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This book examines the rise and fall of the aristocratic Lacy family in England, Ireland, Wales and Normandy. As one of the first truly transnational studies of individual medieval aristocrats, it provides a fresh look at lordship and the interplay between aristocracy and crown from 1166 to 1241. Hugh de Lacy (†1186), traded on his military usefulness to King Henry II of England in Wales and Normandy to gain a speculative grant of the ancient Irish kingdom of Mide (Meath). Hugh was remarkably successful in Ireland, where he was able to thwart the juvenile ambitions of the future King John to increase his powers there. Hugh was hailed by native commentators as ‘lord of the foreigners of Ireland’ and even ‘king of Ireland’. In this study his near-legendary life is firmly grounded in the realities of Anglo-Irish politics. The political career of Hugh’s less famous son and heir, Walter de Lacy (†1241), is in turn illuminated by surviving royal records and his own acta. Walter was one of the major actors in the Irish Sea province under Kings Richard I, John and Henry III, and his relationship with each king provides a unique insight into the nature of their reigns. Over the course of fifty-two years, Walter helped to shape the course of Anglo-Irish history. That history is recast in light of the transnational perspective of its chief participants. This book is a major contribution to current debates over the structure of medieval European society.
thirteenth centuries was a miscellany of varied realms with varying lordship structures. The king-centred hierarchy of authority in England contrasted with the pattern of lordship in other provinces, posing unique challenges to transnational aristocrats, not to mention those who study them. Hugh and Walter de Lacy did not deal with their lands in Herefordshire as they did those in Meath, where ‘English’ lordship had to be grafted on to pre-existing Celtic conditions, or even in Normandy, which had a pattern of lordship all its own. The preceding chapters have told the
7 The dangers of transnational lordship: 1222–41 T he reign of King John cast a long shadow. His rule provided the context, and his administrative appointees the personnel, for his son’s Minority government. It was also in this later period that some of his policies began to bear fruit. As argued in Chapter 4, King John’s removal of John de Courcy and promotion of Hugh de Lacy as earl of Ulster in 1205 seem to have been done to counterbalance Earl William Marshal’s control of the southern Irish Sea littoral. The elder Marshal’s good relations with the Lacys at
1 A transnational magnate: 1166–74 T he Lacys took their name from the Norman town of Lassy (Calvados, cant. Condé-sur-Noireau), where they held a subtenancy under the bishop of Bayeux. Two brothers, Ilbert (d. 1093) and Walter (d. 1085), accompanied William the Conqueror to England in 1066, and were rewarded for their service with substantial grants there. The elder brother, Ilbert, was granted a northern barony centred on Pontefract (Yorkshire). The younger brother, Walter, was established in the west midlands and along the Welsh march, centred on his fee
3 Divided allegiance: 1189–99 A number of factors combine to deprive us of sources for the history of the Lacy family for the period following Hugh de Lacy’s death. The minority of Hugh’s son and heir, Walter, presents the first problem. It had taken quite some time and an ambitious venture in Ireland for contemporary writers to take notice of Hugh de Lacy, and, just when he had become a regular object of their attention, his unexpected death delivered his inheritance into wardship. The magisterial figure who could rival Ruaidrí Ua Conchobair, high king of
Limerick and seventeenth-century Milan respectively, ‘Ultor de Lacy’ and ‘Borrhomeo the Astrologer’ indicate a breadth of reference which also impresses. ‘Ultor de Lacy’ is centred on Cappercullen, Murroa and Abington, districts in County Limerick where the author had grown up in the disturbed 1820s
4 Factionalism: 1199–1206 T he accession of King John marks a turning point in the history of the Lacy family. In this period, Ireland was brought under the direct lordship of the king of England, and Normandy was lost. The balance of the king’s administration and attention (if not his ambition) was shifted westwards, and he sought to exploit his insular realms for resources to retrieve his continental inheritance. John’s brother and father had relied upon strong local magnates to drive the Irish royal administration in their absence, but, after fifteen years
barons were championing the cause of baronial rights and the limitation of kingship, the keeping of the kingdom was delivered into the hands of the aristocracy. The regency government set up to rule in the young Henry III’s name was one largely composed of the late king’s most loyal magnates, who, like Walter de Lacy, would not have been strangers to the excesses of John and his immediate predecessors. The royalist barons’ loyalty was not entirely disinterested, and they soon set about limiting English kingship through the several reissues of Magna Carta that followed
2 ‘Lord of the Foreigners of Ireland’: 1177–86 T he year 1177 marks a turning point in the career of Hugh de Lacy; the year’s events had a profound effect on the strength and character of his lordship in England, Ireland, Wales and Normandy. The change is evident in the highly symbolic resolution to Hugh de Lacy’s dispute with the bishop of Hereford over one knight’s fee at Holme Lacy. This was a very local, English, dispute between two of the most powerful landholders in Herefordshire, and had rumbled on for over a decade. However, on 3 June 1177, Hugh
5 Royal v. aristocratic lordship: 1206–16 K ing John’s policy for Ireland in the opening years of his reign was one based on political pragmatism and expediency. His administration lacked the resources to compete with the great provincial lordships, so he was forced to work with them to achieve his ends. John’s promotion of the Lacys and William de Briouze during the factionalist disputes of the previous years meant that, by 1206, the resident Lacy brothers were without rival in Ireland. Although it was a situation of his own making, this prominence of