Ireland up to the famine

England’s conquest of Ireland began as do most things in Ireland,  a vendetta, embroiled in complex tribal politics and wrapped in unbridled passion. Between the years 1140 and 1168, Ireland, then an unaligned nation of warring tribal states, was wracked in a brutal struggle for power between two powerful forces. One side was led by  Dermot MacMurrough (Diarmait Mac Murchadha), the powerful king of Leinster, the other by his enemy Rory O'Connor (Ruaidhri O Conchobhair), king of Connacht.  Finally, O’Connor managed to chase MacMurrough out of Ireland and into the court of King Henry II of England. That one, simple, act changed the course of Irish and English history forever and opened the doors for the Norman invasion in 1169.

    The word invasion isn’t exactly accurate, not in the sense we know it today. The Normans, and for that matter, the English, never actually invaded Ireland, a more apt description would be that they entered quietly through the backdoor and never left.

  With Henry’s permission, MacMurrough enlisted Richard fitz Gilbert de Clare, the would-be earl of Pembroke, Wales, other wise known as Strongbow, a mercenary, of sorts. In exchange for leading his army of Cambro-Norman barons into Ireland and regaining MacMurrough’s kingdom for him, Strongbow was promised the Wexford town

and two adjoining areas, as well as Dermot's daughter, Aoife, in marriage and the whole province of Leinster upon Dermot's death.

    Between 1168 and 1171 the Cambro-Normans not only reconquered all of Leinster with Dermot MacMurrough, including Dublin, but invaded the neighboring province of Meath as well. When Dermot MacMurrough died in May 1171, Strongbow established himself as lord of Leinster, after crushing a general revolt of the Leinster Irish and Ostmen. (The descendents of Ireland’s other quasi-invaders, the Vikings)

    Several problems grew out of Strongbow’s ambitious march through Ireland. The first was matter of cultural values. In Strongbow’s view, since he had conquered the lands, the lands were his, and, technically, now part of the English empire. In the Irish view, colored by centuries of self- imposed isolation from the rest of the world, one’s influence mattered, and not the ownership of property. Simply put, the earth belonged to the earth, it had no value. The concept that land could be owned by a foreign power somewhere outsides of Ireland’s shores and that the people who occupied that land for untold centuries, were now, essentially, the private property of a foreign dictate was almost beyond their understanding.

     The other problem was Strongbow himself. He was, at best, a slippery fellow of questionable moral character and deeply ambitious  and not a man to be trusted.

 Henry II, watching Strongbow’s remarkable success in Ireland, and fearing his growing power in southwestern Ireland, a short step from England’s shores, landed with a large army near Waterford on October 17, 1171. Strongbow and his Barons quickly relented and swore allegiance to the crown. In return, Henry gave Strongbow control over

 Leinster and but kept the city and kingdom of Dublin and all seaports and fortresses from himself. With that, the English conquest of Ireland, her first colony and probably her last, had begun.
    It was an inevitable conquest. For England, Ireland was simply in the wrong geographical location, it was to close to Britain’s shores to stand alone as an independent nation. The English paranoia of a foreign power using Ireland as a steppingstone to invade England wasn’t without some foundation. Over the next several centuries, a series of English enemies would use Irelandfor just that very purpose.  But the English would do more then simply occupy Ireland to protect their flanks. They would never apply a live and let live policy there as they would in their other colonies. In Ireland, the English would, over hundreds of years, crush Irish customs, tradition, and language. It would strip the Irish of their religious freedom, and drive its culture underground.

 By the 1800s, Ireland was, effectively, a 16^th century nation populated largely by peasants who lived on the break of economic and physical ruin.

     In some cases, although it was rare, the English would use force to impose their will on the Irish people. More often, they used the legal system to take what they wanted.      

   Through out its long history, Ireland had used several types of legal systems including the tribal system, the oral tradition, and the written law. But no matter what the system, the laws had remained almost constant for several centuries.

   Traditional Irish law was, originally, not compiled in a single work, it was passed orally from generation to generation and taught by the Druidic class and was, occasionally, written in various literature and judgments.

  During the time of St. Patrick, the law was written as a single document, a codification that became known as the Brehon Laws. [1] Only four copies, in various degrees of completeness, exist today. The Brehon laws remained, basically, unchanged from the original for eight centuries.[2] They were Irish laws, written by the Irish in the Irish language. They were not conceived or enforced by foreign hands. Irish law was conceived and written by those who the Irish and because the laws were written and enforced by Irish men, the laws were, in an Irish sort of way, respected and followed.

    The largest portion of the Brehon law was a section called the Senchus Mó¢r (pronounced Shankus mor), better thought of as a collection of customs rather than one of statutes already widely known and observed by the Celts since the dawn of their time.

    Unlike the British law that would later rule over their lives, the Senchus M¢r didn’t

use an imperious tone. The laws were written to be understood and were based in wisdom. 

    It’s been argued that Ireland had no uniform means to enforce the law and undoubtedly, in Ireland vast history, there were Kings or others of vast power, who broke the law. But overall, the law was followed because the law based in logical, fair tribal custom.     

    Through a series of invaders who would rule over Ireland, the Viking, the Normans, the English, the old Irish legal system was eventually beaten down and never able to reemerge. When the English arrived in full force, they brought their own laws with them. Written in Norman-French, not in the Irish or Latin as were the Irish laws in place before them, the English laws were combined with a series of repressive acts written in 1367 during a parliament session held in Kilkenny. These news acts recognized the Irish, in their own land, as rebels and enemies of the state and were intended, over a period of time, to crush and kill off Irish society. These new laws later termed the Irish Penal Codes, punished Irish dress, manners language, and laws.

    Essentially, the laws, enacted in 1695, were designed and written to deny almost all rights to the Irish Catholics in Ireland and to eventually eradicate the catholic religion in Ireland. Protestant England had no intention of sharing its power with in Ireland with the Pope in Rome. But that would be on the higher end of the Penal Codes. Without question, the basic role of the Penal Laws was to legally take the land from the people under the questionably noble guise of saving the Irish on behalf of the Protestant King of England.

    Civil liberties were crushed. Catholics were denied education, land ownership, and medical practice and treatment. The Catholics were not allowed to enter the legal profession, nor could they hold government offices.[3]  The laws were enforced simply enough; to hold any position or wealth in Ireland, the Irish were forced to repeat and sign an oath which no catholic would take.