Above : Another Picture Of Henry II

It will be seen, therefore, that so far as the submissions made to Henry II by the Irish chiefs were concerned, there was not so much difference between the Irish and feudal conceptions of their meaning. In Ireland, from time immemorial, the chiefs of a tribe or an oi^-jm’ acknowledged the supremacy of the \u without sacrificing the internal independence or the possessions of his clan. Nor did the homage paid to the •cV.jvo-’Rt before the time of Brian confer upon him any right to interfere in the jurisdiction of such of the ” provincial Kings” as acknowledged him. The removal of the ” provincial Kings ” had left the political integrity of the clans unimpaired, although their chiefs now submitted to the High King himself direct. Similar personal submissions conferring no right of interference in internal affairs were well known under feudalism. Henry himself paid homage to the King of France, but had absolute dominion over his duchies of Normandy and Aquitaine and his other possessions, and he was, in fact, at constant war with his liege lord. The dukes and counts who ruled most of what is now France were similarly placed, and so also were the kings, dukes and electors who comprised the Empire of the Germans. Kings of Scotland had frequently paid homage and fealty to English Kings, but they still ruled their own Kingdom.

The acknowledgment of the superior power of Henry was, therefore, at the most an act of personal submission on the part of those Irish chiefs who made it, and conferred, either under feudal or Irish custom, no right or dominion over their clans or territories.

It was in respect of its conception of land tenure, however, that feudalism came most violently into conflict with Irish ideas. We have seen that amongst the Irish, the land of the clan was the common property of the clan. To whatever extent private ownership prevailed, it did not interfere with that essential principle. The chief had no right to alienate any part of his clan’s possessions. To people accustomed to such ideas feudal ownership was unintelligible and abhorrent—even immoral. The claim of even a rightful King to deal with the land as his own property was to them impossible ; for a foreign King to profess to grant Irish lands to his own followers was an act of injustice and conquest compared with which the piracies of the Norsemen were mere incidental robberies.

The hostility between Irish and feudal ideas of land ownership, affecting, as it did, the very basis of social and political life, lay at the root of the future struggle between the two races. The conflict between the two ideas, begun by the grants of Henry of Anjou, continues to the present day.