Impotence Of The Crown
Above : Painting Of King Henry VI
The successful careers of Niall M6r O’Neill, Art Mac Murrough, and Murrough O’Connor mark at once the completion of the absorption of the Normans and the end of Irish re-conquest. Henceforward, little change in territory took place. The recent conquests were held, but no new ones of importance were made. Indeed, there was but little left to win. The Pale continued to shrink into even smaller dimensions, but the process was gradual, and was due more to internal weakness than to external attack. An effort would have extinguished it, but no such effort was made, and it was allowed to exist on sufferance.
The collapse of English influence was much more striking than the shrinkage of the Pale. Little as had been the power of the Crown since the time of Bruce, it practically vanished in the fifteenth century. The reign of Henry V of England (1413-22) Was taken up by the conquest of the northern half of France ; that of Henry VI (1422-61) was distracted at first by the loss of the French conquests (due to the efforts of Jeanne d’Arc), and afterwards by the Wars of the Roses, in which for thirty years (1455-85) rival factions devastated England with civil war. In such circumstances little attention could be given to Ireland. The English Crown in Ireland was impotent. An occasional weak effort was the only sign of its claim to govern or of the exercise of the responsibilities of government. But almost purely nominal as was its existence, it was sufficient to prevent the development of any other central authority, and it continued in its narrow limits until an opportunity came to re-assert itself. Nor was there any disposition, apparently, amongst chiefs or lords to remove a merely nominal sovereignty, for one which, even if native, would keep them under control.
Above : Painting Of King Henry V
The chiefs and lords, in fact, enjoyed their freedom from control. During all this period they ruled Ireland unchecked by any central Government, and they did not desire to be therwise. Lords and chiefs, great and small, Irish and Norman, overned their clans or followers and fought their rivals without any interference. To a few of the great Norman lords, of course, the office f Lord Deputy with the control of the Dublin officials was an asset which they were always ambitious to secure. But, apart from its value as a personal chattel, they paid little respect to the position, and a Lord Deputy broke the laws against fosterage and Irish alliances and ” coyne and livery ” and private wars as easily as if he were not the King’s representative. And, on the other hand, his viceregal position never brought him immunity from war, capture, or imprisonment, at the hands of another nominal subject of the King. No King’s sheriff and no King’s judge now dreamt of collecting taxes or administering law in the lands which English Kings had ” granted ” to their followers.
