From The Nation and the Normans to The Birth of English Nation

Above: Picture of King John

This process of absorption had been progressing steadily for a long time, but the most definite evidence of it was given when the De Burghs, or Burkes, renounced allegiance to England, and adopted Irish language, Irish land tenure, Irish names and customs. Their example was deliberately followed by the other Normans of Connacht, while it was imitated by many of those in other parts of the country. The Desmond Geraldines, in particular, were conspicuous for their adoption of Irish ways. But the process was a natural one, and it affected all.

The Normans in Ireland were becoming as Irish as the Gaelic clans around them, from whom they differed only in tradition, in their systems of holding and succeeding to land and titles, and, in some cases only, in a nominal allegiance to the English Crown.

The change in the character of the Normans in Ireland was the more marked because a change had also taken place amongst those in England. Soon after the invasion King John had lost Normandy, which became incorporated in the growing Kingdom of France.

The English Normans, deprived of their possessions on the Continent, were forced to look upon England as their home, and they soon ceased to be Normans, and became fused in the composite ” English ” nation which was then evolved.f The Gaelicised Norman consequently found that his Irish neighbour had more in common with him than had the Anglicised Norman.