rhys ap Tewdwr (Reese ap Tudor). The Welsh were put on the backfoot, losing control of the southern coast and the southeast, while being pressured and driven in on all their marchers.
The principalities of Wales prior to the Norman conquest.
The Anglo-Norman advance into Wales was not monodirectional though, and the Welsh managed to stage a recovery under Reese ap Tudor's grandson, Reese ap Gruffudd (Griffith). His accession in 1155 saw bloody back and forth campaigns against the Norman Marcher lords and other Welsh princes. The Normans were able to exploit such differences among their enemies to push ever deeper into Welsh territory. Any sign of Welsh recovery was met with royal intervention by King Henry II, turning even victories into defeats.
The Welsh princes finally were able to put their differences aside and unite in one large host in 1164, led by Reese and his former rival the Prince of Gwynedd, Owen ap Griffith. Henry II mounted yet another intervention and campaigned into Wales but was defeated by this united host and rain. The castles of the Marcher lords were the next to fall, and by 1170, Reese was in a dominant position, having taken many Marcher lords hostage. The death of Owen saw him being acknowledged as the leader of the Welsh princes.
With no second campaign forthcoming by Henry, the Marcher lords rightly suspected he had lost interest in squandering resources on Wales, having bigger problems in France. Losing greatly in the war with Reese, they began looking for other means of redress. An opportunity soon arrived.
In Ireland, dynastic squabbles had led to the King of Leinster Diarmait mac Murchada (Dermot MacMurrough), an ally of Henry II, being deposed by the High King of Ireland Ruaidri Ua Conchobair (Rory O’Connor). He sought refuge in England and petitioned Henry II to help him regain his throne, in return for swearing fealty to him. The King, seeing a chance to establish a foothold in Ireland, authorised his barons to assist Dermot.
Henry II permitting Dermot to levy forces among his vassals in return for his fealty.
Many rallied to his cause, seeing gain for themselves which Dermot was happy to provide, promising lordships to all those who helped him. The foremost among them were the Marcher lords who had been dispossessed or hurt by Reese's campaigns. They hoped a campaign in Ireland would redress their losses, and thus prepared their forces. Dermot requested Reese to allow his rivals to depart, something he was reluctant to do at first. He however allowed it upon seeing opportunity to consolidate his own gains and position in their absence.
Thus began the Norman invasion of Ireland, in 1169 and 1170, led by the battle-hardened Marcher lords and their Cambro-Norman soldiery. The Normans used surprise, their superiority in arms and sheer brutality to make early gains, overwhelming the Irish, capturing Leinster and punishing those who had refused to submit to Dermot with impunity.
The early Norman invasion of Ireland.
Dermot married his daughter Aife (Eva) to the foremost of his Norman backers, Richard Strongbow de Clare, and declared him heir to Leinster, while he himself deigned to become the High King of Ireland with Norman support. The Normans then collected their forces and marched on Dublin and Meath towards the north, taking the former with treachery while sacking and pilfering the latter. High King Rory was enraged and executed Dermot's son, one of his hostages.
One can suspect that this event led to a break between Dermot and his allies, as at first he returned from the front lines of the campaign, dismayed, before suddenly dying. Murder? Maybe. Regardless, Strongbow now claimed Leinster as his, as promised by Dermot. The Irish, who had by now gathered their forces under Rory, were outraged by this and struck back, pushing the Normans back to the coast.
The Marriage of Strongbow and Aoife (Daniel Maclise, 1854) following the Norman sack of Waterford.
A brutal war was engaged, locked in a stalemate as the Normans responded in kind to the Irish, when Henry II himself landed on the island, afraid of Strongbow setting up an independent Norman kingdom.
This is an interesting point to note, as it provides us with historical context for the goal of this AAR. Henry II would come to greatly suspect and fear the power of his Irish vassals, recognising the danger they posed if they decided to unify against him. The Hautevilles had shown just how resourceful and valiant Norman knights could be among those who could not respond to their tactics. A unified Norman kingdom on the borders of England would put English pre-eminence in the British Isles on a precarious position.
Compounding this problem for Henry, the knights and barons who had participated in the Irish invasion were not the most loyal. They had several grievances against of him, his refusal to follow up his failed campaign against Reese ap Griffith being but one of them. Henry had at first demanded all those who had gone to Ireland to return to England, failing which their lands and titles would be seized. Strongbow refused; he reminded Henry that they had gone to Ireland by his leave, and all their gains were held by them under his authority.
Henry responded with a voyage to Ireland, passing Wales, where he confirmed Reese in all his holdings and made peace with him, seeing him now as a useful check on the Marcher lords. Upon his arrival, his vassals reaffirmed their oaths of fealty and Henry allowed them to hold all the lands they had acquired as fiefs. He himself now assumed control of the invasion, arriving with a significant army. He handed control of it to his vassals, and departed after making further land grants.
While Henry's arrival had managed to create a fragile peace, war soon broke lose after his departure. He would attempt multiple times over his reign to rein in his vassals in Ireland and negotiate a peace with the Gaels. He negotiated the Treaty of Windsor with Rory, and when that collapsed due to Norman aggression, he sent his son John as Lord of Ireland to take control of his vassals and keep them in check. John, however, would fail spectacularly. When the Pope refused Henry's attempts of having John crowned as King of Ireland, Henry finally gave up and resigned himself to dealing with the urgent problems he faced in France.
Dublin, Waterford, and Wexford and their hinterlands were ruled as Crownlands.
The Anglo-Normans meanwhile continued their advance. They pushed deep and hard into Ireland, overwhelming the native kings and establishing their own lordships. The Irish fought and pushed back, sometimes severely denting the Norman advance, but most fell under the tide. One by one, every kingdom slowly either fell to Norman rule or became a vassal, and the Normans extended their authority from coast to coast. By 1250, most of Ireland had fell to the Normans.
The newly established lords now shifted their focus from conquest to consolidating and developing the empty but rich lands they had acquired. The Normans brought modernity with them, reforming many of Ireland's archaisms. Money was introduced, stone castles were built, and they set about implementing other practices to bring Ireland in with the rest of Europe, and increase the productivity of their virgin lands. Settlers were brought in from England and France, including Englishmen, Welshmen, Bretons, Gascons and others, all of whom intermingled to create a unique culture.
Under the rule of King John, who was determined to correct at least one of the mistakes of his youth, Ireland prospered. Royal charters were issued, protecting townspeople, traders and farmers. Colonisation was sponsored, logging was encouraged, and the new settlers established farmsteads as tenants of their lords, utilising techniques many times more efficient than the Irish used. Efficient land use practices were implemented along with the feudal system to collect the increased produce; harvests only multiplied, assisted by the Medieval Warm Period.
Food fuels growth, and sure enough, the population of the Irish fiefs grew by leaps and bounds. Urbanisation soon progressed rapidly. Walled boroughs were founded where previously none existed. Old decayed towns were modernised, growing massively. Flemish merchants, attracted by royal protection, established trade posts throughout the island, connecting the Norse-Gael towns of Dublin, Waterford, Wexford, Cork and Limerick with the countryside. These cities became bustling trade hubs, expanding rapidly under the new opportunities that abounded as well as the royal protection they now enjoyed. Flemings settled throughout the fiefs, bringing with them their own unique strand to the already flourishing embroidery that was Norman Ireland.
Norman Ireland at its peak.
The late 13th Century was a golden age for Norman Ireland. In 1297, the first Irish Parliament was called, marking a great achievement for the Irish landholders. In their minds, they had tamed, civilised and developed a savage land, bringing great wealth to the peasant settlers, townsmen and themselves. Ireland had progressed under their rule, their fiefs were among the richest in the Plantagenet realm. The new prosperity, needless to say, did nothing for the native Gaels who were reduced to the fringes of their own lands. This was soon to change, however.
The beginning of the 14th Century saw renewed attacks by the Irish chiefs, who had now started raiding and using guerrilla tactics to counter the superior Norman knights on the field. Normally, the Hiberno-Normans were able to beat them back assisted by the Crown, but this time no such help was forthcoming, with Edward I fully immersed in his Welsh and Scottish affairs.
There had also been a general lack of direction under Henry III and his son, their attention and energies fully committed to facing the baronial revolts in England and attacks on Gascony in France. The Hiberno-Normans, left to fend for their own, fared poorly but still were able to beat back the resurgent Gaels, before facing a bigger threat.
Edward Bruce invaded Ireland seeing the tenuous situation there, rallying the Gaelic lords to his banners. He raided and pillaged the fiefs the Hiberno-Normans had so carefully built, burning down crops and causing great destruction to the newly built heavily settled cities, Dublin chief among them. In the resultant chaos, many Gaelic lords were able to regain their lands back and the Normans were further pushed back into the East.
While Edward was ultimately defeated, the Norman lords and their fiefs had been devastated by war. Famine struck, exacerbated by the general Great European Famine of 1315-17, preventing imports of grain.
The Black Plague was the final nail in the coffin, and the Norman lordships never recovered. Surrounded now by Gaelic chieftains, abandoned by a Crown which was busy stretching its limited resources to war with France, the Hiberno-Normans and the English settlers began embracing Gaelic culture to protect themselves from further aggression. They eschewed the Crown and started adopting native languages, customs and traditions, becoming Gaelicised.
Many in England lamented that the settlers were now “more Irish than the Irish themselves”. New laws were enacted to control the population and prevent them from going over to the Irish. They proved ineffectual, and by the 16th Century, many of the Hiberno-Normans were unrecognisable from the Gaels, while royal authority had shrunk down to just the Pale.
Ireland by 1450. The remaining Norman lords were more Gaelic at this point.
Meanwhile in Wales, even as the Norman conquests proceeded in Ireland, Reese ap Griffith, the Lord Rhys, as he was later honoured, had managed to reconquer nearly all of South Wales. He managed to use his persona and stature to win the allegiance and loyalty of the Welsh princes; those who he could not win over using diplomacy, he used arms. By 1190, he was virtually Prince of all Wales, though he never claimed the title.
He had made peace with Henry II and had become his ally, travelling with him several times and lending him support in conflicts. He pioneered the adoption of Norman customs and traditions into his court, initiated construction of stone castles in the Norman style, and worked to unite Wales. However, squabbles between his sons meant that following his death, South Wales lost its ascendancy, being reinvaded by Normans who recaptured many of the lands and castles they had lost to Reese.
Ruins of Carreg Cennen, one of many castles built by the Lord Rhys.
His death however did not mark the end of the new Normanised Wales he had created, united by a single prince. Gwynedd now rose to pre-eminence amongst the Welsh princes, but they carried on many of the practices and customs Reese had started. They continued achieving dominance over the remaining princes, becoming their representative to the English Crown. They adopted Norman customs with a vigour and strove to establish Wales as a power in European affairs.
Dolwyddelan Castle, built by Lewellyn the Great near his place of birth.
Lewellyn the Great, foremost among them, earned respect in both France and England for his prowess. He enjoyed a healthy correspondence with the Pope and was commended for making his trueborn son by Princess Joan, daughter of King John, his heir and not his eldest, bastard or not, as had been ancient Welsh custom. He encouraged the intermarriage of Welsh and Marcher lords, hoping to win them over. Castle construction increased under his reign as did the gradual unification of Wales.
Gwyneddian ascendancy would however prove ephemeral. The ties that had virtually made Lewellyn Prince of all Wales were not institutionalised but personal, and the conflict among his sons prevented them from reclaiming what they could have as the other princes broke free from Gwynedd's grasp.
His grandson Lewellyn ap Griffith was able to reclaim much of what his grandfather had ruled, but the conflict he created in doing this allowed Edward I to establish himself in Wales, by exploiting differences amongst the Welsh, to an extent that no English king previously had been able to; thus was Lewellyn named The Last.
The Death of Lewellyn the Last.
Within some forty years of the death of Lewellyn the Great, at one of the peaks of Welsh influence and power, Welsh independence was utterly and thoroughly crushed, never to recover. Lewellyn the Last’s severed head was paraded through the streets of London and crowned in a mockery of the prophecy that one day a Welsh prince would be crowned in London. It was subsequently mounted on the Tower of London.
His brother David survived him by only a few months before being captured. He was hung, drawn and quartered, the first person of prominence to suffer that punishment. His sons were imprisoned for life, dying there, while his daughters were sent to priories. Thus ended the House of Gwynedd.
The Marcher lords enjoyed an ascendancy following Edward’s conquest. These Welsh barons themselves are worthy of particular attention. Most were only minor nobles in William the Conqueror’s service who forged their own dynasties with strength and cold steel, driving out ancient, storied Welsh houses as they mounted their own banners on their manors. Cold, brutal and warlike even by Norman standards, they perennially fought savage, bloody wars with their ancestral enemies, until they had finally crushed them.
The Marcher lords enjoyed a comprehensive range of powers due to the necessities of war, liberties only matched in the Plantagenet realm by their Irish counterparts. They could build their own castles, appoint their own sheriffs, designate boroughs and adjudicate on nearly all matters except high treason, issuing their own punishments, even to the highborn. They made full use of these powers following Edward’s conquest to consolidate their newly acquired lands. New castles were built, space provided for the colonists Edward I sent, and the Welsh were evicted. Bretons, who had been previously trusted by the House of Normandy to rule over their Cornish and Welsh subjects, were again brought in as reliable administrators and lawmen.
This period saw a renaissance of the culture which had developed in the first Welsh earldoms. Pembroke, Glamorgan and others were at the forefront of the new society developing in Wales, their citizens claiming descent from the first Flemish, English, Norman and Breton colonists who had come with their lords in the 11th Century, even as new colonists immigrated into Gwynedd and Powys.
The divisions of Wales following Edward's conquest.
The Marcher lords themselves soon reached the peak of their powers. Edward I put increasing trust and privileges on them, enfeoffing them with the Welsh lands he had conquered with their support and granting them royal leave to consolidate and develop them, even as he set about doing the same. Thus enriched, they used their newfound influence to rise to prominence and feed their undying ambitions. They soon did so, as many acquired positions in the royal court.
First among them was Roger Mortimer himself. He arose to a position no baron in England ever had before, becoming King in all but name. His downfall was swift and hard just as his rise had been, dying with him was his compatriots’ short-lived ascendancy. Edward III, seeing the threat they posed to his royal person, took measures to curb their influence and bring them under the control of the Crown, measures which were expanded upon by his successors. As English energy, stretched thin by war and Plague, was diverted to the war with France, the Marcher lords and their lordships suffered and declined.
One of the many paintings showing the arrest of Roger Mortimer and Queen Isabella by a young Edward III and companions.
Thus, we have two extremely interesting societies containing giddying amounts of potential and possibility which both failed to realise and soon faded to nothing. The Marcher lordships and the Irish lordships were at their peak only a few decades removed from each other. Could it have been possible for them to marry their destinies at the peak of their powers? Was there a chance of uniting these numerous rival fiefdoms divided by the sea into the kingdom Henry II had feared? One man came close. Lord of Wigmore and Trim, Earl of March, Lord Justiciar of Wales and Ireland, lover of the Queen and the man who was almost King, Roger Mortimer, chief amongst the Irish and Welsh lords of his time, a man whose ambitions knew no bounds until he was crushed under their weight. What if his ambitions made him look West, to a more direct route to be King? That is the possibility we shall explore.
The Arms of the House of Mortimer. Get used to seeing them a lot!
The Normans are one of my favourite peoples in history. Thus, it was only natural that I decided to do my first AAR on them. I had problems at first when I tried to look for a scenario that would be both interesting and unique, removed from the oft beaten to death scenarios already covered endlessly, no matter how willing people are to read them. With some research, I managed to find what I was looking for, an extremely interesting scenario with a great potential for a good storyline, set in a criminally overlooked medieval society, and a fascinating starting character.
Welcome to 'Across the Sundering Seas', the CK2 portion of my AAR following the adventures of Roger Mortimer, 1st Earl of March, and his heirs, as they attempt to unite the Norman barons of Ireland and Marcher lords of Wales into a rival Norman state to England, to save them from the doom and obscurity that awaited.
Chapter 0: Prologue
A Brief History of Norman Ireland and Wales
In the times between Henry VIII's formalisation of the territories held by Anglo-Norman lords outside England and William I's conquest itself, the lands at the fringes of rule from London, in Wales and Ireland, developed an intriguing, multifaceted society composed of peoples from all across the Angevin realm, coming together to be the shield and sword of their King. They were ruled by barons with the freedoms of a king, prospering on the lands they had conquered from the native rulers.
These marcher societies reached their peak between the end of the 13th Century and the early decades of the 14th Century, and were in the middle of a fascinating ethnogenesis, before they faced disaster and faded into obscurity.
Wales was brought into the Anglo-Norman orbit first. Norman Marcher lords pushed deep into the Welsh borderlands in William I’s reign, overwhelming the Welsh lords of Brycheinog (Brecon), Morgannwg (Glamorgan) and Gwent. A wholesale invasion of Deheubarth (South Wales) followed after the death of its prince, Rhys ap Tewdwr (Reese ap Tudor). The Welsh were put on the backfoot, losing control of the southern coast and the southeast, while being pressured and driven in on all their marchers.
The principalities of Wales prior to the Norman conquest.
The Anglo-Norman advance into Wales was not monodirectional though, and the Welsh managed to stage a recovery under Reese ap Tudor's grandson, Reese ap Gruffudd (Griffith). His accession in 1155 saw bloody back and forth campaigns against the Norman Marcher lords and other Welsh princes. The Normans were able to exploit such differences among their enemies to push ever deeper into Welsh territory. Any sign of Welsh recovery was met with royal intervention by King Henry II, turning even victories into defeats.
The Welsh princes finally were able to put their differences aside and unite in one large host in 1164, led by Reese and his former rival the Prince of Gwynedd, Owen ap Griffith. Henry II mounted yet another intervention and campaigned into Wales but was defeated by this united host and rain. The castles of the Marcher lords were the next to fall, and by 1170, Reese was in a dominant position, having taken many Marcher lords hostage. The death of Owen saw him being acknowledged as the leader of the Welsh princes.
With no second campaign forthcoming by Henry, the Marcher lords rightly suspected he had lost interest in squandering resources on Wales, having bigger problems in France. Losing greatly in the war with Reese, they began looking for other means of redress. An opportunity soon arrived.
In Ireland, dynastic squabbles had led to the King of Leinster Diarmait mac Murchada (Dermot MacMurrough), an ally of Henry II, being deposed by the High King of Ireland Ruaidri Ua Conchobair (Rory O’Connor). He sought refuge in England and petitioned Henry II to help him regain his throne, in return for swearing fealty to him. The King, seeing a chance to establish a foothold in Ireland, authorised his barons to assist Dermot.
Henry II permitting Dermot to levy forces among his vassals in return for his fealty.
Many rallied to his cause, seeing gain for themselves which Dermot was happy to provide, promising lordships to all those who helped him. The foremost among them were the Marcher lords who had been dispossessed or hurt by Reese's campaigns. They hoped a campaign in Ireland would redress their losses, and thus prepared their forces. Dermot requested Reese to allow his rivals to depart, something he was reluctant to do at first. He however allowed it upon seeing opportunity to consolidate his own gains and position in their absence.
Thus began the Norman invasion of Ireland, in 1169 and 1170, led by the battle-hardened Marcher lords and their Cambro-Norman soldiery. The Normans used surprise, their superiority in arms and sheer brutality to make early gains, overwhelming the Irish, capturing Leinster and punishing those who had refused to submit to Dermot with impunity.
The early Norman invasion of Ireland.
Dermot married his daughter Aife (Eva) to the foremost of his Norman backers, Richard Strongbow de Clare, and declared him heir to Leinster, while he himself deigned to become the High King of Ireland with Norman support. The Normans then collected their forces and marched on Dublin and Meath towards the north, taking the former with treachery while sacking and pilfering the latter. High King Rory was enraged and executed Dermot's son, one of his hostages.
One can suspect that this event led to a break between Dermot and his allies, as at first he returned from the front lines of the campaign, dismayed, before suddenly dying. Murder? Maybe. Regardless, Strongbow now claimed Leinster as his, as promised by Dermot. The Irish, who had by now gathered their forces under Rory, were outraged by this and struck back, pushing the Normans back to the coast.
The Marriage of Strongbow and Aoife (Daniel Maclise, 1854) following the Norman sack of Waterford.
A brutal war was engaged, locked in a stalemate as the Normans responded in kind to the Irish, when Henry II himself landed on the island, afraid of Strongbow setting up an independent Norman kingdom.
This is an interesting point to note, as it provides us with historical context for the goal of this AAR. Henry II would come to greatly suspect and fear the power of his Irish vassals, recognising the danger they posed if they decided to unify against him. The Hautevilles had shown just how resourceful and valiant Norman knights could be among those who could not respond to their tactics. A unified Norman kingdom on the borders of England would put English pre-eminence in the British Isles on a precarious position.
Compounding this problem for Henry, the knights and barons who had participated in the Irish invasion were not the most loyal. They had several grievances against of him, his refusal to follow up his failed campaign against Reese ap Griffith being but one of them. Henry had at first demanded all those who had gone to Ireland to return to England, failing which their lands and titles would be seized. Strongbow refused; he reminded Henry that they had gone to Ireland by his leave, and all their gains were held by them under his authority.
Henry responded with a voyage to Ireland, passing Wales, where he confirmed Reese in all his holdings and made peace with him, seeing him now as a useful check on the Marcher lords. Upon his arrival, his vassals reaffirmed their oaths of fealty and Henry allowed them to hold all the lands they had acquired as fiefs. He himself now assumed control of the invasion, arriving with a significant army. He handed control of it to his vassals, and departed after making further land grants.
While Henry's arrival had managed to create a fragile peace, war soon broke lose after his departure. He would attempt multiple times over his reign to rein in his vassals in Ireland and negotiate a peace with the Gaels. He negotiated the Treaty of Windsor with Rory, and when that collapsed due to Norman aggression, he sent his son John as Lord of Ireland to take control of his vassals and keep them in check. John, however, would fail spectacularly. When the Pope refused Henry's attempts of having John crowned as King of Ireland, Henry finally gave up and resigned himself to dealing with the urgent problems he faced in France.
Dublin, Waterford, and Wexford and their hinterlands were ruled as Crownlands.
The Anglo-Normans meanwhile continued their advance. They pushed deep and hard into Ireland, overwhelming the native kings and establishing their own lordships. The Irish fought and pushed back, sometimes severely denting the Norman advance, but most fell under the tide. One by one, every kingdom slowly either fell to Norman rule or became a vassal, and the Normans extended their authority from coast to coast. By 1250, most of Ireland had fell to the Normans.
The newly established lords now shifted their focus from conquest to consolidating and developing the empty but rich lands they had acquired. The Normans brought modernity with them, reforming many of Ireland's archaisms. Money was introduced, stone castles were built, and they set about implementing other practices to bring Ireland in with the rest of Europe, and increase the productivity of their virgin lands. Settlers were brought in from England and France, including Englishmen, Welshmen, Bretons, Gascons and others, all of whom intermingled to create a unique culture.
Under the rule of King John, who was determined to correct at least one of the mistakes of his youth, Ireland prospered. Royal charters were issued, protecting townspeople, traders and farmers. Colonisation was sponsored, logging was encouraged, and the new settlers established farmsteads as tenants of their lords, utilising techniques many times more efficient than the Irish used. Efficient land use practices were implemented along with the feudal system to collect the increased produce; harvests only multiplied, assisted by the Medieval Warm Period.
Food fuels growth, and sure enough, the population of the Irish fiefs grew by leaps and bounds. Urbanisation soon progressed rapidly. Walled boroughs were founded where previously none existed. Old decayed towns were modernised, growing massively. Flemish merchants, attracted by royal protection, established trade posts throughout the island, connecting the Norse-Gael towns of Dublin, Waterford, Wexford, Cork and Limerick with the countryside. These cities became bustling trade hubs, expanding rapidly under the new opportunities that abounded as well as the royal protection they now enjoyed. Flemings settled throughout the fiefs, bringing with them their own unique strand to the already flourishing embroidery that was Norman Ireland.
Norman Ireland at its peak.
The late 13th Century was a golden age for Norman Ireland. In 1297, the first Irish Parliament was called, marking a great achievement for the Irish landholders. In their minds, they had tamed, civilised and developed a savage land, bringing great wealth to the peasant settlers, townsmen and themselves. Ireland had progressed under their rule, their fiefs were among the richest in the Plantagenet realm. The new prosperity, needless to say, did nothing for the native Gaels who were reduced to the fringes of their own lands. This was soon to change, however.
The beginning of the 14th Century saw renewed attacks by the Irish chiefs, who had now started raiding and using guerrilla tactics to counter the superior Norman knights on the field. Normally, the Hiberno-Normans were able to beat them back assisted by the Crown, but this time no such help was forthcoming, with Edward I fully immersed in his Welsh and Scottish affairs.
There had also been a general lack of direction under Henry III and his son, their attention and energies fully committed to facing the baronial revolts in England and attacks on Gascony in France. The Hiberno-Normans, left to fend for their own, fared poorly but still were able to beat back the resurgent Gaels, before facing a bigger threat.
Edward Bruce invaded Ireland seeing the tenuous situation there, rallying the Gaelic lords to his banners. He raided and pillaged the fiefs the Hiberno-Normans had so carefully built, burning down crops and causing great destruction to the newly built heavily settled cities, Dublin chief among them. In the resultant chaos, many Gaelic lords were able to regain their lands back and the Normans were further pushed back into the East.
While Edward was ultimately defeated, the Norman lords and their fiefs had been devastated by war. Famine struck, exacerbated by the general Great European Famine of 1315-17, preventing imports of grain.
The Black Plague was the final nail in the coffin, and the Norman lordships never recovered. Surrounded now by Gaelic chieftains, abandoned by a Crown which was busy stretching its limited resources to war with France, the Hiberno-Normans and the English settlers began embracing Gaelic culture to protect themselves from further aggression. They eschewed the Crown and started adopting native languages, customs and traditions, becoming Gaelicised.
Many in England lamented that the settlers were now “more Irish than the Irish themselves”. New laws were enacted to control the population and prevent them from going over to the Irish. They proved ineffectual, and by the 16th Century, many of the Hiberno-Normans were unrecognisable from the Gaels, while royal authority had shrunk down to just the Pale.
Ireland by 1450. The remaining Norman lords were more Gaelic at this point.
He had made peace with Henry II and had become his ally, travelling with him several times and lending him support in conflicts. He pioneered the adoption of Norman customs and traditions into his court, initiated construction of stone castles in the Norman style, and worked to unite Wales. However, squabbles between his sons meant that following his death, South Wales lost its ascendancy, being reinvaded by Normans who recaptured many of the lands and castles they had lost to Reese.
Ruins of Carreg Cennen, one of many castles built by the Lord Rhys.
His death however did not mark the end of the new Normanised Wales he had created, united by a single prince. Gwynedd now rose to pre-eminence amongst the Welsh princes, but they carried on many of the practices and customs Reese had started. They continued achieving dominance over the remaining princes, becoming their representative to the English Crown. They adopted Norman customs with a vigour and strove to establish Wales as a power in European affairs.
Dolwyddelan Castle, built by Lewellyn the Great near his place of birth.
Lewellyn the Great, foremost among them, earned respect in both France and England for his prowess. He enjoyed a healthy correspondence with the Pope and was commended for making his trueborn son by Princess Joan, daughter of King John, his heir and not his eldest, bastard or not, as had been ancient Welsh custom. He encouraged the intermarriage of Welsh and Marcher lords, hoping to win them over. Castle construction increased under his reign as did the gradual unification of Wales.
Gwyneddian ascendancy would however prove ephemeral. The ties that had virtually made Lewellyn Prince of all Wales were not institutionalised but personal, and the conflict among his sons prevented them from reclaiming what they could have as the other princes broke free from Gwynedd's grasp.
His grandson Lewellyn ap Griffith was able to reclaim much of what his grandfather had ruled, but the conflict he created in doing this allowed Edward I to establish himself in Wales, by exploiting differences amongst the Welsh, to an extent that no English king previously had been able to; thus was Lewellyn named The Last.
The Death of Lewellyn the Last.
Within some forty years of the death of Lewellyn the Great, at one of the peaks of Welsh influence and power, Welsh independence was utterly and thoroughly crushed, never to recover. Lewellyn the Last’s severed head was paraded through the streets of London and crowned in a mockery of the prophecy that one day a Welsh prince would be crowned in London. It was subsequently mounted on the Tower of London.
His brother David survived him by only a few months before being captured. He was hung, drawn and quartered, the first person of prominence to suffer that punishment. His sons were imprisoned for life, dying there, while his daughters were sent to priories. Thus ended the House of Gwynedd.
The Marcher lords enjoyed an ascendancy following Edward’s conquest. These Welsh barons themselves are worthy of particular attention. Most were only minor nobles in William the Conqueror’s service who forged their own dynasties with strength and cold steel, driving out ancient, storied Welsh houses as they mounted their own banners on their manors. Cold, brutal and warlike even by Norman standards, they perennially fought savage, bloody wars with their ancestral enemies, until they had finally crushed them.
The Marcher lords enjoyed a comprehensive range of powers due to the necessities of war, liberties only matched in the Plantagenet realm by their Irish counterparts. They could build their own castles, appoint their own sheriffs, designate boroughs and adjudicate on nearly all matters except high treason, issuing their own punishments, even to the highborn. They made full use of these powers following Edward’s conquest to consolidate their newly acquired lands. New castles were built, space provided for the colonists Edward I sent, and the Welsh were evicted. Bretons, who had been previously trusted by the House of Normandy to rule over their Cornish and Welsh subjects, were again brought in as reliable administrators and lawmen.
This period saw a renaissance of the culture which had developed in the first Welsh earldoms. Pembroke, Glamorgan and others were at the forefront of the new society developing in Wales, their citizens claiming descent from the first Flemish, English, Norman and Breton colonists who had come with their lords in the 11th Century, even as new colonists immigrated into Gwynedd and Powys.
The divisions of Wales following Edward's conquest.
The Marcher lords themselves soon reached the peak of their powers. Edward I put increasing trust and privileges on them, enfeoffing them with the Welsh lands he had conquered with their support and granting them royal leave to consolidate and develop them, even as he set about doing the same. Thus enriched, they used their newfound influence to rise to prominence and feed their undying ambitions. They soon did so, as many acquired positions in the royal court.
First among them was Roger Mortimer himself. He arose to a position no baron in England ever had before, becoming King in all but name. His downfall was swift and hard just as his rise had been, dying with him was his compatriots’ short-lived ascendancy. Edward III, seeing the threat they posed to his royal person, took measures to curb their influence and bring them under the control of the Crown, measures which were expanded upon by his successors. As English energy, stretched thin by war and Plague, was diverted to the war with France, the Marcher lords and their lordships suffered and declined.
One of the many paintings showing the arrest of Roger Mortimer and Queen Isabella by a young Edward III and companions.
Thus, we have two extremely interesting societies containing giddying amounts of potential and possibility which both failed to realise and soon faded to nothing. The Marcher lordships and the Irish lordships were at their peak only a few decades removed from each other. Could it have been possible for them to marry their destinies at the peak of their powers? Was there a chance of uniting these numerous rival fiefdoms divided by the sea into the kingdom Henry II had feared? One man came close. Lord of Wigmore and Trim, Earl of March, Lord Justiciar of Wales and Ireland, lover of the Queen and the man who was almost King, Roger Mortimer, chief amongst the Irish and Welsh lords of his time, a man whose ambitions knew no bounds until he was crushed under their weight. What if his ambitions made him look West, to a more direct route to be King? That is the possibility we shall explore.
The Arms of the House of Mortimer. Get used to seeing them a lot!
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