There is some evidence of women being literate and formally educated in the late-fifteenth century, especially in the Anglo-Norman-controlled areas. Six monastic schools on crown lands are mentioned in 1539 as educating ‘both gentilmen childer and other, both of man kynd and women kynd’. It is not clear how long these schools had been established, but their existence suggests that the new humanist idea of giving girls access to formal education had some purchase in Ireland. Within the colony, women could achieve significant status. Townswomen could trade and make contracts on their own behalf. Some Anglo-Irish women managed huge estates while their husbands were away, often for lengthy periods, on military service. Equally, the status of women of the landowning class was somewhat enhanced by provisions for inheritance under English (feudal) law. Under Irish (Brehon) law, women were not allowed to inherit collective property. Feudal law allowed a woman to inherit property if there was no male heir. This created in Ireland a degree of inheritance shopping, with rich families using whichever system suited their circumstances best.
Yet, for both the Irish and the Anglo-Irish, marriage seems to have been a moveable feast, and divorce was easily available. It remained normal for upper-class men and women to have a succession of spouses. Dubhchabhlaigh Mór (‘the Great’), daughter of the king of Connacht, who died in 1395, was known as Port-na-dtrí-namhad (‘Meeting place of the three enemies’), because she married in succession three sworn foes. It is interesting that when, after about 1400, the Irish adopted the common European practice of requiring a new wife to bring a dowry, it was with the proviso that the dowry must be returned in the event of a divorce.
52. Magi Cope, c. 1470
One striking thing about the culture of fifteenth-century Ireland is what is not represented in it. There is not, to any great extent, evidence of that great flowering of European intellectual and artistic life that is summed up in the term Renaissance. The magnificent set of fifteenth-century Benediction copes and Mass vestments that survives from Christ Church cathedral in Waterford stands out as a rare example of Renaissance art in Ireland; but it could not be other than a European import.
The vestments are first mentioned in 1481 in the will of John Collyn, dean of the cathedral. They are likely to have been commissioned by a wealthy local patron and must have cost a fortune: the fabric is Italian cloth-of-gold and the embroidery is Flemish, probably from the great workshops of Brussels, Bruges or Ghent. When Oliver Cromwell’s troops took the city in 1650 many of the city’s great religious treasures were destroyed. The vestments, however, were so well hidden that they were not discovered again until 1774, when the old cathedral was demolished.
The most important part of the collection is the set of copes (liturgical mantles or cloaks): the red Creation Cope, illustrating the mystery of the Incarnation; the green Crucifixion Cope; a second green Marian Cope with marvellous velvet, and, featured here, the Magi Cope. It is staggeringly opulent: one-and-a-half metres high and two metres wide, brocaded velvet on cloth-of-gold, with a pile of red silk fixed with tiny loops of gold. The velvet almost certainly came from the Florence of Lorenzo Medici. The opulence is visual and metaphorical as well as physical. The hood of the Magi Cope alone depicts three parallel Biblical scenes: the homage of the Magi to the newborn Christ at the centre, the arrival of the Queen of Sheba at the court of King Solomon on the left and the visit of Abraham to Melchizedek on the right.
The Flemish artists who designed the Magi scene almost certainly drew on depictions in a book that typified the spread of learning in the Renaissance period that was made possible by printing: the Biblia Pauperum, the ‘Bible of the Poor’ that was hugely popular in Germany and the Netherlands. Thus, the cope brings together some of the forces that were shaping western European culture: the burgeoning wealth of the Italian city states, the spread of books, the skills of a growing artisan class, a new visual imagery that implies a new way of seeing the world. Nothing like this could have been made in fifteenth-century Ireland. The Renaissance was above all an urban phenomenon, and in Ireland at the time urban settlement was, if anything, being reversed. Ireland was never cut off from the great cultural awakening, but experienced it largely as an import.
53. De Burgo–O’Malley Chalice, 1494
An inscription on this fine silver chalice, perhaps given to the Dominican abbey of Burrishoole, in Co. Mayo, in 1494, bears the names of Thomas de Burgo and his wife, Gráinne Ní Mháille (Gráinne O’Malley). The first surname is that of a scion of one of the great Anglo-Norman warlord families in Ireland; the second is obviously Gaelic. (Gráinne was an ancestor of the famous Granuaile.) The chalice—Michael Kenny of the National Museum of Ireland suspects it was probably made in Galway—is a physical token of the integration of the former invaders into Gaelic aristocratic society. Its Gothic style reveals a continuous exposure of Irish art to a shared European heritage.
The de Burgo presence in Ireland dates to the late-twelfth century, when William de Burgo was granted land in Tipperary by Lord John, the future King of England. William’s son Richard invaded Connacht in the 1230s and, after a devastating series of conflicts, took control of most of it in 1235. The Bruce invasion and vicious infighting among various claimants to the de Burgo lordship gradually weakened it. Connacht was effectively lost to Anglo-Norman control, and hence to the English government, by 1350.
Anglo-Norman landholders—Burkes, Joyces, Stauntons—melted, as the chalice shows, into Gaelic upper-class society. In this sense, the chalice symbolises the revival of the Gaelic aristocracy and the retreat of the Anglo-Norman colony. The idea that Anglo-Norman Ireland was ‘Gaelicised’ in the fifteenth century neglects the fact that many of the major Anglo-Norman families resulted from marriages to high-status Irish women. For example, Thomas fitz Maurice, ancestor of the powerful Desmond clan, had an Irish wife called Sadhbh. The colonial aristocracy was always partly Irish, and the process of making it Hiberniores Hibernis ipsis (more Irish than the Irish) was a long one.
This process also involved more ordinary settlers. Hence, the Statute of Kilkenny, promulgated by Edward III’s son Lionel, duke of Clarence, in 1366, complained ‘many English…live and govern themselves by the manners, fashion and language of the Irish enemies’. Uniquely in the Christian world, the statute attempted to ban marriage between two Christian communities, the English and the Irish. Laws such as this were re-enforced by further parliamentary decrees even to the time this chalice was made, but the names inscribed on its base show how futile they were. Ironically, the English themselves began to think of the Anglo-Norman population of Ireland as simply Irish. In the fifteenth century, those of Anglo-Irish origin were officially classified in England as aliens. The earls of Desmond, descended from Thomas fitz Maurice, typified this new hybrid identity. Gerald FitzGerald was justiciar (royal governor) of Ireland in the 1360s but wrote Gaelic poetry. He had a daughter who did not know how to dress in English clothes and a son who was fostered by a Gaelic chief, Conor O’Brien of Thomond. It was increasingly necessary for such magnates to maintain theoretical loyalty to the English monarch while operating on the ground as Irish chieftains.
54. Kavanagh Charter Horn, twelfth and fifteenth centuries
It is particularly ironic that the Gaelic kingship that best survived the Anglo-Norman invasion was that descended from Diarmait Mac Murchada, who had first brought Anglo-Norman warlords to Ireland. The Mac Murchadas retained lands in Carlow and north Wexford. The Kavanagh (Caomhánach) branch of the family, directly descended from Diarmait’s son Domhnall Caomhánach, thrived as the Anglo-Norman colony weakened. Art Mór Mac Murchada had carved out a coherent kingdom by the time of his death, in 1416, successfully defying Richard II’s attempts to have him removed.
This exotic object, preserved at Borris, Co. Carlow, by the Kavanagh family, perfectly captures this revival of Irish kingship. It is the only piece of Irish regalia to have survived from the mediaeval period. It was made from elephant ivory, sometime in the twelfth century, and may origin
ally have been used as a hunting horn. In the period of Art Mór’s resurgent kingdom it was given a new brass mounting—the maker’s name, Tigernan O’Lavan, is inscribed on the mount—with clawed bird’s feet on which it stands. This turned the horn into a ceremonial drinking vessel, probably for use in inauguration rituals. It was later used to further the Kavanaghs’ claims to the kingship of Leinster.
That such a claim could be made at all was a remarkable historical reversal, given that Leinster had been so deeply penetrated and settled by the Anglo-Normans. By the 1420s, however, the area called the ‘land of peace’—that is, under secure English administration—was confined to Dublin, Meath, Kildare and Louth. By the 1470s, this area was being referred to as the Pale. The revived Irish kingship outside that region was in many ways remarkably similar to what it had been before the Anglo-Norman invasion. The king was still drawn from a wide array of contenders, making civil wars of succession as common as they had been in the tenth century. The retinue of the king was also remarkably intact, with its hereditary ranks of brehons (judges), poets, genealogists, musicians and physicians. The expectation that a king could place his relatives in high clerical office was undiminished. Moreover, the economy on which this hierarchy rested was not all that different either. The land looked different in the places where the colonists had cleared the great forests. The tillage and grain-based agriculture introduced by the settlers retained a significant hold, but the revived Gaelic lordships still based their notions of wealth on cattle.
This strong element of cultural and economic conservatism is one of the factors behind the failure of these revived Irish kingships to cohere into anything like a national state. The resurgent Gaelic domains had little place for the urban life that was driving development in Europe. Even linguistic diversity was being rolled back: French disappeared in Ireland and English suffered a rare reversal. The Gaelic world that re-emerged never transformed itself into the kind of centralised, modernised political structure that could ultimately assert its independence.
55. Gallowglass gravestone, fifteenth or sixteenth century
This 1.75 metre-long stone was uncovered in the graveyard of the ruined church at Clonca on the Inishowen peninsula, in Co. Donegal. Made of dark limestone, it is finely carved with a crucifix and a floral motif. The inscription says Fergus mak Allan do rini in clach sa/Magnus mec Orristin ia fo tri seo. ‘Fergus Mac Allan made this stone/Magnus Mac Orristin of the Isles under this covering’. Most striking are the images carved to the right of the cross: a sword and hurley and ball. The sword is a typical late-mediaeval variety from the west of Scotland. The hurley and ball suggest that Magnus was famed for his skill at what was called winter hurling, a form of the game played in the north of Ireland and in Scotland.
English sources divide Irish military forces into horsemen, kerns and gallowglasses. There were professional soldiers in the first two categories, but their ranks were swollen in times of war by ordinary farmers—only the clergy and the learned classes were exempted from duty. (Remarkably the Irish horsemen still refused to use stirrups—a striking testament to the conservatism of indigenous culture.) Gallowglasses, of whom Magnus was one, were professional soldiers. The word (gallóglach), which means ‘foreign warrior’, is first used in the late-thirteenth century in reference to mercenaries recruited from the mixed Scottish-Norse population of the Western Isles. Throughout the fourteenth century, large numbers continued to arrive from the islands and highlands of Scotland, drawn from the losing factions in internal conflicts.
From the beginning, however, these Gaelic-speaking mercenaries were integrated into Irish society. Two gallowglass families in particular became prominent in Irish affairs: the MacSweenys (former lords of Knapdale in Argyle) and the MacDonnells became, respectively, sub-chiefs of the O’Donnells and the O’Neills. The MacSweenys spread southwards from Tirconnell (Donegal) into Connacht and then into Munster, where they served the various MacCarthy clans. The MacDonnells, meanwhile, spread into Co. Mayo.
Gallowglasses had padded coats, helmets, daggers and the distinctive long-handled axes that marked them out. The warrior was accompanied by a manservant to carry his equipment and a boy to carry and cook his food; the unit of three was known as a spar, and 100 spars was the standard grouping. These men were quartered on the general population (a practice known as bonnaght), a cruel imposition in time of protracted war. As warriors, the gallowglass had a reputation for do-or-die courage. One account of 1534 notes that ‘these sort of men be those that do not lightly abandon the field but bide the brunt to the death’, and the annals mention whole battalions of gallowglasses dying together in battle. This professional ethic raised the level of militarisation in Gaelic society, making it a more formidable barrier to the expansion of English control.
56. Book of Common Prayer, 1551
This object is the first book printed in Ireland and, as such, marks the island’s rather belated acquisition of one of the defining features of modernity. The revolutionary process of printing on a press with moveable type had been pioneered by Johannes Gutenberg in Germany almost exactly a century earlier. The delay in catching up with this new technology says much about Ireland’s absence from the mainstream of the Renaissance, but if the advent of the first printed book brings a key aspect of modernity to Ireland, that modernity arrives in a form that is unwelcome to a substantial majority of the population.
Much of the initial impetus for the use of print was political and administrative, but it became an important weapon in the struggles between the energetic new Protestant faiths and the Catholic Counter-Reformation. The first uses of print in Ireland came in the wake of a failed rebellion against the crown by Silken Thomas FitzGerald, when the Tudor monarchy set about building an effective permanent government in Ireland. Printed royal orders were sent from London, as were printed copies of the submission to the crown of the powerful chieftain Con O’Neill. Print, therefore, arrived as an aspect of official power and propaganda.
Its effectiveness was limited in part by the limited knowledge of the English language in Ireland and in part by the absence of a resident printer. This latter problem was addressed in 1550 when the privy council granted £20 to establish Humphrey Powell, a London printer, in his trade in Dublin. His first task was to produce what the title page calls ‘The boke of common praier and administration of the sacraments...after the vse of the churche of England’. That Church of England was, of course, itself a momentous development for Ireland. The product of Henry VIII’s split from Roman Catholicism in the 1530s and the establishment of a national church headed by the monarch. The Book of Common Prayer, produced in 1549 under Henry’s short-lived son Edward VI, was a major step towards the creation of an official and uniform Protestant religion. It was temporarily reversed under Edward’s Catholic successor Mary, before being copperfastened under Elizabeth I.
The relative failure of the Protestant Reformation in Ireland is one of the great shaping forces of modern Irish history. Who knows how the island would have developed had the Book of Common Prayer eventually become as common and comfortable a presence in the average Irish home as it was in England? That this did not happen made Ireland one of the great exceptions to the compromise formula adopted throughout most of Europe after ferocious religious conflict: cuius regio, eius religio: the religion of the ruler will be the religion of his subjects. In Ireland a majority of those from both Gaelic and Anglo-Norman stock remained Catholic.
57. Salamander pendant, c.1588
This incongruously elegant jewelled pendant was recovered from the wreck site of the Spanish galleass La Girona, which sank off Lacada Point, on the north Antrim coast, in the autumn of 1588. Girona was part of the largest invasion fleet yet assembled, the great armada of 130 ships that set sail from Lisbon on 30 May 1588. Its aim, as part of Philip II’s crusade against Protestant ‘heretics’, was to depose Elizabeth I and presumably to re-establish a Catholic monarchy. (Philip had been married to Elizabeth’s sister and predecess
or, Mary.) Spain and England were already fighting a proxy war in the Low Countries; Philip was now intent on a comprehensive victory. On board the ships was a vast store of ordnance, including the massive siege guns intended to batter down the walls of London.
The pendant embodies the imperial power and commercial reach of Spain. Its body is of gold probably from the Spanish colonies in the new world of America. The rubies that marked out its spine and tail—three of the original nine survive—may have come from southern Asia. The fine workmanship in the detail of the scales, claws and tail adds to the flair of the object. The salamander is a real lizard but is also a mythical creature with the magical ability to survive and extinguish fire. For the officer who wore the pendant, it thus served as a talismanic protection against the danger of fighting on a wooden ship.
The charm was even more necessary than its owner must have hoped when Girona set sail. The armada was held up by English manoeuvres and unfavourable winds in the English Channel, and left with little choice but to try to return to Spain. Its commander, Medina Sidonia, warned his captains to ‘take heed lest you fall upon the Island of Ireland for fear of the harm that may happen to you upon that coast’. The foul Atlantic weather took its toll: Girona was one of at least 26 ships that foundered off Ireland.
A History of Ireland in 100 Objects Page 10
