Richard Roche

Sadly, a slim volume. But useful as a collected narrative covering a very ad-hoc take-over. Beginning as a simple feudal entanglement, where a land-hungry Norman marries into an Irish family, looking for useable land (plus peasants, of course!), the matter shapes into a national invasion where the bulk of the Irish Kings yield their lands to Henry II o0f England in order to belong to the European community. There are some echoes of this in the desire of Ukraine to belong to the European Union, no matter how bad the deal, just avoid even closer ties to the Russian Federation, a devil with whom they are very familiar.
For the small Irish kings, the known devil was the constant state of petty war that wracked Ireland a an Elite struggled for the illusive title of High King. The Normans represented a far more stable system, with many fewer wars. But, as the Norman invasion in Ireland was sporadic, and incomplete, as Henry was called away to deal with a problem in southern France, the relationship with the Norman crown was left vague. Henry's answer was to contract out the remainder of the conquest to John de Courcy, who efficiently conquered Ulster. Connacht and the rest of the west remained under Irish chieftains whose squabbles enliven the history books for the next five hundred years. The flaw in the Norman conquest, according to Roche, agreeing with Rev. F.X. Martin, was that it was incomplete. If the conquest had been so crushing as that of England by William the Conqueror, then the Irish would have been more integrated into the London-based system ,and a more peaceable United Kingdom of Ireland would have resulted. It seems reasonable to me.
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