Page 148 - Demo

148 Stephen Dunford: The Journey of The IrIsh
nection with the murder of Thomas á Becket, Archbishop of Canterbury, a crime Henry inspired, and one for which he later received Papal absolution.
Before departing, however, titling himself ‘Lord of Ireland,’ Henry put in place damning arrangements, which clearly demonstrated to the Irish princes who had submitted to him, how little his vows of protection meant.
The whole of Ireland, with the exception of Dublin and the main maritime towns, was carved up and granted to ten Norman families. Normans now sat where Irish kings had pre- ceded them. Strongbow got Leinster-this would have been equivalent to the southern half of the modern province; Hugh de Lacy was granted the province of Meath-roughly equivalent to the northern half of modern Leinster, he also got the governorship of Dublin; the city of Dublin was given to the occupation of the merchants of Bristol; Ulster, which encompassed the modern counties of Antrim, Down and northern Derry, from which Henry had not received submission, he purported to give to John de Courcy. Later he gave Connacht, from which he also had not received submission to Willian de Burgh, with several other promi- nent families receiving other large tracts, including the Geraldines or Fitzgeralds, Butlers, Prendergasts, Carews, Fitzstephens, Fitzmaurices, De Clares, to be divided amongst their supporters. These grants were often given on the basis that the land was owned by those families who could hold it: so called ‘speculative grants.’ There is an old tradition in Ireland which says that wherever a boy is referred to as garsún (French garcon) there the Normans had a settlement, complete with stout castle, garrison, sheriff and market.
Needless to say, as a result of the chicanery displayed by Henry, the Norman barons did not exercise undisputed control over the districts granted to them, and clinging to the preci- pice of survival, the betrayed Irish chieftains, though still compelled to display some exterior signs of submission to the English monarchy, never really renounced their own authority or the customs of their forefathers. The Normans therefore ruled over those districts only which they could acquire, and continue to hold possession of, by the sword.
But there was no real unity among the Normans. They came in small parties each anx- ious to win something for himself and in no way desirous to share his plunder with anyone- in fact often they joined with an Irish chief against one of their own. Also, the fact that there was no Norman king resident in the country, no visible leader who could command and unite all his subjects, made the Normans less formidable. But united or not, these small
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