The Anglo-Norman invasion
Anglo-Norman knights invited by an exiled Irish king land in Wexford, and Henry II of England claims lordship over Ireland.
- Ireland in the Middle Ages — Seán Duffy, Macmillan (1997)
- Ireland: A History — Thomas Bartlett, Cambridge University Press (2010)
- The Oxford Companion to Irish History — S. J. Connolly (ed.), Oxford University Press (2002)
In 1166 Diarmait Mac Murchada (Dermot MacMurrough), king of Leinster, was driven out by rival Irish kings. He went to Henry II of England for help and recruited Anglo-Norman knights from Wales. The first landed at Bannow Bay in Wexford in May 1169; in 1170 Richard de Clare, known as Strongbow, followed, took Waterford and Dublin, and married Diarmait’s daughter Aoife.
- Ireland in the Middle Ages — Seán Duffy, Macmillan (1997)
- Ireland: A History — Thomas Bartlett, Cambridge University Press (2010)
Alarmed that Strongbow might set up a rival kingdom, Henry II came himself in October 1171 and received the submission of Norman lords and many Irish kings. He relied on a papal grant, Laudabiliter (1155), whose authenticity historians still debate. From then on English kings claimed to be “Lords of Ireland”.
- Ireland in the Middle Ages — Seán Duffy, Macmillan (1997)
- The Oxford Companion to Irish History — S. J. Connolly (ed.), Oxford University Press (2002)
In practice the conquest was never completed. Norman lords built castles and towns across much of the east and south, but there was a Gaelic resurgence in the fourteenth century, and many Norman families, the Fitzgeralds and Burkes among them, adopted the Irish language, law and customs. A famous later phrase called them “more Irish than the Irish themselves”. By the fifteenth century the Crown controlled little more than the Pale around Dublin.
- Ireland in the Middle Ages — Seán Duffy, Macmillan (1997)
- Ireland: A History — Thomas Bartlett, Cambridge University Press (2010)
The beginning of English conquest and of the long struggle for Irish freedom, with Diarmait Mac Murchada remembered as the traitor who "brought in the foreigner".
- Ireland: A History — Thomas Bartlett, Cambridge University Press (2010)
- Modern Ireland 1600–1972 — R. F. Foster, Allen Lane (1988)
Less a single conquest than the start of a partial, uneven lordship. English control shrank to the area around Dublin (the Pale) by the 1400s, and Gaelic and Norman lords intermarried and allied across the supposed divide.
- Ireland in the Middle Ages — Seán Duffy, Macmillan (1997)
- The Oxford Companion to Irish History — S. J. Connolly (ed.), Oxford University Press (2002)
Why it matters today
1169 is the traditional starting point of "eight hundred years" of English rule in popular memory. It is also a reminder that history is messy: the invaders were invited in by an Irish king, and within a few generations many of them had become thoroughly Irish.