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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.
Sea. The case is less clear in 1233–4 than it had been in 1223–4, but in both instances the Crown backed one faction over another, giving royal support to the most aggressive aspects of aristocratic lordship. Although his faction ultimately reaped the rewards of victory in Ireland, 191 walter de lacy Walter’s prominence quickly faded. But the demands of his lordship were not diminished. No longer conspicuous on the battlefield, Walter now faced opponents in the law courts. His lengthy quarrel with the Knights Hospitaller at the papal curia (one initiated by his
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
John time to regroup his forces. His 1210 expedition to Ireland was a delayed, but necessary, response to the flouting of his authority since 1207. The manifestation of unrepentant aristocratic power in Ireland, the Lacy/Briouze alliance, was sacrificed so that the strength of John’s personal lordship would be embedded in the colony. By the time that civil war broke out in England and Wales in 1215, several of John’s enemies from 1207 were his firmest supporters. In particular, Walter de Lacy’s return from exile demonstrates the essential strength of the symbiotic
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
Ireland, and even John, the Angevin dynasty’s uncrowned king of Ireland, was replaced by an underage boy. King Richard’s crusade and imprisonment, which disrupted the records of royal government (the normal framework for evidence of patronage or disfavour), meant that Walter’s early career is even less well documented than might have been expected in other circumstances. Finally, many of the chroniclers who had paid attention to Hugh ceased writing in Walter’s minority. Bereft of such sources, the early career of Walter de Lacy is a historical uncertainty. All is not
of royal enrolments allow for a detailed view of these processes, especially royal lordship. Consequently, the mechanics of the relationship between king and magnate are more visible than ever before, and no more so than with the Lacys. Walter de Lacy began John’s reign in a strong position. He had a decade of experience as John’s vassal in Ireland to draw upon in his dealings with the new king, and enjoyed a recent history of amicable relations. Walter’s marriage to Margery, daughter of the king’s familiar William de Briouze, was a manifestation of this good will
Conclusion Conclusion T his study of the careers of Hugh and Walter de Lacy has involved a fresh look at transnational lordship and the interplay between aristocracy and crown from 1166 to 1241. One of the major conclusions that has emerged is that the extent and achievements of the Lacys’ lordship was often enhanced by the inability of the English Crown to exercise its own authority effectively without them and their like. A number of the Lacys’ greatest triumphs occurred while they were ostensibly instruments of the royal will. This is precisely the way in
introduction which historians sort them. For instance, Hugh and Walter de Lacy were recognised by their contemporaries as Welsh marchers, but they were also English and Norman magnates whose efforts often went to extending their position in Ireland. To lose sight of all these factors is to take them out of context. As Sidney Painter observed in his biography of the (decidedly atypical) ‘feudal baron’, William Marshal: ‘to know a typical feudal baron is to have a fuller comprehension of feudal society as a whole’.2 A view from below often uncovers characteristics not
the witness list of Walter de Lacy’s 1194 charter of liberties to Drogheda, came after Walter granted these demesne lands to his brother, Hugh de Lacy the younger.61 It may be that it was this Hugh, rather than his father, who enfeoffed Richard. Finally, Hugh granted the land of Rathwire (Co. Meath) to Robert de Lacy (whose relationship to Hugh is impossible to determine on the basis of existing evidence). Nevertheless, the grant of Rathwire introduced another line of Lacys into Meath.62 For the most part, Meath was divided among men drawn to Hugh’s service, rather