Untitled

The British Isles
A History of Four Nations

Second edition
h u g h k e a r n ey
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First published 1989

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Canto edition 1995
Reprinted 1998, 2000, 2004
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For my wife, Kate
In this Ocean there happen to be two very large islands which are called
Britannic, Albion and Ierna, bigger than any we have mentioned.
Aristotle, De Mundo c.iv
Contents
List of illustrations page viii

List of maps xi
Preface to the first edition xiii
Preface to the second edition xv
Map: the British Isles xviii
Introduction 1
1 The Celtic societies of the British Isles 13
2 The impact of Rome on the British Isles 27
3 The post-Roman centuries 41
4 The Vikings and the fall of the Old Order 60
5 The Norman and post-Norman ascendancy 92
6 The decline of the post-Norman empire 132
7 The making of an English empire 157
8 The remaking of an empire 189
9 The Britannic melting pot 219
10 The rise of ethnic politics 251
11 Between the wars 280
12 Withdrawal from empire 294
13 Post-imperial Britain: post-nationalist Ireland 304
Afterword 322
Selected reading list 325
Index 341
vii
Illustrations
1. Horse trapping in Yorkshire.

C The Trustees of The
British Museum page 15
2. Horse trapping in Co. Galway. C National Museum of
Ireland 16
3. Traprain Law hill-fort.
C RCAHMS (John Dewar
Collection) 20
4. Hill-fort at Moel-y-Gaer.
C Cambridge University
Collection of Air Photographs 25
5. Portchester Castle.
C English Heritage Photo Library,
Photographer: Jonathan Bailey 31
6. Hadrian’s Wall. C www.britainonview.com 33
7. Caerwent. C Cambridge University Collection of Air
Photographs 37
8. Emain Macha. C Crown Copyright/MOD. Reproduced
with the permission of the Controller of Her Majesty’s
Stationery Office 46
9. The Sutton Hoo ship burial. C The Trustees of The
British Museum 51
10. The Ardagh Chalice. C National Museum of Ireland 53
11. Dumbarton fort. C Cambridge University Collection of
Air Photographs 55
12. Commemoration stone from Lindisfarne. C English
Heritage Photo Library 63
13. The Cross of Cong. C National Museum of Ireland 70
14. Viking chessmen from the Isle of Lewis. C The Trustees
of The British Museum 73
15. Odd’s Cross slab from the Isle of Man. C Manx National
Heritage 83
16. The tomb of Edward the Confessor, Westminster Abbey.

C Dean and Chapter of Westminster 93
17. The Norman cathedral on the Rock of Cashel.

C Cambridge University Collection of Air Photographs 96
viii
List of illustrations ix
18. The great motte of Urr. C Cambridge University

Collection of Air Photographs 112
19. Chepstow Castle. C Crown Copyright/MOD.
Reproduced with the permission of the Controller of Her
Majesty’s Stationery Office 125
20. St George’s Chapel, Windsor. C Reproduced by
permission of the Dean and Canons of Windsor 135
21. The battle of Bannockburn. C By permission of The
British Library / Add. 47682 143
22. The seals of Owain Glyndwr. C National Museums and
Galleries of Wales 146
23. Portrait of Henry VIII.
C National Portrait Gallery,
London 160
24. Mary, Queen of Scots (1541–87), monument by
Cornelius and William Cure. C Dean and Chapter of
Westminster 174
25. The Bible in Welsh. Bishop William Morgan’s Welsh Bible
from 1588. C By permission of the National Library of
Wales 178
26. Slave ship.
C National Museums Liverpool, Merseyside
Maritime Museum 191
27. Statue of Robert Burns (1759–96). C www.britain
onview.com 208
28. The United Irishmen 1798, portrait of leader Henry Joy
McCracken. C NMGNI 2005. Photograph reproduced
with the kind permission of the Trustees of the National
Museums and Galleries of Northern Ireland 213
29. The Palace of Westminster. C www.britain onview.com 220
30. Statue of Caractacus. C Guildhall Art Gallery,
Corporation of London 227
31. Statue of Oliver Cromwell (1599–1658). C www.britain
onview.com / Doug McKinlay 233
32. Belfast postcard – ‘No Home Rule’. C NMGNI 2005.
Photograph reproduced with the kind permission of the
Trustees of the National Museums and Galleries of
Northern Ireland 255
33. Stormont and the Edward Carson statue.

C HarrisonsPhotos.com 261
34. Eamonn De Valera (1882–1975). C D. H. Davison / The
Irish Picture Library 282
35. Hunger March. C Reproduced by kind permission of
J. Batstone. Source: South Wales Coalfield Collection,
Swansea University 291
x List of illustrations
36. Bobby Sands mural. C Kelvin Boyes Photography 298

37. The Black Watch. C www.britain onview.com 302
38. Muslim community life in Britain.
C Getty Images 306
39. The new Parliament Building in Scotland. C Keith
Hunter / arcblue.com 310
40. Millennium Building, Cardiff.
C Billy Stock /
Photolibrary Wales 317
Maps
1. The principal routes by which knowledge of La Tène art

styles spread to Britain and Ireland. From Facing the
Ocean, by Barry Cunliffe, Oxford University Press, 2001.
By permission of Oxford University Press. page 28
2. The tribes of North Britain (names from Ptolemy) in the
early Roman period. Map drawn by Hanni Bailey from
Celtic Britain by Charles Thomas, Thames & Hudson Ltd,
London 34
3. Celts and Romans, early first to fifth centuries ad After
Christopher Haigh, ed., The Cambridge Historical
Encyclopedia of Great Britain and Ireland (Cambridge,
1985), p. 11. 36
4. Celts and Saxons, early fifth to late eighth centuries. After
Christopher Haigh, ed., The Cambridge Historical
Encyclopedia of Great Britain and Ireland (Cambridge,
1985), p. 55. 38
5. Tribal migrations leading to the dismemberment of
Roman Britain. Map drawn by John Woodcock from Celtic
Britain by Charles Thomas, Thames & Hudson Ltd,
London 42
6. British river names. ‘The Celtic element: map of British
river names’ is reproduced with the kind permission of the
estate of Kenneth Jackson and the publisher, Four Courts
Press, from Language and History in Early Britain (Dublin,
2000) 44
7. The distribution of pagan Saxon cemeteries 47
8. The impact of the Vikings, late eighth to early eleventh
centuries 61
9. Scandinavian settlement in northern Britain. From Facing
the Ocean, by Barry Cunliffe, Oxford University Press,
2001. By permission of Oxford University Press 86
xi
xii List of maps
10. The boundary agreed by Alfred and Guthrum, c. 880,

between England and the Danelaw and the distribution of
Scandinavian place-names. From Facing the Ocean, by
Barry Cunliffe, Oxford University Press, 2001. By
permission of Oxford University Press 88
11. The Viking settlement of Ireland. From Facing the Ocean,
by Barry Cunliffe, Oxford University Press, 2001. By
permission of Oxford University Press 90
12. The Norman Conquests, 1066–1169 94
13. The distribution of motte and bailey castles in Britain 99
14. The Angevin empire/the post-Norman empire. From
Facing the Ocean, by Barry Cunliffe, Oxford University
Press, 2001. By permission of Oxford University Press 128
15. The English empire, 1536–1690 158
16. The railway age during the nineteenth century 222
Preface to the first edition
In the course of writing this book I came to owe a great deal to vari-
ous friends and colleagues. In particular I wish to thank Rees Davies of
University College, Aberystwyth, David Dumville of Cambridge
University and Harry Dickinson of the University of Edinburgh for the
time they gave to reading various portions of the typescript. I am espe-
cially grateful to the Master and Fellows of Peterhouse, Cambridge, and
to the Governing Body of the University of Wales, who awarded me vis-
iting fellowships in 1985. My stay in Aberystwyth was made particu-
larly enjoyable thanks to the hospitality of Rees Davies, Gareth Williams,
John Davidson, Martin Fitzpatrick and their wives. I wish also to express
my gratitude to the University of Pittsburgh for granting me leave of
absence during the Fall Term, 1985. At various times, I benefited from
the encouragement of Janelle Greenberg of the University of Pittsburgh,
John Pocock of Johns Hopkins University, Joseph Lee of University Col-
lege, Cork, James Shiel of the University of Sussex and Lord Dacre of
Glanton, erstwhile Master of Peterhouse. Brian Wormald, my friend and
old supervisor at Peterhouse (1942–3), gave me many hours of his time
forty years later. James Shiel provided the epigraph. Like many others I
have incurred a debt to Linda Randall, Hazel Dunn and Maureen Ashby.
Mr William Davies of Cambridge University Press has displayed patience
and sympathy beyond the call of duty. My deepest debt, however, is to
Kate, my wife for over thirty years, who encouraged me to persevere in
an enterprise which underwent several strange metamorphoses.
Bury St Edmunds h u g h k e a r n ey
xiii
Preface to the second edition
On St George’s Day 1993 John Major, Prime Minister of the United

Kingdom, addressed a group of the Conservative party as follows:
Fifty years from now Britain will still be the country of long shadows on county
[cricket] grounds, warm beer, invincible green suburbs, dog lovers and pools
fillers and – as George Orwell said – ‘old maids bicycling to Holy Communion
through the morning mist’ – and – if we get our way Shakespeare still read in
school. Britain will survive unamendable in all essentials. (quoted Richard Weight,
Patriots: National Identity in Britain 1940–2000, London, 2002, p. 666)
This passage illustrates vividly the type of Anglo-centricity which I crit-
icise in The British Isles. John Major refers to Britain, an island which
encompasses Wales and Scotland, but the ‘Britain’ which he evokes is
very much an idealised version of southern England. There is no hint
here of the industrialised cities of northern England, South Wales and
south-west Scotland with their commitment to football grounds set in
grimly urban surroundings. Nor is there any hint of the way in which
new ethnic groups are changing the ‘essentials’ of Britain, especially in
the capital, London. Missing also from Major’s nostalgic musing is any
sense that the most determinedly British element of the United King-
dom is to be found in Northern Ireland, where in some Unionist areas
pavements are painted red, white and blue.
The Southern England of John Major’s vision undoubtedly exists. It
is, however, merely part of a wider United Kingdom of Great Britain
and Northern Ireland, whose history until recently also included that of
‘the British Isles’ as a whole. The various histories of Australia, Canada
and New Zealand all reflect the impact of a wider ‘British Isles’ history
in which English, Welsh, Irish and Scots ethnicities have interacted with
one another. The history of the United States is also linked with that
of ‘the British Isles’ from which Scots, Irish and Ulster Scots as well
as Anglo-Saxons emigrated. Finally, immigration from the wider British
empire of India, Pakistan, Africa and the Caribbean is now changing what
Major calls the ‘essentials’ of Britain. ‘The old maids bicycling to Holy
xv
xvi Preface to the second edition
Communion through the morning mist’ are very much an embattled

species. Indeed, in modern Britain, there are as many worshippers attend-
ing the mosque as those the parish church.
What is becoming clearer is an awareness that the United Kingdom
is not a nation state with a unique past (a ‘sonderweg’) but a multi-
ethnic conglomerate whose shifting patterns of historical development
resemble those of states such as Spain or the Habsburg Monarchy. The
English scholar Gerald Brenan wrote a classic work entitled The Spanish
Labyrinth (1940) which analysed the interaction of the various ‘nations’
of what we call ‘Spain’. It is this, in my view, which should be our model
for histories of the United Kingdom rather than a comforting but now
simple-minded recourse to ‘the Englishman and his History’. To say this,
of course, is to take part in a debate which has a long history. (It may
be followed in Hugh MacDougall’s brilliant short book Racial Myth in
English History: Trojans, Teutons and Anglo-Saxons (1982.)
The title of this book is ‘The British Isles’, not ‘Britain’, in order to
emphasise the multi-ethnic character of our intertwined histories. Almost
inevitably many within the Irish Republc find it objectionable, much as
Basques or Catalans resent the use of the term ‘Spain’. As Seamus Heaney
put it when he objected to being included in an anthology of British
Poetry:
Don’t be surprised
If I demur, for, be advised
My passport’s green.
No glass of ours was ever raised
To toast the Queen.
(Open Letter, Field day
Pamphlet no.2 1983)
But what is the alternative to ‘The British Isles?’ Attempts to encourage
the use of such terms as ‘The Atlantic Archipelago’ and ‘The Isles’ have
met with criticism because of their vagueness. Perhaps one solution is to
use ‘the British Isles’ in inverted commas (‘quotes’ in American usage).
All this is not to say that a ‘British Isles’ approach is the only way of dealing
with their complex interrelated history. It is misleading, for example, to
ignore the different ways in which the four nations have been involved
in Europe. Irish missionaries in particular played a key role during the
so-called Dark Ages. After the Norman Conquest, England and, later,
Scotland were closely involved in France. During the Reformation and
Counter-Reformation period, England, Ireland and Scotland were all
linked with Europe in various ways, although the experience of Ireland
was very different from that of the other two nations. At a later period,
Preface to the second edition xvii
the impact of the French Revolution was much greater in Ireland than
elsewhere in the archipelago. Thus a ‘British Isles’ approach should not
be taken as ruling out a European emphasis as the basis of alternative
interpretations. At the time of writing, for example, it looks as if the
Republic of Ireland is moving towards a more European future than that
of a United Kingdom which is still coping with the challenges of its post-
imperial past.
In preparing this new edition, I should like to record my thanks for their
help to John Morrison, Proinsias O Drisceoil, Rees Davies and Gareth
Williams as well as to Michael Watson, Isabelle Dambricourt and Carrie
Cheek of Cambridge University Press, and to my keen-eyed copy-
editor, Sue Dickinson. As before my wife, Kate, made an indispensable
contribution.
Bardwell, 2005 h u g h k e a r n ey
Introduction
This is not a piece of national history, though it owes a great deal to the
work of more nationally minded historians. It is an attempt to examine,
within short compass, the interaction of the various major cultures of the
British Isles from the Roman period onwards. The emphasis through-
out is upon the British Isles, in the belief that it is only by adopting a
‘Britannic’ approach that historians can make sense of the particular seg-
ment in which they may be primarily interested, whether it be ‘England’,
‘Ireland’, ‘Scotland’, ‘Wales’, Cornwall or the Isle of Man.
To concentrate upon a single ‘national’ history, which is based upon the
political arrangements of the present, is to run the risk of being impris-
oned within a cage of partial assumptions which lead to the perpetuation
of nationalist myths and ideologies. Herbert Butterfield, in his essay, The
Whig Interpretation of History (London, 1931), stressed the importance of
trying to see all sides of past conflicts. The modern world in his view arose
from both Protestant and Catholic, not from one or the other. In the same
way, no single ‘national’ interpretation, whether English, Irish, Scottish
or Welsh, can be treated as self-contained. A ‘Britannic’ framework is
an essential starting point for a fuller understanding of these so-called
‘national’ pasts.
This point might hardly seem worth stressing, were it not for the fact
that, in its continued use of a ‘nation’ paradigm, the historiography of
the British Isles still bears traces of its late nineteenth-century origins.
The professionalisation of history brought with it the acceptance not
only of Leopold von Ranke’s critical methods but also his stress upon
the role of ‘nations’ in history. Ranke believed that the ‘nation’ was the
divinely created unit at work in universal history, with each nation having
its own appointed moment of destiny. So far as England is concerned,
the publication of William Stubbs’ Constitutional History of England (from
1866 onwards) marked the introduction of history on the Rankean model.
Stubbs’ History was acceptably ‘modern’ in its critical use of primary
sources. There was also no doubt that Stubbs saw the ‘nation’ as the
appropriate unit for a historian to concentrate upon.
1
2 Introduction
Nation-based history became the basis around which the new academic
subject of history expanded. The English Historical Review was founded
in 1886 and in due course national history reviews were founded first for
Scotland (1904) and then for Ireland (1938) and Wales (1970). In the
new elementary and secondary schools of the late nineteenth century,
history was taught on national lines as a means of inculcating the virtue
of patriotism. Libraries took ‘nations’ as the appropriate cataloguing divi-
sion for the ‘subject of History’. During the twentieth century, long after
the original impulse from Ranke had been lost sight of, the writing of
history along ‘national’ lines seemed axiomatic.
The extent to which the writing of history was so strongly nation-based
was disguised by the way in which English historians shifted between the
use of ‘British’ and ‘English’ as if the two were somehow equivalent. Three
examples of this tendency may suffice, all taken from major historians.
The historical development of England is based upon the fact that her frontiers
against Europe are drawn by Nature and cannot be the subject of dispute . . . In
short, a great deal of what is peculiar in English history is due to the obvious fact
that Great Britain is an island. (L. B. Namier, England in the Age of the American
Revolution (London, 1930), pp. 6–7)
In the Second World War, the British people came of age . . . The British people
had set out to destroy Hitler . . . No English soldier who rode with the tanks into
liberated Belgium . . . The British were the only people who went through both
world wars from beginning to end . . . The British empire declined . . . Few even
sang ‘England Arise’. England had risen all the same. (A. J. P. Taylor, England
1914–45 (Oxford, 1966), p. 600)
Nevertheless, something can be learned about the British political system . . . The
early attainment of national identity is one of England’s most distinctive fea-
tures . . . To this extent British political development may be plausibly regar-
ded . . . If we are to understand the reasons for the peculiarities of the English
political system . . . Quite apart from all the consequences that have flowed from
Britain’s imperial role. (Keith Thomas, ‘The United Kingdom’, in Raymond
Grew, ed., Crises of Political Development in Europe and the United States (Princeton,
1978), pp. 44–5)
These examples indicate that a single nation-based approach is insuffi-

cient. Much as the historians concerned wish to keep within an ‘English’
framework, they are led in spite of themselves to refer to a wider
dimension.
There was, however, an earlier tradition of historiography whose prac-
titioners had been willing to consider the histories of Ireland, Scotland
and Wales as an essential part of the story. Thomas Babington Macaulay
may have entitled his master work History of England (1848–61) but it
was, in effect, a history of the British Isles during what he saw as the
Introduction 3
crucial period of modern history, the Glorious Revolution of 1688. James

Anthony Froude is best known for history of England in the sixteenth
century but his study of The English in Ireland (1872) together with his
novel The Two Chiefs of Dunboy (1889) reveal a remarkable understand-
ing of Ireland. W. E. H. Lecky’s History of England in the Eighteenth Cen-
tury (1878–90) included Ireland and Scotland as well as England within
its overall perspective. Elie Halévy’s History of the English People (1913),
despite the limitations of its title, took a wide view of its topic, with exten-
sive treatment being given to Ireland and Scotland. Halévy apart, the
influence of these writers tended to decline in the early twentieth century
because their narrative approach, their use of the concept of ‘race’ and
their handling of sources were thought to be unprofessional. With them,
a ‘British Isles’ approach declined also. Thus, the modern French his-
torian François Bedarida, modelling himself on Halévy some years later
(1979), confined his attention largely to English history. For much of the
twentieth century, indeed, within the British Isles, history has been taught
and written along national lines, and hence tied to nationalist ideologies
and nation-building. In England this approach was represented by such
figures as Arthur Bryant. Within the schools, the teaching of English Lit-
erature took on a nationalist colouring under the influence of the Newbolt
Report of 1921. In Ireland, exponents of the ideology of ‘Irish Ireland’
put in place the framework of a nationalist history curriculum soon after
De Valera came to power in 1932. In the United States, also, ethnocen-
tric attitudes among immigrants from the British Isles have encouraged
the production of ‘national’ histories geared to specific English or Irish
ethnic tastes. The American appeal to ‘Manifest Destiny’ was of course
a prime example of nationalist history.
The concept of ‘nation’ provided modern historians with a convenient
framework around which to organise their materials but a price has had to
be paid. What later became national boundaries were extended backwards
into a past where they had little or no relevance, with the consequence
that earlier tribal or prenational societies were lost to sight. The border
between ‘Wales’ and ‘England’ is a case in point. It is now assumed
that Herefordshire and Shropshire are part of ‘England’ and that their
inhabitants are ‘English’, with all the appropriate ‘mental furniture’ to
go with that term. In fact these border counties have been the scene of
intermingling between ‘Welsh’ and ‘English’ cultures over a long period
of time. The same point may also be made about the border between
‘England’ and ‘Scotland’, which was drawn at one time to include the
(now Scottish) Lothians within England and at another to include Celtic
Cumbria within the kingdom of Strathclyde. The presence of ‘Arthur’s
Seat’ in the heart of Edinburgh is a reminder that the Lothians, Wales
4 Introduction
and Cornwall were once linked by a common Celtic culture stretching

from Traprain Law to Tintagel.The modern distinction between Ulster
and south-west Scotland did not exist in the later middle ages, since
the channel dividing the two areas served as a unifying element for the
seaborne post-Viking society which occupied the ‘Isles’. Thus to make
sense of so much variation over time requires a ‘Britannic’ framework,
although this need not exclude awareness of the influence of Europe and
of a wider world.
This point may be reinforced if it is borne in mind that episodes which
are generally recognised as having been of decisive importance in the his-
tory of the various ‘nations’ of the British Isles in fact transcended the
national boundaries of a later date. The Roman Conquest, the Barbarian
invasions, the Viking raids, the Norman Conquest, the Reformation and
the Industrial Revolution were all ‘events’ which affected the British Isles
as a whole and brought about crucial changes in the relations between the
various Britannic societies of the period concerned. The so-called English
Civil Wars were in fact multi-national events which had long-term con-
sequences for all three kingdoms. To deal with any one of these episodes
requires in every case something wider than a national framework. The
only possible exception is perhaps that of the Roman Conquest, from
which Ireland was spared, but even here recent research has revealed the
importance of Roman contacts with Ireland. Indeed it has been suggested
by Professor Barry Cunliffe that Irish mercenaries served in the Roman
army before returning home. There is in any case the influence upon Ire-
land of the Latin culture of the later Roman empire introduced through
the medium of Christianity. Pictish Scotland is also now receiving more
attention.
The present author is not alone in pressing for a ‘Britannic’ approach.
Several recent examples of a similar impatience with the straitjacket of
exclusively national categories come readily to mind. Michael Hechter,
in his stimulating book Internal Colonialism (1975), used the concepts
of ‘core’ and ‘periphery’ in an attempt to elucidate the relations between
England and what he termed, misleadingly, the ‘Celtic Fringe’. Hechter’s
main point was that England established a colonial relationship with other
parts of the British Isles, from which it alone benefited. John Le Patourel’s
study The Norman Empire (1976) was a successful attempt to avoid a nar-
rowing concentration upon Norman England by examining the impact of
the Norman Conquest within the British Isles as a whole. Hugh Trevor-
Roper’s fine essay ‘The Unity of the Kingdom’ (though open to criticism
for its use of ‘race’ as a historical concept) stood out from other con-
tributions within a collection entitled The English World (1982) by its
willingness to move beyond a merely English perspective. John Pocock,
Introduction 5
in his powerful article ‘The Limits and Divisions of British History: In

Search of an Unknown Subject’ (American Historical Review, April 1982),
attempted to define a field of study that might properly be called ‘British
History’. Pocock emphasised the political aspects of ‘British Isles’ history
in an essay which, though brief, ranged widely in time and space. Since
that pioneering effort Pocock has remained at the forefront of efforts to
promote a wider archipelagic approach in the history of poltical thought
during the early modern period. Oxford and Cambridge, for example,
once pre-eminent centres of English-based history, now encourage the
study of the history of ‘The British Isles’.
My own efforts to deal with the problems raised by ‘national’ histories
have led me to see what I have called the ‘Britannic melting pot’ in terms
of a complex of interacting cultures, an approach which carries with it
the danger of emphasising the importance of ethnicity at the expense of
‘class’. ‘Culture’ is not the only concept available to historians but it has
the advantage of enabling the historian to raise questions about life-style,
customs, religion and attitudes to the past in a more fluid way than if
confined to a one-dimensional framework. Cultures change over time,
are influenced by other cultures, cross national boundaries and often
contain sub-cultures within themselves. ‘Nation’, in contrast, is a term
of rhetoric used to evoke feelings of unity in response to a particular
situation. When Churchill spoke of ‘Britain’s finest hour’ or De Valera
referred to ‘the struggle of a small nation for its independence over seven
centuries’ they were attempting to sway the emotions of their audiences,
not to expound a detached piece of history. It is very doubtful whether
the term ‘nation’ can escape these emotional overtones. One sees this
most clearly perhaps in the case of post-colonial Africa where the use of
‘nation’ all too often conceals the true realities of tribal cultures. From
this point of view, it is an accident of history that several states (nations?)
eventually made their appearance in the context of British Isles history.
The realities with which the historian should deal are the cultures which
lie behind the label nation-state. The concept of ‘nation’ stresses the
differences between a particular society and its neighbours. A Britannic
approach, in contrast, would emphasise how much these cultures have
experienced in common.
With this in mind there is still a good deal to be said for approaching the
history of the British Isles during the immediate post-Roman centuries
along traditional lines, as a conflict for supremacy between ‘Celts’ and
‘Anglo-Saxons’. It should be made clear, however, that these terms do
not refer to distinct ‘races’ but to broad linguistic and cultural differences.
The Celtic and Germanic languages are both Indo-European. Both sets
of peoples came from central Europe. In their tribal organisation they
6 Introduction
closely resembled one another. There is nothing to be gained by using

the outmoded nineteenth-century concept of ‘race’. We would do better
to see the British Isles from the fifth century onwards as an arena in which
several Celtic cultures and several Germanic cultures competed with
each other. In Ireland there were differences between north and south,
in Scotland between Picts, ‘Irish’, ‘British’ and Anglo-Saxons. Among
the Anglo-Saxons in ‘England’ similar contrasts long existed between
Northumbria and Mercia and Wessex, as well as within each kingdom.
What is clear about the immediate post-Roman centuries is that some
‘Britannic’ framework is necessary to do justice to a situation in which
the Briton (and Celtic-speaking) St Patrick brought Christianity to Ire-
land (most probably the northern areas of it) during the fifth century and
Irish monks in turn became missionaries to the inhabitants of ‘Scotland’
and north Britain. The life of St Cuthbert is a case in point. He was
originally a monk at Melrose (a Celtic monastery in today’s Scotland),
but then moved to Lindisfarne, an island off the coast of what is now
Northumberland. After the Viking invasions his body finally ended up
in the Norman cathedral at Durham, where his memory is revered as an
Anglo-Saxon saint. Historians of art devised the term ‘Hiberno-Saxon’
(now in turn replaced by ‘insular’) to create a broader framework than
traditional national categories. It is time for historians at large to follow
their example and to break away from the concept of ‘nation’, which they
inherited from nineteenth-century historiography, and which is too rigid
to use when dealing with the complexities of the post-Roman centuries.
The same judgement may be made with equal force about the three
‘Scandinavian centuries’, from the ninth to the eleventh, when large areas
of the British Isles fell under the control of first, raiders and then settlers
from Denmark and Norway. Modern historians play down the impor-
tance of this period but it is clear that the cultures of the British Isles
underwent profound changes during these years. After this common
experience, ‘England’, ‘Ireland’, ‘Scotland’ and ‘Wales’ all emerged as
very different societies in the second half of the eleventh century from
what they had been earlier. Marc Bloch saw this as the first phase of
feudalism, but, whatever term is used, the old structures of the ‘Celtic’
and ‘Anglo-Saxon’ worlds undoubtedly underwent radical changes.
Were it not for the clumsiness of phraseology, terms such as ‘Anglo-
Scandinavia’, ‘Hiberno-Scandinavia’ and ‘Scoto-Scandinavia’ might be
appropriate.
A new period began with the coming of the Normans (in the mid-
eleventh century so far as ‘England’ and ‘Wales’ were concerned; in the
twelfth century, in the case of ‘Scotland’ and ‘Ireland’). The British Isles
were drawn away from Scandinavia and into closer contact with northern
Introduction 7
France as a consequence, though it was not until the mid-fourteenth cen-

tury (perhaps later) that the links of northern ‘Scotland’ with Norway
were finally severed. Continental-style feudalism now took root marked
by self-conscious knightly institutions, and a greater emphasis upon links
with the Crown. In the Church, the authority of the hierarchy became
more pronounced. Although ‘Normanised Scotland’ established its inde-
pendence within this Britannic framework during the fourteenth century,
a Britannic approach is still necessary if attitudes and assumptions then
are to be understood. The term ‘Norman Empire’ becomes increasingly
unsatisfactory after the loss of Normandy in 1209, although the domi-
nance of French culture continued until the late fourteenth century. The
rise of St George as the patron saint of England indicates that a change of
national identity was under way, although why this particular figure was
chosen to replace ‘The Holy Edward’ remains unclear (a similar problem
surrounds the choice of St Andrew for Scotland). Westminster Abbey still
remains as a monument to ‘The Holy Edward’ though challenged from
the late fourteenth century by St George’s Chapel, Windsor.
During the early sixteenth century, further profound changes took
place within the British Isles deriving largely from continental influences.
Reformation and Counter-Reformation were the common experience of
all the societies of the Britannic melting pot. Though European in ori-
gin, these movements became closely connected with the expansion of
the influence of the English Crown, throughout the British Isles. The
creation of a Protestant English empire was one of the main features of
Britannic history during this period, leading to the extension of the influ-
ence of a biblically orientated culture throughout the British Isles, and
the coast of North America. In due course, Scotland was also to be asso-
ciated with the enterprise when, after the Union of the Crowns in 1603,
Scottish and English settlers took part in the plantation of Ulster. Ireland
became a society increasingly divided among Catholics, Anglicans and
Presbyterians. The effects of this proved to be of lasting significance not
merely within the British Isles but also in British possessions overseas. In
Canada and Australia the conflict of the ‘Orange’ and the ‘Green’, like
so much else, requires a Britannic framework for its elucidation.
With the Industrial Revolution of the eighteenth and nineteenth cen-
turies, a further series of major shifts took place within the British Isles.
A new industrialised and urbanised culture took root in northern Eng-
land. Large-scale movements of population took place in response to
the opportunities offered by an expanding industrial society. In addi-
tion to migrants from local areas, English emigrants were drawn into
south Wales and Ulster, Scottish Highlanders and Irish into Glasgow
and its environs, Irish and Welsh into the Liverpool area. The major
8 Introduction
cities of the British Isles became multi-ethnic societies in which varied

ethnic groupings competed for economic security, social status and polit-
ical influence. During the closing decades of the nineteenth century, the
diversity of this multi-ethnic society was still further increased by an influx
of Jewish refugees from eastern Europe into London, Leeds, Manchester
and Glasgow. Immigrants also arrived from other areas including Spain
and Lithuania. The name of Wolfson College, Oxford commemorates
the success of one of these newcomers. It was not an isolated case.
It was during these years of industrialisation at home that a new British
empire was created overseas in Canada, Australia and New Zealand.
Though they formed part of the ‘history of the English-speaking peo-
ples’ (to use Churchill’s phrase), these emigrants were by no means all
English. The new empire was ‘Britannic’, drawing for its population upon
Scottish, Irish and Welsh as well as English. In due course, after the
Second World War, the former colonies became even more multi-ethnic
as a result of the arrival of a new wave of immigrants from Europe.
A paradoxical and quite unexpected turn to the imperial story was to
occur after 1945 with the arrival in Britain of large numbers of immigrants
from the West Indies, India, Pakistan and parts of Africa, at a time when
the former Indian empire and the former colonial empire were ceasing
to exist. The full significance of this wave of immigration has yet to be
fully assessed. In the 1980s cultural tensions involving various immigrant
groups led to serious outbreaks of rioting. It may be, however, that the
creation of a multi-ethnic society in some parts of Britain is merely one of
the ways in which the various societies within the British Isles are coming
to resemble the United States. The partial Americanisation of popular
culture within the British Isles had begun in the 1930s with the influence
of American films. Since then other aspects of American culture have also
taken root on both sides of the Irish Sea. Future historians may come to
see this as a more important development than entry into the European
Economic Community (1973).
It remains to mention the political changes which have taken place
in the twentieth century in the wake of two world wars. In the years
immediately after the end of the First World War, the United Kingdom felt
the impact of a successful nationalist revolution in Ireland. The result of
the conflict was the creation of an independent state in southern Ireland,
leaving the remaining six counties of the north-east as a semi-autonomous
‘province’ within the United Kingdom. There was now a political border
within the British Isles for the first time since the sixteenth century.
One of the consequences of the creation of an Irish Free State and
later (1949) of the Republic of Ireland was the partial elimination of
Ireland from historical interpretations of British history. It was almost
Introduction 9
as if British historians had come to believe that it was possible to write

a history of their own ‘nations’ without mentioning the Irish Republic
or the historical territory which it occupied. In the case of the Oxford
Illustrated History of Britain this tendency had the unfortunate effect of
a map being printed in which Northern Ireland appears in some detail
while the rest of Ireland remains a blank even though the period under
discussion is well before the partition of 1920 (however, there is now a
multi-authored, multi-volume Short Oxford History of the British Isles).
The same criticism may be made of Irish histories in which Ireland
appears in isolation and not as an island linked historically with Britain
for well over a thousand years. In fact, of course, close economic and
cultural ties continued to exist between the United Kingdom and the
Irish Free State. Informal cultural ties did not disappear. Universities
in the Republic drew, as before, upon the United Kingdom for exter-
nal examiners. Dublin civil servants in the Department of Finance long
remained in touch with their London counterparts. The career of the
great Irish poet Patrick Kavanagh (1904–1967) is worth mentioning in
this connection. Kavanagh learned about poetry from English models
such as ‘Gray’s Elegy’ and he remained very much the anglophile.The
novelist John McGahern was able to take refuge in England after a clash
with church authorities. Links were not as close as they had once been
but they were nonetheless real. During the 1950s and 1980s Irish immi-
gration into England took place on a scale unequalled since the 1880s.
During the 1960s, as ‘Eire’ emerged from its self-imposed isolation under
De Valera, contacts increased still further. During the 1970s, both states
joined the European Economic Community. They were also drawn into
close communication as a result of the continued crisis over Northern Ire-
land. In spite of themselves, the two governments were forced to recognise
the existence of a ‘Britannic’ dimension.
The viewpoint adopted in this book is that the histories of what are
normally regarded as four distinct ‘nations’ appear more intelligible if
they are seen first within a general British Isles context and secondly
if they are seen in terms of ‘cultures’ and ‘sub-cultures’. Upon closer
examination what seem to be ‘national’ units dissolve into a number
of distinctive cultures with their own perceptions of the past, of social
status (‘class’ is here seen as subordinate to culture), of religion and of
many other aspects of life. As with any historical approach, however, the
problem is complicated by the inevitability of historical change. Cultures
change and interact over time. Where nationally minded historians tend
to stress continuity over time between, say, the ‘Scots’ or the ‘Irish’ of
different periods, a cultural approach involves the recognition that the
perceptions of one period are radically different from those of another.
10 Introduction
In 1989, I argued that at least eight cultures co-existed in the British

Isles. Thus in Wales, the gulf between the Welsh-speaking, Calvin-
ist Methodist north-west and the more cosmopolitan, English-speaking
south indicated the drawbacks of speaking in terms of a single Welsh
nationality. I regarded the Welsh-Jewish poet Danny Abse as a product
of Cardiff rather than of ‘Wales’ as such. The Welsh nationalist Saun-
ders Lewis could be viewed as reacting against the environment of his
Merseyside birthplace to become the spokesman of the Welsh heartland.
In Scotland, the situation appeared as more complex. Here the south-
west, centred on the Clydeside conurbation, may be seen as a culture in
its own right, linked in conflicting sentiments with the Protestants and
Catholics of ‘Ulster’. In contrast the western Highlands and the Hebrides
constituted a sub-culture, as did Orkney and Shetland. However, the
exploitation of North Sea oil since the 1970s has clearly been a source
of profound cultural change in both of these areas as well as on the east
coast. What had seemed like a clear contrast between east and west had
begun to dissolve into new cultural patterns. Ireland, partitioned in 1921,
remained divided at the end of the century, but the contrast between a
largely agrarian south and an industrial north had by 2000 changed rad-
ically. The Republic of Ireland was now an independent member of the
European Union, enjoying a period of unprecedented prosperity, whereas
Northern Ireland, divided by sectarianism and civil unrest, had lost its
former industrial base. Finally, in England, the decline of the industrial
north and the growing prosperity of the south, linked to the EEC markets,
accentuated the cultural differences between these two areas. Overall, the
influence of London and the south-east increased, thanks to such factors
as television, motorways, the growth of the London market and the influ-
ence of the EEC. Towns such as Brighton, Bath and Cambridge, fifty or
more miles from London, have become part of a southern commuter-belt
in which people live while working in London.
In 1989, there was a good deal to be said for regarding the United King-
dom as consisting of a dominant metropolitan culture (itself exposed to
transatlantic influences) and a number of provincial sub-cultures, with
the Republic of Ireland enjoying informal cultural and political links with
England, Scotland and, of course, Northern Ireland. By 2000, however,
this model no longer did justice to the complex cultural patterns of the
British Isles. Immigration during the post-war years had now brought a
new multi-ethnicity to the United Kingdom and especially to London.
South Asian and African cultures were now making their presence felt in
all manner of ways. There were now many more than eight cultures within
what was increasingly referred to in the media as a ‘multicultural society’,
a point exemplified in the emergence of Muslims as a political force to be
Introduction 11
reckoned with during the election campaign of 2005. Where does Ireland
stand in all this? Protestant culture in Northern Ireland still seems more
closely linked to Glasgow and to Dublin than it is to London. As for
the rest of Ireland, cultural influences deriving from southern England
and from the United States, and from Europe, contend for supremacy.
Tourism, the common law, English newspapers, English TV, English-
language books, contact with recent Irish emigrants to London and Birm-
ingham and a close involvement, since 1985, with the affairs of Northern
Ireland all combine to link the Republic and Britain. The new prosperity
of the Republic has also brought drug problems and issues linked with
immigration similar to those of Britain. However, the Republic, despite
its long historical links with Britain and its common interest in North-
ern Ireland, was now linked with the euro. Benefiting from its links with
Europe, it seems to be following its own distinctive path apart from that
of the rest of ‘The British Isles’.
Outside the British Isles the direct influence of the United Kingdom has
waned. In Australia, films such as Breaker Morant and Gallipoli illustrate
a growing Australian nationalism. In both Australia and Canada, a large
influx of European immigrants after 1945 has also helped to weaken
cultural connections with Britain, a tendency accentuated in Canada by
its proximity to the United States and by the growth of French-speaking
nationalism in Quebec. Even in New Zealand strong emotional links with
Britain had begun to weaken in the 1980s. By the 1970s throughout the
former British empire, in India, Pakistan, Africa and the Far East, it
seemed as if British Isles culture would be mediated through the United
States. Within the British Isles itself, American influence in the form of
military bases, fast-food chains, TV programmes and films continued to
grow. To an observer at the end of the twentieth century it might well
seem that the various cultures of the British Isles would be submerged in
a vast transatlantic, indeed global cultural aggregation.
Postscript
As stated above it was clear by the year 2000 that post-imperial Britain was
home to far more than eight cultures. The census of 2001 revealed that
immigrants from the Caribbean, Pakistan, Bangladesh, India and Africa
constitute 8 per cent of the British population today, much larger than
the total population of Wales and nearly as large as Scotland (see Tariq
Modood, ‘Britishness out of Immigration and Anti-racism’, in H. Brock-
lehurst and Robert Philips, eds., History, Nationhood and the Question
of Britain (London, 2000), pp. 85–98). To Modood it seems likely that
non-white ethnic groups will become the majority in several English cities
12 Introduction
in the first quarter of the twenty-first century, including by far the most
populous city of Europe, London (Modood, ibid). The impact of the
influx of the largest group of immigrants – from the Republic of Ireland
during the 1950s and 1960s onwards – also must not be lost sight of.
Post-war immigration has raised crucial questions about identity which
are now being addressed by the government. There is also concern about
the status of traditional cultures within a modern, secular society. For
example, the imposition of unacceptable marriage partners upon young
girls has caused serious problems. As one social worker of Islamic back-
ground puts it, ‘We are talking about domestic violence against women
and in extreme cases murder: the excuse is family honour’ (The Guardian,
9 December 2004). The right to make critical comments about the
Prophet Muhammad is also a highly sensitive issue, as Salman Rushdie
found out to his cost when he published The Satanic Verses in 1988 and
became the object of a ‘fatwah’. More recently, in 2004, the journal-
ist Charles Moore asked whether Muhammed could be regarded as a
paedophile for taking a nine-year-old child as his bride. What appeared
to Moore as the legitimate exercise of free speech was denounced by
the Muslim Association as a ‘clear incitement to religious hatred and
division’ (The Guardian, 14 December 2004). A few days after Charles
Moore’s article appeared, members of the Sikh community in Birming-
ham protested against the performance of a play Bezhti (Dishonour) and
threats of continued violence led to its being abandoned. It was also
reported that the dramatist concerned, Gurpreet Kaur Bhati, a young
Sikh woman, had been forced into hiding because of death threats (The
Guardian, 21 December 2004). Adding to these problems is the fact that
unemployment is markedly higher than the national average among those
of Pakistani or Bangladeshi origin, in part no doubt because of their
lower educational qualifications but seen by them as racial discrimina-
tion. Some of the fundamental questions raised are discussed in Bhikhu
Parekh, Rethinking Multiculturalism: Cultural Diversity and Political The-
ory (Cambridge, MA, 2000), and Brian Barry, Culture and Equality: An
Egalitarian Critique of Multiculturalism (Oxford, 2001).
1 The Celtic societies of the British Isles
John of Gaunt in Shakespeare’s Richard II speaks of

this scepter’d isle . . .
This precious stone set in a silver sea . . .
This blessed plot, this earth, this realm, this England . . .
These powerful lines may be seen as representing the unspoken assump-

tion of so many historians that ‘England’ is for all intents and purposes
an island. It is, of course, merely part, though now the most populated
part, of the larger island of an Atlantic archipelago situated off the coast
of north-west Europe. Shakespeare’s poetry, however, may be taken as
reflecting the almost total dominance which English culture, more prop-
erly perhaps the culture of south-eastern England, has achieved through-
out the British Isles in the modern period. The typical inhabitant of
the British Isles is today English-speaking (though a minority may speak
Gaelic, or Urdu, at home).
The dominance of English culture marks the culmination of a com-
plex and prolonged process, which is far from complete even today. As
a historical starting point, however, it must be set on one side. For the
purpose of ‘making sense’ of the history of the British Isles, we must go
beyond the Anglo-Saxons and the Romans to the Celtic Iron Age, which
left a lasting stamp upon the languages, place-names and cultures of these
islands.
A full prehistory would need to go much further back, possibly to
the mesolithic period of c. 7000 bc when human beings returned to
the British Isles in the wake of a retreating Ice Age before land bridges
between the islands and between Britain and the continent were finally
washed away. This period – of hunting, fishing and food gathering – was
followed (c. 4000 bc) by the introduction of agriculture and the establish-
ment of settled communities by migrants from the Mediterranean. This
was the so-called Neolithic Revolution. Megalithic tombs erected during
this period indicate the high priority which these societies accorded to the
afterlife. It has been suggested that the building of Stonehenge (begun
13
14 The British Isles
c. 2500 bc but extending over a prolonged period of several hundred

years) required 30 million man-hours to complete. (The long barrows of
the early neolithic period needed a mere 10,000 man-hours.) The Irish
passage-graves, built at much the same time as Stonehenge, suggest the
allocation of resources on the same scale, possibly under the dictates of
a theocratic priestly class. For much of this period it is clear that the
Irish Sea served not as a barrier but as an avenue linking related soci-
eties. Passage-graves, such as Bryn Celli Du on the Isle of Anglesey, are
markedly similar to those found on the east coast of Ireland in the Boyne
valley and Lough Crew.
During the Bronze Age (of roughly the second millennium bc) similar
Britannic patterns may be discerned. The introduction of metalworking
in bronze led to the creation of economic conditions in which trade across
the Irish Sea in Irish copper and Cornish tin (the metals required for the
production of bronze) took place on a regular basis. The Middle Bronze
Age saw the creation of an axe industry which one archaeologist has
described as ‘neither English nor Irish but Britannico-Hibernian’. In the
Late Bronze Age tools and ornaments from the British Isles reached a
wide European market.
In many ways, the coming of the Iron Age may have represented an eco-
nomic setback. During the first millennium bc, from c. 750, the Bronze
Age communities of the British Isles faced the challenge of a more effi-
cient and cheaper technology based upon iron. Widespread changes took
place, though it is not clear how far they were due to invasion and how
far to adaptation by native communities. The spread of massive hill-forts
in southern Britain, for example, suggests the growth of larger political
units based upon the dominance of a military aristocracy. Until recently,
an ‘invasion’ hypothesis, distinguishing between three periods from Ages
A, B and C, each marked by a different group of invaders, held the field.
Since the 1960s, greater emphasis has been placed upon the response
made by indigenous elements, though the influence of some groups of
newcomers on the east coast and in the south-east must be allowed for.
Whatever the explanation, there is no doubt that the communities with
which the Romans came into contact in the first century bc were Celtic-
speaking, iron-using societies organised on a tribal pattern.
Place-names may be seen as illustrating a common Britannic cultural
framework during the pre-Roman period. The place-name ‘Brent’ asso-
ciated today with the London suburbs of Brent and Brentford is linked
with the river ‘Braint’ in Anglesey and with northern British tribal groups,
known as the Brigantes. The name of the Brigantes is paralleled in Europe
in such place-names as Bregenz and Brienne. It is also associated with
the goddess Brigantia in Britain and with the Irish goddess Brigid, ‘the
The Celtic societies of the British Isles 15
Figure 1. Horse trapping in Yorkshire

This horse trapping provides a glimpse of the La Tène culture which
flourished in northern Europe during the immediate pre-Roman period,
and existed on both sides of the Irish Sea. Recent excavations (2003) at
Ferrybridge, west Yorkshire have revealed a chariot burial, but detailed
evidence of this Celtic culture in the territory of the Brigantes has been
slow to emerge from beneath the layers of successive conquests.
exalted one’, who was patron of poetry, healing and metalwork. In due
course, Brigid the goddess was to be transformed into St Brigid. The
parallels provided by Brigantia, Brent and Brigid clearly point to the exis-
tence of common cultural links throughout the British Isles, not merely
in a ‘Celtic fringe’.
Figure 2. Horse trapping in Co. Galway

This horse trapping from the west of Ireland is very similar to that from
Yorkshire, but Celtic society and La Tène art survived much longer in
Ireland than in southern Britain. Irish place-names, genealogies and
even epic poetry survive to cast a rich light upon Celtic civilisation,
evidence which has largely vanished in the neighbouring island.
In addition, the art and language of these societies indicate that they
shared a common culture with the Celts of continental Europe, groups
of whom crossed the Alps and sacked Rome in 390 bc. The Celts did
not form a race, any more than the ‘English-speaking peoples’ constitute
a race today. Nineteenth-century historians may have looked upon the
Celts as a race with distinct physical features but there is no sound basis for
this view. When discussing the Iron Age societies of the British Isles during
the first century bc the most we can say is that they spoke one or other
of the dialects of a common Celtic language, that their religious beliefs
show a common pattern associated with such attitudes as a reverence for
rivers and wells and the cult of the severed head, that their social ideals
tended to be those of a military aristocracy (though not all the societies
of the British Isles were equally military in their outlook) and their art,
at this date (c. 100 bc), was heavily influenced by the free-flowing ‘La
Tène’ style.
Cult-objects provide a source of evidence for such links. As Anne Ross
has shown in her book Pagan Celtic Britain (1967), similar types of ritual-
artifact are to be found throughout the British Isles. The head was the
Celtic symbol par excellence. The Celts seem to have regarded the human
head with particular reverence as the seat of the human spirit. It is not
surprising, then, that carvings of heads should be found in northern and
southern Britain as well as in Ireland. The most famous Celtic head is the
Medusa mask in the Roman baths in Bath. Other striking examples are
to be found in Ireland. There is little doubt that the cult of the head was
widespread throughout the British Isles. In modern times, it has survived
at St Winifred’s Well (Holywell, North Wales) where a healing spring is
said to have appeared after St Winifred was beheaded. Second only to
the cult of the head was the devotion paid to the horned fertility god
Cernunnos, who was the ‘horned god’ of the Brigantes. Horned heads
from Gloucestershire, Cumberland, Kent, Norfolk and Ireland all testify
to the widespread character of this cult. Sword-hilts using the head as a
main motif are a further source of evidence.
The most lasting evidence of this cultural affinity is language. Celtic
languages still survive in Wales, the western part of Ireland and Scotland,
the Isle of Man and Brittany (colonised from the Celtic south-west of
Britain under pressure from Anglo-Saxon invaders). These languages,
with the exception of Welsh, are now under pressure. To the historian,
however, they provide an invaluable reminder of the period when Celtic
languages were spoken throughout the British Isles. Before the mid-
nineteenth century, and the onset of literacy in English throughout Ire-
land, Wales and Scotland, the Celtic-speaking section of the population
was far more numerous than is the case today. It is ironical that the aver-
age student of British history is more likely to have an acquaintance with
Latin than to have the faintest glimmering of any Celtic language. The
survival of such river-names in southern England as ‘Ouse’ (from uisce,
water) and ‘Avon’ (from afon, river) is a reminder, as valid in its own way
as more physical evidence, of the earlier presence of Celtic-speaking soci-
eties in what became Anglo-Saxon England. Hill-forts such as Ditchling
Beacon on the Sussex Downs and Maiden Castle in Dorset, which now
bear English names, owe their existence to this Celtic phase in Britan-
nic history. The fact remains, of course, that speakers of P-Celtic and
Q-Celtic could not understand the other, Welsh and Breton being very
different in sound and structure from Irish.
Finally, there is the evidence of art. The influence of the La Tène style,
so widespread throughout the Celtic world, was also powerful throughout
the British Isles. It is to be seen in such objects as the Torrs Pony-cap
(Kirkcudbright), the Turoe Stone (Co. Galway) and the Battersea Shield.
Gold torques, thought to have been worn by chiefs, were to be found in
both Britain and Ireland at this time. The La Tène style, though more
varied in its local manifestation than might appear at first sight, testi-
fies to the influence of a common Celtic culture throughout the British
Isles.
To draw attention to this fact is not to say that there was political and
social uniformity throughout the area. The existence of tribal groupings
in both Britain and Ireland is an indication of political differences at the
local level. The Romans, to whom we are indebted for Latin versions of
tribal names in the absence of their original Celtic forms, distinguished
over twenty tribes in Britain south of the Forth. In Ireland, where political
aggregation had not gone as far as it had elsewhere, the number of tribes
seems to have been much larger.
One powerful cause of variety was geography, in particular the con-
trast between Highland and Lowland Zones. It was Sir Cyril Fox who
argued in his book The Personality of Britain (1932) that the Lowlands
would usually be exposed to forces of change before the Highlands. The
Highland/Lowland contrast certainly makes good sense when applied
to Britain, where north and west form a distinctive geographical area,
including a good deal of land over 400 metres above sea-level. Poorer soil
and climatic conditions made agriculture more of a challenge in the High-
land Zone than it was in the south and east. In a British Isles context,
however, the Highland/Lowland contrast is not quite so clear. Ireland,
which has been compared to a saucer in which the rim represents the
hills and the flat base the central plain, is not, geologically speaking, a
Highland Zone. There is no doubt, however, that the narrow seas between
north-west Ireland and south-west Scotland linked rather than divided
them. At this particular period, however, it may be seen as forming part of
a ‘cultural Highland Zone’, cut off, for better or worse, from the influence
of the rising military power of Rome.
Geographical determinism should not be pressed too far, however. It
can also be argued that, under certain conditions, the Irish Sea provided
a channel of communication linking the Highland Zone with Armorica,
Spain and the Mediterranean. This seems to have been what happened
during the neolithic period and the Bronze Age. It also seems to have been
the case during the fifth and sixth centuries ad when Christian commu-
nities on both sides of the Irish Sea retained their links with Christian
Europe at a time when the eastern half of Britain was being overrun by
Germanic settlers. The Irish presence in Scotland in the sixth century ad
and in parts of Wales illustrates the same point. (Scottish Gaelic and Irish
Gaelic are in origin the same language.) The name of the Lleyn peninsula
in North Wales links it with Leinster.
Barry Cunliffe’s wide-ranging study Facing the Ocean: The Atlantic
and Its Peoples (Oxford, 2001) now provides the framework of an alter-
native interpretation in which the Irish Sea may be seen as a maritime
corridor linking the coasts of western Britain and Ireland with Western
Europe (see Map 1). Fox’s model of Highland and Lowland Zones now
needs to be supplemented by Cunliffe’s Atlantic model in which Corn-

wall, west Wales, the Isle of Man and the west coast of Scotland all take
their place. Cunliffe’s work also has the geat merit of showing how the
relationship of the Irish Sea Province with Western Europe changed over
time. In particular, the Roman conquest of Spain and Gaul weakened the
connections which the Irish Sea Province had with those areas. In con-
trast, as a Roman province from 43 ad the Lowland Zone increased its
power and influence. Cunliffe suggests that Irish mercenaries may have
joined Roman auxiliary regiments, returning home with a knowledge of
a wider world (p. 417).
For the immediate pre-Roman period, Fox’s contrast between a Low-
land Zone exposed to innovation and a conservative Highland Zone
(including Ireland) provides a useful key to the situation. Caesar wrote of
the coming of the Belgae to south-east Britain during the first century bc.
The archaeological evidence, now more plentiful thanks to recent exca-
vations, supports the view that the Thames estuary and the territories
around it were the centre of an innovative Belgic culture, sometimes
termed the Aylesford-Swayling culture from key sites associated with it.
The newcomers soon began to expand at the expense of their neighbours
until by the early first century their influence had reached as far north as
the Trent and as far west as the Severn.
The Belgic kingdoms involved in this expansion were the Trinovantes
and the Catuvellauni (lacking knowedge of their Celtic names we have
to use their Roman equivalents) with their capitals at Verulamium (the
modern St Albans) and Camulodunum (the modern Colchester). To the
north, the outlying tribes affected were the Iceni and the Coritani, in
what are today’s Norfolk and Lincolnshire respectively, and to the west
the Dobunni in the Cotswolds. The Atrebates to the south lost a good
deal of territory to the newcomers and were soon confined to the narrow
coastal strip of modern Sussex. It is not surprising that these four tribes
seem to have welcomed the coming of the Romans as a lesser evil. The
limit of Belgic expansion to the south-west was the tribal territory of the
Durotriges centred on today’s Dorset. Here the refortification of such
hill-forts as Maiden Castle took place in the first century bc, presumably
as a defensive measure against the Belgae. The forts were still in active
use when the Romans arrived in ad 43 and formed the basis of temporary
resistance to the legions of Claudius.
Another contrast between the Highland and Lowland Zones was almost
certainly demographic. No firm statistical evidence exists but several
strong indicators suggest that there was a considerable increase of pop-
ulation in the Lowlands from the fifth century onwards, well before the
Belgic invasions. A good deal of internal colonisation seems to have taken
Figure 3. Traprain Law hill-fort
Traprain Law hill-fort, south of Edinburgh was the capital of the Votadini. It is a reminder of the
Celtic culture which linked the Lothians with the Clyde estuary, Cumbria and Wales. The Welsh
epic The Gododdin, though of a later date, looks back to this early period, recalling a disastrous
British defeat at the hands of the Angles.
place during this period. Regularly shaped field systems existed in the
areas surrounding hill-forts which suggests that organised schemes of
land clearance were being carried out. The thrust of agriculture lay in
the direction of improved tillage, presumably in response to the needs of
a growing population, though perhaps also with a market in view. Sheep
farming also seems to have been practised on a large scale with the aim
of providing the manure necessary for newly cleared land. Crops too
became more diversified. Demographic growth may have led to land-
hunger and to competition over rights to land. If this were the case, it
would provide a plausible explanation for the building of hill-forts as
the central points of larger political units. Such hill-forts were in effect
urban centres with substantial populations. Thus it has been estimated
that Hod Hill, Dorset had nearly 300 houses within its fortifications and a
population of 500–1,000. In the territory of the Atrebates, Calleva (on the
site of the later Roman town of Silchester) and Venta (later Winchester)
were all substantial urban centres. Clearly even before the coming of the
Belgae the Lowlands of the Iron Age were undergoing change.
During the first century bc the most striking developments occurred
in the Thames valley and its environs. Here there was a shift away from
an earlier concern with settlement on hill-top sites, such as those at
Wheathampstead (Herts.) and Bigbury (Kent), towards larger urban
units on the plains of which Verulamium, Camulodunum and Durover-
num Cantiacorum (Canterbury) were the most important. This was more
than a geographical decision. These towns were in effect the capitals of
powerful new kingdoms, controlling a wider area than the traditional
tribal organisation. Though the details are not clear it would seem that
the Trinovantes and the Catuvellauni formed a confederacy under a single
king, Cunobelinus (the Cymbeline of Shakespeare). The Romans were
able to make good use of the resentment which this monarchy aroused, to
make alliances with the southern Atrebates, the Cantiaci (of Kent), the
Iceni and the Dobunni, when they invaded Britain after Cunobelinus’
death (he died in ad 41).
Other signs testify to the importance of the changes which were taking
place in the south-east at this time. Perhaps the most important of these
was the widespread use of coins. The survival of coins in quantity indicates
the existence of a cash market and a certain level of numeracy and literacy,
at least among some segments of the population. Coins bearing the image
of the king bear witness to settled political conditions. All the signs are
that the societies of the south-east were developing economic ties with
Rome. Indirect Romanisation had already begun.
In sharp contrast with all this, the political organisation of the Highland
Zone (or the Irish Sea Province as we may prefer to call it) remained at
a more local level. Hill-forts in this area were both smaller and fewer in
number, less than a hundred as against the several hundreds of south-
east England. The characteristic unit of the area seems to have been the
enclosed family homestead, the so-called ring-fort. In Ireland and else-
where in the Highland Zone, 30,000 of these ring-forts have survived, and
their existence, together with the relative absence of hill-forts, suggests
that it was possible, as a consequence perhaps of a relatively static pop-
ulation, for small-scale political units to enjoy substantial independence.
Warfare was probably a local affair. Tribal kingdoms existed (Irish tuatha)
but the powers of the kings were limited. The large number of kingdoms,
compared with the Lowland Zone, also suggests that they were small in
size. The complete absence of coinage and of urban concentrations is
another pointer in the same direction. What appear to be at first sight
large hill-forts at Tara, Emain Macha (the Armagh of today) and Dun
Ailinne turn out on closer inspection to be ritual sites, built during the
Bronze Age and later probably used for annual assemblies.
There can be little doubt that this broad social and economic contrast
between Lowland and Highland Zones was also reflected in culture. An
obvious next step, therefore, would be to consider the extent to which
such matters as law, religion and general problems of ‘meaning and value’
differed from one Zone to another. The question, however, is easier to
ask than to answer, at least for the Lowland Zone. The Roman Conquest,
later to be followed by large-scale Anglo-Saxon colonisation, obliterated
almost all traces of Celtic cultures in the south and east of England. In
contrast, a great deal survived for Ireland. Thus we are in the paradoxical
position of knowing more about the ‘traditional’ era of the Celtic world
than about its ‘modernising’ sector.
Our knowledge of early Irish society derives largely from the evidence
of the Brehon Laws first committed to writing in the sixth or seventh
century ad but undoubtedly, thanks to the conservatism of the jurists,
casting light upon some social assumptions of pre-Christian times. Pro-
fessor Binchy, the editor of the laws, has characterised this society as
‘tribal, rural, hierarchical and familiar’. Hence, it may be seen as con-
trasting with the monarchical and relatively urbanised societies of the
Lowland Zone (though Binchy’s views are now under challenge).
Within the context of the British Isles, the relatively traditional char-
acter of Celtic societies in Ireland is suggested by several features. They
were, in the first place, oral cultures. The localised and static character
of these societies is also implied in the importance which was attached to
kinship. Power and prestige rested with the kinship group, derbfine (fine
being the term for family). This did not mean that ownership of land was
communal. It seems clear that the actual cultivation and ownership of
the land rested with individual nuclear families.
The localised character of these societies suggests that a sense of

national identity was lacking. Hence the use of the word ‘Irish’ in ref-
erence to this period, though convenient, may be misleading. (The same
difficulty will appear later in references to Anglo-Saxon England.) The
largest political unit at this period was the tribe (tuath) under its king
(rı́). The earliest political terms refer to tribal units, e.g. the Ciarraige
(the people of Kerry) or the Muscraige (the people of Muskerry). There
were tribal kings with limited powers, but in general the structure of these
societies was aristocratic rather than monarchical.
Within the individual kinship groups there was, no doubt, a rough-and-
ready equality, tempered by deference to age and seniority. But kinship
groups themselves were not equal. The laws indicate the existence of
different grades or gráda (perhaps ‘castes’ might be a more appropriate
term) each with its own standard of compensation in the case of injury.
The basis for differentiation was the assumption that priestly and warrior
kinship groups were superior to the farming groups. By this time, a ‘mid-
dle class’ of smiths and leeches (medicine men) had managed to infiltrate
the social hierarchy, their claim being legitimised on the basis of the craft
having allegedly been founded by a particular god.
Aristocratic assumptions may also be seen in the prestige associated
with the owning of cattle. It is often, and wrongly, assumed that Irish
society rested upon cattle raising to the exclusion of arable farming. There
is no doubt that arable farming was practised, but the evidence of the laws
and other sources indicates that cattle raising was regarded as a superior
form of social activity. Wealth was reckoned in herds of cattle, not acreage.
Cattle raids were seen as an appropriate activity for the young nobility
of a kingdom. In quasi-feudal arrangements which developed between
wealthy patrons and needy clients, grants of ‘fiefs’ involved cattle not
land. The unit of exchange in society was the sét, a unit estimated as
being equivalent to one heifer. The ritual division of the year into two
halves derived from the regular movement of cattle to winter and summer
pasture. Bull symbolism also plays a large part in the Ulster epic Táin Bó
Cuailgne. All these details suggest the cultural dominance of a cattle-
raising aristocracy which relegated arable farming to lower social status.
These societies were not localised in any absolute sense. At the level
of the elite groups of druids and warriors there seems to have been a
common culture. It is easy to overstress the importance of this, however.
Most of the gods and goddesses of Ireland were extremely localised per-
sonages with a local clientele, as the early Christian saints were to be
several centuries later. Trade was confined to annual fairs within each
kingdom. The pattern of settlement, based as it was upon isolated ‘ring-
forts’ rather than nucleated settlements, also indicates heavily localised
societies. Behind the apparent unity of the Brehon Laws, Professor Binchy
has detected the existence of local codes. In the fourth century ad a con-
siderable degree of political change occurred leading to the formation of
several large kingdoms. During this earlier, pre-fourth-century period,
however, there seems little doubt that small-scale societies were typical
of Ireland, and of the Highland Zone generally.
There was, however, some social change. Kinship groups may have
been the norm but the rise of relationships based upon clientage shows
that some form of feudal relationship might exist between individuals.
Thanks to the researches of Professor Binchy, it is possible also to discern
a shift from earlier legal assumptions involving the sanction of taboos to
a social world in which the law was enforced by kinship groups or by a
powerful patron or king. The earliest level of thinking survived in such
practices as troscad in which litigants fasted, possibly unto death, in order
to bring pressure to bear upon the offending party. Such fasting was
probably regarded as a magico-religious activity, capable of transferring
the physical suffering of the faster to the person being ‘fasted against’.
By a later period troscad seems to have become largely obsolete as a legal
remedy though it was still apparently an option open to the weak and
powerless who lacked the backing of patrons or kin. If what we have said
about the localised character of these societies is correct, it may also be
expected that, within Ireland itself, some areas would be more traditional
than others, the practice of troscad being a case in point.
The only other substantial body of ‘Celtic’ law about which some-
thing is known derives from the area now known as ‘Wales’, though there
were presumably analogous legal systems operating throughout the rest
of the British Isles. Welsh ‘tribal’ societies came into direct contact with
Rome and there are good reasons for thinking that the legal practice of
South Wales, within the orbit of the Roman military base at Caerleon
(near Newport, Gwent) was influenced by Roman codes. Elsewhere in
Wales pre-Roman social structures seem to have survived to influence
assumptions about land-holding. In Welsh local cultures, as in Ireland,
specific tracts of land were regarded as belonging to aristocratic kinship
groups and hence inalienable by individuals. These assumptions prevailed
into the sixteenth century and beyond. Welsh society in the pre-Roman
period, as later, was heavily pastoral and, like Ireland, organised around
a transhumance pattern of summer and winter grazing. Elsewhere in the
Highland Zone we may assume the existence of an ‘Irish-Welsh’ style of
social structure reflected in law, religion and general culture.
It is regrettable that no equivalent sources of evidence exist for the
Lowland Zone. Even for tribal names we have only Latinised equivalents.
If such sources had survived, we might expect them to reflect in some
way the central position occupied by agriculture, the growing importance
of trade and the extensive power enjoyed by such kings as Cunobelinus.
Figure 4. Hill-fort at Moel-y-Gaer

A hill-fort at Moel-y-Gaer (Denbighshire) set in the Welsh hills. Under
Roman occupation, this part of Britain was controlled from Chester.
Hill-forts such as Maiden Castle (Dorset) were very much a feature of
pre-Roman Britain.
Warfare, the consequence of invasion as well as of competition for land,

was probably more prominent in Lowland culture. All this is a matter for
speculation. What seems certain is that the ‘Celtic’ social arrangements
revealed by the medieval Irish and Welsh evidence were more traditional
in character than the equally ‘Celtic’ societies of southern and eastern
Britain.
The British Isles, on the eve of the Roman invasions, thus present
a broad contrast between the urbanised, monarchical societies of the
south and east and the rural, tribal and aristocratic societies of Highland
Britain and Ireland. For Lowland Britain, the Roman invasion was the
latest in a series which had subjected that area to violent change over
several centuries. Even before the Romans arrived, the political ambitions
of individual kingdoms had led to shifts in the balance of power in the
south-east. For some hard-pressed groups, such as the Regni (of what is
now West Sussex), the Romans were almost certainly a lesser evil. Perhaps
they anticipated that the invasion of Claudius in ad 43 would be similar to
those made by Julius Caesar in 55 and 54 bc, raids in force leaving Rome’s
allies in possession of the field. If so, they were wrong. On this occasion the
Romans arrived with the intention of staying permanently. So powerful
was their impact that it is only by a great effort of the imagination that
we see the need to go beyond the lasting monuments of Roman rule to
the scattered relics of the Celtic societies which everywhere in Britain
preceded it.
Postscript
This is perhaps the appropriate point to mention the contemporary
debate about the term ‘Celtic’. The most accessible introduction to this
controversial topic is Professor Joep Leersen’s excellent essay in Terence
Brown, ed., Celticism (Amsterdam, 1996), pp. 1–20. Malcolm Chapman’s
The Celts: The Construction of a Myth (Basingstoke, 1992) is essential
reading.
2 The impact of Rome on the British Isles
The tribal societies of southern Britain, already in direct contact with

Rome, would have found it difficult to avoid being drawn into a system
of ‘informal imperialism’. The social and economic consequences of this
can only be guessed at, but clearly the expansion of trade and cash-
crops together with the spread of literacy would have led to changes
in social structure, modifying without necessarily destroying traditional
institutions. ‘Modernisation’, as we have seen, was in some respects well
under way. In the event, however, the Romans decided upon a course of
conquest and colonisation which led to the total destruction of the Celtic
societies of the south.
What was the overall effect of this upon the British Isles? The North
Sea Province underwent a social and cultural revolution. South of a line
between Lincoln and Lyme Bay, the various Celtic kingdoms lost their
independence and were incorporated within an imperial administrative
framework. British Celtic language, religion, law and social institutions
totally lost their elite status and henceforth were to bear the stigmas of
the conquered. The southern Lowlands forming a military province were
the most Romanised section of Britain. North and west, a military zone
existed over which the policy of Rome was to exercise military control
rather than to administer as a civil province.
English historians of the Roman Conquest have seen it, on the whole,
through the eyes of the victors, an understandable attitude in a society
with its own strong imperial traditions. From the Renaissance onwards,
indeed, the Roman model has been looked upon as one which the English
should copy. Not surprisingly, English accounts of Roman Britain, even
the most recent, give the Romans the benefit of the doubt. We are assured,
for example, that the Romans brought ‘firm government’ (S. S. Frere,
Britannia (1967), p. 370). They are seen as having ‘put Britain on her feet
once more and restored her self-respect’ (p. 111) and inaugurating ‘a new
era in the province with far-reaching advances both in the military sphere
and in that of cultural development’ (p. 115). We are told that ‘the early
third century was a period of social advance and that the settlement of
27
The Routes by which the Concepts

of LaTène Art Reached Britain & Ireland
Early La Tène
core zone
Marne Moselle
0 200 km
Map 1. ‘The Routes by which the concepts of La Tène Art Reached

Britain and Ireland’.
Roman veterans near Hadrian’s Wall resulted in a much greater commu-

nity of sentiment between the garrisons and the local tribesmen’ (p. 214).
In the more recent Oxford History (P. Salway, Roman Britain (1981)),
similar judgements are made. Rome, it is said, imposed relative peace
by preventing inter-communal warfare. ‘The very presence of a large
army and civil establishment and other attractions which the new society
held for local leaders cannot have left the humblest family untouched’
The impact of Rome on the British Isles 29
(p. 236). The Romans, another scholar tells us, aimed to unite Britain
with an economy and a culture superior to anything previously known
there. For the first time the whole country was united under one govern-
ment, made possible by a splendid road system. The Roman Conquest is
seen as creating a new situation tending to peace and order which greatly
stimulated rural development.
The problem with such judgements is that they tell the story from
the viewpoint of the coloniser. There were, clearly, other interpreta-
tions of events, even though we may never discover them. The work of
E. M. Forster or Joseph Conrad (or even, in the late twentieth century,
of Thomas Keneally in his sensitive study of the Australian aboriginals,
The Chant of Jimmy Blacksmith) is enough to justify the placing of a
question-mark against one-dimensional accounts of the Roman Con-
quest of Britain. What is clear about the Roman invasion of Britain is
that it imposed one culture upon another. What is unclear is the extent
to which the colonised inhabitants themselves came to welcome this as
‘modernisation’; and how far we ourselves are entitled to make the judge-
ment that the Conquest was ‘all for the best’. The overwhelming weight
of the evidence, in the shape of inscriptions, pottery and buildings predis-
poses us to make a judgement in favour of the Romans. On the other hand,
the survival of such objects as the Battersea Shield and of later Irish works
of art, influenced by La Tène traditions, is a reminder that Roman-style
modernisation involved loss as well as gain. Recent excavations made at
Ferrybridge, Yorkshire suggest that ‘a burial grave venerated for centuries
may have been the last rallying point for Britons facing the prospect of
Roman colonization’ (The Daily Telegraph, 10 March 2005).
As we have seen, the Celtic societies of Britain were by no means wholly
traditional in character on the eve of the Roman Conquest. Social change,
at least in the south, was taking place in the direction of larger politi-
cal units, urbanisation and a wider market economy. The thrust towards
‘modernisation’ was greatly accelerated, however, after the Claudian inva-
sion of ad 43. By the end of the first century ad the tribal monarchies
of southern Britain had given way to one in which power rested with a
literate bureaucracy, ruling according to the standards of a cosmopoli-
tan empire, from urban centres which were linked by a centralised road
system.
The key instrument in bringing about the radical changes which trans-
formed much of Britain was the Roman army. The role played by the
army in the initial phases of the occupation was inevitable. What was
unexpected was the prolonged nature of the military occupation. Con-
trol of the Lowlands proved to be relatively easy. The Highlands, however,
were never completely subdued and even maintaining a Roman presence
there involved an inordinate amount of expenditure. Unrest among the

Brigantes of the Highland Zone (Yorkshire and the Pennines) drew the
Roman army into a never-ending series of campaigns. What the gov-
ernment originally envisaged as a buffer zone turned into a dangerous
frontier area. The construction of Hadrian’s Wall, with all the diversion
of resources which this involved, was a clear admission of the serious-
ness of the problem. Britain in fact demanded a larger outlay of military
resources than any other province within the empire.
In such a situation, in which the army played a key role in decision-
making, ‘modernisation’ took on a military colouring. Military decisions
lay behind the establishment of garrison towns at Exeter and Lincoln
with a military road, the Fosse Way, linking them. More such decisions
lay behind the foundation of York and Caerleon as the main military
centres of the Highland Zone. Most urban foundations in Roman Britain
had a military origin. Some such as Lincoln or Colchester were colonies
of army veterans. Even Bath, with its warm springs, catered largely for
the needs of army officers, on leave or in retirement. Roman towns, true
to their military origins, resembled barrack-like blocks in their regularity
of pattern.
The army was not an end in itself, however. It formed part, but the
most essential part, of a wider colonial society. Britain was a Roman
colony, run for the benefit of the empire and its representatives. It is this
undoubted fact which makes such judgements as ‘putting Britain on her
feet’ so wide of the mark. Rome modernised the various tribal societies
of Britain with the intention of exploiting its resources and raw materials.
A centralised colonial economy replaced the various local economies of
tribal society.
Within the new order the army was by far the most important single
market. Its needs for a constant supply of corn, iron, leather, wine and
pottery led to the mobilisation of a large labour force. The army was also
responsible for the exploitation of silver mines, an imperial monopoly.
The ‘splendid’ road system also required a plentiful supply of stone. All
this was achieved not by the payment of wages but by the imposition of
slavery combined with the ‘pressing’ of local labour. Convict labour was
used in the mines and, in some cases, labourers were kept underground.
The traditional status system resting upon membership of kinship groups
was replaced by one in which the army was at the top of the social hierar-
chy with a largely unfree labour force constituting its base. Slavery existed
in the tribal societies of the pre-Roman period but there was a clear dif-
ference between that situation and one in which slavery was a central
institution.
There is little direct evidence about the transference of a colonial sur-
plus abroad to the continental empire. The existence of an imperial
Figure 5. Portchester Castle (Hampshire)

Portchester Castle, near Portsmouth, was originally one of a number of
coastal forts constructed in the late 3rd century by the Romans against
seaborne attacks. Similar forts, though less well preserved, also survive
on the east coast at Burgh Castle and Brancaster. A keep was added to
Portchester by Henry I and the castle remained in use for many centuries
afterwards.
bureaucracy, however, indicates that such a surplus existed, for other-

wise the civil servants would have had no raison d’être. The aim of the
bureaucracy was the collection of taxes. The officials responsible for tax
collection as well as for supplying the necessary quotas of forced labour
needed to maintain ‘public works’ were the decuriones. It was they who
supervised the collection of the annona, the compulsory levy of wheat
which was placed in a central state store before being distributed to the
army.
In all of this, the demands of the Roman state were paramount. Army,
bureaucracy and towns formed parts of a wider imperial organisation. It
seems likely also that the Roman villas formed part of this structure. The
600 villas discovered so far were once thought to have been essentially
rural in character, but it now seems clear that they were located relatively
near urban centres. Far from being places of leisure or retirement, the
villas, or most of them, were units of agricultural production, akin to the

hacienda of colonial Mexico, or the ‘big houses’ of eighteenth-century
Ireland. The likelihood is that they were run by slave labour, though
the evidence is not absolutely conclusive. At Hambledon (Bucks) the
numerous remains of female infants suggest that infanticide was practised
with a view to maintaining a largely male work force.
The nature of the evidence in Roman Britain means that we know
far more about the colonists than about the colonised. Historians have
concentrated their attention upon the task of working out the details of
how the army was organised or the bureaucracy was run. It is only by
placing Roman Britain within the wider context of the British Isles that
we are reminded that these institutions rested upon a conquered Celtic-
speaking population. Such was the power of Rome that Celtic culture
was almost lost to sight in southern Britain. Only in the north and west
and in Ireland, which the Romans did not attempt to conquer, may clear
glimpses of alternative social arrangements be discerned.
The impact of the Roman empire upon the Highland Zone is difficult
to gauge. Roman roads and the accompanying system of Roman forts
tended to attract clusters of native settlements. Hadrian’s Wall was also
an economic magnet in its own right. Apart from these points of con-
tact there is little reason to doubt that Celtic social institutions survived
over much of what is now northern England. York, with its cosmopolitan
population, must be seen as a garrison town in a largely Celtic ‘York-
shire’. The ‘Jackson map’ of Celtic river-names (see p. 44) offers further
evidence of the survival of Celtic culture in what we now think of as Eng-
land. Celtic religious beliefs undoubtedly survived and perhaps revived
in the course of the fifth century or earlier as the Celtic temple in Lydney
(Glos) suggests. Even in the Lowland Zone, excavation has revealed the
existence of temples on Celtic sites. We may also assume the survival of
‘native’ law in many cases.
When due allowance has been made for the survival of Celtic culture,
there still remains the factor of Roman power to be taken into consid-
eration. In her work (An Early Welsh Microcosm: Studies in the Llandaff
Charters (1978); Wales in the Early Middle Ages (1982)), Wendy Davies
has suggested that over large areas of south Wales, Roman-style land law,
based on the ‘estate’, survived for many centuries after the Roman with-
drawal. Clearly, considerable ‘Romanisation’ had taken place in what was
part of the Highland Zone. There is also the vexed question about the
extent to which the Highland Zone had been Christianised by the fifth
century ad. It was indeed this Church which produced Patrick, the Apos-
tle to the Irish, and the first clearly recognisable individual personality in
British history (more so than ‘Arthur’). If Christianity is taken as an index
Figure 6. Hadrian’s Wall

Hadrian’s Wall is an impressive monument to the military power of the
Roman empire. Initially the Romans intended to conquer Scotland and
perhaps also Ireland but setbacks in England forced them to limit their
ambitions and withdraw further south to what we now call the Scottish
Borders. At one stage the Antonine Wall was also constructed stretching
from the Clyde to the Forth.
of Romanisation, the survival of Christian communities in the Highland

Zone after the Roman withdrawal is of considerable significance.
What was the position of Ireland during this period? Conventional
interpretations have tended to stress its total isolation. Recent reassess-
ment of the significance of such evidence as pottery, coinage and other
material suggests that this may be too rigid a view, at least for the northern
and eastern coasts of the island. Allowing for the fact that Irish raiders
brought back silver and coins as booty, there does seem to have been
some degree of peaceful contact during the first and second centuries ad
and again, after a long unexplained interval in the third century, in the
fourth and early fifth centuries. Irish material found in south Wales may
derive from colonies of an Irish tribe (the ‘Deisi’).
Of all Romanising influences, however, the most important was
undoubtedly Christianity. The coming of St Patrick to the north of Ireland
and of other missionaries (who may have preceded him) to the southern
half of the country is normally seen in exclusively religious terms as part
of the history of the Christian Church. In cultural terms, however, it
Faeroe Is
Shetland Is
Orkney Is
s
de
bri
He
Skye
Picts
ARGYLL
Votadini Jutes
Scotti Angles
and
Isle of Saxons
Man
LL
Deisi and
EY
Ui Liathain
N
Irish tribes
Scilly Is Votadini
Picts
Southern British
Jutes
ARMORICA Angles and Saxons
(BRITTANY)
0 100 200 300 km
Map 2. The tribes of North Britain (names from Ptolemy) in the early
Roman period.
marked the opening up of Ireland to the Latin language and to the val-
ues of Rome. During the fourth century ad Christianity had become the
established religion of the empire and as a consequence had organised
itself on the Roman administrative model. The Church was no longer
a network of sects but an organisation made up of dioceses (the secular
term for the imperial administrative unit) ruled by bishops in a monar-
chical system in which the Emperor as well as the Pope exercised a great
deal of power. Latin was the sacred language of the Western Church and
its centre was Rome. The Christian missionaries to Ireland in the course
of the fifth century were thus agents of Romanisation. The Church which
St Patrick founded was linked with sub-Roman Britain and presumably
run on Roman lines.
The religion of the druids was heavily embedded in an oral culture. If
later practices of the poets (filid) are taken as a guide, candidates for the
individual priesthood had to undertake a prolonged course of memori-
sation extending over many years. Secrecy was all-important and mem-
bership as a consequence seems to have been confined to certain kinship
groups. Christianity, in contrast, was a religion of the book. It brought
literacy in its wake, though no doubt of a restricted kind. The new cul-
ture was Latin in its orientation, though the view that Columbanus, the
Irish pilgrim of the late sixth century, was familiar with the Latin classics
seems to be unfounded.
The Christian Church, which had taken the imperial organisation as
its model, was monarchical in structure. Its laws were seen as deriving
from the authority of duly ordained rulers rather than from the local
communities. In principle at least it aimed at uniformity. In doctrine also
the Church aimed at orthodoxy, defined in as precise a manner as possible
according to Greek philosophy. This too was in contrast with the loose
polytheism of traditional societies within Ireland.
This process of Romanisation was by no means an instant success.
Indeed, historians have tended to exaggerate the speed at which Chris-
tianity made headway in Ireland. The decline of the western empire in
the fifth century also played its part in slowing down the rate of change.
Many traditional aspects of Irish life survived for centuries to come. In
spite of these qualifications, however, there is no doubt that the isola-
tion of Ireland broke down during this period. During the fifth century,
in an episode which is still obscure, Irish colonists from Ulster estab-
lished themselves in Argyll. During the same period links were established
across the Irish Sea between Ireland and Wales. So far as Wales is con-
cerned, the story was to peter out inconclusively. In Scotland, however,
the Irish, known by their Roman nickname of ‘Scotti’, came to exer-
cise lasting influence, since it was from their kingdom of Dalriada that
Christian missionaries eventually came to evangelise the Anglo-Saxons
of Northumbria in the mid-seventh century.
Looked at in broad perspective, the British Isles c. ad 400 present a
contrast between cultural areas. England south of a line from the Thames
estuary to the Bristol Channel was heavily Romanised. Though few
or no written sources have survived, physical testimony in the form of
the remains of towns, forts and villas indicates that this part of Britain
was very much part of the Roman empire. Here was a bureaucratic,
Map 3. Celts and Romans, early first to fifth centuries ad.
centralised administration, capable of responding to military and naval

threats by the building of forts at strategic points along the coasts. Roman
barracks indicate a rigidly standardised approach to the problems pre-
sented by military occupation. Law, we may assume, was administered
according to the dictates of the imperial code, with its emphasis upon
Figure 7. Caerwent
Caerwent in what is now South Wales was a key site in the line of Roman
forts stretching north to Chester. The Romans maintained a strong
military presence in Wales, exemplified in the fort at Caernarfon on the
coast, but they did not succeed in fully Romanising Wales as they did
southern Britain.
private property. In the fourth century, the Christian Church, based

upon the town and the diocese, administered by bishops, reflected in
its unformity the outlook of the empire in which it found itself. Despite
this Romanisation, the majority of the population, Professor Jackson tells
us, almost certainly spoke British Celtic.
The second cultural area may be seen as stretching from the territory of
the Votadini with its ‘capital’ at Traprain Law (near modern Edinburgh)
Map 4. Celts and Saxons, early fifth to late eighth centuries.
to the tribal kingdoms of Wales and Ireland. In this area societies were
heavily localised in their outlook. Laws based upon the dominance of
local kinship groups prevailed. The feud and the compensatory fine were
the sanctions on which these local societies relied. We may also assume
that perceptions of the past adopted by these cultures reflected their local
perspective. We are very far here from the universalist outlook of the
Roman empire. In these cultures, the patronage of local aristocratic elites
still prevailed. As suggested above, the influence of Christian missions
brought these societies in Highland Britain and in Ireland into more
direct contact with the Latin culture of the late Roman empire. For many,
Latin became their sacred language. But the institutions of these societies,
based upon what was seen as immemorial custom, could not be easily
swept aside. Christian teaching, as the evidence of a later period suggests,
probably remained a veneer in societies which still retained their own rites
of passage and attitudes to kinship and, perhaps, human sacrifice.
Over much of the British Isles, the Celtic-speaking world survived the
arrival and the departure of the Roman legions. The vitality of local oral
cultures led to the invention or re-editing of origin legends, legal tracts
and genealogies and narrative histories which were eventually committed
to writing in an acceptable form by the monastic scribes of the early mid-
dle ages. These cultural traditions in due course gave rise to the fables of
Arthur, Fionn MacCumhail and the Mabinogi. Those Celtic perceptions
of the past which survived provided an alternative version of events which
continued to exercise a powerful fascination in Wales, Ireland and Scot-
land and even in Norman England, thanks to the influence of Geoffrey
of Monmouth.
Postscript
Chapter 2 offered a brief ‘revisionist’ interpretation of the impact of the
Roman empire upon the British Isles, stressing the exploitative character
rather than, as is the orthodox view, its role in ‘civilising’ the native inhab-
itants. (As I write, French historians are protesting about the attempt of
the French state to impose a ‘positive’ view of French colonialism in state
schools; The Guardian, 15 April 2005.) In support of my revisionist view,
mention should have been made of the rebellion of Boudica, Queen of
the Iceni, against Roman rule in ad 61. The violence of the rebellion was
matched by the brutality of its suppression when, in the words of Taci-
tus, ‘they (the Romans) made a desert and called it peace (‘solitudinem
faciunt, pacem appellant’, De Agricola).
The Iceni had accepted indirect Roman overlordship after the Clau-
dian conquest of 43 ad but thirty years later turned to open resistance
after the Roman authorities began to impose direct rule. In the course
of this policy the Romans confiscated the estates of the Iceni aristoc-
racy and imposed conscription upon their young men. In an ill-advised
demonstration of their power, Boudicca, widow of the Iceni King, was
flogged and her two daughters raped. Open rebellion against Roman rule
followed in which the Iceni were joined by their immediate neighbours the
Trinovantes. The urban centres of Colchester, London and Verulamium
were destroyed with great loss of life, amounting, so Tacitus tells us, to
70,000 people. In return, the repression of the rebellion by the Roman
army led to even greater casualties among the Iceni population.
The Romans did not succeed in conquering the whole of the British
Isles and may well have been deterred from doing so by the revolt of the
Iceni and the Trinovantes. In due course, however, they established a
form of partition eventually marked by Hadrian’s Wall in the north and a
frontier in the west running from Caerleon to Chester. Ireland was spared
conquest by Rome although we know that the east coast of the island was
in contact with the Roman world. Roman artifacts turn up regularly,
most recently at Lambay Island near Dublin. Irish art also, for example,
indicates the influence of Rome. Above all, the coming of Christianity
to Ireland in the fifth century led to the introduction of Latin as the
sacred language of the new faith. Established practices did not disappear
overnight, however, despite later tales of St Patrick confronting the Druids
at Easter. In particular, law tracts survived as part of an oral culture. These
were written down in the seventh century, and throw unique light upon
a non-Roman society, in which divorce and polygamy were established
practices. In addition the epic account of the Cattle Raid of Cooley (Táin
Bó Cuailgne) survived as part of the oldest vernacular literature in Europe.
It is surely not eccentric to suggest that students of ‘Britannia’ should
take such evidence into account when attempting to estimate the impact
of the Roman Conquest upon what are too often dismissed as barbaric
survivals. The writings of Professor Daniel Binchy, who was an expert in
both Roman law and early Irish law, are instructive here.
3 The post-Roman centuries
Within the British Isles the period between the departure of the Romans
(c. 400) and the coming of the Vikings (c. 800) was marked by the inter-
action of four distinct cultures, British, Pictish, Irish and Anglo-Saxon.
At the beginning of the period British culture (the culture of the P-Celtic-
speaking peoples) was dominant over most of the island of Britain south
of the Forth. Much of this culture in what is now southern England and
South Wales was heavily Romanised. Roman towns and general organ-
isation survived well into the fifth century. Further north, for example
in the territory of the Votadini between the Forth and the Tweed, the
extent of Roman influence had been much less. North of the Forth, the
culture of the Picts (originally known to the Romans first as Caledonii
and then from the fourth century as Picti) was dominant. We know less
about the Picts than any of the other three major cultures of the British
Isles but place-names and other evidence indicate that there were two
main groups, the southern Picts south of the Mounth and northern Picts
north of the Mounth and in Shetland and Orkney. During the Roman
centuries the Q-Celtic-speaking cultures of Ireland had been placed in a
position of relative isolation, which was being broken down by the arrival
of Christian missionaries from Britain and the continent. Germanic cul-
ture was the least important of all four since it was largely confined to
eastern and southern Britain where auxiliaries of Teutonic origin had
been introduced to serve as protective garrisons for towns – for exam-
ple, York, Caistor, Cambridge, Leicester, Winchester and Dorchester-on-
Thames.
By the end of the period a dramatic change had taken place. At the
close of the eighth century, Anglo-Saxon colonists controlled an area
stretching from the Forth to the south coast and as far east as a line
stretching from the Dee to the Tamar. In an almost equally remarkable
turn of events Irish culture had become dominant in the Western Isles of
Scotland and in the area of western Scotland north of the Clyde. (The
name of this Irish kingdom, ‘Dalriada’, is derived from the north-east
Ulster homeland of the newcomers.) Irish culture also established itself in
41
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Map 5. Tribal migrations leading to the dismemberment of Roman

Britain.
The post-Roman centuries 43
the east of what is now Scotland, among the Picts who were introduced to
Christianity by Irish missionaries from Iona led by Colmcille (Columba).
During this period Irish culture also penetrated, though transiently, into
south Wales, where kings with a Gaelic pedigree ruled over Dyfed, and to
the Isle of Man. Perhaps the most surprising development of all was the
influence of Irish culture in the Anglo-Saxon kingdom of Northumbria,
which stretched from the Forth to the Humber. By 800 the cultural map
of the British Isles had been completely transformed in ways that it would
have been difficult to foresee 400 years earlier.
As the Anglo-Saxon and Irish cultures rose in importance during
these centuries, the Pictish and British cultures declined. Pictish cul-
ture remains one of the great unsolved problems of insular history. The
language of the Picts, known only from two dozen inscriptions, has not
been deciphered and their general culture, known only from art and
place-names, remains wrapped in obscurity. The fate of British culture
(P-Celtic) is better known, but even here there are unanswered ques-
tions. By the end of this period British culture survived only in the
kingdom of Strathclyde with its capital at Dumbarton, in the disputed
area of Cumbria (a name which is the same as the Welsh cymry, ‘fellow-
countrymen’ and Cymru, ‘Wales’), in the several kingdoms of what the
English called ‘Wales’ (meaning ‘foreign’) and in Cornwall, which may
once have been part of the British kingdom of Dumnonia (it preserves the
name of the British tribe, the Cornouii). The only area in which British
culture expanded during this period was north-west France where much
of the Armorican peninsula came to be called Brittany (Little Britain)
and ‘Breton’, a variety of P-Celtic, was spoken. It was not until the ninth
century, when ‘Britannia (minor)’ doubled in size, that the peninsula as
a whole became Breton.
Historical interpretation of these centuries has been dominated by the
work of the English monk Bede (673–735) who completed his Eccle-
siastical History of the English People in 731. As a consequence of the
genius of Bede we are well acquainted with the Anglo-Saxon version
of events. There is no rival version from the point of view of any of the
other three cultures, although there are individual sources which go some
way towards making up the deficiency. For the Britons there is the work
of Gildas, The Ruin of Britain, written in the mid-sixth century and the
anonymous History of the Britons written in the early ninth century. For
the Irish, the sources include Adomnán’s ‘Life of Columba’, as well as
less tractable material such as annalistic chronicles, laws, genealogies and
saints’ Lives. For the Picts, there is almost nothing. The accessibility of
Bede’s Ecclesiastical History, available in paperback in English translation,
has added to the influence of his viewpoint in modern times.
British river names

Certainly or probably Celtic
Possibly Celtic
AREA
III
AREA
AREA II
IV
AREA AREA
III
I
III
EA
AR
IV
A
RE
A
Map 6. British river names, the Celtic element.
Bede’s theme is not the clash of cultures, though we may see this mir-
rored in his general account, but the conversion of the ‘English’ to Chris-
tianity. As a Christian historian of the events of the fifth, sixth and seventh
centuries he was presented with the paradox that his own people, the
Germanic newcomers, were pagan, while their victims, the Britons, were
Christian. Bede solved his problem by attributing the English victory to

the working of Divine Providence. ‘The fires kindled by the pagans proved
to be God’s just punishment of the sins of the nation, just as the fires once
burned by the Chaldeans destroyed the walls and palaces of Jerusalem.’
From this point of view the slaughter of 1,200 monks in the early seventh
century by the Saxons was due to the fulfilment ‘of Bishop Augustine’s
prophecy that the faithless Britons who had rejected the offer of eternal
salvation would incur the punishment of temporal destruction’. There is
no echo in Bede of the description of the pagan Saxons as a ‘people more
ferocious than even German ferocity’. In Bede’s eyes, the English had
become a nation chosen by God. As a consequence of this emphasis we
may tend to overestimate the impact of Christianity upon Anglo-Saxon
culture. In this regard the pagan burial of Sutton Hoo (c. 625–50) and
the pagan aristocratic ideas expressed in the epic poem Beowulf may serve
as a reminder that there was no ‘instant Christianisation’ of the Anglo-
Saxons.
Of the relationships between the Anglo-Saxons and the three other
cultures the evidence of Bede suggests that that with the Irish was, for a
time, the most harmonious. Bede refers to the presence of ‘many English
nobles and lesser folk in Ireland who had left their own land during the
episcopates of Bishops Finan and Colmán, either to pursue religious stud-
ies or to lead a life of stricter discipline . . . The Irish welcomed them
kindly and, without asking for payment, provided them with books and
instructors.’ Bede also celebrates the role of Irish monks in the rebirth of
Christianity in Northumbria, monks from Iona who with King Oswald’s
encouragement established themselves at Lindisfarne. (It is unfortunate
that later devotion to St Cuthbert of Lindisfarne has tended to obliterate
these early links with Ireland.) Aldfrith, king of Northumbria in the late
seventh century (685–705), also had close links with Ireland. Three of
the first four bishops of Mercia were either Irish or Irish-trained. Bede
also mentions the work of an Irish missionary, Fursu (St Fursey), in
East Anglia. These cultural links did not exclude political tension, how-
ever, when the interests of the Anglo-Saxons and the Gaels clashed. One
crucial turning point in this respect was the battle of Degsastan in 603
when Aethelfrith of Northumbria defeated Aedhán MacGabhráin, king
of Dalriada.
The art of the period also indicates the existence of close links between
the Anglo-Saxon kingdom of Northumbria and the Irish kingdoms in
both northern Britain and in Ireland itself. The late seventh-century copy
of the Gospels, known as the Book of Durrow, juxtaposes ‘carpet-pages’
of Germanic and Irish ornamentation. The Lindisfarne Gospels of the
eighth century illustrate an intermingling of Irish, English and Mediter-
ranean styles. Parts of the Ardagh Chalice, which is of Irish provenance,
Figure 8. Emain Macha

Emain Macha is a major hill-fort near Armagh in today’s Northern
Ireland. It was the seat of the Kingdom of the Uı́ Néill and because of
the ‘invented’ links with St Patrick eventually became the primatial see of
the Christian Church in Ireland. Today Armagh boasts two cathedrals,
Catholic and Protestant, and retains its primacy in both churches, north
and south of the border.
were influenced by Germanic wood-carving techniques. The Book of

Kells itself (c. 800) may even be a product of this interaction between
Irish and Anglo-Saxon cultures. In his History Bede devotes a good deal
of attention to the clash which developed among Irish and English church-
men over the dating of Easter before the Synod of Whitby (664). Such
tensions undoubtedly existed but they highlight rather than obscure the
Map 7. The distribution of pagan Saxon cemeteries.
close relationship which developed between Ireland, ‘British’ Dalriada

and Northumbria until the coming of the Vikings and which was sym-
bolised in the prominence of the island-monastery of Iona.
In contrast, the relationship between the Anglo-Saxon and British cul-
tures, between colonists and colonised, was permanently antagonistic.
Bede believed that ‘it is the habit of the Britons to despise the faith and
religion of the English and not to cooperate with them in anything more
than with the heathen’. Bishop Aldhelm complained that
beyond the bounds of the River Severn the priests of Dumnonia, taking excessive
pride in the elegance of their own observance, hold our communion in such
contempt that they will not deign to celebrate the sacred offices of prayer with us
in church, nor in like measure will they share the dishes of the festive board with
us at table.
Within the British community, forty days of penance were required

before ‘an English Christian’ was accepted as a member. We must also
assume that the massacre of monks, which Bede regarded as providen-
tial, appeared in a different light to the Britons, who presumably looked
upon it as an act of barbarism. The most spectacular piece of evidence for
the existence of prolonged and continuous hostility between Britons and
Saxons is Offa’s Dyke, built during the eighth century and stretching from
the Dee to the Severn estuaries. It was presumably the need to protect
English settlements from British attack which explains the construction
of an earthwork nearly 150 miles long, though other interpretations have
been offered.
Bede provides us with the viewpoint of a historian for whom the cru-
cial events of the seventh century were the conversion of kings and the
miracles of saints. What is lacking in Bede is a sense of the steady process
of colonisation which led to the almost total dominance of Anglo-Saxon
culture in the Lowland Zone of Britain. Military conquest came first. By
the end of the sixth century the Anglo-Saxons had seized the Romano-
British centres of Gloucester, Bath and Cirencester, and had advanced
to the estuary of the Severn. More permanent than military victory was
the persistent advance of agrarian settlements. Modern scholarship has
demonstrated how the progress of the west Saxons into the British ter-
ritories of Devon and Somerset was based upon the creation of nuclear
settlements, and possibly the extermination of the Celtic population. Fur-
ther north, the so-called ‘midlands system’ of villages and open fields
illustrates the same forces at work. The Anglo-Saxon conquest of the
Lowland Zone rested upon the demographic preponderance which the
village and its open-field agriculture made possible. Where this numerical
superiority was lacking, the foundations of Anglo-Saxon society proved
less secure. The kingdom of Northumbria, for example, despite its artis-
tic achievements, failed to survive the onset of the Viking invasions. In
contrast, the kingdom of Essex with a larger population was better placed
to meet the challenge.
Anglo-Saxon society attributed a much greater importance to descent
within the nuclear family and much less to the role of a wider kindred. The
Britons created compound words to indicate second, third or even more
distant cousins whereas the Anglo-Saxons were content with a single
vague term. In Sir Frederick Pollock and F. W. Maitland’s History of
English Law (1898), Maitland commented long ago on the difficulty of
establishing where kinship loyalties lay in Anglo-Saxon society, where
descent in both male and female lines was acceptable, as compared with
the stress upon patrilineal links among Britons and Irish.
The reason for this difference may well be sought in the colonial nature
of Anglo-Saxon society. The colonists were ethnically mixed, from several
Germanic cultures. In this new, mobile society, unlike the situation in
more static societies, the protection afforded by the lord or the king seems
to have been more important than that of the kindred. The ‘right’ to
newly acquired land was more likely to be safeguarded by a king than
by a possibly distant kindred. Not surprisingly, monarchical institutions
became more powerful in this type of society than in the lineage-based

society of the Britons and the Irish. In Anglo-Saxon law, the development
of bookland, land which was protected by a royal charter and which could
theoretically be disposed of at will, indicated a profound difference from
the assumption of the inalienability of land in ‘Celtic’ law. The importance
of trade within Anglo-Saxon society, indicated by the existence of such
ports as London and Southampton (Hamwih) and by the use of coinage,
may also be related to a more fluid social structure in which trading was
a socially acceptable activity. It was not until the Viking period that coins
made their appearance in Ireland.
Bede wrote of the ‘English People’ and it has been convenient so far to
refer to Anglo-Saxon culture as if it were a single entity. In fact, how-
ever, sharp differences seem to have existed between one group and
another. The most obvious difference was that between the smaller,
older kingdoms of the east and south coasts (Lindsey, East Anglia, Essex,
Kent and Sussex), and the newer, more powerful expanding kingdoms
of the north, the midlands and south-west (Northumbria, Mercia and
Wessex). Historians have noted a contrast in eleventh-century social
structure between the two areas, with slavery being a more prominent
feature in the west. Conquest seems to be the most likely explanation
of this phenomenon, since, among the Anglo-Saxons, the word ‘wealh’
could mean either ‘Welshman’ or ‘slave’. The task of establishing a fron-
tier with the British kingdoms to the west was clearly a perennial prob-
lem, which the Mercians attempted to meet by building Offa’s Dyke. As
suggested earlier, the challenge presented by the need to protect newly
colonised territories may have led to a greater emphasis upon royal power
in Mercia and Wessex than had been the case in the east.
In sharp contrast to the advances made by the Anglo-Saxons, the his-
tory of British culture during this period was one of catastrophic decline.
By the eighth century much of what had been British territory was
securely part of the various Anglo-Saxon kingdoms. P-Celtic culture sur-
vived only in widely separated units along the west coast in the kingdom
of Strathclyde, the kingdoms of ‘Wales’, in Cornwall and in Brittany.
It was the loss of the British kingdoms of what became northern Eng-
land, symbolised in the use of the term ‘Gwyr y Gogledd’ (the ‘Men of
the North’), which seems to have had the greatest impact upon British
consciousness. The heroic Celtic tale The Gododdin told the story of the
defeat by the Anglo-Saxons of a group of northern warriors linked to the
Votadini (with their capital at Traprain Law) at Catterick. So complete
was the overthrow of Celtic culture in northern Britain that this epic sur-
vived only in Wales. Thus later Welsh genealogical tracts of the thirteenth
century attempted to establish links with northern British dynasties of the
sixth century. Poems written in Powys in the mid-ninth century looked

back with bitterness to the defeats of an earlier period in the north. The
figure of Tristan (Drystan), like other personages in Arthurian romance,
seems to emerge from a northern background. Even though we lack the
precision of dates and events to be found in Bede it seems clear that
the fragmented British cultures in the west preserved the memory of an
earlier period when British kingdoms existed in what became the Anglo-
Saxon kingdom of Northumbria. The only large exception to this story of
decline was the survival of the kingdom of Strathclyde whose rulers won
decisive victories over the Irish of Dalriada in 642. The building of Offa’s
Dyke as a defensive frontier line by the Anglo-Saxons in the eighth cen-
tury also suggests that British resistance in what later became the Welsh
marches was far from over.
The ‘cult’ of Arthur may be mentioned in this context. It is not sur-
prising that a culture in defeat should seek compensation in the story
of a warrior who would return to drive the Anglo-Saxons into the sea.
Such seems to have been the significance of Arthur for many Britons
during this period. The actual historicity of Arthur is very much a matter
for debate, indeed there is no evidence for his existence. Bede does not
mention him though he does refer to a certain Ambrosius Aurelianus,
a ‘Roman’ under whom the Britons won their first victory against the
Saxons. Even if Arthur did not exist, there is no doubt that the myth of
Arthur formed part of British historical consciousness during these cen-
turies. There is a reference to Arthur in The Gododdin. The Welsh Triads
also refer to Arthur. However, it was only in the twelfth century, thanks in
part to Geoffrey of Monmouth’s History, that stories about Arthur began
to reach a wider audience until, ultimately, he became a figure of Euro-
pean romance. During this early period, however, the story of Arthur,
along with that of The Gododdin, may be seen as providing us with an
insight into British (i.e. P-Celtic) attitudes towards the past.
If the Anglo-Saxons were divided, so too were the Britons. Perhaps the
most obvious of these divisions was that between the various kingdoms
of what later became ‘Wales’. Culturally, north and south Wales offered
(and still offer) a contrast. The British kingdom of Gwynedd in north-
west Wales looked to northern Britain for its origins. Bardic historians of
this area linked its second ruling dynasty with a certain Cunedda who was
said to have driven Irish intruders from that part of Britain. Place-names
such as Lleyn which have an Irish origin, in this case Leinster, certainly
indicate an Irish presence in north Wales at some time.
In view of these links it is not surprising that memories of former British
kingdoms in northern Britain should have survived more vividly among
the bards of Gwynedd than in south Wales. The cultural horizons of the
Figure 9. The Sutton Hoo ship burial

The ship burial at Sutton Hoo was almost certainly that of a mid-
seventh-century East Anglian king. It was primarily pagan in character
although there were some Christian elements. The Christianisation of
the various Anglo-Saxon kingdoms was much slower than that of their
counterparts, the Franks, on the other side of the English Channel.
Historians tend to forget that Anglo-Saxon immigration into Britain
was very much part of ‘the Barbarian Invasions’ of the western Roman
empire.
kingdom of Powys in mid-Wales and of Gwent and Dyfed in the south

seem to have been very different. In Powys the evidence of Eliseg’s Pillar,
set up in the mid-ninth century, suggests that the ruling dynasty looked
back to one Gwrtheyrn as its founder. In the kingdom of Dyfed, place-
names, Irish-style high crosses and ogham-stones suggest that the dynasty
looked west across the Irish Sea rather than east or north. In the south-
west, the kingdom of Gwent centred on Caerwent may well have looked
back to the days of Rome. Lastly, on the other side of the Bristol Channel,
the kingdom of Dumnonia, now reduced to Cornwall, should not be
considered separately from south Wales since links across the Severn had
always been close and it is probable that the British kingdoms of ‘south
Wales’ had more in common with their counterparts on the other side of
the Bristol Channel than with the kingdoms of ‘north Wales’. The alleged
role of Glastonbury as a British holy place in Somerset before it had been
taken over by the west Saxons deserves consideration in this context.
The paradox of Arthur as a figure in Cornish culture also becomes more
intelligible if the Severn is thought of as a unifying factor, linking the
Britons of the south-west with their countrymen (‘cymry’) in what is
now ‘Wales’.
The third of our four cultures is that of Ireland, which enjoyed what is
generally regarded as a ‘Golden Age’ during this period. An expansion
of Irish culture into ‘Scotland’ and ‘south Wales’ took place, which may
be seen as part of a general movement which took Irish missionaries
led by Colmán (Latinised as Columbanus) into Western Europe. During
the fifth century, under the impact of the mission of Patrick and others,
Christianity had made considerable headway in Ireland, though there
was no ‘instant Christianisation’. The druids were eventually replaced
by Christian clergy but other key institutions in Irish society remained
unchanged. The practice of polygamy, for example, did not disappear
for many centuries. Other native customs, such as that of cursing one’s
enemies, seem to have been taken over by Christian holy men. But there is
no doubt that Christian teaching evoked a powerful response among some
sections of the population. The missionaries whom Ireland produced
during these centuries may be compared perhaps with the fundamentalist
sects of our own day. They preached a simple message which we find
embodied in the stone carvings of biblical scenes on the high crosses at
Moone (Co. Kildare) and elsewhere.
In many ways, however, Ireland, though converted by St Patrick and
though it influenced Britain through its own missionaries, remained
remarkably unaffected by changes on the other side of the Irish Sea.
The course of events might have worked out differently if Roman con-
trol of the neighbouring island had remained intact. A century after the
departure of the Romans from Britain, however, the localised character
of Irish society asserted itself. The monastic communities, which became
typical of the Irish Church, were essentially local lineage groups in a reli-
gious setting, in which the abbot as the kinsman of the saint-founder of
the monastery enjoyed the realities of power while the bishop played a
secondary role. This pattern of ‘coarbs’ (i.e. ‘heirs’ of the saint) lasted
in some areas of Ireland until the seventeenth century. It was this sys-
tem, contrasting so sharply with the centralising ecclesiastical structure
of Rome, which the Irish missionaries introduced into parts of Britain. Its
strength lay in the establishment of strong local roots. The rulers of the
new Anglo-Saxon kingdoms, however, expanding into Celtic-speaking
Figure 10. The Ardagh Chalice

The Ardagh Chalice, now in the National Museum of Ireland, is per-
haps the greatest artistic treasure of the Irish Golden Age. Despite the
unmistakeable Celtic provenance the ornamentation of the item was
influenced by Germanic ‘kerbschnitt’ wood carving. Thus in art, as else-
where, due attention needs to be paid to a British Isles context as well
as to European links.
areas, found episcopal organisation more appropriate as an instrument

of government.
However, it would be a mistake to exaggerate the extent of Irish localism
during this period. Pre-Christian Ireland, which (as we have seen) was
‘tribal, rural, hierarchical and familiar’, underwent considerable polit-
ical change from the fifth century onwards. The fifth century saw the
decline of the system of independent small kingdoms and the rise of two
major over-kingdoms, that of the Uı́ Néill in the north and midlands
and that of the Eoghanachta in the south. In the north, the expansion
of the Uı́ Néill led to the decline first of the Laigin and ultimately of the
Ulaid. The defeated parties found some compensation in the possibilities
opened up by expansion into north Britain (what later became known as

Scotland).‘Old’ and ‘new’ Dalriada remained linked politically until the
seventh century but long after that date close cultural ties persisted. The
men of Dalriada brought to Scotland the system of royal lineages which
found expression in ‘Cenel Loairn’ and ‘Cenel Gabhrain’ (the lineages
of Loarn and of Gabran) which in turn played a prominent part in the
history of north Britain during these centuries. The memory of Dalriada
and its legendary line of Celtic kings from Fergus I survived well into the
modern period as a key element in establishing a Scottish national iden-
tity. The island of Iona also acted as a link with missionaries in Scotland
and Northumbria.
The localism of Irish society did not remain unchanged during the
centuries of Uı́ Néill ascendancy in the north of Ireland. When they had
gained control of Armagh, the Uı́ Néill attempted to use its early asso-
ciations with St Patrick as a means of gaining control of what had been
independent monasteries. In this way the monastic centres at Clonard
and Clonmacnoise fell under Uı́ Néill influence. The Uı́ Néill also spon-
sored new lives of St Patrick by Muirchú and Tı́rechán in which the life of
the saint was to some extent rewritten perhaps to accord with the polit-
ical ambitions of the dynasty. The Brehon Laws were also committed
to writing, especially in the seventh century, despite a long tradition of
secrecy practised by a profession which passed on its learning by oral
transmission. There were also attempts to introduce a taxation system
based upon the rights of Patrick over monastic houses which he was
said to have founded. In all this the Uı́ Néill was not acting so very dif-
ferently from its counterparts in Anglo-Saxon Britain, and, though we
know much less about it, it seems likely that the Eoghanachta in south-
ern Ireland was also building up an overlordship on similar lines. No more
than in Britain, however, was there any sense of ‘nation-building’ during
this period.
It remains to mention Pictish culture. Ideally we should like to have
the literary evidence which is available for Anglo-Saxon, British and Irish
cultures during the period. In the absence of this, the historian must be
largely content with archaeological material and with references to the
Picts in non-Pictish sources. As suggested earlier, it seems probable that
Iona brought Christianity to the Picts, though references in Bede suggest
that a certain Ninian, a north British bishop, may have done so already
in the fifth century. Irish-style high crosses, to be found in the west of
Scotland, the Isle of Man and south Wales, are absent from Pictland,
which suggests that Irish influence may not have been as widespread here
as it was in the west. However, there is no doubt about the influence
of Christianity among the Picts as Pictish cross-slabs and such pieces of
Figure 11. Dumbarton fort

Dumbarton was the capital of the British Kingdom of Strathclyde,
stretching from the Clyde as far south as Cumbria and maintaining a
shadowy existence until the coming of the Normans. Dumbarton took
its name from the Gaelic ‘fort of the Britons’, given to it by its Q-Celtic
conquerors. Its British (P-Celtic) name was Ath Clut (Clyde Rock).
Dumbarton fell to the Vikings in 870. The feature in the foreground
was the original ‘Dumbarton’.
metalwork as the Monymusk reliquary indicate. An important discov-

ery (1958) of a silver hoard on St Ninian’s Isle, Shetland provides us
with an insight into the wealth of a northern Pictish chief (or perhaps an
ecclesiastic) on the eve of the Viking invasions. This and other pieces of
archaeological evidence indicate that Pictish craftsmen were in contact
with Anglo-Saxon as well as Irish culture. Literary evidence also refers to

the Pictish King Naiton expressing his willingness to accept Northum-
brian guidance about the Roman dating of Easter as well as asking for an
architect to build a church on the ‘Roman’ model. In general, however,
Pictish culture remains more of a historical ‘problem’ than a presence.
Throughout the ‘post-Roman centuries’, from the fifth to the eighth,
the image of the late Roman empire exercised a continuing influence
upon the cultures of the British Isles. The British kingdoms of west-
ern Britain were conscious of their links with Rome, which the myth of
Arthur symbolised. In Ireland, the ‘Romanising’ tendencies of the Uı́
Néill have been noted. It was among the Anglo-Saxons, however, that
Rome seems to have had most influence. The association of Christian-
ity with the power of Rome probably made the acceptance of the new
religion and the rejection of ancestral pieties easier. Literacy itself was
associated with the Romans. King Aethelberht of Kent is said by Bede to
have ordered his laws to be written down ‘according to the manner of the
Romans’. The dedication-inscription to Ecgfrith, king of Northumbria,
is in Latin and takes its dating from the Roman Kalends. The church
at Brixworth, which has been described as ‘the most notable example of
church building north of the Alps during the seventh century’, takes its
design from the Roman basilica. In the Sutton Hoo ship burial many of
the key objects are of Roman inspiration. Not the least consequence of
the Viking invasions was the weakening of the power of the Roman image.
With the Vikings from the end of the eighth century, the ‘post-Roman
centuries’ come to an end and a new period begins.
Postscript
In this chapter I attempted an overall view of the history of these islands
during the so-called ‘Dark Ages’. It was an ambitious, perhaps over-
ambitious endeavour but its main point, based on Bede, about broad
differences between what may be seen as four cultures, British, Saxon,
Irish and Pictish, would seem to be acceptable. In discussing the Britons
it is essential to avoid the over-confidence of such works as John Morris,
The Age of Arthur: A History of the British Isles from 350 to 650 (London,
1973). Professor David Dumville, in his devastating article ‘Sub-Roman
Britain: History and Legend’ (History (1977), 72–104), makes it clear
that the sources will not bear the interpretation which Morris placed on
them. Dumville’s comment about Arthur deserves quotation: ‘I think we
can dispose of him quite briefly. He owes his place in our history books
to the “no smoke without fire” school of thought.’ The significance of
Arthur in fact lies in his role of symbolising British hostility towards the
Saxon invaders. Such hostility was also illustrated in the story of ‘The
Treason of the Long Knives’ (Brad y Cyllyll Hirion) which tells how the
Saxon leaders invited their British counterparts to a banquet and then, at
a given signal, slaughtered them with ‘Long Knives’ (Morgan, 1984). On
the English side the memory of Arthur was dismissed by the historian
William of Malmesbury – ‘This Arthur is the hero of many wild tales
among the Britons even in our own day’ (quoted in R.R.Davies, The First
English Empire (Oxford, 2000), p. 1). Only later in the twelfth century,
thanks to the influence of Geoffrey of Monmouth, did Arthur come to
be assimilated into a broader English myth, which provided justification,
or so it was believed, for English overlordship over these islands (Davies,
ibid., p. 1).
On the Saxon side during the fifth and sixth centuries there is a lack of
literary material (hence the value of archaeological evidence such as that
of the seventh-century ship burial at Sutton Hoo). In the absence of such
evidence, Stubbs (1875) was forced to argue by inference from Tacitus’
treatise on the German tribes c. 100ad (De Germania) and as a result his
early chapters have been discredited. But Stubbs does make clear that the
Saxons formed part of a wider pattern of barbarian invasions of Western
Europe. Sutton Hoo is a reminder that eastern England was still largely
pagan territory well after the arrival of St Augustine in 597.
Without Bede, historical pickings would be thin indeed. Fortunately,
however, at least for English history, he was a scholar of remark-
able talent amounting to genius who, in his Ecclesiastical History of
the English People (731), produced a version of events far superior to any
single contemporary work in Irish or British. Thanks to Bede, the English
found themselves provided with a Christian version of their past which
obscured the realities of their barbaric origins and which linked them with
Christian Rome rather than pagan Germany. But Bede’s stress upon the
existence of an English nation may have led us to exaggerate the degree
of unity which existed in pre-Viking England.
Bad relations between the Britons and the Saxons (whom now, follow-
ing Bede, we should call ‘the English’) continued into the eighth century
and beyond. Offa’s Dyke bears witness to this. John Gillingham also tells
us that Bede, writing in 731, called a British king – a fellow Christian –
a barbarian. He also reminds us that early west Saxon law codes treated
Britons (whom they called ‘Welsh’ sc. foreigners) as second-class citizens
(Grant and Stringer, Uniting the Kingdom? (1995, p. 56)). It is not sur-
prising that of our four cultures it was the Irish who helped to convert
the English to Christianity. Thus James Campbell reminds us that the
Irishman Fursey preached the gospel in East Anglia c.635 (Campbell,
2000, p. 114).
The Ireland from which such figures as Fursey emerged was not nec-
essarily the island of ‘saints and scholars’ of pious history. The practice
of polygamy, for example, survived the coming of Christianity. Professor
Daniel Binchy, in a brilliant article (Binchy, 1958), has shown how despite
the coming of St Patrick (c.450) the Kingship at Tara remained pagan
for several generations. Binchy was also able to prove that the story of
Patrick confronting King Laoghaire at Tara in the fifth century could not
have been true, although this did not prevent it from being related still as
fact by the Irish bishops to Pope John Paul II when he visited Ireland in
1979.
By the seventh century, however, a rapprochement had taken place
between Christian and secular learning and tribal sagas were incorpo-
rated into a Christian chronological framework. The way was open for
the rise of a national myth, the ‘Book of Invasions’ (Lebor Gabala), in
which the Irish kings traced their descent to Mil (whose sons on leaving
Spain settled in Ireland) and thence back to Gomer son of Noah. The leg-
endary character of this story should not obscure the fact that the sources
for early Irish history are much more plentiful than those available for
Wales or England. It has been estimated, for example, that the Irish
genealogies refer to 20,000 identifiable individuals compared to a few
hundred for Anglo-Saxon genealogies. Work in this difficult terrain by a
gifted generation of scholars has brought rich rewards which are not as
well known outside Ireland as they should be (see O Croı́nı́n, 1995).
In the context of the history of these islands the cultures of the ‘Dark
Ages’ left a lasting impact upon national identities. In the case of Ireland
a figure from prehistory such as Cuchulain remains a potent symbol even
today. The High Kingship of Tara still retains a shadowy aura. Above
all St Patrick, a man of the fifth century, is still a vivid presence in Irish
culture.
The influence of this period was also long felt in Scottish history where
an elective ‘ancient constitution’ was traced back to Fergus, King of
Dalriada, in the fourth century bc. This was, no doubt, a myth but it
rested upon the undoubted fact of a substantial Irish presence in the west
of Scotland. In the sixteenth century the humanist scholars Boéce and
Buchanan continued to stress the significance of the Dalriada monar-
chy and in the late eighteenth century James Macpherson discovered
(or forged) the literary works of ‘Ossian’, a figure who came to be seen
as the northern Homer. In the fifth century, however, ‘Scotland’ in the
modern sense did not exist. Four ethnic groupings, Irish, British, Pictish
and Saxon, still contended for supremacy or survival. It was not until
the ninth century that a political unit resembling ‘Scotland’ began to
emerge.
The general reader is fortunate in being able to turn to the contribu-

tions of a generation of gifted scholars, in particular David Dumville’s
Histories and Pseudo-histories of the Insular Middle Ages (Aldershot, 1990),
Daibhi O Croı́nı́n’s Early Medieval Ireland 400–1200 (London, 1995)
and James Campbell, The Anglo-Saxon State (London, 2000). Don-
nchadh O Corráin’s chapter, ‘Irish Origin Legends and Genealogy:
Recurrent Aetiologies’ (in T. Nyberg at al, eds., History and Heroic
Tale (1983), pp. 51–96) is most illuminating. Chapter I of Patrick
Wormald’s masterpiece, The Making of English Law: King Alfred to the
Twelfth Century (Oxford, 1999) helps to make a difficult field more acces-
sible to non-specialists. Daniel Binchy always brought clarity to his topic
(see Reading List below). One further point may be made. Our ‘British
Isles’ focus should not blind us to the European dimension of their his-
tory, especially in the case of Ireland whose missionaries had a remarkable
impact upon Western Europe during the centuries when England was
still pagan, well before the heyday of Boniface (c.750) and later, Alcuin
(c.800).
Much of the importance of this period for later generations lies in
the ‘gaelicisation’ of the west of Scotland. How this occurred is still a
matter for debate, as a recent article by David Dumville demonstrated
(Dumville, 2002). Its lasting effects are a salutary reminder of the way in
which Ireland and Britain have interacted over the centuries despite the
efforts of some national historians who wish to keep them distinct.
It was also during this period that Anglo-Saxon newcomers established
a permanent presence north of the Tweed. As we have seen, Scotland at
this time, 500–800, was an unstable complex of distinctive and hostile
ethnic groupings: British (sc. Welsh), ‘Scottish’ (sc. Gaelic), Anglo-Saxon
and Pictish. To this mixture were soon to be added Viking elements. It
was surprising indeed that a Scottish nation eventually emerged under
the leadership of Robert Bruce (1274–1329).
4 The Vikings and the fall of the Old Order
During the early ninth century, the equilibrium which existed between the
cultures of the British Isles was disturbed by the onset of a new, seaborne
power, the Vikings. The first Viking raids took place in the last decade
of the eighth century when Lindisfarne was sacked (793). From then on
the peoples of the British Isles as a whole were subjected to increasing
pressure. Thanks to their longships, a crucial invention, the Vikings were
able to dominate for long periods much of the Irish Sea and the North Sea.
A completely new situation was created, as a consequence of which Viking
settlements were established along the coasts of Britain and Ireland as well
as neighbouring islands including the Isle of Man, Shetland, Orkney and
the Hebrides. Though their political power eventually declined, partly
as a consequence of political divisions, the communities which they set
up remained ethnically distinctive for centuries. With the coming of the
Vikings a new period may be said to have begun in the history of the
British Isles, one which marked a sharp breach with the past.
The term ‘Viking’ originated in a term for ‘pirate’, but, as with the Sax-
ons earlier, piracy eventually gave way to colonisation. The Irish Sea from
the Hebrides southwards was largely dominated by the Vikings, though
it would be a mistake to assume that there was political unity among the
various groups. (The Irish distinguished ‘dark strangers’ dubhgaill, from
‘fair strangers’ fionngaill, whence came ‘Fingal’.) During the course of the
ninth century, trading posts were established at Dublin, Cork, Waterford
and Limerick. The Isle of Man became an important strategic centre. The
North Sea also fell under Danish influence. The capital of Northumbria,
York, was transformed into a major Viking entrepôt, rivalling Scandina-
vian Dublin in its importance. From the mid-ninth century (856) large-
scale Danish colonisation took place along the east coast. In the English
east midlands, large areas of Mercia were soon controlled from the five
Danish boroughs of Lincoln, Leicester, Derby, Nottingham and Stam-
ford, all of them accessible by river from the North Sea. In the Irish
Sea area, a secondary expansion occurred in Cumbria and the Wirral,
although in this case the settlers came from the Scandinavian colonies in
60
The Vikings and the fall of the Old Order 61
Map 8. The impact of the Vikings, late eighth to early eleventh centuries.
western ‘Scotland’ and the Western Isles. During much of the tenth cen-
tury, struggles for power took place between various groups of Vikings.
Hence came the spectacle in the tenth century of the Norse kings of
Dublin attempting to gain control of the Danish kingdom of York, though
ultimately without success.
Conventional interpretations, particularly of English history, tend to

underplay the significance of the Vikings. Many text-books of English
history assume the continuity of an Anglo-Saxon England from the fifth
century to the Norman Conquest. The French historian Marc Bloch,
however, looking at Western Europe as a whole, argued that the Viking
invasions induced responses which led to revolutionary changes in social
and political structures. Daniel Binchy also, in his study of Ireland during
this period (in Proceedings of the Dublin Congress of Celtic Studies (1962)),
has spoken of ‘the Fall of the Old Order’. In the context of the British
Isles, a view which stresses radical change rather than continuity makes
the better sense. Both directly in their own actions, and indirectly in
the responses which they evoked, the Vikings may be seen as agents of
revolution rather than as the cause of a minor break in a general process
of political evolution.
If we deal with eastern Britain first, the revolutionary effect of the
Viking invasions is clear. The Vikings originally set up puppet-kings in
Northumbria and Mercia, but in the first half of the tenth century these
kingdoms ceased to exist. The Christian Church which these kings had
supported also suffered severe blows. Politically, the result of this was to
leave Bernicia, Northumbria north of the Tweed, isolated and exposed to
attack from the north. The future of this area was to lie with the Gaelic-
dominated ‘Kingdom of Scots’. Further west, Anglo-Saxon settlements
in Cumbria, made at the expense of the kingdom of Strathclyde, were
submerged. In Deira (south Northumbria) and further south in Lindsey,
East Anglia and Mercia, Danish settlers moved in in large numbers, often,
it would appear, establishing themselves alongside the Anglo-Saxons. As
the Celts had become second-class citizens in this part of Britain, so too
in their turn did the Anglo-Saxons. The Anglo-Saxon elite, if we may
go by the evidence of the graves, was a military aristocracy. The new
social order was more broadly based upon farmers. Not surprisingly, the
aristocratic artistic tradition of Northumbria was weakened though it did
not perish entirely. Along the east coast of Britain ‘Anglo-Saxon England’
ceased to exist in any meaningful sense. The Christian literate culture of
Alcuin of York linked to Rome and the Carolingian empire, was replaced
by a pagan, oral culture, which looked to Denmark and Norway.
The new society which came into existence in this area during the ninth
century was more market-orientated than the society which it replaced,
though the contrast was not absolute. Anglo-Saxon coins (sceattas) testify
to the existence of trade between London and the Rhineland during the
eighth century. The port of Hamwih (near today’s Southampton) enjoyed
some prosperity. The trading inclination of the Vikings, however, was of
a different order. York became an international trading centre, rivalled
Figure 12. Commemoration stone from Lindisfarne

Lindisfarne, a Celtic monastery on an island off the coast of Northum-
bria, was established by Aedan, a monk of Iona, who came at the invi-
tation of King Oswald. Christianity in Northumbria was a mixture of
Celtic and Roman traditions which came into conflict at the Synod of
Whitby in 664. In a curious turn of events the remains of St Cuthbert
of Lindisfarne were enshrined at Durham, where his Celtic connections
were lost sight of. The scene depicted here commemorated the Viking
raid which led to the evacuation of the monastery.
in the British Isles only by Dublin. Other substantial commercial centres

rose along the east coast at Lincoln, Thetford and Norwich. London had
a thriving community of Viking merchants. On the west coast, Bristol in
due course became an important port specialising in trade with Ireland.
Trade with the French coastal regions also increased.
In the early years of the Viking raids piracy and trade were inextrica-
bly intermingled. Their trade was piracy and piracy was their trade. The
Cuerdale coin hoard of over 7,000 coins, including some Kufic dirhams,
shows the ‘trading’ links which existed between the Scandinavian-
controlled areas of England and the Baltic trading zone with its own
contacts with Russia. Another index of the commercial changes associ-

ated with the Danes is the sudden appearance in the mid-ninth century
of excellent wheel-thrown pottery (confusingly termed ‘Saxo-Norman’
by archaeologists). The use of this pottery spread everywhere where the
Danes had settled. The demand for it suggests the existence of a ‘mass
market’ rather than a restricted aristocratic one such as existed in pre-
Viking Northumbria. In contrast, pottery in Wessex remained largely
hand-made, a sign of that kingdom’s more conservative social structure.
It was no accident that (on the evidence of the Domesday Book) the
eastern half of Britain, now under Danish dominance, was wealthier and
more heavily populated than other parts of England.
It was suggested above that even during the post-Roman centuries the
eastern half of England enjoyed a less rigid manorial social structure than
the midlands. The Vikings almost certainly added to the proportion of
freemen. Maitland commented long ago on the higher proportion of liberi
homines or ‘sokemen’ in the east in contrast with the villeinage charac-
teristic of the mid-lands and West Country. Not all of the freemen need
have been descended from Vikings but the existence of over 10,000 in
Lincolnshire, 5,000 in Norfolk and nearly 2,000 in Leicestershire, areas
of major Scandinavian settlement, is a strong argument for some cor-
relation. The feudal tie of lord and vassal does not seem to have been
characteristic of Viking society. The typical Viking, if we may speak of
such a person, seems to have been a farmer in arms, not a warrior seeking
to control unfree labour. Viking farmers had a tradition of carrying arms
in their local assembly as the name wapentake indicates. Active partici-
pation in political decision-making was encouraged at regular meetings
termed things (hence such place-names as Thingwall).
Local historians have noted how, even in the thirteenth century, well
after the Norman Conquest, and when the trend towards manorial con-
trol was at its height, eastern Norfolk possessed a social structure which
was unusually flexible and free. Partible inheritance was widespread and
most villeins had already established the right to alienate land. Resort to
the common-law courts by tenants was not uncommon in this part of
England. It is also significant that after their military successes against
the Vikings (c. 900) the Wessex monarchs did not succeed in establishing
the ‘hundred’ and the ‘tithing’ in Scandinavian areas. In Wessex, each
member of a hundred was obliged to belong to a tithing (a group of ten
or twelve men) and to accept responsibility for the behaviour of fellow-
members. The absence of such institutions in the Danelaw suggests the
extent to which Viking society was less authoritarian than the rest of
England.
The military revival of the west Saxon monarchy from the early tenth
century onwards did not restore Anglo-Saxon cultural, political and social
dominance north of the Humber. The royal itineraries of the Wessex
kings, which are a good guide to the extent of their real power as opposed
to a temporary ‘showing of the flag’, were largely confined to an area south
of the Thames. For a long time to come, considerable differences existed
between the Danelaw and the rest of England, not least in language,
law, religion and art. The east was very much a distinctive society whose
autonomy the west Saxon monarchy was forced to respect. The revival of
Viking raids in the later tenth century and the establishment of Danish
supremacy over all England during the reign of Cnut (1016–35) can have
done little to reduce this sense of separateness. Even under the Normans,
the Danelaw was to retain much of its own character.
The Scandinavian invasion of the east coast of Britain brought about
the fall of the Old Order and the creation of a new society in its place. Had
the colonising impetus of the Danes been maintained, ‘England’ might
well have been transformed into a ‘New Denmark’. For various reasons,
including the shifting of interest to other areas and the divisions which
existed among the Scandinavians, the conquest of the Anglo-Saxons was
never completed. Indirectly, however, the challenge presented by the new-
comers led to revolutionary changes in the south, where Wessex had man-
aged to escape the fate of Northumbria and Mercia. Under a succession
of able kings, Alfred (871–99), Edward the Elder (899–924), Aethelstan
(924–39), Edmund (939–46), Eadred (946–55), Eadwig (955–9) and
Edgar (959–75), Wessex achieved a remarkable period of dominance.
The tenth century was very much the ‘Age of Wessex’.
These successes were not achieved without paying a price. Wessex, and
the areas which came under its control, became more centralised and
military in character. For Mercia and East Anglia, indeed, ‘liberation’ by
Wessex meant the exchange of one master for another. It is all too easy to
ignore these internal cultural divisions in an interpretation which stresses
the movement of history towards the making of the ‘English nation’. In
due course, despite the military successes of Wessex against the Danes,
Mercia was to show itself restive under the west Saxon monarchy. During
the earlier eleventh century, indeed, the earldom of Mercia enjoyed a good
deal of autonomy.
The new monarchy, from Aethelstan onwards, represented itself as the
instrument of the Divine Will, and, as a consequence, enjoyed a superior
status over and above any opposition based upon ‘tribal’ considerations.
Edgar in particular seems to have regarded himself as possessing quasi-
priestly status. His well-staged coronation at Bath in 973 marks a new
point in the development of monarchical ideology. The officiating clergy

asked Christ to ‘anoint this king to his reign as you have anointed priests,
kings, prophets and martyrs’. Somewhat earlier, Alfred had translated
works of Gregory the Great and Boethius, probably with an ideological
aim in view.
Before the tenth century, kingship was more in the nature of overlord-
ship. Thus the taxation document of seventh-century Mercia, known as
the Tribal Hidage, reveals the existence of distinctive ‘tribal’ groupings
beneath the monarchical façade. In contrast, the new west Saxon mon-
archs, on the basis of their conquest of the Danelaw, in theory enjoyed the
power of direct disposal of land which had formerly been ‘tribal’ territory.
A large royal demesne and a reservoir of Church land at royal disposal
formed a basis of royal power in the conquered areas. Royal charters pro-
vided legal backing for newcomers to these areas. Wessex, once military
success had been achieved, absorbed (or attempted to absorb) the for-
mer kingdoms of Mercia, East Anglia, Essex, Sussex and Kent. This west
Saxon expansion had been made possible by the Viking invasions.
If the Danes had created a society in which traders and farmers were
preponderant, the west Saxon kings, building upon the demands of the
situation, brought a military state into being. As modern research has
shown, the administrative units of ‘shire’ and ‘hundred’, which were to
be so much a part of English history, had a military rather than a civil
function. The royal army (the ‘fyrd’) was not the popular folk-levy of
nineteenth-century imagination but a quasi-feudal body bound to the
king by the ties of vassalage. The royal boroughs which Alfred and his
successors set up as part of their response to the Danes were essentially a
system of fortified centres, military rather than commercial in character,
and hence quite unlike the Danish towns of York, Lincoln and Norwich.
The conquest of Danish Mercia also made possible the reorganisation of
former tribal territories into Wessex-style ‘shires’, under ealdormen, who
were not the civil officeholders, which the modern associations of the term
(aldermen) might suggest, but primarily military governors. This was not
a completely new departure for the kings of Wessex. In large measure it
was an extension of the policy and practice employed in the subjection and
colonisation of Devon, Somerset and Dorset at an earlier period, under
Ine (d.c. 726). The military ambitions of the dynasty were eventually to
lead them well beyond Anglo-Saxon territory – into Scotland; the year
973 was the high point, when Edgar is said to have been rowed down the
river Dee by eight client kings.
If ‘feudalism’ is taken to mean the holding of land in return for military
service, the new monarchy brought a feudal society into existence. The
Danish threat created the need for a class of specialised warriors, whose
position rested upon a manorial system of unfree labour. Hence came

the paradox that during the years of ‘liberation’ the status of the Anglo-
Saxon peasantry seems to have declined even further towards servitude.
In those areas which were under west Saxon control, ‘tribal society’ was
replaced by ‘seigniorial society’. The new shires which were created in
west Mercia bore no relation to the traditional ‘tribal’ units of an earlier
period. The document known as the Burghal Hidage, dating from the
early tenth century, indicates the extent to which change had taken place
since the earlier Tribal Hidage. The new shires were organised around
urban centres under royal control and took their names from them (for
example, Gloucestershire, Derbyshire) and not from their tribal affiliation
as they did in Wessex proper (as in Somerset and Dorset). On the basis
of these new centres and of associated smaller fortresses (burgs), what
amounted to a west Saxon empire was created. As the Burghal Hidage
makes clear, these military settlements rested upon compulsory levies of
men and material assessed according to the unit known as the ‘hide’ (a
family-size holding varying in extent with the area). Thus Winchester was
assessed at 2,400 hides.
In this new seigniorial society, kinship ties, already weak, were giving
way still further to feudal duties imposed from above. The process of
weakening was carried still further as royal justice, administered by royal
judges, began to assume a new importance. The change may be seen in the
creation of artificial groups of ten or twelve men called ‘tithings’, which
were made responsible for the behaviour of their members. Failure to
observe the royal command was punished not by the penalties appropriate
to a kinship group but by flogging by order of the king’s representative.
Law imposed from above was beginning to replace customary law based
upon mutual interaction between groups.
The ecclesiastical aspects of the new monarchy especially illustrate the
far-reaching character of the changes involved. The ‘Tenth-Century Ref-
ormation’ was a movement which introduced a new style of monasti-
cism into Wessex, Mercia and East Anglia under royal auspices. The
three leaders of this reform movement, Dunstan (d. 988), Aethelwold (d.
984) and Oswald (d. 992), all monk-bishops and all men of intellect and
vigour, were closely associated with the royal court of Edgar (959–75).
Their reforming criticisms were levelled at the married clergy, whom they
termed ‘lascivious clerks’, and their reforms were aimed at reducing the
power and influence of local kinship groups. With the backing of the king,
they were able to establish well-endowed monasteries which owed little
to local aristocratic support. It was during this period that over thirty
monasteries were founded, some of them, such as Peterborough (966)
and Ramsey (c. 971), in ‘liberated’ East Anglia, others in Mercia. The
most spectacular event associated with the ‘Tenth-Century Reformation’

was the replacement in 964 of the clergy of Winchester Cathedral with
monks from the new monastery of Abingdon. The new monasteries, with
considerable estates attached to them by royal grant, became centres of
royal influence. Small wonder that at Edgar’s imperial coronation at Bath
in 973, the queen should entertain abbots and abbesses, together with
monks and nuns.
The reign of Edgar also witnessed a revived emphasis upon episco-
pal power at the expense of local interests. In Mercia, Oswald, with the
backing of the king, greatly expanded the territorial base of the church
of Worcester. Against a background of royal expansion, the new monks
became the backbone of the episcopate. Monastic bishops were in effect
royal bishops. When Edgar died, however, there was a strong reaction in
south-west Mercia against the monks, and local nobility who had seen
their influence curtailed were able to expel the newcomers and restore
their own clerks.
Equally significant was the role of the reformers as propagandists for a
new-style national monarchy. Dunstan, Aethelwold and Oswald all saw
the ‘Godly Prince’ as the chosen instrument of regeneration. The Anglo-
Saxon Chronicle spoke of how ‘God had helped him [Edgar] to subdue
kings and earls who cheerfully submitted to his will.’ The Regularis Con-
cordia Anglicae Nationis, the code drawn up in c. 970 to govern monas-
tic life in England, allowed the king great influence. Abbots were to be
‘freely’ elected but subject to the royal prerogative. In the early eleventh
century Wulfstan, successively bishop of London, bishop of Worcester
and archbishop of York (d. 1023), was a particularly strong advocate of
royal authority, even though by now the king was the Danish Cnut.
In both Church and State during the tenth century, what later gen-
erations would call a social and political revolution had taken place. If
the picture given here is correct, however, there was no simple evolution.
The Viking era brought about the downfall of the ‘Old Order’ and created
conditions in which a new-style monarchy could extend its power from
Wessex over English Mercia, and the Danelaw. What we do not know is
the extent to which this ‘empire’ was accepted by its newly assimilated
inhabitants. The problems which it ran into in the reign of Aethelred ‘the
Unready’ (978–1016) suggest that Wessex-style monarchy with its heavy
burden of taxation, its military-style government, its ‘reformed’ monasti-
cism and its depressed peasantry did not enjoy as much universal support
as conventional interpretations would have us believe.
The new monarchy in fact did not long outlive Edgar. Political prob-
lems seem to have arisen, associated with the succession. There was,
in addition, a good deal of hostility towards the newly powerful monks.
Finally, from 980 onwards, Danish raids were renewed. Aethelred proved
unable to deal with the many problems of his inheritance. In 1002 he
was driven to the desperate but impracticable remedy of ordering the
massacre of all Danes resident in England. His reign saw a prolonged
struggle between the Wessex king and the kings of Denmark for control
of England. In 1016 Aethelred died and was ultimately succeeded by the
Dane Cnut (1016–35). ‘England’, now divided into four provinces, each
ruled by a representative of Cnut, became in effect a colony of Denmark.
Though Edward, Aethelred’s son, returned to the throne in 1042, some
years after Cnut’s death, English links with Denmark remained strong.
The Danelaw was still very much a Danish province with its own law and
culture. Kings of Norway also maintained a claim to the English throne.
In the mid-eleventh century, the period which had begun with the Viking
raids of 793 showed little sign of having come to an end. It still looked
very much as if the future of the English North Sea province would be
linked with Scandinavia.
The events of the late tenth century and the first half of the eleventh
bring out the problem of conceptualising the whole of the period from
c. 500 to 1066 in terms of ‘Anglo-Saxon England’. By the early eleventh
century, it was the Danish colonists who were in control of events, and the
term ‘Anglo-Saxon’ to some extent becomes a hindrance to our under-
standing the realities of the situation. We may therefore continue to think
in terms of several sub-cultures each with its own distinctive traditions,
though not uninfluenced by the rest. In some ways, the art of the period –
with its distinction between the Viking motifs of the east coast and the
Carolingian trends of Wessex – helps to bring this out more clearly than
more conventional forms of historical evidence. There was perhaps no
English ‘nation’ at this time, although such a view was totally unaccept-
able to such experts in the field as the late Patrick Wormald.
Viking influence in the western sea-channels from Orkney southwards
had the effect of creating new links between Ireland and Britain, which
replaced the cultural ties that had developed since the sixth century.
Scandinavian culture now dominated Orkney, Shetland and the Outer
Hebrides. Viking cities – Dublin, Cork, Wexford and Wicklow – domi-
nated the western side of the Irish Sea. The Isle of Man, on which Viking
control had replaced British rule, possessed a strategic importance dur-
ing these centuries which it was not to enjoy again. The Viking kings
of Dublin entered into alliances with native Welsh rulers, with Cornish
princes attempting to resist the spread of Anglo-Saxon colonists and with
the Gaelic rulers of the ‘Kingdom of Scots’. If our attention is confined
to England it is possible to treat the coming of the Vikings as a relatively
short-lived threat which was dealt with effectively by Alfred the Great and
Figure 13. The Cross of Cong

The Cross of Cong (Co. Galway) is a major piece of Hiberno-Viking
art in the free-flowing Isle of Urnes style of later Viking art. Now in
the National Museum of Ireland, it illustrates the cultural impact of the
Vikings on pre-Norman Ireland.
his successors. When seen in the context of the British Isles it is clear that
Viking culture added a distinctive element, which remained unassimilated
in many areas until the demographic crises of the fourteenth century.
The impact of the Vikings upon the Celtic-speaking cultures of the
British Isles was in many respects similar to that which they had upon
‘England’. The loose kinship-based structures of the sub-Roman period
gave way to feudal polities which we may see as a response to the Viking
threat. Marc Bloch, in his study of feudal society (La Société féodale (1939;
English transl. 1961)), denied that feudalism spread to Celtic areas. In
his view ‘Celtic’ societies remained non-feudal in character for the simple
reason that kinship groups in these societies were strong enough to meet
the Viking challenge. Modern Irish scholarship (and we know more about
Ireland than about either Wales or Scotland) is less sure. It now seems that
the older political divisions of Ireland gave way to a number of territorial
kingdoms. By the first half of the twelfth century the political realities
of Ireland revolved around new kingships which had arisen on the ruins
of the old. These included the kingdoms of Leinster (much smaller in
size than the modern province), Connacht (more limited in area than the
modern province), Breifne (including modern Cavan and Leitrim) and in
the south the kingdoms of south Munster (Desmond) and north Munster
(Thomond). The ruling dynasties of these kingdoms were the families of
MacMurrough, O Connor, O Rourke, MacCarthy and O Brien. By then
the kingdom of Midhe in the hands of the Uı́ Néill had become ‘the sick
man of Ireland’; but at an earlier date under the aggressive leadership of
Mael Sechlainn I (d. 862) of Clann Cholmaı́n it too may be numbered
among these new-style kingdoms. By 1150, Ireland was very different
from what it had been in the eighth century. Bloch, like many other
historians, exaggerated the unchanging structure of ‘Celtic’ society.
One further fact may also be noted. The Normans did not reach Ireland
until a century after they had overrun England and much of Wales. The
Irish kingdoms, and to some extent those of Scotland, were given time
to develop in the context of an ‘Irish Sea Province’, independently of
Norman pressures.
The process by which these new regional monarchies emerged is still
something of a mystery to historians. It was not part of an inevitable pat-
tern of political evolution but the outcome of a struggle between two con-
cepts as to what constituted an acceptable transfer of power. On the one
hand political power was conceived of as residing within a wide lineage,
distinguished by the possession of royal blood, on the other as belong-
ing to a much narrower dynastic family. On the former pattern, political
power did not descend directly from father to son but to a candidate cho-
sen by the kinship group at large. This was the basis of ‘tanistry’, from
tánaiste (‘the awaited one’), a candidate chosen in each generation with

the right of succession. Hereditary feudal monarchy rested upon a dif-
ferent basis, according to which the choice of successor rested with the
ruling king. Clearly two different conceptions as to what constituted a
‘just’ succession were involved.
Perhaps the best-known example of the bitter conflicts to which this
situation might give rise is provided by a society whose history in many
ways parallels that of Ireland. In eleventh-century Scotland, MacBeth
killed the reigning king, Duncan, and took the kingship himself. Shake-
speare’s account of this episode, though excellent drama, is misleading
historically. In fact, MacBeth was the older man, with a traditional claim
resting upon traditional kinship right. It was the younger man, Duncan,
grandson of the feudalising monarch Malcolm II, who represented the
new tendency towards hereditary monarchy. In Scotland, as in Ireland,
such an episode was not merely a power struggle, though it could also be
that, but a conflict between two cultures, each with its own justification.
As we saw earlier, the rights and duties of lineages (that is, kinship
groups which acted as a unit) were based upon long-standing local pos-
session. In Ireland, as in much of Western Europe, the vendetta (fı́oc
bunaid in Irish, galanas in Welsh) seemed part of the ‘nature of things’.
In the absence of a central authority it was the ultimate sanction of law.
Kinsmen had the duty to resort to it, if all else failed. Fear of causing a
vendetta which might extend over several generations was clearly a power-
ful factor in persuading an offending party, pushed from behind perhaps
by his own kinsmen, to seek out a member of the injured lineage and offer
compensation. The guarantee for due performance would be a powerful
person willing to act as surety. In all of these proceedings, the lineage and
not the individual was the basic unit. To injure one was to injure all. To
be injured by one was to be given the right to injure all.
Monarchical government, in contrast, stood for law enforcement from
above and for exemplary punishment, not compensation. The king or the
royal justices decided whether a crime had been committed and carried
out the punishment, which could include hanging or mutilation. From
the monarchical viewpoint the vendetta represented anarchy. To those
adhering to the traditional kinship code, monarchy might well stand for
savage and institutionalised injustice.
In Ireland, as in western Europe generally, the coming of the Vikings
was an undoubted factor in the rise of the new monarchies. The impact
of the Vikings on Ireland was as severe as it was upon other parts of the
British Isles. During the ninth century the Vikings raided monasteries
on the eastern and southern coasts and established a fortress at Dublin.
In the course of the tenth century they established centres at Waterford,
Figure 14. Viking chessmen from the Isle of Lewis

These medieval chessmen from the Isle of Lewis illustrate the influence
of the Vikings upon the Outer Hebrides as well as the west of Scotland
generally. Place-names in Lewis are Scandinavian not Gaelic.
Limerick and Cork. In Wicklow the Vikings (‘dark foreigners’, dubhgaill,

from which the modern Irish surname ‘Doyle’ is derived) were kept to a
narrow strip of land between hills and sea. This section of the Irish coast,
now a tourist attraction for the growing conurbation of Dublin, was then
a wilderness which attracted the monks of Glendalough as well as the
Céili Dé of Tallaght and Finglas. As they did on the coast of Lancashire
at Formby and Ainsdale, the Vikings brought land into cultivation which
the native inhabitants could not themselves reclaim, or did not wish to.
In some parts of Ireland and for some aspects of Irish culture, the initial
impact of the Vikings was devastating. During the first half of the ninth
century the north-east, the old kingdom of the Ulaid, suffered severely.
The monasteries of Bangor on Strangford Lough and Moville on the Ards
peninsula were destroyed. The loss of these monasteries, which formed

the western end of a cultural unit stretching from Iona to Lindisfarne in
Northumbria, was a blow from which the insular culture did not recover.
Further down the coast the establishment of a Viking settlement at Dublin
marked the beginning of a new age.
The second phase of Viking expansion, in the south of Ireland, was
marked by both a greater emphasis on trade and a more decisive reaction
on the Irish side. After some initial success the Viking colonists (‘Ostmen’,
men from the east) at Limerick, Waterford and Cork found themselves
compelled to come to terms with the local rulers and in effect became
client states forced to dance to an internal pattern of politics. Tensions
between the two cultures endured for a long time. In the late eleventh
century, for example, the bishops of Dublin sought consecration from
Canterbury rather than from their Irish neighbours.
Earlier historians, following the evidence of the annals, may well have
exaggerated the destructive role of the Vikings. Another source of dis-
tortion derived from twelfth-century chronicles anxious to provide pro-
paganda for their patrons. The Struggle of the Gael against the Foreigner
(Cogadh Gaedhel re Gallaibh), for example, described Brian Boru leading
a campaign to drive the Vikings out of Ireland. In the view of some mod-
ern Irish scholars, the Cogadh now appears as very much a piece of official
history written two centuries after the event to glorify the O Briens. The
battle of Clontarf (1014) was fought not between Irish and Viking but
between the forces of Brian Boru and an alliance of the kings of Leinster
and Dublin Vikings, joined in an attempt to resist what they saw as the
unwelcome intrusion of the O Briens of Munster. In such a context, the
term ‘Irish’ can be as misleading as ‘English’ in the history of the North
Sea Province.
So far from having a totally negative effect upon Ireland, and Europe
generally, some of the Vikings at least seem to have been traders and
farmers, not just marauders. Recent excavations in Dublin have pro-
duced unmistakeable evidence, in the form of coins and of manufactures
such as shoes, for this aspect of Viking activity. The Vikings, indeed, may
be seen as having opened up to commerce a culture which had been
landlocked. The result, it would appear, was the rise to prominence of
those parts of Ireland which hitherto had been of minor economic and
political importance. The ports of Dublin, Wexford and Waterford even-
tually brought the kingdom of Leinster to a leading place among the new
kingdoms. The same may also be said of the effect of Cork upon the
MacCarthy kingdom of Desmond and of Limerick upon the O Brien
kingdom of Ormond. The economic and financial resources which such
centres represented provided the new monarchs with sources of revenue
which helped them to build on a much larger scale than had hitherto been
possible. The link between the new monarchies and the Vikings is also
indicated by the way in which Scandinavian motifs dominated ‘Irish’ art
in the late eleventh and early twelfth centuries.
The new patterns of monarchy first made their appearance in the south-
ern half of Ireland during the tenth century. A hitherto subject people of
the Eoghanachta, the ‘Dál Cais’, took advantage of the weakness of their
overlords in the face of the Vikings to establish a kingdom of their own.
Their leaders, Brian Boru and his elder brother, were ‘new men’ but it
was not long before an appropriate genealogy had been manufactured,
tracing the descent of the Uı́ Briain, as their successors were to be called,
back to the Sons of Mı́l. Brian died in 1014 at the battle of Clontarf but
his dynasty continued to be the leading force in the south for the next
century and more. Unfortunately we know little about the machinery by
which this kingdom was kept together, since historians have tended to
concentrate their attention upon a largely mythical high kingship. As will
appear later (see pp. 79–81), the O Briens, to give them their more famil-
iar name, behaved not as ‘high kings’ but as regional monarchs of a new
pattern, to be found elsewhere in the British Isles. Where they differed
from the Eoghanachta was in their adoption of hereditary descent (or
where an heir was too young, in granting the right to succeed to a close
relative) and of territorial borders.
The best studied of the new kingdoms is Leinster, the last native king
of which, Diarmaid MacMurrough (d. 1171), invited the Normans into
Ireland. Until the Viking period ‘Leinster’ consisted of a number of
groupings of tuatha (petty kingdoms), most of them under the tutelage of
the Uı́ Néill. In the early eleventh century, Diarmaid MacMail na mBo
(d. 1072), king of a newly powerful branch of the Uı́ Cheinnsellaigh,
gained control of the Liffey valley hitherto ruled by the Uı́ Dúnlainge
from their ‘capital’ at Naas. From then onwards (despite some setbacks)
the dynasty of Diarmaid ruled as kings of an expanding Leinster, some-
times backed by other kingdoms as a client against the Uı́ Néill. In an
elaborate analysis of the regnal succession in this area over several cen-
turies, Professor O Corráin has shown how ‘contest’ forms of succession
between widely diffused kinship groups eventually gave way to a much
more concentrated form of dynastic succession. The prize for the victors
was prestige, power and land. A similar type of development took place in
the several other kingdoms which emerged from, or perhaps more accu-
rately were carved out of, the ‘Old Order’ by leaders of ability, whose
ambitions were to found their own dynasty.
The implications of the new patterns went well beyond regulations
concentrating royal succession within a particular family. Feudal-style
changes implied control from above, in ways which were unprecedented

in Irish society. The new spirit is to be seen most clearly in the ecclesias-
tical sphere. Hitherto, as we have seen, the monastic Church was loosely
organised upon principles of kinship and clientage. Such attempts at cen-
tralisation as did take place were based not upon territorial unity but
around networks linking monasteries which were divided by geography.
The dispersed jurisdiction of a saint and his heirs may be seen as, to some
extent, the ecclesiastical counterpart of the loose political organisation of
the Uı́ Néill and of the Eoghanachta. Kinship groups on the traditional
pattern of hereditary professions enjoyed remarkable continuity in their
control of monastic endowments.
One of the most significant internal changes introduced by the new
kings was the introduction of bishops as a weapon of ‘reform’ from above
against the old-style ‘kinship’ monasteries. Thus within their kingdom
of Munster the O Briens backed the creation of a diocese of Killaloe,
which corresponded in extent with their own territory. In Connacht, the
O Connor kings took over former O Flaherty territory and made its ‘cap-
ital’ Tuam (from tuaim, ‘mound’) into the see of a new diocese. Tuam in
due course was to become the centre of an archbishopric. A similar devel-
opment took place in the kingdom of Leinster where Ferns, on the site
of an ancient monastery, became the seat of a new diocese, co-extensive
with the territory controlled by the Uı́ Cheinnselaigh kings. In what is now
Co. Cavan, Kilmore became the episcopal seat of the O Rourkes, kings of
Breifne. Such changes in Ireland paralleled what was taking place in Wes-
sex, England and Europe generally where bishops received their croziers
from the king in a feudal ceremony. The bishops, as royal men, could
be called upon to support royal authority within territories, which from
one point of view were kingdoms and from another dioceses. Diarmaid
MacMurrough made his brother-in-law, Lorcán Ua Tuathail/Laurence
O Toole, archbishop of Dublin, when he wished to control that city; but
he was not alone among Irish monarchs in cementing close links with the
episcopate. As in the ‘Tenth-Century Reformation’ in England, the new
bishops became an additional arm of the secular power.
In architecture, the spread of the new Romanesque style supplies a
further indication of the activity of the new royal patrons. Early monas-
tic churches had been on a small scale. The Romanesque churches were
larger and more expensive, as befitted symbols of royal power. The most
spectacular example of the new style is Cormac’s Chapel built on the
Rock of Cashel by Cormac MacCarthy and consecrated in 1134. Cashel
had hitherto been associated with the Eoghanachta. The new chapel sym-
bolised the coming of a new political order.
But Cashel did not stand alone. A building similar in style was con-
structed at Clonfert for the O Connors. At the older monastic sites of
Clonmacnoise and Glendalough larger buildings indicate the establish-

ment of royal control. At Glendalough, for example, a new monastic ‘city’
was constructed well down the valley from the original site of St Kevin.
It was here that a cathedral was built, which still displays its twelfth-
century chancel. The king whose power this celebrated was Diarmaid
MacMurrough. MacMurrough’s hand was also to be seen in the build-
ing of a Romanesque church at Killeshin (Co. Carlow) on the site of an
earlier foundation. Clonmacnoise, once a centre of Uı́ Néill influence,
became an object of interest to the O Connors in the twelfth century.
Turlough O Connor was buried there in 1156 and his son Ruaidhrı́ in
1198. Here, as elsewhere, building in the Romanesque style marks a new
departure. Thus the Nuns’ Church built (1167) by the celebrated Derb-
forgaill, wife of Tighernán Ua Ruairc, in the Romanesque style, is very
much part of a general pattern of royal patronage. The gap between such
works as this and the earlier churches is immense. One of them belonged
to a new European feudal world, the other to one which was far more
localised.
In view of all this ‘modernising’ activity in the southern half of Ireland,
it is not surprising that further initiatives for ecclesiastical reform should
also come from that area. In 1111 the first reforming Synod, that of
Raith Bresail (near Cashel), was held under the auspices of Gilla Espuic,
bishop of Limerick, who was backed by Muirchertach Ua Briain, king of
Munster. Malchus of Lismore, a protégé of the MacCarthys, was another
southern reformer. Reform, however, was not confined entirely to the
south. At Armagh, Cellach (d. 1129) and his protégé, Malachy (d. 1148),
were the spearhead of a movement to weaken the grip upon Armagh of the
hereditary coarbs of Clann Sinaich, to which Cellach belonged. Malachy,
after successes at Armagh, retired in 1137 to become bishop of Down.
Here, as elsewhere, ‘reform’ implied the extension of episcopal authority
with the backing of secular power. Another Synod held at Kells in 1152/3
instituted the four provinces of Armagh, Tuam, Cashel and Dublin. In so
doing, it recognised political realities as well as the imperatives of reform.
An earlier plan called for two archdioceses, based on Armagh and Cashel.
The addition of Tuam and Dublin indicated the powerful influence of
the O Connors and of Diarmaid MacMurrough. The new order in the
Church marked a further decline in status of traditional monastic centres,
such as Clonmacnoise, Emly, Kells and Clonard, and for the system of
kinship-based monasticism which they symbolised.
The process of kingdom-building involved the growth of monarchi-
cal centres of power in ways which were analogous to the building up
of territorial dioceses at the expense of local monasteries. The process
has been insufficiently studied as yet by historians but enough has been
done to provide glimpses of what was involved. Thus, the growth of the
O Connor kingdom of Connacht led to expansion from their base in

Roscommon and the subsequent ‘takeover’ of the great plain of Galway
around Tuam. The sufferers in the story were the O Flahertys who were
forced into west Connacht. Similar internal conquest took place at the
expense of the O Kellys of Uı́ Mhaine when the O Connors seized the
strategic site of Athlone and erected a castle there; studies of the rise of
the other kingdoms show a similar development. What had been local
centres of power could no longer survive in a changing world. The choice
lay between becoming the feudal vassals of the new kings or facing dis-
possession. Some local groups may have welcomed the protection of one
king rather than another. Others may have had feudalism thrust upon
them.
Many interrelated developments point to the rise of centralising king-
ships at the expense of traditional, diffused, political structures. In Ire-
land, as elsewhere in the British Isles and Western Europe, monarchy
involved castle-building, the setting up of a royal household as a bureau-
cratic base, the establishment of professional armies and the raising of
taxation to pay for them, the promulgation of law on the basis of royal
authority rather than as the expression of local custom and, not least, the
development of an ‘ideology’ of kingship.
No doubt the attacks of the Vikings, in Ireland as elsewhere, exposed
the weaknesses of the ancien régime and made new developments possible.
By the eleventh century, however, internal struggles had become the chief
factor behind change. Control of Ireland’s richest resource, land, was the
reward for success. Kings were able to offer freshly acquired land to their
followers and, in return, to receive homage. As we have seen, Church
‘reform’ offered possibilities in this direction. Thus Brian Boru’s brother,
Marcán, was the pluralist abbot of several monasteries on the Shannon.
To make a grant to the Church in such circumstances was merely to
transfer wealth from one branch of the family to another. But grants of
land were also made on a large scale to loyal political followers. Thus
Turlough O Connor granted away a large part of Meath to O Rourke
who presumably, in his turn, granted it to his own followers as a means
of making possession secure. Such Irish kings had little to learn, in this
respect, from the Normans.
Where the kings retained control of new territories in their own hands,
they appointed a governor or viceroy (airrı́) on whom they could depend.
At a level below these was the royal steward (rechtaire) and household-
officials (lucht tige) normally drawn from less powerful segments of the
royal lineage. Territorial kingship required royal ‘capitals’. Thus the O
Briens had as their seats Kincora, Killaloe, Dún na Scaith and not least
Limerick which, from the mid-eleventh century, was a seat of O Brien
power. The O Connors for their part had Tuam, Athlone and Clonmac-
noise. Castles, professional troops to man them and fleets of ships also
made their appearance at this time. The need to finance such a political
and military structure led naturally to taxation on a new scale.
From this period dates the rise of new bardic families who took the
place of the filid, and of the monastic fir teighir, as six centuries earlier
the filid had benefited from the fall of the druids and had become the
custodians of secular traditions. What lay behind this change is still a
matter for research but it would seem that the bards formed the basis of
a new ‘establishment’, many of whose members were drawn from weaker
segments of the major royal kindreds. Such families as the MacBrodys,
historians to the O Briens, are typical of the new intellectual class which,
like many of the humanists of the sixteenth century, produced propaganda
for their patrons. Among the typical literary products of this establishment
culture were the bardic poems.
Ideological backing for the new monarchies took several forms, one
of the most subtle of which was genealogical in character. Under the
influence of royal genealogists the genealogical tracts were ‘ruthlessly
edited’, to use Professor O Corráin’s words. Whereas thirty-one lines
of descent within the ruling house of Ciarraige had been recorded in
750, by 1100 the focus had been narrowed to one line, that of the O
Connors. Such a concentration upon a single royal line indicates more
clearly than any other single fact how far access to political power shrank
during this period. The rise of royal ‘surnames’ at this time also illustrates
the same process at work. Older broad lineages gave way to narrower
family loyalties indicated by the adoption of a ‘surname’. Kinship loyalty
remained strong but it was no longer defined within a clear structure but
survived rather as a vague commitment to the sliocht.
Propaganda of a more obvious kind was provided by such treatises as
Cogadh Gaedhel re Gallaibh (The Struggle of the Gael against the Foreigner)
for the O Briens and Caithréim Chellacháin Chaisil (The Wars of Cellachan
of Cashel) for the MacCarthys. The Cogadh stressed the role of the king as
a dispenser of justice and keeper of the peace, while the Caithréim gave a
picture of the ideal vassal. In an age which was largely illiterate, changes
in ritual perhaps reached a wider audience.
Behind these changes lay a profound transition in attitudes to law.
The evidence of the pre-Viking Age Irish law tracts suggests that in early
Irish society law concerned the settlement of disputes between different
kinship groups on the basis of compensation. From the tenth century
onwards in Ireland, as in other parts of the British Isles, a new emphasis
upon law as the imposition of authority from above makes its appear-
ance. Christian teaching certainly played a significant part in this. An
eighth-century canon-law collection quotes with approval a text stating

that ‘the word of a king is a sword for beheading, a rope for hanging, it
casts into prison, it condemns to exile’. The churchmen called upon the
king to use capital punishment in defence of their interests, clearly a sharp
contrast with the theory of early Irish law. Clerical teaching, indeed, was
upon the duty of the king to exercise authority and not upon the limita-
tions of his power.
Much of the significance of all this has been concealed from view by
the fact that the Irish law tracts of a much earlier period continued to be
copied down in the central and late middle ages. It seems clear, however,
that continuity with the past, which such copying symbolised, was largely
fictitious. Rudolf Thurneysen, the leading twentieth-century student of
the law tracts, described the work of the later commentators as
creating an amalgam in which contact with the world of fact is abandoned in

favour of elaborate calculations, minute casuistry and strange construction which
often lead to impossible results and can never have had any significance for the
practical administration of the law . . . the dreams of bookworms, of pedlars of
antiquarianism.
The realities of legal practice which lay behind the smokescreen of the law
tracts are suggested by brief references in the chronicles to royal lawyers.
One of them was called ‘ollam breithemnuis Erenn’ (‘professor of the
jurisprudence of Ireland’) but in practical terms he was a royal judge of
the O Briens. Many of the new study-lawyers were churchmen, a fact
which at this date suggests that they were both literate and sympathetic
to the enforcement of law by royal authority. No doubt kinship groups
imposed great limitations upon the full exercise of royal power, but the
evidence certainly indicates that these developments were making their
mark. The Irish high kingship may have been a ‘will o’ the wisp’ as indeed
was the regal vision of Alfred the Great’s successors in Britain. But the
realities of Irish kingly power in smaller units cannot be denied.
Between the coming of the Vikings and the Norman invasions begin-
ning in 1169 it is clear that Irish society underwent a radical transforma-
tion. The old order of two ruling federations, each resting upon loosely
organised networks of autonomous tuatha and locally based monastic
communities, gave way to new-style territorial kingdoms held together
by quasi-feudal ties and supported by a reformed episcopate, centralised
religious orders and subordinate towns. The impact of the Vikings may
have been partially responsible for this change but internal causes seem to
have been as important. Perhaps because the Vikings did not affect Irish
society as much as they did English, the swing towards monarchy was not
as marked as it might have been. Many aspects of the old order of kinship
and clientage survived, though with reduced status and at a more infor-
mal level. The recognition of permanent feudal ties between lord and
vassal, the introduction of cash relationships and a new emphasis upon
the duty to obey a king or a bishop were new developments in Ireland
but they did not eradicate all traditional ties. Local cults still retained
their force. Local memories remained tenacious about the intrusion of
newcomers even when the official historians told a different story. The
vendetta remained even at the level of kinship. When Diarmaid MacMur-
rough abducted O Rourke’s wife Derbforgaill in 1152 he created a feud
which was still reverberating over a decade later.
England and Ireland provide the most convenient and best-studied
examples of the impact of the Vikings upon the cultures of the British Isles.
Unfortunately we know much less about northern Britain and ‘Wales’.
The problem presented by ignorance is made worse by the manner in
which national historians of ‘Wales’ and ‘Scotland’ (as indeed those of
‘England’ and ‘Ireland’) create a framework which presents the ‘emer-
gence’ of these ‘nations’ as the primary fact in which we should be inter-
ested. Indeed, we deal better with the intricacies of historical development
if we leave ‘national’ categories out of the picture as much as possible.
In both northern and western Britain, we may assume, several distinct
cultures continued to exist with their own sense of identity and their
own view of ‘their’ past. What later generations see as the emergence
of a nation involved the superimposition of one culture upon another.
In what we know as ‘Scotland’, an Irish Q-Celtic culture succeeded in
imposing itself upon Picts, Britons and Anglians. But this occurred only
in the south and east; in the north and west, Viking culture was to achieve
its own dominance. Thus the net result of the Viking invasions was a new
division of northern Britain into distinctive cultural areas. In ‘Wales’, the
Viking presence was less marked than it was elsewhere in the British Isles
but the consequences were severe enough to induce profound changes.
One of the main results of the arrival of the Vikings in the Irish Sea
was probably to make contact more difficult between the various P-Celtic
communities of west Britain though there is no evidence that links with
Brittany and Ireland were cut, rather the reverse. Such links came to be
symbolised in the figures of St Samson of Dol (d. 565), who was believed
to have left south Wales for Brittany, and St Illtyd, the founder of the
monastery in south Wales which came to be known as Llantwit Major
(viz., Llanilltud Fawr, the principal church of Illtud), who was believed to
come from Brittany. The close links of the kingdom of Dyfed with Ireland
are also evident during the sub-Roman period. From the ninth century
onwards, however, Viking control of the Severn Sea (indicated by over
forty Scandinavian place-names in south Wales) and of the Dee estuary
divided the P-Celtic cultures of the west more sharply than had been the
case before. Some historians believe that the result of these changes was to
make possible the emergence of ‘Wales’ as a distinct British geographical
area, separated from Cornwall, Brittany and Strathclyde.
But ‘Wales’ still remains an elusive concept. There is a Bismarckian
assumption about much modern Welsh historical writing as if ‘unifica-
tion’ were an end towards which the history of western Britain should
have been moving. Thus the ninth-century king, Rhodri the Great, and
the tenth-century king, Hywel the Good, once earned approval from his-
torians for their attempts to bring unity to the disparate parts of ‘Wales’.
The fact that they did not succeed should give us pause. Clearly they
met with opposition from their fellow-countrymen who, on nationalist
assumptions about the past, should have been the first to welcome their
efforts. The term ‘Wales’ provides a clue as to why such opposition should
exist. ‘Wales’ (‘foreign’) did not exist save in the minds of the Anglo-
Saxons to the east. The P-Celtic-speaking inhabitants of the west saw
themselves primarily as ‘Britons’ belonging to one or other of the var-
ious sub-Roman kingdoms or tribal groupings into which the area was
divided.
To do some degree of justice to the complexity of the situation dur-
ing this period we would do well to think of western Britain as being
divided into at least three sub-cultures, one (Gwynedd) looking north to
Strathclyde and the other ‘Gwyr y Gogledd’ (the ‘Men of the North’),
another (Powys) oriented more towards Mercia in the east but still retain-
ing through its bardic poetry the memory of ties with northern Britain,
and a third (Dyfed, Glamorgan and Gwent) linked southward towards the
Severn Sea, Cornwall and Brittany. There was no sense of unity in ‘Wales’.
Attempts by any of these sub-cultures to assert dominance over the others
were resisted, even to the extent of seeking help from the Anglo-Saxons.
Thus in the ninth century the southern kingdoms of Dyfed, Glywysing
and Gwent sought help from Wessex in an attempt to stave off pressure
from Gwynedd.
The cultural differences between north and south probably went back
to tribal loyalties which the Roman empire had done little to weaken.
There was also a ‘hidden Wales’ in the border counties of Cheshire,
Shropshire and Herefordshire, about which we know little but which
almost certainly continued to haunt memories on the ‘Welsh’ side of the
border. In the tenth century, as the poem Armes Prydein Vawr (Prophecy
of Great Britain) indicates, some Britons at least were hoping, in alliance
with the Vikings, the Scots and Strathclyde, to drive the English into the
sea. Had the battle of Brunanburh (937) turned out differently, some
Welsh border territory might have been recovered. As late as the eleventh
Figure 15. Odd’s Cross slab from the Isle of Man

This cross slab is a reminder of the importance of the Isle of Man during
the Viking period when it served as a major base controlling the seas
between Scotland, Ireland and Wales.
century many English settlements well to the east of Offa’s Dyke bore the
mark of British raids, as Domesday Book itself indicates in references to
‘vills laid waste’.
It was during this period of profound change that an ‘invention of tra-
dition’ took place comparable to that which occurred in England and
Ireland. The History of the Britons lays particular stress upon the role of
the northern kingdom of Gwynedd and was perhaps written as a piece of
‘official history’ to provide backing for the new dynasty of which Rhodri
Mawr (the Great) was to be the main representative. The History of the
Britons also contains references to the sixth-century bards, Aneirin and
Taliesin, presumably as an attempt to provide further ‘historical’ backing.
Aneirin may well have been the author of The Gododdin, the heroic poem
dealing with events in north Britain during the sixth century. The emer-
gence of episcopal sees at St Davids in Dyfed and Bangor in Gwynedd
probably also represents an attempt by the new kings to ‘modernise’ the
Church in their own territories at the expense of the localised monastic
institutions of an earlier period. In these various ways, the new dynas-
ties which the Viking period brought into existence created a sense of
legitimacy for themselves.
As elsewhere in the British Isles, in Wales the coming of the Vikings led
to the downfall of the ‘Old Order’. New men, the Welsh equivalent of the
O Briens, carved out kingdoms for themselves. In the north, during the
ninth century, the new dynasty of Merfyn Frydi (its first king, 826–44)
and Rhodri the Great took over Gwynedd. In the south in the tenth
century a great part of south Wales came to be known as Morganwg
(the ‘Glamorgan’ of a later period) from one of its most successful rulers,
Morgan (c. 930–74). New men also seized the ancient kingdom of Gwent.
In the south-west, Hywel, known to history as Hywel Dda, acquired
control of the kingdom of Dyfed. He also briefly became king of Gwynedd
(942–50). Faced with a choice between Viking and Anglo-Saxon, Hywel
chose the latter, rejecting the policy of resistance which the poet of Armes
Prydein Vawr advocated.
In northern Britain at the end of the eighth century cultural patterns
were more variegated than was the case further south. North of the Hum-
ber, Anglian culture was dominant up to the Firth of Forth; P-Celtic cul-
ture still survived on the Clyde and the Solway Firth; the Q-Celtic Irish of
Dalriada controlled Argyll and the Isles and had extended their influence
north-eastwards; and on the east coast the Pictish kingdom maintained
a precarious independence. Four cultures, four languages and four legal
traditions contended for supremacy with the balance perhaps favouring
the Anglo-Saxons and the Q-Celts. All this was to be radically changed
from the end of the eighth century as a result of the Viking invasions.
In the north, the Vikings seized control of the territory of the northern
Picts in Orkney, Shetland and Caithness. The hill land to the south of the
plain of Ross came to be called ‘Sutherland’ (Southland), a geographical
perspective which reflected the viewpoint of the newcomers. The place-
name ‘Dingwall’ near the Moray Firth is the same as ‘Thingwall’ on the
coast of Lancashire, both names illustrating the influence of the Vikings
in northern Britain.
In the west of ‘Scotland’ the repeated sacking of Iona by Vikings from
793 onwards marked the failure of the rulers of Dalriada to protect their
holy places and increasingly control of the Western Isles was taken over
by the Gall-Gaedhil (‘Foreign Gaels’), raiders of mixed culture, who
spoke a form of Q-Celtic. Viking influence was dominant from the Outer
Hebrides southwards (the place-names of the Isle of Lewis are heavily
Scandinavian). The kingdom of Strathclyde effectively lost its indepen-
dence after the taking of Dumbarton in 870 and became a client state
of the ‘Kingdom of Scots’, whose rulers connived at the murder of the
last of its independent kings. Strathclyde maintained a precarious sepa-
rate existence into the eleventh century but was never again a major local
power.
Change was equally marked in the east where from the mid-ninth
century the kingdoms of the southern Picts fell under the control of
a ‘new man’ of obscure background, Kenneth MacAlpin. MacAlpin’s
career resembles that of other new-style kings in other parts of the British
Isles. A ‘Kingdom of Scots’ now arose based upon the conquest of Pict-
land, Strathclyde and of Anglian Bernicia. The dominant culture of this
kingdom was at first the Irish culture of Dalriada from which Kenneth
came. It is tempting to assert that, as was the case with the new dynasties
of Wales and Ireland, a fictitious genealogy was soon concocted, linking
him with the early rulers of Dalriada, Cenel Gabhrain, but it is not clear
that he belonged in fact to that lineage. Finally, further south, the collapse
of the Anglo-Saxon kingdom of Northumbria in the face of Viking attacks
led to the setting up of a Viking kingdom of York. The ninth century saw
the establishment of a Viking empire in north Britain, which in its heyday
influenced the course of events within the British Isles from ‘capitals’ at
Dublin and York.
There is a general tendency among historians of Scotland (as also
among English and Irish historians) to play down the importance of the
role of the Vikings in the history of northern Britain as if it were his-
torically predetermined that the Scottish nation should emerge under
the leadership of the south-eastern-based ‘Kingdom of Scots’. The fact
that the Vikings came to speak Gaelic and to adopt the kinship-based
framework of Celtic society has tended to obscure the Viking presence in
Scandinavian Settlement
in Northern Britain SHET LAND
Scandinavian settlement name Tingwall
In Orkney and Shetland all
settlement was Scandinavian
Jarlshof
0 100 200 km
Birsay
Skaill
O RKNEY
LEWIS
CAITHNESS
Dingwall
S K YE
Dunkeld
ION A
Dumbarton
K INTYRE
Map 9. Scandinavian settlement in northern Britain.
the Highlands and the Hebrides. The ‘MacDonalds’ and ‘MacDougalls’

of Highland history take their names from the ‘Donald’ and ‘Dougall’
who were grandsons of Somerled, the Gaelic-Scandinavian chief who
carved out a kingdom for himself in Argyll. (The name ‘Dougall’ itself
derives from dubhgall (‘dark foreigner’) which as we have seen appeared as
‘Doyle’ in Ireland.) ‘Somerled’ itself was also gaelicised into ‘Somhairle’
and eventually anglicised into ‘Sorley’ in the late sixteenth century. (Sor-
ley Boy MacDonnell, the Ulster chieftain who came into conflict with
Elizabeth, was Somhairle Buidhe – Sorley the Blond.) Indeed, the mili-
tary traditions of the Highlands probably derive from the Vikings rather
than from the so-called ‘wild Irish’. It has even been suggested that the
bitter rivalries between Campbells and MacDonalds derive from the over-
throw of the Christian kingdoms by the pagan Viking newcomers in the
ninth century and a long-lived legacy of hatred which was its result.
A permanent Scandinavian presence in Britain north of the Humber
was one of the main consequences of the invasions of the ninth and
tenth centuries. Another indirect consequence was the establishment of a
Gaelic empire, the ‘Kingdom of Scots’, in what had been the independent
territories of southern Pictland, Strathclyde and (northern) Bernicia. In
effect, this brought about, for a time, the dominance of Gaelic culture in
these areas leaving Pictish, British and Anglian cultures in a subordinate
position. The Welsh Brut y Tywysogion (Chronicle of the Princes) states that
‘the men of Strathclyde . . . had to depart from their country, and to go
to Gwynedd’. In later stories it is stated that Kenneth MacAlpin came to
be king ‘after violent deaths, after violent slaughter’. Thus the ‘Kingdom
of Scots’ did not emerge as part of a providential development in which
‘Scotland’ came to take its place among the nations of the earth but, at
least in the eyes of its sub-cultures, as a process analogous to that by
which the Vikings established themselves elsewhere.
The novelty of these developments in the ‘Kingdom of Scots’ was indi-
cated by the way in which the new dynasty came to cut its links with Iona
and to give its patronage to new holy places at Dunkeld and St Andrews.
The introduction of St Andrew, an apostle without any apparent connec-
tion with Britain, as a cult-figure in eastern Pictland was an important
symbolic change. These changes were not, however, accompanied by a
shift towards episcopacy, a development which in Scotland did not occur
until 1100 at the earliest. Though it was called the ‘Kingdom of Scots’
there were in fact relatively few ‘Scots’ (viz., Gaels) in the new kingdom
save as a ruling elite (the English ascendancy in eighteenth-century Ire-
land offers a possible comparison). Of all the political units of the British
Isles, the ‘Kingdom of Scots’ had the least homogeneous cultural foun-
dations.
On the eve of the Norman Conquest of 1066 the future of the British
Isles seemed to be largely linked to Scandinavia. Seaborne trade in all
areas was in Viking hands. The ports of the east coast of Ireland and of
the eastern and western coasts of Britain were essentially Viking centres.
The Vikings were also solidly entrenched in many areas of the British Isles
from the Shetlands south to Galloway, Lancashire and East Anglia. A new
Scandinavian settlement name

Major southern towns
Boundary of Danelaw
GW
YN
ED
MERCIA
D
MIDDLE
ANGLIA
EAST
ANGLIA
DYFED
Gloucester
Oxford
Wantage Wallingford London
Reading
Bath Rochester
Canterbury Sandwich
WESSEX Winchester KENT
Hamwic
Dorchester
0 100 200 km
Scandinavian Settlement
in Southern Britain
Map 10. The boundary agreed by Alfred and Guthrum, c. 880, between
England and the Danelaw, and the distribution of Scandinavian place-
names.
period, this time of French-speaking ascendancy, was about to begin.

Over the British Isles as a whole, however, the decline of Scandinavian
influence was a much slower process than was the case in England. It
was not until the mid-thirteenth century that the kingdom of Norway
relinquished its rights over Scotland but Viking traditions still remained
strong in Orkney, Shetland and Caithness as well as in the Western Isles.
In Ireland the Viking towns long preserved their own sense of cultural
identity. (Waterford, for example, later took as its motto urbs intacta,
‘intact’ in this instance meaning ‘intact’ from Irish incursions.) In north
Britain also, Viking cultural traditions survived (within what had been the
Danelaw) long after the Norman Conquest. Had the battle of Hastings
turned out differently the future of the British Isles for many centuries
might have lain with Scandinavia, an alternative course of events which
the historian cannot dismiss as an impossibility.
Postscript
The aim of this chapter was to discuss the impact of the Vikings upon
the British Isles. This was and remains a controversial topic, the key
question being to what extent the Vikings may be seen as making a pos-
itive contribution, in terms of trade, for example, rather than as simply
pirates and raiders, as the established view maintains. Recently this ortho-
doxy has been modified, the most convincing evidence being provided by
Ireland. Professor O Croı́nı́n in his excellent discussion of ‘the Viking
Age’(Chapter 9 of Early Medieval Ireland 400–1200 (London, 1995)) dis-
misses Binchy’s view that the Vikings practised ‘total war’ in which no
holds were barred. ‘On the contrary’, O Croı́nı́n argues, ‘the annals indi-
cate all too clearly that before, during and after the Viking period more
churches were plundered and more clerics killed by the Irish than by
the Norse.’ O Croı́nı́n dismisses the criticisms of the Vikings in the offi-
cial history of the O Briens as a ‘rousing narrative’ which is ‘about as
good a source of information on the Vikings as Star Trek is for the Ameri-
can space programme’. O Croı́nı́n does not let the Vikings entirely off the
hook, however. He admits that initially the raids had a traumatic effect on
their victims but that soon the Vikings came to intermarry with the local
population. This chapter in Early Medieval Ireland should be a required
piece of reading for those interested in the Viking period not least for O
Croı́nı́n’s judgement that
Despite everything that has been said in later Irish histories Dublin in fact survived
the battle of Clontarf unscathed and in the eleventh and twelfth centuries enjoyed
a position of unrivalled importance both as an emporium for the entire Atlantic
trade of the north-western world and also as a base for a powerful fleet which
could be hired out as a mercenary force in England and Wales to contestants on
either side of the political divide. (Early Medieval Ireland (1995), p. 270)
In contrast, recent scholarly commentaries upon Anglo-Saxon England

have tended to ignore the impact of the Vikings. James Campbell, for
example, in his brilliant book The Anglo-Saxón State (2000) takes as his
main theme the rise of England during the ninth and tenth centuries as a
‘nation-state’. A similar emphasis is also to be found in Patrick Wormald’s
book, The Making of English Law: King Alfred to the Twelfth Century (1999).
Campbell places the heartland of the English state in Wessex, a point
reinforced by his comment that until Victoria acquired Balmoral and the
future Edward VIII acquired Sandringham, the monarchs of England
had no significant residence north or east of Watling Street. On this view
of English history, the Vikings are a remote force. The trump card for
Campbell and Wormald is the existence of Domesday Book, a survey
which implied the existence of an administrative machine unrivalled in
Viking Settlement of Ireland
Larne
Ballyholme
Nendrum
Louth Dromiskin
Annagassan
Monasterboice
Eyrephort
Dublin
Wicklow
Killaloe Arklow
Limerick Thurles
Cashel
Waterford Wexford
Smerwick Harbour
Gt. Blasket Is.
Beginish Is. Cork

Areas of Hiberno-Norse
settlement in twelfth century
Areas of possible
additional settlement
0 50 100 km
Map 11. The Viking settlement of Ireland.
Western Europe. Even so, doubts may be raised about the extent to which
the power of the Anglo-Saxon monarchy extended north of the Trent
before and even after 1066.
North of the Tweed, of course, the Vikings were a formidable presence
particularly on the west coast and in the Isle of Man (a point touched
on by O Croı́nı́n). In the historiography of Scotland, the influence of the
Vikings has been played down. It is the Gaelic tradition exemplified in

the long line of mythical kings stretching back to Fergus, which is allotted
a prime historical place. Here also, however, as in the case of northern
and eastern England, the role of the Vikings deserves more considera-
tion. At this date, of course, as Professor Campbell and others remind
us, Scotland was still ethnically divided. John Gillingham, for example,
quoted Richard Hexham’s description of King David I’s army in 1138:
‘After the battle his men scattered, and in flight they dealt with each other
not as friends but as foes. For the English and the Scots and the Glaswe-
gians and the rest of the barbarians, whenever they chanced upon each
other . . . took the opportunity to kill, wound or rob the other’ (A. Grant
and Keith J. Stringer, eds., Uniting the Kingdom? The Making of British
History (London, 1995)). Mention may also be made of a recent study,
John D. Niles and Mark Amodio, Anglo-Scandinavian England: Norse–
English Relations in the period before the Conquest (London, 1989), which
seeks to correct the Germanic/Norman bias of current scholarship. Pro-
fessor James Campbell’s volume The Anglo-Saxon State (London, 2000)
remains essential reading.
5 The Norman and post-Norman ascendancy
The victory of the Normans in 1066 brought revolutionary changes in its

wake, not merely for southern Britain but in due course for the rest of the
British Isles. Its effects were most immediate in ‘England’. William, who
was crowned at Westminster Abbey on Christmas Day, lost little time in
establishing himself and his followers. So complete was the Conquest that
it is tempting to think in terms of a united kingdom. But the situation as
it presented itself in the aftermath of the battle of Hastings was not yet
so very different from what it had been earlier. Southern Britain was still
divided into its distinctive cultures and these would continue to exist.
The itineraries of Cnut (d. 1035) and Edward (d. 1066), when mapped
by a modern cartographer, make it clear that the heartland of the west
Saxon monarchy was still the area south of the Thames. ‘Wessex’ was
distinguished by large concentrations of royal and ecclesiastical land and
by wealthy monasteries open to royal influence. In this region, royal writs
and charters were effective and an efficient administration collected geld.
This was also a society with a large percentage of unfree labour. There
was some resistance in Wessex to the newcomers, at Exeter in 1069 for
example, but for a long time to come this part of England was to provide
a secure foundation for monarchy.
In the east, where Scandinavian influences were strong, there was a
different story. In 1069, a Danish fleet arrived at the abbey of Ely which
had close ties with the Danish monarchy. For a short time, under Here-
ward the Wake, there was to be active resistance to the Normans. Further
north, the earldom of Northumbria still enjoyed a tradition of indepen-
dence from Wessex, most recently displayed when Harold’s brother Tostig
had been displaced as earl. Northumbria, which comprised the former
Danish kingdom of York and former Bernician ‘Anglian’ territory north
of the Tees, could hope for help from Scotland or Norway or Denmark
in resisting the Normans. William himself seems at first to have avoided
direct intervention in this sensitive area but its opposition to the payment
of geld led him towards a more aggressive policy. In 1069, after a period
of crisis during which the Normans experienced defeat and a Danish
92
The Norman and post-Norman ascendancy 93
Figure 16. The tomb of Edward the Confessor, Westminster Abbey

The importance of Edward the Confessor lies largely in the myth of
‘the Holy Edward’s Laws’ which lay behind Magna Carta and the
seventeenth-century belief in the Ancient Constitution stretching back
to Anglo-Saxon times. Edward also provided the basis of William the
Conqueror’s claim to the throne. His tomb is thus a key symbol.
Map 12. The Norman Conquests, 1066–1169.
army took Hull, William intervened to administer a severe lesson. After

the ‘harrying of the North’, the independent character of the northern
Danelaw was largely undermined. Its place was to be taken by ‘York-
shire’, reconstructed on the southern manorial model. Norman castles at
Newcastle (at the strategic Tyne-crossing), Durham, York, Norwich and
Lincoln symbolised the effective presence of the Norman monarchy on

the east coast.
In the north and west, there had been something of a ‘Celtic resurgence’
early in the eleventh century as a result, in part, of a period of weakness
of the west Saxon monarchy. In the north-west, Strathclyde recovered
parts of Cumbria which had been lost to the English. In Wales, under
the leadership of Gruffydd ap Llywelyn, the frontier with Mercia was
pushed back beyond Offa’s Dyke. In 1055, Hereford was sacked and
English villages such as Knighton were abandoned. In all this, Gruffydd
could rely upon help from the Vikings of Dublin and Wexford and, in
a complex political situation in which Mercia was opposed to Wessex,
upon an alliance with Aelfgar, earl of Mercia. A successful campaign in
Wales by Harold of Wessex brought this to an end in 1063. Gruffydd’s
head was sent to Harold by his own followers as a symbol of surrender
and his place was taken by client kings.
In Wales, changes were apparent even before 1066. Norman influence
was already being felt in Herefordshire in the person of Richard FitzOs-
bern, who had been called in by Edward the Confessor to defend this
exposed frontier. But the Conquest began in earnest in the decades fol-
lowing. By the end of the century the Normans were in complete control
of south Wales. On the borders the earldoms of Chester, Shrewsbury
and Hereford controlled Mercians and Welsh alike. In the northern king-
dom of Gwynedd there was a more complex situation. Here, with the
backing of the Scandinavian kingdom of Dublin, Gruffydd ap Cynan
halted the Norman advance. In 1098, the fleet of Magnus Barefoot, king
of Norway, on a raiding expedition from the Isle of Man, appeared off
the coast of Anglesey and took the Normans, under the earl of Shrews-
bury, by surprise. As a result of this defeat, the Normans seem to have
decided to be content with ‘indirect rule’ in Gwynedd and Powys, toler-
ating the existence of Welsh princes, provided they did not constitute a
threat.
In Scotland, Norman influence was also exerted indirectly through
the sons of Malcolm III Canmore (1058–93). Malcolm himself was a
‘modernising’ monarch, on the lines of the O Briens in Ireland, and in
supporting his sons the Normans were taking the side of strong monarchy
against aristocratic lineages. They did not become fully involved, how-
ever, until ‘invited’ to do so by Malcolm’s youngest, David I (1124–53),
who had been educated and knighted at the court of Henry I. David
encouraged Normans to settle in lands north and south of the Forth and
under William the Lion (1165–1214) the process was taken further. In
effect, a Norman settlement took place under the auspices of the Scottish
Crown. Lothian and Strathclyde were particularly affected, but there was
Figure 17. The Norman cathedral on the Rock of Cashel

The Norman cathedral on the Rock of Cashel symbolises the dominance
of the Normans over the south of Ireland. It overshadows Cormac’s
Chapel which was built (1128–34) by the MacCarthys, who ruled the
area before the Normans arrived in 1169.
also Norman penetration further north in Fife and Moray. Such ‘Scottish’
families as Fraser, Haig, Bruce, Wishart (Guiscard) and Stewart (many
of them today complete with tartan and kilt) first made their appearance
in Scotland as a result of this episode.
The various kingdoms of Ireland remained unaffected by Norman
power until 1169, although, as we have seen, they were by no means unaf-
fected by ‘modernising’ tendencies in Church as well as state. The Viking
towns of the east coast were in control of the Irish Sea and in contact with
Scandinavian settlements on its west coast from Galloway southwards.
In 1169–70, this situation changed dramatically when the exiled king
of Leinster, Diarmaid MacMurrough, asked the Norman lords of south
Wales to help him regain his kingdom. In many ways, Diarmaid’s deci-
sion to seek Norman aid resembled that of David of Scotland, earlier
in the century. In Ireland, however, the Normans encountered stronger
opposition. Even so, by the end of the century, they were in control of
much of the country.
The Norman successes created a French-speaking ascendancy
throughout the British Isles. By the end of the twelfth century the various
kingdoms and provinces which had been independent entities were ruled
by an aristocracy, which in its turn was linked by ties of vassalage to a
single monarch. Even the king of Scotland with large estates in mid-
land England (the Honour of Huntingdon) was in a measure incor-
porated within the system. The kings of Gwynedd in the thirteenth
century did homage to Henry III. For a time, in the late twelfth cen-
tury, the British Isles formed part of a wider empire which also included
Aquitaine.
Throughout this period, French culture was a symbol of belonging
to the political and ecclesiastical elite. The result was to downgrade the
status of the various languages and cultures of the North Sea and Irish
Sea Provinces. To speak these languages could be a mark of bondage.
Lanfranc, the Norman archbishop of Canterbury, referred when writ-
ing to Pope Alexander II to his own ignorance of the language of ‘bar-
barous peoples’. In religion, the Normans saw themselves as reformers.
They replaced what they regarded as a superstitious attachment to local
saints with ‘uncouth’ names with the veneration of saints of the uni-
versal Church. Churches dedicated to St Peter, St Thomas, St Andrew
and others replaced saints with possibly dangerous or unfashionable local
attachments. The Normans also left their mark on the language of the
people whom they ruled, as the following selection of French loanwords
in Middle English indicates.
1 a d m i n i s t r at i o n , l aw : Crown, parliament, reign, royal, state, city,
council, court, evidence, fine, fraud, gaol, prison.
2 d r e s s : apron, bonnet, boot, brooch, chain, collar, jacket, jewel,
(boot-)lace, ornament, petticoat.
3 fa m i ly : aunt, cousin, nephew, niece, uncle.
4 f o o d, m e a l s , f r u i t s : bacon, beef, mutton, partridge, pheasant,
pigeon, poultry, sausage, sugar, tripe, veal, dinner, feast, supper, date,
fig, grape, lemon, orange, raisin.
5 h o m e , h o u s e h o l d, f u r n i t u r e : chamber, pantry, parlour,

scullery, blanket, coverlet, curtain, cushion, quilt, towel, chair, dresser,
wardrobe.
6 m i l i ta ry : army, battle, guard, navy, peace, soldier, spy (also military
ranks).
7 r a n k s : clerk, duke, farmer, master, mistress, prince, servant, sir.
8 r e l i g i o n : abbey, convent, lesson, mercy, parson, pity, prayer,
preacher, saint, sermon, sexton, vicar.
9 m i s c e l l a n e o u s : dozen, flour, flower, (cart) grease, hour, litter,
mange, more, oil, ounce, pasture, people, person, pocket, quarry,
quart, quarter, rein, second, squirrel, stallion, stranger, tailor, tune.
In all areas of the British Isles, the instruments of empire were the castle,
the Church and the borough. In England alone, it has been estimated,
the Normans built nearly a thousand castles, though few of these were
on the grand scale of royal castles. There were well over three hundred
in Wales. Castles were fewer in the west Saxon heartland but many were
needed in the former Danelaw and in the marcher lordships of Wales.
Scotland, too, had its quota of castles on the Norman model. In Ireland
Norman mottes and baileys controlled the rich lands of Meath and Tip-
perary. But castles were not a completely new feature in Ireland. Some
Irish kings were building them in the modern idiom before the Normans
arrived.
The Church was an integral part of this system, not least because the
large ecclesiastical estates were expected to provide their due quota of
knights for the royal army. With the Normans came a new emphasis on
spectacular building. Edward the Confessor prefigured the trend with his
abbey at Westminster. After the Conquest, such cathedrals as Durham
and Ely with their imposing message of dominance may be taken as sym-
bols of imperialism. All this was accompanied by the introduction of
French religious orders and French colonies of monks. Norman abbeys
benefited from grants of English and Welsh land. The military orders of
the Temple and of St John took root in marcher areas: the most prominent
of the new religious orders, the Cistercians, also came to play a role in this
process. The Norman Conquest did not involve the movement of peoples
on the grand scale as had occurred during the Anglo-Saxon and Scandi-
navian/Viking invasions. In some areas, however – in particular eastern
Ireland, south Wales and parts of Scotland – it did promote a consider-
able degree of selective, sponsored colonisation. For this the instruments
to hand were the borough and the nucleated settlement. Throughout the
British Isles the borough was a sign of effective Normanisation. By offer-
ing the relative freedom of borough tenure, both king and lords were able
to attract settlers from Flanders to Wales and in due course to Scotland
Map 13. The distribution of motte and bailey castles in Britain.

and Ireland. When land-hunger grew in the thirteenth century a further

incentive was added. In north Wales, Edward I’s royal boroughs became
the points around which colonisation of the countryside was organised.
If some assessment of the significance of three centuries of Norman-
isation is attempted, it may be argued that the effect of the Normans
was felt most strongly in the Irish Sea Province. In Wessex, the Nor-
mans had inherited an existing system and, though they undoubtedly
introduced major changes, they did not transform the social structure.
In the Scandinavian areas of eastern England, the trading centres soon
recovered. Here, as elsewhere, the Normans superimposed their own
culture, though the existing divisions between the ‘command’ society of
Wessex and the ‘market’ society of the east remained. In the Irish Sea
Province, where the Normans met with severe resistance, they destroyed
existing kinship structures and replaced them with a hierarchical, cen-
tralised framework. ‘Modernisation’ on continental lines was already well
advanced in the Irish kingdoms and in Scotland under Malcolm Can-
more. What the Normans did was to carry it forward in a revolutionary
manner. Feudal relationships were imposed from above, not sought from
below.
The general tendency of English historians has been to domesticate
the Norman Conquest. In the late nineteenth century Stubbs saw it as
an example of a ‘masculine’ race disciplining and educating a ‘feminine’
race. The mid-twentieth-century medievalist David Knowles admired the
vigour and strength of the Normans. The American sociologist George
Homans felt that England was ‘fortunate’ in being ruled by the Norman
aristocracy. The fact remains, however, that the Normans behaved as
conquerors and remained conscious of the origins of their power for long
after 1066. Late in the thirteenth century William de Warenne spoke of
‘how his ancestors came with William the Bastard and conquered their
lands by the sword’.
The result of the Conquest was to create a two-class society. It is true
that Richard FitzNeal spoke of the mingling of races at the end of the
twelfth century, but he restricted his comment to freemen. What he had
to say may well have been true of London, but over the great mass of rural
England there is little doubt that, for a long time to come, conquerors and
conquered remained separate. At the top of the social scale, it is clear that
the most powerful families married within the ranks of the baronage. At
a somewhat lower social level, marriage between Normans and English
took place but only as an exceptional event. The situation was to change
only from the mid-fourteenth century onwards as a result of demographic
shifts following upon the Black Death, not as the consequence of royal
or baronial policies.
There was in fact no ‘English’ history for long after the Conquest.
What is normally spoken of as ‘English’ political history during these
centuries relates almost exclusively to controversy and conflict within
the ascendancy. The Becket tragedy, Magna Carta, the baronial wars
of the mid-thirteenth century were all essentially matters relating to the
French-speaking elite. As Stubbs pointed out, the influence of French
culture increased rather than diminished in the thirteenth century. A
Frenchman, Simon de Montfort, played an active role in ascendancy pol-
itics during the thirteenth century. Edward II took his coronation oath
in French. Henry de Beaumont, to whom Edward II gave the Isle of
Man, was the son of Lewis de Brienne, viscount of Beaumont in Maine.
His brother, the bishop of Durham, is recorded as having said on one
occasion under stress: ‘Par seynt Lewis, il ne fut pas curtays qui est
parole icy escrit’ (‘By Saint Louis, the word written here is discourte-
ous’). Under Henry III, French became the language of written law, and
under Edward I the language of the courts of law. The continued strength
of the ascendancy in spite of its internal division is indicated by the sur-
vival of such names as de Bohun, Bigod and Mortimer, dating from the
Conquest.
The colonial nature of this society needs to be stressed if its true char-
acter is to be understood. The followers of William took great risks in the
enterprise and their rewards were correspondingly great. Settlers contin-
ued to arrive well into the twelfth century, displacing English sub-tenants
who had survived the first generation of conquest. For the younger sons of
Norman families (and ‘Norman’ here must be understood to cover much
of the north-western coastline of the continent, including Flanders) Eng-
land was a ‘frontier’ which offered the chance of social advancement, a
fact of which the historian Orderic Vitalis was well aware when he referred
to those ‘whom Henry had raised from the dust’. It was not uncom-
mon for Norman lords to bring over tenants from their own estates. In
modern terms, England resembled a Texas in which the Anglo-Saxons
came to occupy second-class status. The Yankees in this case were the
Normans.
Such a large-scale process of conquest and colonisation could hardly
be successful without a continuing display of military force. Here lay the
importance of the Norman castles (not ‘English’ castles as they are some-
times referred to). The function of the castle was the same in England,
at least initially, as it was in the marcher lordships and elsewhere in the
British Isles – to overawe a subject population. This may seem to be over-
stressing the obvious, but in most accounts of English history the key
importance of the castle tends to be underplayed. Following the lead of
the great nineteenth-century historians, modern scholars still concentrate
upon such facts of supposedly ‘national’ concern as Magna Carta. The

castle exemplified the realities of local power. For the great majority living
in the unfree condition of villeinage, it, not parliament or king, was the
dominant institution in their daily lives.
The structure of the colonial aristocracy was never uniform, nor did
it remain unchanged from 1066 to the mid-fourteenth century. On the
marcher shires of the Welsh border and on the Scottish border from
the late thirteenth century, defensive needs were uppermost and, as a
consequence, lords needed manpower as much as income. In the east
and south, there was no similar military need and as a consequence the
military aspect of lordship declined, though it never disappeared. The
popularity of tournaments (William Marshall took part in over 500),
the Crusades, campaigns in France and the cult of chivalry all testify to
the importance of the military ideal. As control of the colony came to
be taken for granted, however, the economic exploitation of the landed
estate took on greater significance. The growth of population from the
twelfth century onwards, land-hunger and rising prices led the magnates
to pay greater attention to the opportunities offered by the market.
These economic activities took several forms. On some estates, atten-
tion was concentrated upon raising rents or entry-fines (required when a
tenant entered upon his holding). Others encouraged the ‘colonisation’
of new land from which they were now able to draw rent. In the thir-
teenth century, Roger Bigod brought tenants from his Norfolk estates to
his newly acquired land in Ireland. Other lords took an active interest in
demesne farming with the market directly in mind. The earl of Leices-
ter owned vast herds of cows, and from such estates as his the towns of
Boston and Lynn exported butter and cheese by the ton. This great rise
in economic activity, associated especially with the thirteenth century, is
often seen in ‘national’ terms as if it were ‘English’ cheese and bacon
which was being exported. The great mass of the population, however,
does not seem to have benefited. On many estates, landlords attempted
to hold on to or even increase the labour services to which they were ‘enti-
tled’. If we are to follow Professor Postan’s assessment (in The Medieval
Economy and Society (1975)), the chief beneficiaries of this rise in eco-
nomic activity were the great magnates. In contrast, the lesser baronage
and gentry may have lost ground, a fact which would help to explain the
restiveness of this class during the thirteenth century.
Colonialism was not confined to the secular world. It was to be seen also
in the field of religion. Like many conquerors, the Normans felt that God
was on their side. Walter Espec is reported as saying at the battle of the
Standard, ‘Why should we despair of victory when victory has been given
to our race by the Most High, as it were in fee?’ They also saw themselves
as reforming a decadent Church. A local, hereditary priesthood was to

be replaced by a celibate clergy. Parishes were to be created as the basis
of new communities, with tithes as their economic basis. Canon law was
to be tightened up with regard to marriage. More churches were to be
built. Rural areas were to be more actively evangelised. In all of this, the
criterion of reform was to be decided by the new colonial rulers.
One instrument of change was a Normanised episcopate backed by
the Crown. Of the sixteen English bishoprics, only one was not held by
a ‘Norman’ at the end of the eleventh century. Professor Le Patourel has
shown (in The Norman Empire (1976)) that well into the twelfth century
the bishops of England were all foreign-born with the exception of two,
born in England of Norman or Flemish extraction. The new departure
was emphasised in some cases by a shift from an Anglo-Saxon site with
traditional associations to a new site. Selsey, for example, linked with St
Wilfred and the former kings of the south Saxons, gave way to Chichester.
Another instrument of Normanisation was the monastic order. Many
English churches were donated to Norman or French monasteries. Over
twenty Norman monasteries were recorded as possessing English manors
by 1086. Soon, Norman and French monks were being invited over to
England to take part in the work of reform. William de Warenne asked
for Cluniac monks to found a house at Lewes. Other prominent monastic
houses with a French affiliation were established at Chester, Tewkesbury
and Evesham. The abbot of Glastonbury in the early twelfth century was
the Norman Henry of Blois. Evesham also had a Norman abbot. Hugh
of Avalon, who founded the first Carthusian house in England, came
directly from La Grande Chartreuse. The introduction of the French-
based Cistercian order into northern England took place under the aus-
pices of Thurston, archbishop of York, who was born in Bayeux. The
place which the monasteries enjoyed in the colonial ascendancy may go
some way towards explaining their unpopularity at a later date.
How autonomous, then, were religious values within this colonial
society? It would be clearly mistaken to see all members of the monas-
tic order as exponents of a colonial ideology. At the level of bishops and
abbots, however, Church and colony were closely connected, since both
types of prelate were expected, as tenants in chief, to provide the Crown
with its due quota of knights. Peterborough abbey, for example, was
responsible for sixty knights and Glastonbury for forty. Also, the role
of churchmen in administration was fundamental.
The Church in the first century after the Conquest could not have
escaped the impress of its colonial situation even if it had wished to do
so. Perhaps the real problem is to discover when the situation changed
enough to allow the admittance of ‘natives’ into the higher echelons of
the Church. The coming of the Friars in the early thirteenth century
seems to have marked something of a turning point. The Franciscans, in
particular, drew upon lower social groups within the towns, which were
more likely to be English-speaking than French-speaking. However, it
was only with the rise of the Lollard movement in the late fourteenth
century that an unmistakeably English religious movement appeared.
The third element in the colonial structure was the borough. Dur-
ing the years immediately after the Conquest, ‘Norman’ colonists were
introduced into at least six towns, including Nottingham and Shrewsbury.
More significant, however, is the fact that many new towns were estab-
lished during the late eleventh, twelfth and thirteenth centuries. Between
1066 and 1130, forty new towns were founded (not including eighteen
in Wales). During the civil wars of Stephen’s and Matilda’s reign (1135–
54), the rate slowed, but it picked up again in the second half of the
twelfth century. During the period 1191–1230, nearly fifty new towns
were planted. The creation of new towns was thus a remarkable feature
of post-Conquest England and Wales.
In seeking an explanation for this phenomenon, historians have tended
to stress the rise of trade. From this standpoint, the history of towns
forms part of ‘English’ economic history and, as with ‘English’ castles and
‘English’ monasteries, so too there have been studies of ‘English’ towns. If
we look at who founded these towns and why, it is clear that the initiative
came mainly from the Norman colonial elite. Some towns, Newcastle,
for example, were royal foundations but most owed their existence to the
initiative of local lords.
The attraction of such institutions for the lords lay in the fact that towns
were, in effect, controllable markets where the output of estates could be
turned into cash. The rents which burgesses paid in a lord’s town were
another source of cash. Trade conducted within a town paid tolls. Mills
were another source of income. Though the details of boroughs varied
from place to place, the object remained the same, to add to the wealth
of the colonial ascendancy. The earls of Gloucester acquired a quarter
of their total income from the tolls of Bristol. Leicester provided the
earls of Leicester with a third of their income. These were large and
prosperous urban centres which had existed before the Conquest. More
typical were towns of middling importance. The bishops of Worcester
founded Stratford. The earls of Chester founded Stockport and Salford.
Control of the town of Coventry was disputed between the local feudal
and ecclesiastical lords. Under the auspices of the bishop of Norwich,
the town of Lynn expanded (to be known first as Bishop’s Lynn and
then later as King’s Lynn). Hugh de Gonneville founded the town of
Chipping Camden as an outlet for the Cotswolds wool trade. The same
story was repeated many times, sometimes with success, sometimes with
failure.
During this period, the towns of England were not independent mani-
festations of the commercial spirit, but sponsored institutions controlled
by the colonial ascendancy. It was only when this started to decline in the
second half of the fourteenth century that towns began to achieve some
measure of independence. Maitland noted how ‘in some great boroughs,
seigniorial justice was a hardy plant’ (in Sir Frederick Pollock and F. W.
Maitland, History of English Law (1898), p. 646). He was referring to the
situation in the town of Stamford in 1275, where various lords, ecclesi-
astical and secular, claimed rights over their tenants. But Stamford was
typical at this date. At Stockport and Salford, the lord’s steward presided
over the borough assembly. At Tavistock, the abbot closely supervised the
borough which the abbey had founded: the abbot’s steward presided over
the borough court, levied a percentage on corn ground at the town mill,
collected inheritance dues and controlled various services due from ‘his’
burgesses. At Bury St Edmunds, the abbey wielded wide powers over the
economic life of the borough, controlling its court and its market and
collecting tolls. The abbey also enjoyed a considerable privilege, in that
its own produce was exempt from tolls. It also took precedence in making
purchases of grain.
Towns which had existed before the Conquest lost whatever autonomy
they had possessed earlier. This may be seen most clearly in the shift in
the control of urban churches. In such towns as Bristol, Stamford and
Lincoln, churches had been built by local patrons. At Winchester, most
of its fifty-six churches had been built in this way. After the Conquest,
ownership was vested with the Norman bishop or with the local Nor-
manised monastery. Thus at Leicester, the earl transferred six churches
to his new foundation of Augustinian canons. In such an instance we may
see how castle, monastery and borough formed a network of institutions
supporting the colonial ascendancy.
There is, finally, the key institution of the manor, described by Pro-
fessor Postan in The Medieval Economy and Society (1975) as ‘the most
powerful, the most ubiquitous and the most characteristic institution of
medieval economy and society’. The manor may be seen as consisting
of the lord’s demesne, worked by an unfree labour force, which in turn
for its services was allowed to cultivate its own holdings. Over much of
England, it was associated with the so-called open fields in which the
peasantry cultivated ‘strips’. The economic arrangements of the manor,
however, varied widely from place to place and from time to time. In
‘Wessex’, the tenants were more likely to be unfree than in East Anglia.
The same person could pay rent for one holding and be required to pay
in labour for another. Rentals on manors in a newly colonised area were

likely to be less onerous than those in more settled parts. Recent research
also suggests that the tenants were often more mobile than was once sup-
posed. In theory, the peasants were bound to the soil. In practice, the
needs of a market economy often meant that some degree of flexibility
was permitted by the bailiffs of the estate.
The Normans did not invent the manorial estate. Such estates were
already well established in 1066. Indeed, some scholars suggest that their
origins may have to be sought in the villas of late Roman Britain. What
the Normans did do, however, was to develop the economic potentialities
of the manor. Land and tenantry were exploited at a more intense level
in an economy increasingly orientated towards the market. New land
was brought into cultivation, often at the expense of peasants who had
hitherto relied upon ‘waste’ for fuel or as grazing-land for pigs.
In the colonial situation which existed in England after the Conquest,
it was not surprising that royal lawyers should work hard to sharpen a
distinction between the ‘natives’ and the newcomers. By the thirteenth
century, it was held in law that villeins could not bring cases to the royal
courts. The ‘common’ law was in effect confined to the ascendancy and
those associated with it. A royal writ (de natiuo) was devised to help in the
repossession of natives who had fled their lord’s estate. In the light of these
realities, it is ironical that one of the classical works of historiography in
the field should be known as The History of English Law (not ‘Norman
Law’).
So far we have concentrated our attention upon the Norman elite, a
mode of procedure which the great wealth of official records and the tradi-
tions of English historiography thrust upon the historian. In comparison
with the amount of material relating to the ascendancy, evidence about
the majority is minimal. What, then, can be said about them? It is tempt-
ing to assume that we are at last dealing with the ‘English people’. The
survival of regional dialects, however, suggests that local loyalties were still
strong. During the Middle English period (1100–1450) earlier cultural
divisions into Northumbria and Mercia (both with Danish minorities)
and Wessex may be seen as surviving in the form of dialect areas, now
known as ‘Northern’, ‘Midlands’ (‘East’ and ‘West’), and ‘Southern’.
The south seems to have been more Normanised than the north, if the
evidence of Norman loanwords is a safe guide. In the north-west, the
incorporation of former Gaelic-Scandinavian areas and of Strathclyde
south of Carlisle into the Norman colony meant that new sub-cultures
now existed within ‘England’. To these may be added Shropshire and
Herefordshire, now part of the Norman kingdom but inhabited in their
western sections by a population of Welsh background. In Herefordshire
the existence of the enclave of ‘Archenfield’ (Erging, in Welsh) with its

own Welsh laws and language symbolised the cultural diversity of this
area. There was, finally, Celtic-speaking Cornwall, which was incorpo-
rated into ‘England’, governmentally if not culturally.
As well as cultural diversity, there was considerable social differenti-
ation within the majority. The basic unit of society was the vill (a term
used to suggest something simpler and often smaller than the village) but,
as modern research has shown, the relative poverty of these small-scale
societies did not exclude differences of status and wealth. There were
clear class divisions between richer and poorer peasants, and in the light
of modern colonial societies it would be unwise to assume that common
hatred for the foreign lord outweighed the bitterness of local conflict.
Studies of nineteenth-century Ireland have shown how hostility between
farmers and labourers could be more significant as a cause of violence
than that between landlords and tenants.
There was, in the third place, the contrast between the relatively com-
mercialised east and the more manorialised parts of England, particu-
larly the west midlands and the southern counties. This was a distinction
which went back to before the Conquest, but it seems to have become
more marked in the post-Conquest period, as the growth of London and
of the ports of the east coast indicates. In the west the rise of Bristol
and of Chester point to the commercial development of the ‘Irish Sea
Province’, as well as the new trading links with south-west France. By the
mid-fourteenth century, the east coast and (in the west) the Bristol hin-
terland were the wealthiest regions of England. Such commercialisation
makes it understandable how the dialect of the east midlands, with its
centre at London, should become the language of the new society which
emerged after the decline of the colonial ascendancy.
On the eve of the Norman Conquest of England, there were four major
Welsh political units – Gwynedd in the north-west, Deheubarth in the
south-west, Morganwg in the south to south-east and Powys in the east,
surrounded by a number of smaller lordships over whose fate the dom-
inant kingdoms contended. Some historians have been eager to see the
rise of a Welsh national consciousness during the pre-Norman centuries,
but there was little sign of unity. As a result of the divisions imposed by
geography and by their different historical experiences, Gwynedd looked
towards the Gaelic-Scandinavians of the Wirral and the Viking kingdom
of Dublin, Deheubarth had been drawn at least spasmodically into the
sphere of Wessex and the fortunes of Powys had been linked with Mercia.
Despite these divisions, however, ‘Wales’ had survived the challenges of
the Viking centuries. The west Saxon and Anglo-Danish kings had been
content with asserting a general suzerainty over Wales, whenever this was
possible. With the coming of the Normans, however, a new period began,
marked by military control and large-scale colonisation.
The full impact of the Normans was not felt immediately. William
seems to have been content to establish control of the Welsh border-
lands, with the probable aim of containing unrest in Mercia. At this date,
the three great Norman earldoms of Chester, Shrewsbury and Hereford
may be seen as largely defensive in character. In the last decades of the
eleventh century, however, with the opportunity offered by the death of
Rhys ap Tewdwr, king of Deheubarth (d. 1093), a more forward policy
of conquest and colonisation began. The coast of south Wales with its
easy access by sea from Devon was an inviting target for those younger
sons who had missed earlier opportunities in England. In the north, an
approach from the Dee estuary offered similar possibilities, though it was
to be much less successful. Not until the campaigns of Edward I in the
late thirteenth century was the kingdom of Gwynedd in the north finally
brought under control.
The Norman Conquest of Wales is a dramatic story. What was less
dramatic but equally significant was the process of colonisation which
accompanied it. The first plantation of Flemish colonists took place in
Pembrokeshire in the early twelfth century but the really decisive fac-
tor in the Norman success was the supply of English colonists. Much
of Wales was mountainous but there were many substantial pockets of
fertile land along the south coast and in the valleys of the Severn, the Usk
and the Wye. In the north, the vale of Clwyd and the Isle of Anglesey
were similar areas. Herefordshire, today a part of England, was another
attractive target for the colonist. All these lands were to fall to English
colonists during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. The demographic
upsurge which was so marked a feature of English society in the twelfth
and thirteenth centuries provided the impetus behind the colonisation
of Wales. Without the numerical backing of English tenants, it would
have been impossible for the Normans to make the inroads which they
did. By the early fourteenth century much of the best land in Wales
was occupied by the Normans and their tenants. Each lordship had
its ‘Englishry’ of good land, and its ‘Welshry’ of poorer land. In the
one, the Norman law operated, in the other Welsh. A colonial society
was delineated in Wales more clearly than anywhere else in the British
Isles.
As in England, the combination of castle, borough and Church
provided the framework around which Norman control was organised.
Several hundred castles were built, mostly of the motte-and-bailey type.
Castles, as at Chepstow, provided the nuclei towards which smaller cas-
tles could look for support. It was a sign of the hostile environment within
which the colonists operated that castles were much thicker on the ground
in Wales than was the case in English counties, such as Somerset. Another
sign was the de facto independence which the Crown permitted the lord-
ships to enjoy. Royal law did not operate in the marcher lordships, which
numbered about forty during the heyday of the colony.
Boroughs were also created to meet the needs of the castle and the
settlers. Some of them, such as Cardiff and Monmouth, developed into
fully fledged towns. Others, such as Whittington and Chirk, remained
scarcely more than villages. In the later thirteenth century, Edward I
established Flint and other boroughs as part of a conscious policy of
colonisation. Though at a later period such towns became indubitably
‘Welsh’ in their outlook, to live in a town during the Norman period was
a sign of belonging to the English colony. The Welsh were in fact excluded
from them. The square towers of many urban churches were intended to
serve a defensive function, and no new town was established far from the
protection of a castle. The towns existed primarily to serve the needs of
the ‘Englishry’.
The Norman Conquest had a particularly marked effect upon the
Welsh Church. In Wales there had been no equivalent of the English
‘Tenth-Century Reformation’ with its policies of centralisation. As in
other areas of the Irish Sea Province, earlier patterns of local control
based upon kinship groups had prevailed against a system based upon
government by bishops. There were four Welsh bishoprics (St Davids,
Llandaff, St Asaph and Bangor) but in the countryside episcopal surveil-
lance counted for little against the entrenched traditions of abbeys with
strong local roots, symbolised by an attachment to a local saint. In
the Church, as in secular society, the kinship group was an enduring
institution.
Wherever they established themselves, the Normans almost immedi-
ately ‘reformed’ this system out of existence. At Brecon, where he estab-
lished a castle, Bernard of Neufmarche established a monastic cell linked
to Battle Abbey (Sussex). West of Cardiff, Richard of Granville set up a
monastery of Neath linked with the French order of Savigny. Other lords
became patrons of monastic houses linked with Le Mans and Saumur.
Another maintained ties with Glastonbury. (In parts of Wales less affected
by Norman pressure, local kings established Cistercian monasteries with
similar ‘reforms’ in mind.) In Norman-controlled Wales, the Church
became closely identified with the ‘Englishry’. This was as true of the
bishoprics as of the monasteries. The see of Glamorgan had been ‘angli-
cised’ for some time before the Conquest, but the see of St David had
been completely Welsh. After the Conquest, both bishoprics were reor-
ganised on lines acceptable to the newcomers.
There was, finally, the manor, with the accompanying nucleated set-
tlements and open-field system. Within the ‘Englishry’ of the various
lordships, the presence of the new colonists was marked by agrarian
arrangements characteristic of England not Wales. The main difference
lay in the fact that such land was held from a lord in return for ser-
vices rendered, and not by virtue of membership of a kinship group in
return for reciprocal services. Enjoying better land, thanks to the back-
ing of their lords, the Englishry could regard itself as superior to the
Welshry. Outside the immediate circle of the lord’s control, however,
Welsh custom based upon partible inheritance continued to be prac-
tised. Also, customary law relating to the feud (galanas) and the principle
of compensation to relatives for a crime committed against one of the
kindred’s members survived in many areas. Marcher lords themselves
were willing to enforce the law of galanas in the Welshries in return for a
fee.
A distinction may be drawn between the early colonisation of Wales
in the immediate post-Conquest period and the later, more centralised
attempt to colonise Gwynedd during the reign of Edward I. Gwynedd had
succeeded in maintaining its autonomy during the twelfth century and
much of the thirteenth, though at the cost of its rulers formally accepting
the overlordship of the English king. A period of relative independence
during the baronial wars of the mid-thirteenth century was followed even-
tually by defeat at the hands of Edward I. In 1282 Llywelyn of Gwynedd
died in battle and his brother David was executed a year later. In 1284
Edward held a ‘parliament’, as a result of which the Norman criminal law
enforced by Norman-style sheriffs was introduced into the three shires
which now constituted the former kingdom of Gwynedd.
As in the south, the classical combination of castle, borough and
Church was relied upon to provide the framework of the colony. Edward’s
castles at each end of the Menai Straits and down the coast at Harlech still
stand as a monument to his policy. More effective, at least at first, were the
newly founded boroughs of Flint, Denbigh, Holt, Rhuddlan and Ruthin.
These are thoroughly Welsh today but they were originally intended to
be islands of colonial privilege in the Welsh countryside. Welshmen were
forbidden to live within them and were excluded from taking an active
part in their trading activities. A policy of plantation was also adopted in
connection with these boroughs and as a consequence good land in the
vale of Clwyd was confiscated for the benefit of new settlers while the
Welsh were ‘compensated’ with poorer land on the hillsides. The Greys
of Ruthin were one of the families who benefited from their part in this
colonisation.
The Statute of Rhuddlan, which was drawn up under Edward’s guid-

ance, made clear that colonisation and ‘civilisation’ were thought to go
hand in hand. Edward saw himself as retaining certain good customs
of the Welsh while abandoning those like galanas and fosterage which
seemed undesirable. Archbishop Pecham of Canterbury, who regarded
galanas as a travesty of justice, also wished to reform Welsh custom with
regard to marriage and legitimacy. In theory, this should not have led to
discrimination. In fact, Englishmen settling in Wales were often promised
that they would be tried only by Englishmen, if accused of a crime.
Welshmen were often prohibited from buying land held on English tenure
without the licence of the lord concerned.
The Welsh castles of Edward I reveal the extent of his imperialism. Of
the major castles which were to be built along the Welsh coast, Caernarfon
was singled out for particular emphasis as a symbol of empire. The site
itself was the Segontium of the Romans. The bailey of the late-eleventh-
century castle was retained as a reminder of the early years of the Nor-
mans. The Eagle Tower of the castle was intended to recall Constantino-
ple. Finally, the queen made a special journey to Caernarfon in order
that her son Edward should be born there. In the context of the history
of the British Isles, Edward I appears as much the English Augustus as
the English Justinian.
Unfortunately for this imperial vision, the demographic conditions
which might have made it possible did not survive the first quarter of
the fourteenth century. Traditional institutions of kinship were still to
be found in Gwynedd (now part of the principality of Wales), and other
areas such as Clun which did not feel the full brunt of colonisation, into
the fifteenth century and beyond. The three political units of the pre-
Conquest period each had different historical experiences. Deheubarth
and the south had been most affected by colonisation. Powys had faced
a more peaceful penetration. Gwynedd had not been affected fully until
the late thirteenth century. Beneath the Norman ascendancy, distinctive
cultures still existed.
The Norman Conquest of Wales was to have an indirect effect on
Ireland as well as England. An invasion of Ireland may have been planned
in the late eleventh century. It took place in fact in the late twelfth, when
Normans who had taken an active part in the Conquest of south Wales
crossed the Irish Sea. The descendants of Gerald of Windsor, the steward
of the earl of Pembroke, became the FitzGeralds of Munster. In due
course the Irish Sea Province became part of a Norman empire in the
British Isles. The lords of the Welsh marches also played an important
role in English politics from the twelfth century onwards. With military
Figure 18. The great motte of Urr

The great motte of Urr (Kirkcudbrightshire) was built by the Normans
to control Galloway in the south of Scotland, an area which earlier was
under Viking dominance. Similar Norman mottes are an indication of
the extent of Norman power throughout the British Isles, including
much of the south of Ireland.
forces at their disposal, they were always in a position to intervene in

England, should they be called upon to do so. Indeed the part which
they and Llywelyn played in the wars of Simon de Montfort probably
persuaded Edward to adopt a more active policy towards Wales.
Scotland, like Wales and Ireland, was very much a ‘geographical expres-
sion’ at the end of the eleventh century. Broadly speaking, it appears
divided into an Irish Sea province and a North Sea province, though the
distinction must not be pressed too hard in view of the fact that Norway
controlled Shetland, Orkney, the islands of Lewis and Skye and the Isle of
Man. The Inner Hebrides had in the early twelfth century been formed
into a kingdom by Somerled (d. 1164) and his descendants continued
to rule the area. Galloway, closely tied to the north of Ireland, was ruled
by Gaelic-Scandinavians, whose power south of the Solway had given
way before the expanding Canmore monarchy. It is difficult to be certain
about the political and social arrangements of the Gaelic-speaking lord-
ships but it would seem that a kinship system still survived, modified by
feudal ties between lord and vassal. The Vikings who colonised Argyll and
the Isles became gaelicised, and took over Gaelic forms of legitimation.
Donald and Dougall, the sons of Somerled, used the Gaelic patronymic
‘Mac’ (son of) which came to be the basis of the MacDonald and Mac-
Dougall clans. But the stone castles, which were built at key anchorages
in this seaborne society, pointed to the influence of ideas which were not
very far removed from those of the Normans.
The Irish Sea province looked towards the western seas and for some
time after the Norman Conquest of England was to be left to its own
devices. It was the North Sea province of ‘Scotland’ which was drawn
first into the Norman sphere of influence. The reigns of David I (1124–
53) and of William IV (the Lion, 1165–1214) were decisive here. Where
Malcolm Canmore had been largely concerned with extending his influ-
ence into what had been Bernicia and was now northern Northumbria,
his sons and grandson moved north into Gaelic-speaking Moray and
Buchan and south-west into Galloway. This could hardly have been suc-
cessful without the support of the Normans. The kings of the twelfth
and thirteenth centuries were, all in their different ways, dependent upon
the Norman kings. Without this support the rise of Edinburgh to polit-
ical importance is difficult to explain. A Norman ascendancy was thus
established in Scotland but more indirectly than was the case in Wales or
Ireland.
The instruments of Normanisation were the same as those employed
elsewhere in the British Isles – castle, borough and reformed Church. It
has been estimated that there were twenty-eight mottes in Annandale,
twenty-six between the Nith and the Cree and eleven to the west of the
Cree – well over fifty in the south-west alone. Some of these mottes, like
the motte of Urr, were major undertakings. In addition to these baronial
castles, there were royal castles, such as those at Stirling and Inverness.
The building of castles in such numbers makes clear what may not be
apparent at first sight, that the establishment of the Canmore dynasty
rested upon the fact of conquest; however, traditionally, historians have
preferred to see it in terms of ‘the making of a kingdom’ according to the
‘best European models’.
Resistance to the newcomers continued for some considerable time. In

the late twelfth century, and in the early thirteenth, risings took place in
the north-east in the name of MacWilliam, the presumed son of Duncan
II. The Normans took these risings sufficiently seriously publicly to beat
out the brains of a supposed MacWilliam female infant in the square at
Falkirk.
In Galloway, the practice known as surdit de serjeant illustrates the con-
flict which existed between notions of justice derived from kinship obli-
gation in the feud (galnes in Cumbric) and royal justice dispensed from
above. Surdit de serjeant empowered the royal officers (serjeants) to indict
those whom they suspected of being criminals and to hang them if caught
red-handed. Unfortunately we know little about this type of law enforce-
ment at the local level. The experience of such royal justice, however, may
go some way towards explaining the continued restiveness of Galloway
under the new regime. The Viking background of Gallowegan culture
must also have been a factor.
As elsewhere in the British Isles, the Norman borough played a crucial
role in the working of the Norman ascendancy. The aim was to establish
local trading monopolies which could levy tolls and hence raise cash for
their owners, whether king or local baron. Many boroughs, such as those
of Renfrew and Prestwick, were founded by local barons, but most, in
keeping with the prominent role played by the Scottish Crown in the
changes of the twelfth century, were royal. Such ventures are frequently
depicted as part of an enlightened commercial policy designed to develop
trade, but the complaints made by the monks of the Isle of May about
their loss of freedom in selling fish as a result of the establishment of a
royal borough indicate that changes were not always regarded as reforms.
As was the case in Wales and Ireland, the new boroughs were often mini-
colonies of Flemish or English immigrants dependent upon the king or
their lord for survival. The names mentioned in borough records are
overwhelmingly foreign at this date. Thus, taken in conjunction with
the restrictions which were imposed upon the movement of the peasant
population, the boroughs appear as part of a system of regulation imposed
from above.
There was, moreover, the reform-minded Church which also occupied
a prominent place in the process of Normanisation. The picture emerges
most clearly in the north-east, where Viking traditions were strong. Here,
new dioceses were created for Moray, Ross and Caithness. These were the
ecclesiastical counterparts of the earldoms now under royal control. In
Moray, the royal burgh at Elgin became the site of a cathedral which was
built in the thirteenth century. This new centralised structure of Church
government brought a new bureaucracy into existence, together with a
system of Church courts, to replace the loosely organised system of local

churches in which kinship groups had been dominant. Hundreds of parish
churches were eventually established, each, in theory at least, staffed by a
priest whose livelihood depended upon the collection of ‘teinds’ (tithes).
The introduction of new monastic orders was also a feature of the first
half of the twelfth century, thanks to the extraordinary zeal of King David
I. The monastery at Holyrood was staffed with monks from Merton in
England and the abbey at Jedburgh with monks from Beauvais. The new
monasteries, staffed by foreigners and often committed to expanding
revenues for building purposes, admirably fulfilled the purposes of the
ascendancy. We can only guess at the local response to their foundation.
By the end of the twelfth century all the elements of a Norman ascen-
dancy were in place in the east and south of Scotland. During the course
of the next century, Alexander II (1214–49) and Alexander III (1249–
86) attempted with some success to bring the west under the control of
the monarchy. By the late thirteenth century, the Stewart family, with
its castle at Rothesay in Bute, was the most powerful Norman family in
this area. Alexander II challenged the authority of Norway in the Isles,
but his unexpected death brought expansion to an end for a time. In
1266, after a struggle in the course of which a Norwegian fleet was
dispersed by a storm (1264), the kings of Norway agreed to convey
the sovereignty of the Isles, including the Isle of Man, to the kings of
Scotland. The MacDougalls and MacDonalds also came to terms with
Alexander III.
In 1278, when Alexander III was compelled to go to Westminster to
do homage to Edward I, the Norman ascendancy within the British Isles
seemed secure. In 1286, however, as a result of the unexpected death
of Alexander III without a male heir, new problems began to appear.
The Norman lords in Scotland agreed to accept the ‘Maid of Norway’,
Alexander’s granddaughter, as queen, but her death in 1290 brought to
a head a struggle for power which had been brewing for some years.
The main protagonists in the struggle were the factions of Bruce and
Comyn, each with its candidate. The Bruce candidate was Robert Bruce
of Annandale; the candidate of the Comyns was John Balliol, brother-in-
law of the Comyn baron, and a new arrival in Scotland. In due course,
with Edward I’s active participation as the overlord of many of those
involved, the court which had been appointed to decide gave its verdict
in favour of Balliol. In 1292 Balliol became king, with the support of over
half of his fellow magnates. There was little trouble until 1294, when
Edward called upon his vassals to aid him in defending Gascony against
the attacks of the French. Edward’s magnates in England were reluctant
to do so, and it is not surprising that John Balliol and his supporters should
also refuse. Edward’s response was to make war in the Scottish Lowlands
and to treat with unusual severity any of his opponents who might be
captured. William Wallace (whose name with its ‘Welsh’ overtones recalls
the old British kingdom of Strathclyde) rose in the name of King John
and enjoyed some success before being captured and executed in 1304.
Comyn and Bruce already had made peace with Edward in 1301. When in
1306 Robert Bruce quarrelled with John Comyn in the Greyfriars church
at Dumfries and stabbed him to death, it looked as if Edward had little
to fear in the future, despite the fact that Bruce had himself crowned
at Scone. Edward’s death in 1307, however, and the weakness of his
successor in the face of baronial opposition, made it possible for Bruce to
survive and eventually, in 1314, to defeat his enemies at Bannockburn,
near Stirling.
Confusion is often caused by the use of the concepts ‘English’ and
‘Scottish’ in dealing with these events. In fact, issues of national iden-
tity have little place in a situation which at the highest political level
was dominated by ideas of lordship and vassalage. What occurred in the
years following 1294 was not a conflict between ‘England’ and ‘Scot-
land’ (though it became so later) but a struggle for power within the
Norman ascendancy. As such, it was little different from the civil wars of
the mid-century. The contenders in the struggle, with the exception of
Wallace, were all of ‘Norman’ extraction. Balliol and Bruce (the elder)
had been taken prisoner at the battle of Lewes in 1264, fighting for Henry
III against Simon de Montfort. Comyn had taken the side of Simon and
Llywelyn of Wales. A structure of politics which allowed this to occur took
little account of national aspirations. When Bruce was proclaimed king at
Scone, the three areas which took sides against him, Buchan, Galloway
and Argyll (with their distinctive cultures), were precisely those in which
the Canmore dynasty had had most difficulty in establishing its author-
ity. Bruce’s support came from his fellow-Normans, and not all of them.
Those who gave him their support took their stand against a king who
seemed to have shifted his position from that of feudal overlord to one of
imperial dominance. Edward I was the revolutionary. They were the tra-
ditionalists, defending the local autonomy to which they felt themselves
entitled.
Concentration upon the political activity of the Normans tends to dis-
tract attention from the fate of the various sub-cultures which co-existed
in Scotland in the eleventh century. By the beginning of the fourteenth
century, Gaelic was clearly in retreat, except in the west. Its place had
been taken by English in the form of the Lothian dialect. The elite spoke
French but, below that level, English took over. Why this should be so is
not very clear. It may be due to a number of factors, including sponsored
colonisation from the Lowlands, of a kind which led to the anglicisation

of parts of south and east Wales. After two centuries of Norman ascen-
dancy, the five sub-cultures of Scotland had given way to three, English
in the east, Gaelic in the west and Scandinavian in Shetland and Orkney.
The latest casualty was Gaelic-speaking Buchan which did not recover
from the ‘harrying’ it received at the hands of the newly crowned Bruce.
Unlike the Norman infiltration of Scotland during the twelfth century,
the coming of the Normans to Ireland was sudden and dramatic. On
1 May 1169 a small contingent of Norman knights landed at Bannow Bay
near Wexford. A year later a larger force led by Richard FitzGilbert, earl
of Pembroke, landed at Waterford. Dublin fell to the Normans in 1171,
and soon the two Irish kingdoms of Leinster and Midhe were in Norman
hands. In 1171 King Henry II visited Ireland and accepted the homage
of both the conquistadores and of many of the Irish chiefs. He also, in an
act of far-sighted policy, established royal castles in Dublin, Waterford,
Cork and Limerick. Throughout the feudal period these were to remain
symbols of a Crown ‘presence’ in Ireland. Soon, much of Ireland was
overrun by the Normans. In 1175 the Norman newcomer de Cogan (a
name which survives as ‘Goggins’ in modern Ireland) and his followers
conquered most of the MacCarthy kingdom of Desmond. In 1177 John
de Courcy marched north and seized much of north-east Ulster. Parts of
Thomond also fell under Norman control. Connacht west of the Shannon
was spared for a time, thanks to the political skill of its O Connor king,
Cathal Crobhderg, who negotiated successfully with Henry II and his
successors. Much of Connacht too, however, had been taken over by the
mid-thirteenth century. Some of these successes proved to be temporary,
most notably in the Shannon area, but much of the best land in the
east changed hands permanently. Ireland indeed had suffered the same
fate as England, Wales, the Scottish Lowlands and other parts of western
Europe. The ‘blitzkrieg’ was not without its horrors. In 1170, for example,
by the orders of the Norman commanders seventy citizens of Waterford
were thrown from a cliff into the sea after their legs had been broken.
In Scotland the colonists derived legitimacy from the invitation of King
David I. In Ireland they legitimised their invasion on the basis of the
invitation from their Irish ally Diarmaid MacMurrough, king of Leinster.
It was Diarmaid who in effect called in the new world to redress the
balance of the old. His aim, as revealed in the years before 1169, was to
extend the power of the Leinster kingdom from the Scandinavian towns of
Dublin, Wexford and Waterford to the Shannon where Ossory was under
his control, and from the southern borders of Munster to the Boyne where
the ailing kingdom of Midhe was an obvious prize. These ambitions led
him into rivalry with the Shannon powers of Connacht and Breifne and
in the power struggle which occurred in the 1160s he came off worst.
Forced into exile in 1166, Diarmaid’s request for help from the Normans
was something of a gambler’s throw. Henry II himself had enough on
his hands with the problems of his own Angevin empire in France and
England and showed little enthusiasm for the prospect. It was among the
Norman feudatories of south Wales that Diarmaid found support. And
the fact that they acted to some extent in defiance of the Crown was to
have long-term consequences. The Norman conquistadores always felt
that they were independent of royal control. Indeed it was not until the
reign of Henry VIII that the title ‘king of Ireland’ was officially adopted
by the Crown. Throughout the medieval period the kings of England
were merely ‘lords’ of Ireland. Nonetheless, royal authority, at least in
the thirteenth century, was very much a reality.
Diarmaid also gave an additional cover of legality to the enterprise by
arranging for the marriage of Strongbow to his daughter Aoife, though
such an arrangement carried little weight in traditional Irish law. In their
own eyes, however, the Normans now had a claim to the kingdoms of
Leinster and Midhe. Religious reform added a further card to play. Diar-
maid was a ‘reforming’ king who had founded monasteries and had been
in contact by letter with the great St Bernard himself. The Norman epis-
copate in England could be relied upon to support their king. The Pope,
Alexander III, also looked upon the newcomers as agents of reform. But,
in essentials, the coming of the Normans to Ireland involved a conquest,
with consequences as unmistakeable as that by the Teutonic knights in
east Prussia.
What were the consequences of the coming of the Normans? This is
an issue which still deeply divides Irish historians. Eoin MacNeill (in
Phases of Irish History (1919)) looked upon the invasion as a wholly neg-
ative episode as a result of which the development of Irish nationhood
was set back for centuries. More recently, Professor Binchy (in Proceed-
ings of the Dublin Congress of Celtic Studies (1962)) has argued strongly in
favour of regarding the Viking invasions rather than the Norman Con-
quest as the crucial turning point in Irish history. There is also a ‘revi-
sionist’ school of Irish historians which stresses the positive contribution
made by the Normans in some areas. Professor F. X. Martin, for example,
has argued that the Normans made possible the introduction of parlia-
mentary institutions into Ireland. Professors Aubrey Gwynn and John A.
Watt have seen the Normans as completing the movement of reform in
the Irish Church. H. G. Richardson stressed the role of the Normans in
bringing Ireland into the mainstream of European culture and though,
as we have seen earlier, the Romanesque architecture of the early and
mid-twelfth century indicates that pre-Norman Ireland was not isolated,
Goddard Orpen, in the standard work on the Normans in Ireland, pre-

judged the whole issue by entitling his first chapter ‘Anarchic Ireland’.
The interpretation which I adopt here is nearest to that of Eoin MacNeill,
though not without some reservations.
If what has been said earlier is well founded, the Normans did not intro-
duce feudalism. From the tenth century onwards, Irish kings had con-
quered territories, built castles, exacted oaths of fealty from vassals and
used ‘religious reform’ to extend their control of newly acquired areas.
The punishments inflicted by Irish kings upon the recalcitrant included
blinding and the cutting off of hands and feet. The education of these
kings was modelled upon a warrior ethic similar to that of the Normans.
In Ireland as elsewhere these new attitudes clashed with traditional
attitudes towards the rights of kindred. Even before the Conquest, kings
in Ireland were trying to enforce a regnal succession from father to son.
Kings, like bishops, found an ideological basis for this in the idea of
patriarchal authority. Well before the Norman Conquest parts of Ireland
were moving towards a ‘modernising’ pattern.
It is clear, however, that external conquest by newcomers of a dif-
ferent language and culture and with different assumptions about the
role of law brought more far-reaching consequences in its train than
internal conquest by those possessing the same language and culture.
The former kingdom of Midhe, for example, which was the product
of many centuries of political evolution, stretching back to the shad-
owy Niall of the Nine Hostages in the fifth century, was transformed
into the ‘Liberty’ of Meath. (‘Liberty’ was a technical term under Nor-
man law for a lordship held from the Crown under which the lord had
the right to enforce law and order, with the exception of certain pleas
reserved for the Crown courts.) ‘Midhe’ ceased to exist, except in the
memory of the conquered. Meath was now a fief held from the English
Crown by Hugh de Lacy in return for the service of 100 knights. De
Lacy’s castle at Skryne, overlooking the ancient site at Tara, symbolised
the dominance of the new order. His vassals, among whom were num-
bered Petit, Pippard, Tyrell and Rochfort, held their own fiefs as part
of the feudal pyramid. A gigantic simplification had taken place. The
complexities of an older political culture, with its myths and genealo-
gies, had been relegated to obscurity. The Irish language itself became a
mark of servitude within the Norman-controlled area. ‘Hibernicus’ and
‘villein’ were synonymous. The coming of the Normans, far more than
the coming of the Vikings, marked a social revolution, at least in eastern
Ireland.
Institutions which had been associated with the traditional order found
no place within the new society. Thus, the Norman bishop of Meath,
Simon de Rochfort, centralised his diocese upon the new fortified town
of Trim. In the process, the older centres of Clonard and Fore, with
their cults of the early Irish saints Finnian and Fechin, were down-
graded. It may well be that Bishop Simon’s motives were mixed and that
he saw himself as undertaking genuine religious reform, but the result
was to place the Church in Meath firmly behind the new order. Within
the Norman-controlled areas, Irish hereditary learned families ceased
to have an economic base. Bards and brehons also lost their elite sta-
tus in this part of Ireland although they probably survived at a popular
level. Clearly, Irish culture in these areas received as profound a shock
as Anglo-Saxon culture did in England after the Norman Conquest of
1066.
It was as much by colonisation as by conquest, however, that the
Normans revolutionised eastern Ireland. Marc Bloch (in Feudal Society
(1961)) looked upon colonial settlement as one of the features which dis-
tinguished the second phase of feudalism from the first. In this the Irish
experience formed part of a general European pattern, which derived
from population pressures and land-hunger. The same forces, indeed,
which led the Germans to establish colonies beyond the Elbe led the
‘Franks’ into south Wales, the Scottish Lowlands and the east of Ireland.
How many colonists came in the late twelfth and thirteenth centuries will
never be known, but the incidence in east Leinster of such surnames as
‘Walsh’ (viz., Welsh), ‘English’, ‘French’ and ‘Fleming’ provides some
indication of their numbers. We have a better sense as to why they came.
Some at least were drawn to a strange land by the prospect of holding
land by free tenure. A number of place-names incorporating ‘burgage’ or
‘borris’ provide evidence of this phenomenon (for example, Borris, Co.
Carlow). Burgage tenure was in fact free tenure. Direct pressure from
Norman lords in England probably also played a part in ‘encouraging’
emigration. The Norfolk manors of Roger Bigod, who was lord of Carlow
as well as earl-marshal of England, show high rates of emigration during
this period.
Once the initial military successes were over, the story was that of
painstaking colonisation, particularly of the river valleys of Cos. Wex-
ford, Waterford and Meath. In Wexford, settlers moved up the valley of
the Slaney. In Waterford, they colonised the valley of the Barrow from
New Ross to Carlow, the Nore valley up to Kilkenny and beyond, and
the Suir valley from Carrick to Clonmel and Cahir. In Meath, they fol-
lowed the course of the Boyne from Drogheda through Navan and Trim
to Edenderry. Each stage of the advance was marked by the building of
mottes and baileys, walled towns, stone castles and monasteries. His-
torians and archaeologists have still to examine the chronology of this
process, but it seems likely that the valleys of the Boyne, the Barrow and
the Nore were the first areas of colonisation followed later by the less
accessible valleys of the Slaney and Suir.
Cultivation and clearance of land on this scale was something new in
Irish history. The three-field system, with its division into strips cultivated
with the heavy plough, probably made its first appearance in Ireland at this
time. There was thus an important new economic aspect to the Norman
Conquest. The tillage of the heavy soil of the river valleys could not
have taken place without a new expertise. Overall, however, the military
aspect seems to have been dominant. Great stone castles at Trim, Carlow,
Kilkenny, Cahir and elsewhere were the key centres of the new order.
The garrisons of these castles provided protection for the settlers and in
return received their agricultural surplus. Towns also had an important
military function. The Norman settlements at Trim, Thomastown and
elsewhere resembled similar Norman foundations at Flint, Denbigh and
Rhuddlan in north Wales. In Wales, the natives were (at least in theory)
excluded from these towns. In Ireland, the same rule seems to have been
applied. In Wales such towns became the target for attack from a resentful
countryside. So, too, in Ireland, such towns as Carlow suffered a similar
fate at the hands of the MacMurroughs, when these erstwhile allies of
the Normans turned against them.
The Church itself played an active military role in some areas. Medieval
historians have largely ignored the part played by the military order of
the Templars and the Knights Hospitallers of St John in the Conquest
of Ireland. Most numerous among the religious orders during the post-
Conquest period were the Augustinian canons with well over a hundred
houses. Between them, the Templars and the Hospitallers accounted
for at least twenty and possibly as many as sixty. Their role was by no
means negligible. The military-style architecture of the monastery at Kells
(Co. Kilkenny) speaks far more eloquently about the role of the Church
in this area than any written sources. Other monastic houses such as
the Cistercian monastery at Dunbrody (Co. Wexford) served the needs
of the colonists. The archbishopric of Dublin was also very much a part
of the military establishment, with castles at Swords and Tallaght. Stat-
ues of knights in the cloisters of Jerpoint abbey (Co. Kilkenny) make the
same point about the place of the Church in colonial Ireland.
From the beginning, indeed, the Church was committed to the support
of the Conquest, though ecclesiastical historians often lose sight of this
fact by isolating Church history from history at large. Bishops were now
royal tenants in chief with military obligations. The bishop of Limerick,
for example, was responsible for maintaining the king’s peace as a secular
judge. Reorganisation of cathedral chapters in the name of reform enabled
prebends to be held by royal or other nominees who were not obliged to

reside. Churchmen also played a key role in the royal administration,
and did not always avoid the seamy side of politics. Recent research has
shown the close involvement of Stephen of Fulbourn, bishop of Water-
ford, in the assassination of the two MacMurrough brothers at the end of
the thirteenth century, an incident which did not prevent his later promo-
tion to the archbishopric of Tuam. Another interesting ecclesiastical fig-
ure was the military-minded bishop of Ossory who carried the Host about
with him on the grounds that any attack on his person would become by
definition an act of sacrilege. There is no reason to think, however, that
the role of the Church was any different in Ireland after the Conquest
from what it was in England, Wales and Scotland. Monastic historians
mesmerised by ‘bare, ruined choirs’ have tended to overlook the way in
which castles, cathedrals and monasteries formed part of a single colonial
complex, in which French-speaking culture was dominant.
In Munster the Conquest was signalled unmistakeably by the building
of a large Gothic church on the Rock of Cashel, completely overshadow-
ing Cormac’s Chapel. In Dublin the Normans built a Gothic cathedral
and dedicated it to St Patrick, thus attempting, as others had done before,
to control the saint for their own purposes. At Durrow, Hugh de Lacy
attempted to use the stones of the old monastic site to build a castle and
was struck down for his pains. At Lismore a castle was built upon the site
of the ancient monastery. Other important monastic centres of the tradi-
tional order – Emly, Clonmacnoise and Terryglass, which had been active
in the first half of the century – were allowed or encouraged to decay.
At Fore the older monastery was replaced by a house of Augustinian
canons.
Resistance, when it came, was not from these older foundations but
from Cistercian monasteries in the valleys of the Boyne and Barrow, where
the reform movement had made some headway before the Norman Con-
quest. Trouble arose at Mellifont, Bective (near Trim) and Jerpoint in
the early years of the thirteenth century and had become sufficiently seri-
ous by 1211 to warrant the appointment of an official investigation by the
Cistercian order. The mission was carried out by Stephen of Lexington, a
Norman cleric linked by close family ties with Henry III’s administration.
As might have been anticipated, the result went against the Irish monks.
It was ordered that only French and Latin, and not Irish, should be spo-
ken within these houses. The various monasteries with Irish monks were
placed under French or Anglo-Norman supervision. Overall the effect
was to undermine still further the position of Irish-speaking institutions
within the Norman orbit.
It would be an oversimplification to suggest that the clergy both higher

and lower were drawn completely from the ranks of the conquerors. The
role of the Crown in ecclesiastical appointments, however, did place the
newcomers in a strong position in such sees as Dublin and Meath and
the southern half of the archdiocese of Armagh. The amalgamation of the
traditional see of Glendalough with Dublin (1216) and the transference of
the see of Clonard to Trim (1202) were carried out in the name of reform
but clearly benefited the urban partners. With their insistence upon cleri-
cal celibacy and stricter adherence to canon law concerning marriage, the
Normans had another weapon in their armoury, the reforming papacy
of Innocent III. Though the whole topic requires further investigation, it
seems likely also that the Normans dedicated their churches to the Holy
Trinity, the Virgin Mary or to saints with a wider reputation than those
enjoyed by the more localised Irish saints. Churches dedicated to Saints
Peter and Paul, St Anne, St Thomas, St Mary, St Michael and St David
are examples of this tendency. St Audouen’s in Dublin was a Norman
foundation. Here again, however, as we have seen earlier, the Normans
had been anticipated by the O Connors, the O Briens, the MacMurroughs
and other Irish kings.
The oldest traditions did not disappear overnight. Many of the Irish
cults survived at a popular level, kept alive by the observance of feast
days, visits to local wells, the holding of ‘patterns’ (patrons) in honour of
local saints and perhaps also by the belief in the greater efficacy of prayers
to Irish saints. At Ardmore near Waterford, for example, devotion to St
Declan flourished for many centuries after the coming of the Normans.
It is perhaps not inappropriate to see the Norman clergy in Ireland as an
Established Church in a world of Irish-speaking dissenters, divided from
them by culture and tradition as well as by economic and political sta-
tus. There seems little doubt that the outlook of the Norman theologian
Richard FitzRalph, who taught at ‘Drawda Hall’, Oxford, was poles apart
from the mentalité of rural Meath, though he was born at Drogheda, in
the same county.
Outside the areas of direct Norman control, the elite status of the
Irish language survived and with it the traditional hereditary professions
of bards, brehons and historians. Some hereditary families were driven
from one part of Ireland only to take refuge in another. Thus the O Clerys
(Ua Cleirigh) moved from near Galway to Mayo. The Duignans (Ua
Duibhgennain), originally from Clonmacnoise, settled in Leitrim and
Roscommon. The Wards (Maic an Bhaird), formerly hereditary poets to
the O Kellys in the Athlone area (Uı́ Mhaine), became bards to the O
Donnells in Donegal. The Maic Conmidhe became poets to the O Neills.
The O Breslins were poets to the Maguires. Actual possession of land in

some areas was slow to change hands, and it has been suggested that
many such families survived as erenaghs (airchinnigh) or lay stewards of
lands belonging to traditional monastic foundations. On Devenish Island
and Boa Island (Co. Fermanagh) such traditional monastic communities
existed side by side with newer foundations.
Irish cultural institutions did not disappear, but they were probably
placed on the defensive. Many of the manuscripts which survive are
compilations. For better or worse the Book of Invasions (Lebor Gabala)
seems to have achieved canonical status at this time as a record of an
Irish past contrasting with that of the Normans. In the field of law the
text of the Senchas Mar continued to be copied but its original meaning
had been lost, not to be recovered until the twentieth century (and then
with extreme difficulty). The brehons were carrying on a legal tradition
which they did not fully understand. The tradition of keeping annalis-
tic chronicles was maintained, however, and stories around the figure of
Fionn MacCumhail multiplied, thus ensuring at a popular level the sur-
vival of a version of the remote Irish past. Fionn was in some measure the
Irish equivalent of King Arthur, a Celtic leader whose existence implied
a pre-Conquest past.
As elsewhere in the British Isles, a particularly sharp contrast existed
between the outlooks of conquerors and conquered in the field of law.
The Normans assumed that in matters of inheritance the appropriate
pattern was from father to son. Irish traditions, though changing to some
extent at the royal level in response to a new model of kingship, still
stressed the rights of kindred. Such differences did not originate in racial
origins nor were they unique to Ireland. They were indeed cultural in
origin. As Professor Le Roy Ladurie (in ‘Family Structures and Inheri-
tance Customs in Sixteenth-Century France’, in Jack Goody, Joan Thirsk
and E. P. Thompson, eds., Family and Inheritance (1976)) has shown in
relation to France and the Netherlands during this period, profound dif-
ferences existed between north-east and north-west France about the
rights enjoyed by fathers in the disposal of property. This was not a mat-
ter of light and darkness, as historians brought up within a narrow English
common-law tradition tend to assume. Rather it originated in profoundly
different ways of looking at ends and means. In a father–king-centred
paradigm such as the Normans brought with them to Ireland, the kin-
dred and the sons were legally disadvantaged. In the Norman scheme of
things, the tendency was towards ‘primogeniture’ (the right of the eldest
son to inherit at the expense of all other claims); entail (the process of
controlling inheritance over several generations by a decision of the exist-
ing landholder); and the disposal of personal property by will by a father
Figure 19. Chepstow Castle

The Norman castle at Chepstow, with its priory and town at the mouth
of the River Wye, controlled entry into south Wales. It is some 10 miles
distant from Caerwent, the former Roman capital of the area, associated
with the Silures.
who might conceivably ignore any claims upon his property. In Norman-
controlled areas those assumptions tended to prevail, since they had the
backing of the Crown and the common-law courts. Thus the FitzGeralds
consistently adhered to primogeniture. In Irish-controlled areas the clash
between old and new continued for several centuries. The chronicles reg-
ularly refer to conflicts over succession which often seem to originate in
a clash between these two approaches.
In criminal law Norman emphasis was upon retribution. Thus hanging

for theft became a routine penalty. In some Irish areas thieves might well
receive exemplary punishment, but the tradition of compensation and of
kinship responsibility survived until the seventeenth century. Here again
this was not a contrast between civilisation and barbarism, though the
Normans tended to see it that way, but a clash between two legal systems
organised on different principles. A similar clash existed in the field of
ecclesiastical law where Norman views on clerical marriage, polygamy,
marriage between prohibited degrees and illegitimacy contrasted with
Irish traditions. The struggle between the two was not to be resolved for
many centuries. Ecclesiastical historians, however, have perhaps been too
ready to take the side of the self-styled reformers.
The gulf which existed between these two legal worlds was not totally
unbridged. Five royal lineages (Ua Néill of Ulster, Ua Mael Shechnaill
of Meath, Ua Conchobair of Connacht, Ua Briain of Munster, and
MacMurrough of Leinster), which had all come to terms with the Nor-
mans, were allowed access to royal law courts as a privilege. It was also
possible by the second half of the thirteenth century for individual Irish-
men living within Norman areas to buy grants of privilege, though this
class of person never seems to have numbered more than a few dozen. An
attempt was made c. 1277–80 by the archbishop of Cashel to negotiate
the purchase of a grant of English law on a wider scale. Though this did
not come to anything, it presumably reflected a recognition by church-
men of Irish background that the existing situation carried with it serious
disadvantages for the Church as an institution. Archbishop MacCarvell
and others like him were, after all, ‘reformers’ with no great commit-
ment to the traditional Irish kinship system as it extended to ecclesiastical
matters.
In general, however, the effect of the introduction of Norman-style
law with its relegation of many Irishmen to second-class status may well
have been to increase the attractiveness of reliance upon kindred. To
whom could an Irishman turn? The Calendar of Justiciary Rolls tells of a
group of Irish tenants who after their English lord was slain approached
another Englishman and asked to be placed under his protection. He
agreed to do this, indicated some waste lands where they might set-
tle and then arranged for them to be massacred en route. Presumably
not all such requests for ‘avowry’ ended in this way, but it may well be
that kinship ties seemed a more reliable method of achieving security. If
this was so, the introduction of Norman feudalism into Ireland may have
had the paradoxical result of helping to keep alive non-feudal ties. There
is no doubt, indeed, that the Normans themselves came to recognise the
power of kinship links among the Irish – so much so that a technical term
from Brehon law, cin confocuis, appears in early parliamentary legislation

in Ireland during Edward I’s reign.
In some parts of Ireland, notably in the south-west, the Normans
blended into an existing pattern of alliances. Maurice FitzThomas, who
first established the power of the FitzGeralds in south Munster, drew
upon the support of the O Briens as well as some of his fellow Nor-
mans. However, perhaps the key difference between the two societies lay
in the continuing colonial settlement of the east. Without this factor it
is difficult to explain why the MacMurroughs should have become dis-
enchanted with their former allies, the Normans. The MacMurroughs
initially benefited from the invasion. It was their hereditary enemies,
the O Brenans, who had been driven out of Wexford to take refuge in
the uplands of the Nore valley. From about 1270, however, the Mac-
Murroughs showed signs of hostility to the colonists, so much so that
Roger Bigod, earl of Norfolk, who had been granted the lordship of
Carlow, planned to bring them over to England to meet Edward I,
in the hope of negotiating a truce. Bigod himself, however, may have
been the cause of the problem, in so far as he encouraged colonisa-
tion of his Irish estates. At all events, the threat from the MacMur-
roughs had become so great that in 1282 the justiciar, Stephen of Ful-
bourn, bishop of Waterford, took steps to have them assassinated. In folk-
memory this murder became an event by which the passing of time was
judged.
That Mary was of the age of twenty-three years on the vigil of St Mary Magdalen
last. He knows this by common fame current in this country which was that
Mary was born to Philip, of his wife then being in Fyngal, on the day when Art
McMurth was slain who was slain on the said vigil. And it is known in the whole
country that twenty-three years are passed since Art McMurth was slain.
If the Viking invasions brought about the fall of many aspects of

the ‘Old Order’, the Norman Conquests completed the process. During
the Viking centuries the British Isles remained divided into distinct but
overlapping political and cultural communities, all of them affected to a
greater or lesser extent by Scandinavian influences, Norwegian or Danish.
With the coming of the Normans, communities of the British Isles were
brought together at the aristocratic level, in Church and State, within a
single cultural and political ascendancy which looked towards France.
For nearly three centuries a French-speaking colonial elite imposed its
own cultural norms, with the castle, the borough, the reformed Church
and new-style episcopal government as their mainstays. This was very
much a ‘command’ society in which power rested with a military aristoc-
racy. Institutions associated with different forms of society, those based
SCOTLAND
IRELAND
WALES ENGLAND
Normandy
Paris
Brittany
Maine
Aquitaine
Gascony
Lands inherited by Henry II

Lands acquired by Henry II's marriage
to Eleanor of Aquitaine
Lands claimed by right of
suzerainty or conquest
Capetian royal domain
Borders of France and the empire
0 200 400 km
Map 14. The Angevin empire/the post-Norman empire.
on kinship or on the market, took a second place during this period. The
Normans were not interested in trade for its own sake. The dominant
ideology of the regime was based upon the notion of the three estates,
warriors, priests and peasants, each with its own function. Merchants
had no obvious place in this scheme of things. In this society the highest
prestige was reserved for the military class with its tournaments and its
cult of chivalry. The highest loyalty was reserved for lord or king, not for
the kinship group. In religion the same assumptions may be seen at work.
The cathedrals of the colonial regime stressed the importance of author-
ity, divine and episcopal. Some historians have detected a shift, from a
concern with offences against one’s neighbour or kindred to a preoc-
cupation with sin against divine authority, as having taken place during
the Counter-Reformation. Something of the same kind, though possi-
bly on a more limited scale, seems to have occurred during this period
also.
The use of the term ‘Norman’ for the whole of this period, from the
mid-eleventh to the mid-fourteenth centuries, is, of course, very much
an oversimplification. The followers of William the Conqueror were not
exclusively Norman. Many were Breton, Flemish and Picard by back-
ground. From the mid-twelfth century the line of Norman kings was
replaced by that of Henry II Plantagenet and the Angevins. The early
settlers of Wales, Scotland and Ireland included many Flemings. But
such qualifications, while necessary, do not change the essential fact that
a French-orientated ascendancy introduced by the Normans came to
dominate most of the British Isles, so much so that the historian loses
sight of the varied cultures over which the ‘Normans’ ruled. It is only by
a conscious effort that the historian reminds himself that the newcom-
ers were very much in a minority. The history of the various cultures
of the British Isles during this period still remains to be written, for the
localities of England as well as for north and south Wales, Highland and
Lowland Scotland and Ireland, east and west of the Shannon. These
cultures survived, but few if any of them escaped the influence of the
Norman ascendancy.
Postscript
Students of ‘British Isles History’ now have to hand a master work, The
First English Empire: Power and Identities in the British Isles 1093–1343
(Oxford, 2000) by Professor Rees Davies (now Sir Rees Davies). Pro-
fessor Robin Frame has also made a notable contribution in his The
Political Development of the British Isles (Oxford, 1990) and Ireland and
Britain (London, 1998). To these may now be added a number of bril-
liant articles by Professor John Gillingham. In one of these he refers to
‘the English empire established in the tenth century – a thousand year
Reich in the making’ (in A. Grant and Keith J. Stringer, eds., 1995).
The key difference of emphasis between these approaches and that are
put forward here in Chapter 5 is their stress upon ‘the English’. Where
then are the Normans in this new ‘English’ interpretation? The question
as to when the Normans began to see themselves as ‘English’ has long

been debated, as has the question whether the Norman Conquest was
really a conquest or rather a relatively peaceful ‘takeover’. Scholars such
as James Campbell and John Gillingham make a formidable case for
their view that the conquerors came to see themselves as ‘English’ by the
mid-twelfth century. However, the concept of ‘Norman’ cannot be taken
too literally. William the Conqueror’s invading force in 1066 included
many who came from outside Normandy. In addition, with the succes-
sion of the Angevin Henry II to the throne of England, my use of the
term ‘Norman’ is open to criticism. How then are we to describe the
invaders of Ireland in 1169? Surely not as Angevins? The concept ‘Nor-
man’ or ‘Norman-French’, like the concept ‘Norman Conquest’, has not
yet outlived its usefulness. This said, there is little doubt that Rees Davies’
book The First English Empire (2000) constitutes a landmark in the his-
toriography of these islands. Davies, a Welsh-speaking scholar who pos-
sesses first-hand knowledge of Welsh history, is also a former student of
K.B. McFarlane and equally at home in English history. He has also
made it his business to familiarise himself with Scottish and Irish history.
Future historians of the British Isles have no finer model.
The implications of his view of English history are far-reaching. In
effect they spell out a view which emphasises ‘internal colonialism’ as
a prime motif. Edward I now appears as the ‘Hammer of the Scots’
rather than the ‘English Justinian’. Magna Carta, Davies tells us, was,
and came to be regarded as, an affirmation of the political identity of an
essentially English body politic. Stubbs’ emphasis on it did ‘good service
for England’, he tells us, but left unanswered its role for the rest of the
British Isles and England’s relationship to it. The First English Empire is
indeed a challenge to that classic statement of the Whig interpretation of
history, Stubbs’ Constitutional History of England (1880).
One of the most valuable and original features of the book is Davies’ dis-
cussion of the importance of historical mythology. He shows in particular
how Geoffrey of Monmouth’s tales of Arthur influenced the thinking of
Edward I. He refers to an ‘all encompassing self-identity kit of English-
ness’ which was ‘the tool box of English identity and had centuries of
service ahead of it’ (p. 2). Davies’ eloquence carries us with him, but we
cannot avoid the question as to how far down the social scale this sense
of national identity reached. Did it encompass all the villeins and serfs
mentioned in Domesday Book, for example?
There has been a great increase in Scottish history in recent years,
comparable to that in Irish and Welsh history. Attention may be drawn
in particular to William Ferguson’s wide-ranging study The Identity of
the Scottish Nation (1998) together with Edward J. Cowan, For Freedom
Alone: The Declaration of Arbroath (2003).
Amid this rise in interest in the so-called ‘Celtic Fringe’ it is easy to lose
sight of the fact that England in wealth, resources and power gained in
dominance during these centuries. It is thus important to draw attention
to such works as Magna Carta by Professor James Holt (revised edition,
1992) with its detailed analysis of what became a key symbol for the ‘whig
interpretation of history’.
6 The decline of the post-Norman empire
The end of the thirteenth century saw the greatest extent of the post-
Norman Edwardian empire of the British Isles. In Wales, Edward I’s
castles symbolised the establishment of royal authority over the last
autonomous Welsh kingdom. Wales was now divided between marcher
lordships in the south and west and a principality in the north-west
where royal castles dominated the coastline from Harlech northwards. In
Ireland, the royal justiciar John Wogan, sitting at Ardfert in Kerry, heard
a plea concerning land at Dunquin. Royal power was not confined to
Dublin and the east coast but extended to remote areas in the south-
west. In Scotland, Edward, acting as overlord, had appointed guardians
to decide upon the succession to the Scottish Crown. In England, the
king seemed well able to cope with any opposition. The main problems
seemed likely to arise in Gascony which Edward held as the vassal of the
king of France.
As we now know, none of this proved to be permanent. Wogan’s court
in 1307 was the last royal assize to be held in Kerry for three centuries.
In Scotland, Robert Bruce, whose father had fought with Henry III at
the battle of Lewes, defeated the forces of Edward II at Bannockburn
(1314). The conquest of Wales seemed to have succeeded but even here,
at the end of the fourteenth century, Owain Glyndwr exposed the shallow
foundations of Edward I’s success.
With the benefit of hindsight we may decide that the break-up of the
Edwardian empire into four ‘national’ units was inevitable. But this may
be to take too narrow a view. In the context of the British Isles, the supe-
riority of the south-east in men and resources was clear. The building of
Edward’s Welsh castles was a remarkable technical achievement, which
depended for its success upon the mobilisation of skilled labour from all
over England. The royal administrative system made it possible to levy
taxes on a national scale. Given the political will, the assertion of royal
authority throughout the British Isles seemed to be an eminently practi-
cable proposition. Twenty years after the defeat at Bannockburn, Edward
III gave his support to Edward Balliol’s attempt to gain the Scottish
132
The decline of the post-Norman empire 133
throne. Robert Bruce had died in 1329, succeeded by his son David, who
was only five years old. There was thus a golden opportunity to avenge
Bannockburn and to reverse the terms of the Treaty of Northampton,
by which the independence of Scotland had been recognised. In 1333,
Balliol gained a decisive victory at Halidon Hill, and in 1334 ceded much
of the area south of the Forth to Edward III. Edinburgh was occupied by
Edward and remained in his possession until 1340.
What made the conquest of ‘Scotland’ difficult was the support which
the young David Bruce began to receive from the French. In effect, France
presented Edward with the option of choosing between Gascony and
Scotland. Edward’s reply, in 1337, was to claim the Crown of France, a
claim which he might well have put forward in 1328 after the death of
Charles IV, last of the Capetian kings of France. From 1337 onwards,
Edward was committed to a gigantic gamble on the European continent.
It was to this that royal resources were to be devoted. Scotland for the
time being became an object of secondary importance.
The French wars, as we now know, proved to be a long-term com-
mitment. For over a hundred years, the French enterprise required the
expenditure of resources and manpower on the grandest scale. Historians
differ about the profitability of the wars, much as they do about whether
the British empire of a later date showed a profit or loss at the end of the
day. What concerns us here are the political consequences of the wars in
the context of the British Isles. There can be little doubt that the prime
importance which was given to the dream of an empire in France dis-
tracted attention away from what now seemed to be the lesser vision of
an empire in the British Isles.
As a consequence, at least in part, of Edward III’s involvement in
France, the Norman ascendancy dissolved into several constituent parts.
The sense of difference was most marked in the Scottish Lowlands where
the struggle for independence was prolonged. In Ireland, it arose as the
result of the Norman lords being left to enjoy a de facto independence
over a long period. In Wales, the marcher lords were allowed to retain
their privileges as the price of defending the Welsh march. In northern
England, a new class of marcher lordships came into existence to defend
the border with Scotland. During the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries,
a pattern may be seen emerging in the British Isles which was nearer
to that of the Iberian peninsula than to France, in the sense that local
autonomies prevailed over a wider monarchy.
The future of the Norman ascendancy was also influenced by fac-
tors over which Edward III had little control. In 1349, the Black Death
reduced the population of England by one third. The result of this and
succeeding attacks of plague was to reduce the population pressures which
had provided much of the impetus to colonisation. The pressure on land

which had drawn many English tenants to seek their fortunes in Wales
and in Ireland was reversed. For the remainder of the century and for
most of the fifteenth it would be a question of landlords seeking tenants
for their land, not vice versa. The Norman colonies in Ireland and Wales
now lacked the constant supply of manpower upon which they relied. The
demographic links which held the ascendancy together began to dissolve
during the fourteenth century.
It was not until the sixteenth century that this period in insular his-
tory came to an end. By then the demographic situation had changed. In
addition, the Tudors, for their own reasons, were prepared to give much
of their attention to the affairs of Scotland, Ireland and Wales. After
the Scottish defeat at Flodden in 1513, the Lowlands were left exposed
to English pressure and in 1560 Elizabeth was able to intervene on the
side of the pro-English party. The victory of John Knox and the Scot-
tish reformers was in effect a victory for English influence. In Ireland,
successive monarchs had intervened from time to time though without
effective results. Edward III sent William of Windsor over to Ireland in
the mid-fourteenth century. Richard II made two largely symbolic visits
to Ireland. Edward IV sent over John Tiptoft as lord deputy, with dis-
astrous consequences for the earl of Desmond (who was executed) but
without long-term political results. It was not until Thomas Cromwell
took action against the young earl of Kildare in 1535 that royal power
became a reality. In Wales, the Acts of Union, passed under Cromwell, in
1536 and 1543 brought the marcher lordships to an end. In England itself
the defeat of the Pilgrimage of Grace in 1536 led to the establishment of
a royal Council of the North, which in effect took over from the marcher
lords. In 1314 all this was far in the future. For two centuries the history
of the British Isles was the history of its individual communities.
The political history of England during the fourteenth and fifteenth
centuries is a tale of violence and revolution made familiar in the work of
Shakespeare and Marlowe. In 1327 Roger Mortimer and Queen Isabella
deposed Edward II, only for Mortimer to be killed in his turn by the
young Edward III in the counter-revolution of 1330. In 1399 Richard II
was deposed by Henry of Lancaster, who claimed the throne as Henry
IV. In 1461, Henry VI was deposed, restored in 1470, and deposed once
more in 1471. In 1485 Richard III died on Bosworth Field in battle
against Henry Tudor, the future Henry VII. To this story of violence
must be added the violence involved in the Hundred Years War, with its
innumerable sackings, sieges and destructive ‘scorched earth’ marches.
The battles of Crécy, Poitiers and Agincourt and the burning of Jeanne
D’Arc were incidents in a prolonged war, at the end of which there was
civil war in England itself.
Figure 20. St George’s Chapel, Windsor
St George’s Chapel, Windsor was rebuilt during the reign of the Yorkist
King Edward IV. It replaced an earlier chapel which had once been
dedicated to St Edward. St George, himself a shadowy figure from
fourth-century Greece, was believed to have visited England and a leg
purporting to be his was venerated at Canterbury. Why the myth of
St George should take hold in England is still a matter for speculation.
From the standpoint of political history, it is difficult to avoid a pes-

simistic conclusion. Looked at in the context of economic history, how-
ever, the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries take on a somewhat different
colouring. As a consequence of the sudden decline in population caused
by the Black Death of 1348 the second half of the fourteenth century in
England witnessed the decline of unfree tenures, accompanied by a shift
from labour services to cash rents. A shortage of labour led to the rise of
labourers’ wages. During the same period, cloth made in southern Eng-
land began to be exported in large quantities. Industrialisation took place
in East Anglia, the Cotswolds and, in due course, in the West Riding of
Yorkshire. England, which had been a colonial-style economy exporting
raw materials, turned to manufactures.
The sharp contrast which exists between the political and economic
history of the period suggests that we may be justified in thinking that we
are dealing with two societies, one of them a military society, in which
a military class controlled the use of resources, and the other a market
society, in which profit by peaceful exchange was the main objective.
During the twelfth and thirteenth centuries the castle dominated the
working of the English economy. During the fourteenth and fifteenth
centuries, the balance shifted in favour of the merchant community. The
continuance of the Hundred Years War, however, ensured that military
considerations were often paramount. Thus the Crown, using its right
of purveyance, was empowered to buy food for its armies or garrisons
at prices which were set by its own representatives. The war necessarily
diverted resources from the economy at large for the purposes of achieving
political objectives.
The existence of a military society during these centuries was clearest
on the border with Scotland. The Scottish wars, which were inextricably
intertwined with the wider conflict of the Hundred Years War itself as a
consequence of the Franco-Scottish alliance, led to the creation of a mil-
itary class to defend the north of England. Hence the northern counties
of Northumberland, Westmorland and Cumberland became more ‘feu-
dalised’ than had been the case earlier. The building took place of castles
of a type which was no longer needed in the more peaceful south. Such
castles were built at Etel (1341), Edlingham (1350), Gleeston (1330)
and elsewhere. Smaller ‘peel’ castles were also erected for the defence of
smaller estates. A type of marcher society came into existence in north-
ern England of a kind which had long been familiar on the Welsh borders
and in Ireland. The Percys, the Nevilles and the Cliffords came to play a
role in English politics which the Mortimers of Wigmore and Chirk had
played earlier.
The castle was a familiar feature of military society. The war also
brought into existence a new institution in the ‘affinity’ of indentured
retainers. John of Gaunt, one of the sons of Edward III, indentured well
over a hundred esquires at a peacetime salary of up to 20 marks a year,
provided that they also recruited a man-at-arms. While it may be going
too far to regard the Hundred Years War as a gigantic system of outdoor
relief for the English feudal elite, there is no doubt that service with the
military nobility during the war provided an attractive and appropriate
career for many hard-pressed younger sons of minor landlords. The war
in France was a long-term imperial venture, which was the counterpart
in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries of the empire in the British Isles
which had drawn the Normans in 1066.
War to such men as Sir John Chandos and Sir John Fastolf was a
money-making enterprise. The Hundred Years War, however, was not
exclusively justified in financial terms by its participants. In an earlier
period, the idea of the Crusade had provided the reason for undertaking
military expeditions in eastern Europe, the Holy Land and even in parts
of western Europe. The ideological backing for the Hundred Years War
was supplied by the cult of chivalry. Edward III consciously cultivated the
notion that the war was a romantic enterprise. The torchlight-procession
of knights at Bristol in 1358 was not an isolated event but part of a
programme of tournaments and other activities intended to convey the
chivalric message. In 1348 Edward III founded the Order of the Garter as
a community of knights modelled upon the fellowship of King Arthur and
the Round Table. The knight was encouraged to see himself as following
a higher calling, marked off by the code of chivalry from those who made
fortunes by the base method of trade. Presumably those who suffered at
the hands of Edward’s captains did not share these assumptions.
This romantic approach to war (or pseudo-romantic depending upon
one’s point of view) was incorporated in the architecture of the castles
which were built in southern England. The new-style castles of the four-
teenth and fifteenth centuries provided a military façade for what were
in fact palatial living quarters. The most spectacular example of such
conspicuous consumption was the castle which Edward built at his birth-
place, Windsor, between 1350 and 1377. The cost of the whole enterprise
was, by contemporary standards, prodigious. John of Gaunt built a simi-
larly elaborate castle at Kenilworth. Sir John Fastolf, a lesser figure, built
in the same vein but on a smaller scale at Caistor, near Norwich. Other
examples of the ‘chivalric castle’ include castles at Raglan, Crew and
Tattersall. All were monuments to a particular ideology.
The attractions of a military career may well have seemed greatest to
lords and their families who were hard hit by the crisis in agriculture.
During the two centuries which followed the Conquest the feudal elite
controlled resources through the related institutions of castle, borough
and Church. In the fourteenth century, this situation changed radically.
As a result of the sudden decline in population which followed the Black

Death, the manorial officials were no longer able to control their tenants
in the same way. Since land was freely available, it was relatively easy
for unfree tenants to move. As labour was now scarce, wages went up on
estates which made use of wage-labour. More and more landlords decided
to abandon demesne farming, and to cease employing the unfree labour
on which the system depended and to rent their land out to tenants.
Villeinage declined and the status of peasants rose. There also seems to
have been a shift of wealth from the countryside to the towns during this
period.
A comparison of the taxation returns of 1334 and 1515 indicates that
the balance of wealth shifted from the grain counties of the midlands to the
new clothing-industry areas of the south. In 1300 English wool provided
the raw material for the cloth industries of Flanders and northern Italy.
By 1400, a ‘native’ cloth industry had come into being, partly as a result
of the migration of Flemish weavers to a country in which wool was
relatively cheap and water power was abundant. The heavy export taxes
on wool exported abroad made the possibility of manufacturing cloth a
more practicable proposition than it had been when export duties were
light. By 1381 Flemish weavers were conspicuous enough to be the targets
of native hostility.
One of the consequences of the rise of the cloth industry was the
development of towns and industrial villages in those areas where the
industry prospered. In these counties a shift took place from the manor-
dominated borough to the independent town. Coventry achieved its
independence during the mid-fourteenth century. Other towns followed
suit in obtaining their own mayor and council. Ecclesiastical boroughs,
which were slow to make the transition, became centres of unrest dur-
ing the so-called Peasants’ Revolt of 1381. What was coming into being
was a market-orientated society in the south of England, above all in
London.
Military society had its own institutions, as too had the market society,
all of them associated with towns. The equivalent of the military affini-
ties were the urban guilds, which were in essence monopolies designed
to protect the general interests of their members. The profit motive was
understandably uppermost but the guilds also stressed the importance of
fraternity. The fraternities, each with their own church, were the equiva-
lent in market society of the indentured retinues of military society. Ritu-
als, patrons, saints, liveries, mystery-plays, all served as symbols of unity
within the appropriate fraternity. Conspicuous consumption in this soci-
ety took the form of church-building or of the establishment of chantries
to say masses for the souls of guild members. In the early fifteenth
century some London guilds were able to buy town-houses from the
nobility and convert them to their own purposes. These economic
changes were also responsible for a cultural change of great significance –
the emergence of the English language as a socially acceptable medium.
English was the language of the trading community and the rise of Lon-
don, Norwich, Bristol and other towns brought about the elevated social
status of English.
The constitutional link between the military and market sectors of
English society was provided in parliament. The balance between the
two was far from equal, however. For all the wealth of the market soci-
ety, the exercise of political power was heavily weighted in favour of the
landed aristocracy. It might have been better for the towns had a system
of estates developed different from that of the English parliament. As it
was, the landed interest dominated the House of Lords in the persons of
the great magnates and the House of Commons in the representatives of
the knights of the shires. It is not surprising that parliaments should have
consistently thrown their weight on the side of ‘military society’. From
the mid-fourteenth century onwards parliament passed a series of sump-
tuary laws, designed to prevent the ‘lower’ classes wearing clothes which
were more appropriate to the gentry. It was parliament which in 1351
passed the Statute of Labourers in a vain attempt to control wages in the
interests of rural landlords. It was parliament which attempted to forbid
towns from harbouring villeins who had fled from their masters. In 1413
the Statute of Additions was passed requiring persons involved in lawsuits
to give more precise descriptions of themselves, another measure aimed
at restricting social mobility. In 1429, in an attempt to restrict the num-
ber of voters in county elections, the vote was confined to forty-shilling
freeholders.
The most dramatic example of the control of parliament by military
society was the ‘Merciless’ parliament of 1388, when the five magnates,
Gloucester, Arundel, Warwick, Bolingbroke (the son of John of Gaunt)
and Nottingham brought about the downfall of Richard II’s government.
One of the royal counsellors was Nicholas Brembre, mayor of London,
who supported the anti-war policies of the Crown. The king was forced to
give way and Brembre, along with some others, was executed. A similar
crisis occurred a decade later, when Richard II was forced to abdicate
by Henry of Lancaster. Richard was committed to a policy of peace with
France and had he remained in power the likelihood is that the Hundred
Years War would not have been resumed. The political power of the
magnates ensured that England was again involved in a long imperial
venture under Henry V and his successor which may be said not to have
ended until the loss of Calais in 1558.
The political influence of military society was also to be seen in the

interventions which the Percys, marcher lords of the north, played in the
revolution which brought down Richard II and in events in 1403 which
might easily have caused the fall of his successor Henry IV. During the
Wars of the Roses a similar role was played by the Nevilles.
There was little sign of the political rise of a middle class during this
period. The politically ambitious merchants had to acquire some sem-
blance of gentility in the form of a landed estate before they could hope for
a political career. Social differences died hard, however, as John Wiltshire
found to his cost when he purchased half a manor and became tenant
in chief to the king, with the service of handing the king a towel before
dinner on coronation day. The court set up by John of Gaunt to adjudi-
cate on his claim ordered that it be delegated to the earl of Cambridge.
Despite such individual problems, however, it has been estimated that
marriages between children of gentry and of merchants were common
(amounting to between a quarter and a third of surviving cases).
In the context of insular history the partial industrialisation of the
southern counties was a significant event, or series of events, which led
to the differentiation of this area of England from the rest of the British
Isles. The southern counties came to resemble other industrialised areas
of western Europe, especially Flanders and northern Italy. In terms of
population and wealth they mark a great change. The economic pull of
the market society of the south began to influence Wales and Ireland even
during a period when the political links between the various communities
were in a state of suspension.
At the end of the thirteenth century, the power of Edward I in Wales
was at its height. His victories over Llywelyn had led to the creation
of the principality which stretched from Gwynedd in the north, down
the Welsh coast to Carmarthen in the south. But this was not the only
indication of royal influence. During the 1290s, Edward made a point of
demonstrating his control over the marcher lords. He sat in judgement
on the earls of Gloucester and Hereford, lords of Glamorgan and Brecon
respectively. He imprisoned the lord of Ewyas Lacy. He ordered Edmund
Mortimer of Wigmore, who had hanged a villein belonging to the royal
lordship of Montgomery, to provide an effigy of the felon which could be
hung on the royal gallows. In these and other episodes Edward showed
his intention to maintain his rights in the marches, though he was careful
not to take more than what he considered his due.
In both the principality and the marches, the foundation of ‘Norman’
power still rested upon the combination of castle, borough, priory and
manor. Castles continued to dominate the countryside. The burgesses
of boroughs established close to the castles often served as warriors in
the retinue of their lord. In time of political confrontation, the marcher

lords were able to parade the military strength which they had at their
disposal. In 1313, the Bohun earl of Hereford could rely upon his ‘crowd
of Welshmen wild from the woodland’. In 1321, the followers of Mortimer
of Wigmore paraded ‘all clothed in green with their arms yellow’. In the
revolution of 1399, Henry of Bolingbroke was met by loyal tenants from
his Welsh estates. The marcher lordships exemplified the power of military
society.
As was the case in fourteenth-century England, however, the founda-
tions of this society were soon to be eroded by the demographic catas-
trophe of the Black Death and its aftermath. From mid-century, villages
began to be abandoned. The area of cultivated land contracted. Lords
found themselves unable to enforce the labour services due to them within
the manorial framework. In 1397, the lord of Dyffryn Clwyd complained
that his natiui refused to perform their harvest obligations and mill dues.
Bondmen fled from their estates, in ‘Welshries’ as well as ‘Englishries’.
Many colonial boroughs were penetrated by Welshmen whose presence
within their walls had hitherto been forbidden. The Englishry of Glamor-
gan was recolonised by Welshmen. Reaction against seigniorial attempts
to restore the status quo was almost certainly one of the causes behind
the revolt of Owain Glyndwr in 1400. By the early fifteenth century, the
military society was everywhere in retreat, despite the enactment of penal
laws which made Welshmen ‘second-class citizens’ in their own country.
Socially, if not legally, the Welsh ‘natives’ were the beneficiaries at the
expense of the colonists. The situation was by no means a simple one,
however. In the ‘Welshries’, the social structure which had survived Nor-
man invasion broke down in the face of population decline. The kinship-
based system of inheritance increasingly gave way to one in which hold-
ings passed from father to son. In the late fourteenth and early fifteenth
centuries, Welshmen in large numbers adopted English tenure, with its
freer possibilities of alienation, and its allowance for descent to women,
in preference to the Welsh system with its defence of the rights of the
members of the kinship group. By the end of the fifteenth century, Welsh
rural society was heavily ‘anglicised’ in an economic sense.
The marcher lordships also found it difficult to cope with the new free-
dom of market conditions. Ideally, each marcher lordship had constituted
a single economic unity whose resources were mobilised for the good of
the whole (as seen from the lord’s point of view). Thus the Mortimer
estate in Wales provided supplies for the Mortimer estate in Ireland. The
controlled market upon which this rested gave way to a more open system.
Market towns, such as Wrexham, replaced the restricted estate boroughs.
Fairs became increasingly popular for the freedom of sale which they
offered. In south Wales, numerous small ports traded with Bristol and
Devon. The wool of the Welsh uplands became an important source of
raw material for the growing English cloth industry. Welsh cattle supplied
meat for the markets of south-eastern England. South and east Wales, in
particular, were drawn into a close relationship with the English economy.
The particularism which had been so marked a feature of the economic
life of the marcher lordships gave way to a more open system.
The result by the early sixteenth century was considerable social
change. The military society, dominated by the castle and its associated
institutions, gave way to one in which the squire’s manor house, the mar-
ket town and the individual farmer were typical. The egalitarianism of
the kinship group (gwely) gave way increasingly to a society stratified by
wealth. The bondmen, whose task from early days had been to supply
the courts of the Welsh princes with food, disappeared from Welsh life,
perhaps to become labourers. In the ‘Englishries’, the manorial structure
gave way to farms and villages.
All these changes preceded the formal incorporation of Wales into the
English political, legal and administrative system in the Acts of Union
1536 and 1543 which in effect ratified the social revolution of the pre-
ceding century. Differences between English and Welsh codes of law were
now abolished. Marcher lordships were incorporated within English-style
shires. The Welsh language survived these changes but the culture which
came into existence in most parts of Wales was something new, an amal-
gam of Norman, English and Welsh. The new Welsh squirearchy in many
ways resembled its English counterpart. Soon gwely and galanas were to
be forgotten and castles to fall into ruins. Broad differences of outlook
between north and south Wales continued to exist, however.
In Scotland, Bruce’s victory in 1314 at Bannockburn and the Treaty of
Northampton some fourteen years later, recognising Scottish indepen-
dence, did not bring peace. The border between England and Scotland
became in effect a subsidiary theatre in the Hundred Years War. The
French alliance, which was the guarantee of independence, by its very
nature required the Scots to engage in military operations on the border.
Hence what might have been a peaceful frontier turned into an area of
continual war. The high points of this were the battles of Neville’s Cross
in 1346, Homildon Hill in 1402, Flodden in 1513 and Pinkie in 1547.
But these were merely the major events in a series of conflicts which went
on for over two hundred years.
We have already glanced at the effects which this state of affairs had
upon the northern counties of England. The effect was equally far-
reaching upon the Scottish Lowlands, and indirectly upon the Highlands
as well. The frontier war brought into existence a society which was even
Figure 21. The battle of Bannockburn

The battle of Bannockburn (1314) is a key event in the establishment
of the independence of a Scottish nation. The Declaration of Arbroath,
an appeal to Pope John XXII, made the case some years later (1322) on
the grounds of principle. In due course the King of Scots established
control of the north and west but the threat from England remained
constant, a fact which explains an enduring Franco-Scottish alliance.
more organised for war than that which had existed in the twelfth and
thirteenth centuries. In this situation the Scottish Crown was heavily
dependent upon a nobility able to put large numbers of retainers into
the field at short notice. The most powerful of these was the house of
Douglas, rulers of Galloway (the Black Douglases) and, through another
branch of the family, of the east coast (the Red Douglases of Angus).
The Douglases also had allies in the north upon whose support they
could count.
The power of William, eighth earl of Douglas (1425?–52) was seen
most dramatically in his treatment of a certain MacLellan, who refused
to serve as a Douglas retainer. MacLellan was imprisoned. A kinsman
who came to ask for his deliverance was told, after being served dinner,
that ‘[he had] come a litill to leit; bot zondar is zour sistir sone lyand;
bot he wantis the heid; take his bodie and do with it quhat ze will’. This
incident well illustrates how the Black Douglas regarded himself as to
all intents and purposes an independent ruler with the power of life and
death. It also helps to explain how the king with the aid of the enemies
made by the Black Douglas was able to bring about the downfall of the
family in 1455.
In this military society the castle was the centre of lordship. The Dou-
glas castle at Threave in Galloway, built in the late fourteenth century,
had its counterparts in other lordships throughout Scotland. Not until
the coming of artillery in the mid-fifteenth century did the balance shift
against the castle. With its base in local society the nobility controlled
access to higher appointments in the Church and the major abbeys. Even
more than in England parliament was dominated by the earls and nobles.
In any one parliament it was usual for only a few boroughs (not always
the same) to be represented. Boroughs, indeed, despite their theoretical
independence were very much exposed to pressures from the local nobil-
ity. The baronial courts were the legal reality in the face of the continued
weakness of the royal courts. Sheriffs, in theory royal servants, commonly
belonged to the dominant nobility of the region. War, far from uniting
society, was a major factor in creating disunity.
One consequence of the overwhelming importance of the defence of the
southern borders was the decline of Lowland influence in the west. Dur-
ing the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, while the attention of the Low-
landers was diverted southwards, the west was able to enjoy a prolonged
period of independence. During this period the MacDonalds, Lords of
the Isles, were able to extend their influence into Ulster, where a branch
of the family became the MacDonnells of Antrim. The military innova-
tion on which this rise in their power rested was the gallowglasses (gal-
loglaich = foreign soldiers), highly disciplined companies of swordsmen
and axemen who dominated the tactical scene in this area until the
sixteenth century. Gallowglasses from the Isles became the indentured
retainers of the O Donnells and of the earl of Desmond. The importance
of the Lords of the Isles in a British Isles context was illustrated in 1388
when Richard II sent a mission to establish good relations with them. For
their part, the Scottish kings were always willing to accept overtures from
disgruntled Ulster chiefs.
Royal influence had not entirely ceased to exist in the west, but here
as elsewhere the Crown was dependent upon a military nobility which
had its own interests in mind as much as those of the Crown. In Argyll,
the Campbells had been brought in by Bruce as a replacement for the
MacDougalls, the allies of his rivals, the Comyns. In due course the
Campbells, who became earls of Argyll in 1458, were to be uncrowned
kings of the west. Further north, the Huntleys and the MacKenzies served
as the channels of Lowland influence.
It is possibly a mistake to overstress the difference between the ‘two
cultures’ of Highlands and Lowlands at this date. Such Lowland mag-
nates as the Black Douglases, with their indentured retainers and their
power to enforce acceptance of service (‘bond of manrent’) over a wide
area, in many ways resembled Highland chiefs. The inner core of their
followers, enjoying the same name as their leader, were bound by ties of
kinship as close as any Highland clan. In the absence of a central authority
the ‘feud’ may indeed have been the main sanction behind local law. The
clan, for its part, was by this date very much a feudal institution in which
military service was rendered to the chief in return for his protection. The
galloglaich, who served in Ireland, were the Gaelic equivalent of inden-
tured retainers. Feudalism in its late medieval form was no stranger to
the Highlands. Many of the customs of the Highlands seemed strange to
Lowland eyes, but the political behaviour of the chiefs conformed to the
assumptions of the time. John MacDonald of the Isles when he became
the ally of the Douglases saw nothing strange in making a treaty with
Edward IV of England. The survival of lordship rested upon a shrewd
appraisal of the realities of the balance of power. In the long run, however,
this was to tilt against the MacDonalds.
The Lowlands proper consisted of a relatively narrow belt stretching
east–west between Glasgow and Edinburgh and a coastal strip running
north–south from Coldingham to Brechin, and taking in the river valleys
of the Forth and the Tay. It was the culture of this area which contrasted
most sharply with that of the Highlands. Here English was now dominant
even among the nobility. The earl of March, writing to Henry IV, his
patron, in 1400, spoke of his preference for English rather than French.
The majority of burghs, churches and monasteries were concentrated in
Figure 22. The seals of Owain Glyndwr

Owain Glyndwr (c.1350-c.1416) appears as a somewhat eccentric per-
sonage in Shakespeare’s play Henry IV. A recent biography by Sir Rees
Davies has established him as a significant figure in his own right who
proclaimed himself Prince of Wales and whose alliance with Henry Percy
(Hotspur) might well have changed the pattern of English and Welsh
history.
the Lowlands. There is little doubt that the level of literacy was higher
than in the rest of Scotland. Above all, market relations based on cash
were becoming more common in the south-east than in the feudalised
west where services in kind remained usual for a long time to come. The
shift to a cash economy was to be seen in the commutation of labour
service into money rents, a process which occurred during the fifteenth
century on the ecclesiastical estates which covered much of the region.
The practice of feuing (leasing out land for a fixed annual sum), which
guaranteed inheritance in perpetuity provided the sum was duly paid,
was a feature of the Lowlands. It was unknown in the Highlands where
security of tenure was still associated with membership of a kinship group
under the chief’s protection.
Signs that the autonomy of the Isles might be in danger have been read
into the fall of the house of Douglas in the 1450s. It was not until 1476,
however, that James III (1460–88) turned his attention to the west. In
1476, John MacDonald, earl of Ross and Lord of the Isles, surrendered
his earldom to the Crown after being accused of treasonable relations
with Edward IV in the preceding decade. He was soon to be overthrown
by his illegitimate son Angus Og (‘The Young’), who in turn was to be
assassinated (1490). In 1494 a royal naval base was created at Tarbet on
the Clyde, once a castle of Bruce. Early in the sixteenth century several
castles in the Isles were bombarded from the sea. Royal artillery, which
had proved so effective against Douglas, had been mounted on ships and
used against the MacDonalds.
As in Wales and Scotland, the high-water mark of imperial power was
reached in Ireland c. 1300. In 1245 the old kingdom of Leinster had been
divided into five feudal lordships, Carlow, Kildare, Kilkenny, Leix and
Wexford. The magnates who held these fiefs – Bigod, de Vesci, de Clare,
Mortimer and de Valence – were all members of the ruling elite and their
‘presence’ in Ireland indicated the strength of the imperial connection.
Assizes were held regularly at Dublin, Cork and Limerick in the second
half of the thirteenth century. As mentioned earlier, the peak of imperial
power may be seen in 1307 when the king’s justiciar John Wogan tried
a case at Ardfert (Co. Kerry) concerning land in Dunquin, at the tip of
the Dingle peninsula. The imperial connection could go no further in the
south-west of Ireland. It was a brief moment, however, and three more
centuries were to elapse before it reoccurred.
The immediate causes which led to the decline of imperial influence in
Scotland also affected Ireland. In 1315 Edward Bruce, brother of Robert
Bruce, was invited to campaign in Ulster by an alliance of Ulster chiefs
and discontented Norman barons. For a time there was a real possibil-
ity that Ireland might follow the example of Scotland and become an
independent kingdom with Edward Bruce as its ruler. Bruce’s defeat at

Faughart in 1318 ruled this out but the result of the Bruce episode in the
long term was to expose the dependence of the Crown upon the feudal
magnates. By the end of the fourteenth century, direct imperial rule in
Ireland had been replaced by indirect influence exercised throughout the
south of Ireland by three great feudal magnates, Desmond, Ormond and
Kildare. Though they held their land in theory from the Crown as earls,
the FitzGeralds of Desmond and of Kildare and the Butlers of Ormond in
effect ruled their territories as independent units. The FitzGeralds and
the Butlers were the equivalent in Ireland of the great marcher houses
of the Welsh and Scottish borders tolerated by the Crown for fear of a
greater evil.
Future patterns of power in the south were already evident in the
first half of the fourteenth century in the tumultuous career of Mau-
rice FitzThomas, who was created first earl of Desmond in 1319. The
house of Desmond, once established, became the leading political force
in Munster and together with the FitzGerald earls of Kildare and the
Butlers of Tipperary and Kilkenny formed an Anglo-Norman bloc,
which, despite internal dissensions and repeated clashes with the royal
administration, remained part of the English nexus. The earl of Desmond,
for example, served as a loyal tenant-in-chief with Edward III against the
Scots. Feudal structures and assumptions survived in the south in spite
of the fact that direct Crown control was ultimately confined to the ‘Pale’
around Dublin and Waterford.
Maurice FitzThomas was a descendant of the Geraldine, Thomas of
Shanid, younger son of Maurice FitzGerald and a relatively minor figure
in the Norman invasion of Munster in the late twelfth century. By 1300,
however, the family controlled the fertile lands of north Kerry, from its
base at Tralee, and much of Limerick, from its castles at Adare, Askeaton
and Kilmallock. In effect, the earls of Desmond took over much of the
territory which the O Briens had occupied in the tenth century under
Brian Boru. They felt, as conquistadores, that they did not owe their
position to Crown assistance, a fact which helps to explain the ambivalent
attitude and behaviour of Maurice FitzThomas.
Thanks to the researches of Professor G. O. Sayles (‘The Rebellious
First Earl of Desmond’, in J. A. Watt, J. B. Morrall and F. X. Martin,
eds., Medieval Studies Presented to Aubrey Gwynn S. J. (1961)), we know a
great deal more than once seemed possible about FitzThomas. During the
thirty years of his active political life he was involved in two prolonged
clashes with the Crown (1329–33 and 1339–44) as well as numerous
small-scale incidents. In 1329 he was the leader of a conspiracy whose
members planned to make him king of Ireland and to divide the country
among themselves. During a further period of unrest he was accused of

usurping royal authority and of protecting and harbouring rebels. Even-
tually, in 1343, the royal justiciar marched against him, took the castles
of Askeaton and Castle Island and hanged the earl’s steward. In 1346
Desmond surrendered and went to London to make his submission. In
1355 he returned, this time as justiciar. In 1356 he died.
Professor Sayles’ judgement on all this is that ‘for the second quarter
of the fourteenth century, the activities of the first earl of Desmond made
orderly government in the south-west of Ireland very largely impossible’.
That is, in effect, the viewpoint of the Crown on ‘law and order’. We
know, however, from the involvement of the justiciar in the assassination
of MacMurrough in 1283 that Crown officials themselves were quite
capable of behaving illegally in the cause of ‘law and order’.
What is interesting about Desmond’s behaviour is that he confined
his attention very largely to bringing pressure to bear upon royal officials,
centres of royal power and Crown-controlled towns, such as Limerick and
Youghal. In 1330, for example, he ordered Sir Thomas FitzGulber to pub-
licise a prohibition that neither the sheriff nor any other servant of the king
was to be obeyed. When, a few days later, Brian O Brien slew the sher-
iff, Desmond made ‘great wassail’ with him in celebration. Later in the
same year, when the deputy justiciar ordered a new sheriff to take action
against O Brien, Desmond commanded him to return O Brien’s horses
and cattle. In 1332 the royal stronghold at Bunratty Castle was destroyed
by O Brien and MacNamara, presumably with Desmond’s blessing.
It seems clear from this and other episodes that Desmond was attempt-
ing to set up a ‘palatinate’ in which he would be the sole source of polit-
ical and legal authority. Thus he held a court at Dungarvan at which he
issued fines and distraints. He appointed his own constable at Bunratty.
He ejected royal bailiffs from the barony of Inchiquin and held his own
court there. He issued pardons and ordered executions. He intervened in
legal disputes or encouraged others to do so. He seized cattle from a cer-
tain John of Byford after John had refused to become ‘his man’. All this
indicates Desmond’s wish not to destroy law and order but to become the
fount of law and order in this particular part of Ireland. The alternative
to a resident lord was the intervention of royal officials on behalf of an
absentee monarch. Judging from the support which Desmond received
from Irish and Norman alike his attitude was viewed sympathetically.
Part of the explanation for Desmond’s outlook may be sought in the
various attempts which were made by the royal administration to ‘resume’
control of land which, it was argued, had been acquired without appro-
priate legal authorisation. Desmond, as the husband of an O Brien, was
open to charges of intermarriage with the king’s enemies. The Statutes
of Kilkenny, passed in 1366 but anticipated in legislation passed fifteen

years earlier in 1351, were clearly aimed at such lords as the earls of
Desmond. From time to time throughout the fourteenth century the
Crown through its deputies and eventually in the person of King Richard
II made attempts to assert its authority, but without lasting effect. The
relative abundance of evidence dealing with parliaments and lord deputies
has perhaps tended to mislead historians. There never was a ‘royal lord-
ship of Ireland’ during the late medieval period. It existed only in the
minds of lawyers and administrators. The reality of power in the south-
ern half of Ireland rested with the great feudal earldoms and not with the
administration, even though the Crown might ‘show the flag’ when the
situation seemed to require symbolic action. The career of the first earl
of Desmond illustrates the success of a ‘feudal resurgence’ against the
Crown. For two centuries and more the key to understanding the course
of events in the southern half of Ireland lay in the Geraldine centres at
Askeaton and Maynooth and in the Butler-controlled castles at Cahir and
Kilkenny.
In the northern areas of Ireland, there was no semblance of an ‘imperial
presence’ after the Bruce episode. Power rested to a great extent with
the rival dynasties of O Neill and O Donnell, each of which would look
back to a shadowy Uı́ Néill genealogy. The realities of power rested,
however, not upon descent but military retinues. The O Donnells came to
power and retained it thanks to gallowglasses imported from the Isles. The
MacSweeneys, MacSheehys, MacDowells and other clans of galloglaich
played the same role in Ireland as indentured retainers did in fifteenth-
century England. Their reward was land, in the MacSweeneys’ case, on
the estuary of the River Moy. In 1373 when O Neill negotiated a treaty
he was accompanied by MacDonnell, ‘captain of the Scots dwelling in
Ulster’. One of the O Connors married a MacDonnell and received 120
galloglaich as his dowry. At the end of the fourteenth century, gallowglasses
moved into the Glens of Antrim and set up a lordship at Dunluce. In
the early seventeenth century the MacDonnell earl of Antrim took his
name ‘Somhairle’ from ‘Somerled’, the twelfth-century ancestor of the
MacDonalds and MacDougalls.
It seems clear that during this period the north of Ireland fell within
a sphere of influence whose centre was the lordship of the Isles. Ulster,
in fact, was the Irish equivalent of the border area between England and
Scotland. In such a twilight zone, the O Neills and the O Donnells, who
were themselves hereditary enemies, were able to play off one side against
the other. When Manus O Donnell wrote to James IV of Scotland, asking
for assistance, he referred to his father’s earlier association with the Scot-
tish Crown. James, in his reply, described O Donnell as his ‘most devoted
subject’. The O Neills for their part looked to the English monarchy for
support. This situation persisted until the beginning of the seventeenth
century, when, in a fundamental political shift, James VI of Scotland
became also king of England, and the raison d’être of these marcher lord-
ships disappeared.
The symbolism of these Gaelic regimes was ‘traditional’ in character,
though the tradition may have been recent in origin. The Gaelic lords
were careful to legitimise their behaviour by surrounding themselves with
the cultural trappings of an earlier age. Thus learned families from south
and west Ireland were able to find employment with the northern chiefs.
Few episodes are more revealing, however, than the installation of a new
MacWilliam under the auspices of Hugh Roe O Donnell in 1595. O
Donnell summoned the eight claimants to the chiefry to meet him at
Tyrawley. The rath where the ‘election’ took place was surrounded by
four lines of troops, O Donnell’s own personal guard, the troops of Tir
Connell, the gallowglasses of the MacSweeneys and ‘the men of Con-
nacht’. O Donnell’s own nominee was selected and three of the seven
defeated candidates were placed in bonds. O Donnell seems to have cho-
sen other chiefs in similar fashion, on other occasions.
As in Scotland, there were significant differences between north and
south. The north was the Irish equivalent of Highland society and it was
here that the main clusters of Irish hereditary learned families were to
be found in the later middle ages. Each of the Gaelic elite families, like
the MacDonalds of the Isles, had its own bards, senachies and brehons.
Thus the O Cleirigh family, one of whose members was to take his part
in producing the Annals of the Four Masters, were historians to the O
Donnells. It was Luigh O Cleirigh who produced an official life of Hugh
Roe O Donnell in the early seventeenth century. One of the last families
to survive the Cromwellian debacle were the MacFirbisigh, bards to the
O Dowds. The last representative of this culture was Roderick O Flaherty
in the remote parts of west Galway during the early eighteenth century.
In the southern half of Ireland there was a different situation thanks
largely to the dominance of the powerful Norman lordships of Kildare,
Desmond and Ormond. In certain areas, there was indeed an ‘Irish resur-
gence’ in the sense that local Gaelic-speaking elites gained control of terri-
tory once occupied by the Normans. But the concepts both of ‘Irish’ and
of ‘resurgence’ are misleading if they are taken to imply either nationality
or the regaining of land by the original holders. Much of the best land
remained in the possession of the Normans. Relatively poor areas, though
large in acreage, were now controlled by such families as MacCarthys,
MacMurroughs, O Mores and MacGiolla Padraig. There was a marked
contrast, for example, between the MacCarthy territory of Duhallow in
the narrow upper valley of the Blackwater and the attractive Norman land
of Mallow and Charleville in the lower valley. A similar contrast existed
between the MacCarthy land of Muscraige in the upper Lee valley and
the good land further down. In the Barrow valley, further north, the bleak
moorland of Fassadinin offered shelter for the O Brenans, while the fer-
tile valley remained in the hands of the colonists. The ‘Celtic Rally’ was
more of a ‘Celtic Survival’.
At the end of the thirteenth century, the political future of the British
Isles seemed to be directed towards a unified Norman ascendancy. In
the event, the ascendancy dissolved into a number of independent or
semi-independent units. The ‘Norman Scots’ declared for a kingdom of
Scotland. In Ireland, their equivalents settled for a real autonomy beneath
a vague royal overlordship. In Wales, the great marcher lords, after meet-
ing the challenge of Edward I, survived for another century or more. All
this was made possible by the decision of ‘England’ to seek an impe-
rial future in France, a venture which turned into the Hundred Years
War.
The characteristic unit of society during this period was the ‘Norman’
feudal lordship, or, in the west of Scotland and over much of Ireland,
feudal lordship in its Gaelic guise. Though it is tempting, and perhaps
unavoidable, to refer to ‘Ireland’, ‘Scotland’ and ‘Wales’, each of these
‘polities’ was in fact remarkably fragmented. Even England, with its
marcher areas in the north and west, was far from unified. The ‘paradigm’
which governed political attitudes is best characterised as ‘feudal’ in the
sense that security was felt to lie not in allegiance to a distant and perhaps
ineffective Crown but in the service of a local magnate or those linked to
him.
Change in the direction of a new set of political assumptions came
first in south-east England, with its great trading metropolis of London.
‘Progress’, associated with literacy and with the growth of market rela-
tions, seemed to lie with a more powerful monarchy. The same phe-
nomenon was also to be observed in south-east Scotland. By the early
sixteenth century few areas of the British Isles can be said to be entirely
immune to the influence of such agencies of change, though felt least in
the west of Scotland and the north of Ireland. Such factors as the growth
of population, the increased use of artillery and warships made further
change possible.
The shift which was taking place has been characterised by sociologists
and historians in various ways, though usually with some implication
of ‘modernisation’. Clearly, profound changes were likely to take place.
What was not clear was the direction. It was by no means inevitable, for
example, that Scotland should fall under English dominance. Nor was it
inevitable that the English government should decide to attempt a second

conquest of Ireland. Models for possible futures could have resembled
those offered by Switzerland, the Habsburg empire and Italy as much as
those of France and Spain. As much was to depend upon decision-making
as upon ‘historical trends’.
In this chapter little emphasis has been placed upon the ‘Wars of the
Roses’. Shakespeare in his history plays made these a central feature of
English history, marking the transition from the anarchy associated with
usurpation to the blessings of Tudor monarchy. From a ‘British Isles’
standpoint the ‘Wars of the Roses’ may be seen as the final chapter in
the decline and fall of the post-Norman empire. During the late fifteenth
century, Scotland, Ireland and Wales were left largely to their own devices
and even smaller communities such as the Isle of Man and Cornwall,
which deserve more attention than has been given to them here, enjoyed
a good deal of independence. In a fuller British Isles version of the Wars
of the Roses, the role of the two Yorkist pretenders, Lambert Simnel and
Perkin Warbeck, would be given more emphasis. Both landed in Ireland,
in 1487 and 1491 respectively. Simnel was crowned in Cork. Warbeck,
with the support of the Fitzgerald earls of Desmond and Kildare, claimed
to be the duke of York, son of Edward IV. Warbeck’s travels in search of
the Crown during the 1490s took him to Scotland and Cornwall and
again to Cork in 1497. He was executed in 1499. Warbeck, like Richard
II before him, and James II later, was attempting to play the ‘Irish card’ as
a means of gaining power. When the English ‘core’ was divided, as it was
during the Wars of the Roses, the ‘periphery’ could be of considerable
political importance.
Postscript
Chapter 6 dealt with what is often termed somewhat vaguely ‘the Later
Medieval Ages’. In the context of ‘British Isles History’ the two centuries
c.1314 to c. 1530 may be seen constituting a period in which pressure
of the south-eastern ‘core’ upon the rest of the archipelago was for vari-
ous reasons reduced. Shakespeare’s ‘history’ plays, based on Holinshed’s
Chronicles, offered what was in many ways the dominant Tudor interpre-
tation of how this came about. Thus in his interconnected series of plays,
Henry VI, he showed how an overseas adventure went badly wrong and led
to a bitter civil war. In Richard II we are shown how a revolution took place
which led to political instability. A major theme of Henry IV is the uncer-
tainty created by the Lancastrian Revolution of 1399, creating a dilemma
which was solved at least temporarily by Henry V’s decision to invade
France, but which in due course created the unrest which Shakespeare
dramatised in Henry VI. Shakespeare’s view still remains influential and

will no doubt remain so but it should be not be treated as an orthodoxy.
In many ways of course he, like his source Holinshed’s Chronicles, was
providing his audience with a version of events favourable to the Tudors.
Holinshed itself may be read only by scholars but the popularity of Shake-
speare ensures that the Tudor version of the fifteenth century, according
to which they brought stability to a troubled kingdom, will remain central.
It should be noted, however, that Shakespeare, supreme dramatist that
he was, often, perhaps always, provided an ironic twist to his commen-
tary. Thus the famous soliloquy referring to ‘this sceptred isle’ continues
in terms which lament the way in which ‘this dear, dear land’ is now
leased ‘like a tenement or pelting farm’. The speech itself is given by a
nobleman, John of Gaunt, who may be seen as symbolising a decaying
feudal nobility. Ambiguity always remains even in his history plays, leav-
ing room for alternative interpretations for characters or events. A recent
example of the shape which such an alternative view of late medieval
England might take is now provided by Gerald Harriss in his powerful
study Shaping the Nation; England 1360–1461 (Oxford, 2005), in which
he tries to undermine the grip which the Tudor version of events has
upon our understanding of late medieval England.
Shakespeare was largely concerned with England and its problems but
in several of these plays he refers to a wider ‘British Isles’ context. In
Henry VI, for example, we are shown how Richard of York, who had
been appointed Lord Lieutenant of Ireland in 1450, encouraged Jack
Cade’s rebellion and then attempted himself to gain power. In Richard
II it is the King’s absence in Ireland which encourages his opponents
to mobilise against him. In Henry IV part I Shakespeare’s historical pic-
ture includes Wales in the shape of Owen Glendower, Scotland, and
in the person of Hotspur, Northern England. Henry V is largely con-
cerned with France but there is an important speech which refers to the
return of Essex from Ireland in 1601 (Act V Chorus). This, though an
anachronism, indicates that Shakespeare wants us to be aware of events
outside Westminster. There are, in addition, several scenes in which the
multi-ethnic character of Henry’s army is portrayed, the Anglo-Irishman
MacMorris and the Welshman Fluellen being notable examples. Shake-
speare’s history plays are often discussed in solely English terms and he
was, of course, a London-based dramatist. But particularly in Henry IV
part I there is no doubt that he provides a dramatic setting which goes
beyond the south-east. In MacBeth, of course, he moved north of the
border, taking advantage of the union of the crowns, after 1603. Lear
and Cymbeline also have fascinating historical implications which are now
being explored by scholars.
The story of England dramatised in the history plays is that of a society

which is being torn apart by faction. As suggested in Chapter 6 this is
not the whole picture. Nevertheless it does provide some indication as to
why politics on the periphery were able to achieve a greater freedom of
action and indeed influence or attempt to influence the course of events
in England itself.
The break-up of the post-Norman empire was most obvious in the case
of Scotland where a new sense of national consciousness became evident.
As we have seen, during the twelfth century, in spite of the earlier incor-
poration of the Picts of eastern Scotland into a Gaelic Kingdom, there
were clearly differentiated ethnic groups in north Britain. However, in
the face of what was perceived as the aggression of Edward I, Robert
the Bruce (sc. ‘de Brus’ of French origin) mobilised successful resistance
from Bannockburn (1314) onwards. The ideology which lay behind this
was expounded in a document of 1320, which has come to be known as
the Declaration of Arbroath (a document unmentioned in the first edi-
tion of this book). The Declaration itself, which was in fact a letter to
Pope John XXII, had a chequered history, disappearing from sight for a
long period before reappearing in a printed version in the late seventeenth
century. But the version of history to which it appealed was strongly estab-
lished and became the standard version of Scottish history expounded in
John of Fordun’s Chronicle of the Scottish Nation (c. 1384). It later influ-
enced George Buchanan in his History of Scotland (1582). The events of
the early fourteenth century thus led to the creation of a Scottish identity
resting upon the ‘fact’ that the Scots, after travelling from Scythia and
Spain, conquered the Scottish Kingdom from the Britons, Picts, Norse
and Angles! ‘Within their realm’, it was claimed, ‘have reigned one hun-
dred and thirteen Kings of royal stock, never an alien upon the throne’
(quoted in Ferguson, The Identity of the Scottish Nation (1998), p. 42).
The success of Robert Bruce and the survival of an independent state
in north Britain was to have long-standing consequences for England. In
due course Scotland became a staunch ally of France, which it saw as its
guarantor of independence. English governments for their part sought
repeatedly to neutralise the threat from the north. The creation of a
Scottish problem was thus a legacy of the post-Edwardian years. It is a
story for which William Ferguson provides an illuminating commentary
in his book The Identity of the Scottish Nation: A Historic Quest (Edin-
burgh, 1998). Professor Edward Cowan has written a lively account in
For Freedom Alone (East Lothian, 2003). Professor Roger Mason’s bril-
liant article ‘Scotching the Brit: History and National Myth in Sixteenth
Century Britain’ is also essential reading (see R. A. Mason, Scotland and
England 1286–1815 (Edinburgh, 1987), pp. 60–84).
Professor R. R. Davies’ book The British Isles 1100–1500: Comparisons,

Contrasts and Connections (Edinburgh, 1988) may also be mentioned. This
contains an illuminating article on ‘The Common Law of Scotland and
the Common Law of England’, revising to some extent the orthodox
view that the period after 1314 marked ‘a Dark Age’ of Scottish legal
development. For students of the British Isles this volume also contains
valuable essays on ‘The Scots Invasion of Ireland 1315’ and on ‘Scotland’s
Celtic Fringe in the Late Middle Ages: The MacDonald Lords of the Isles
and the Kingdom of Scotland’ (by Alexander Grant).
It is important also to note that Scotland was not the simple entity to
which the Declaration of Arbroath referred. The writ of the new monar-
chy did not run in all parts of the Kingdom. In particular the Lordship of
the Isles enjoyed a de facto independence. Indeed Professor Steven Ellis
now encourages us to think in terms of a wider Gaelic-speaking society
(‘the Gaeldhealteacht’) which existed on both sides of the narrow seas.
The rise of this ‘polity’ may be termed ‘a Gaelic resurgence’ but it was
not, in Ellis’ view, a precursor of the existence of the Irish nation, but
of a language-based community which was neither Irish nor Scottish but
‘Gaelic’ (see ‘The Collapse of the Gaelic World, 1450–1650, Irish Histor-
ical Studies (November 1999), pp. 449–69).
So far as Ireland is concerned, Katherine Simms, From Kings to
Warlords: The Changing Political Structure of Gaelic Ireland in the Later Mid-
dle Ages (Woodbridge, 1987) is also valuable. In this book she challenges
the entrenched nationalist view that there was a Gaelic resurgence. In her
opinion, ‘The transformation of the Gaelic ruling classes was not uncon-
nected with changes which were taking place elsewhere in Europe at the
end of the middle ages and the beginning of the early modern period.’
One such change was the rise of an Irish version of ‘bastard feudalism’
in which powerful chiefs relied upon their own mercenary forces. Thus
Gaelic society was not completely distinctive.
The contribution of literary scholars to the debate over English nation-
alism has also been very important. Philip Schwyzer’s study, Literature,
Nationalism and Memory in Early Modern England and Wales (Cambridge,
2005), provides a stimulating commentary upon the issues involved.
7 The making of an English empire
In the early sixteenth century, a new period began in the history of

the British Isles. It was characterised by the emergence of an ‘English
empire’, or, more precisely, an empire based on the wealth, population
and resources of southern England over the rest of the British Isles, and,
in due course, over the east coast of North America and the West Indies.
In purely English terms this was ‘the Age of the Tudors’ marked by the
victory of Henry Tudor at Bosworth Field in 1485 followed in due course
by the long reigns of Henry VIII (1509–47) and Elizabeth (1558–1603).
From our perspective of ‘British Isles’ history, 1603 was a key date in that
it marked ‘the Union of the Crowns’ of England and Scotland and con-
firmed the defeat of Hugh O’Neill at the battle of Kinsale in 1601.The
early decades of the seventeenth century also witnessed the plantation of
Ulster as well as the establishment of English colonies in North America.
By the end of the seventeenth century a new English empire had come
into existence, based upon naval power, a neglected aspect of the story
but now the topic of a master work by Professor N.A.M. Rodger, The
Command of the Sea (London, 2002).
During the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, after the decline of the
‘post-Norman empire’, independent centres of local power existed in
many areas of the British Isles. By the mid-seventeenth century these
were incorporated within a larger whole. Even Scotland, which had been
independent for so long, was conquered by Cromwell’s armies in 1650
and eventually brought into a parliamentary union with England in 1707.
During the years 1580–1640 large-scale emigration, which had been char-
acteristic of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, was resumed. Ireland
was now once again to be a prime attraction for colonists from Scotland,
Wales and England. What was new was the establishment of colonies
along the eastern seaboard of North America, under such names as New
England or Virginia. It was not until after the Anglo-Scottish union of
1707 that a fully British empire can be said to have begun to emerge.
This imperial control was exercised in different ways. For much of
the sixteenth century and the first half of the seventeenth, the north of
157
Map 15. The English empire, 1536–1690.
England was governed by a specially created council. Wales also, though

joined to England in the Act of Union of 1536, was still thought enough
of a special problem to merit government by the Council for Wales. In
Ireland, the English government was represented by a lord deputy, ruling
with the aid of a parliament which was eventually dominated by the new
The making of an English empire 159
colonists. In Scotland, the government of Elizabeth, having brought John

Knox and the reformers to power in 1560, enjoyed a good deal of indirect
influence in the second half of the sixteenth century, which was increased
when James VI of Scotland succeeded to the English Crown in 1603. If
the later middle ages in Scotland had been marked by a Scottish link with
France, the early modern period witnessed the gradual incorporation of
Scotland within a London-based empire.
Naval power aside, there were several factors which made the emer-
gence of an ‘English empire’ possible. The rise of the English cloth
industry in the south created a society which was more prosperous, more
heavily populated and better endowed with towns and markets than the
rest of the British Isles. The south of England also enjoyed the advan-
tages of political, administrative and economic centralisation around the
capital, London. Indeed it would be hard to overestimate the significance
of London as a centre of power, with its population ten times that of its
nearest rivals, Norwich and Bristol. The commercial wealth of London
made it possible for governments to draw upon financial resources which
were totally beyond the range of other societies within the British Isles.
Oxford and Cambridge, ‘reformed’ by Henry VIII, were closely tied to
the state and the national church. The Inns of Court were also very much
part of the metropolitan scene. Now that the long imperial adventure in
France was over, southern England was in a position to impose its author-
ity upon the rest of the British Isles, should its rulers wish to take that
course.
An observer in 1500 might well have forecast that the ties linking south-
ern England with the rest of the British Isles would remain largely com-
mercial in character. Already it was clear that the markets of London
and other large towns such as Norwich and Bristol were attracting raw
materials from Ireland, Scotland and Wales. Irish and Welsh wool, Scot-
tish and Welsh cattle, coal from the north of England were being drawn
to the south. What could hardly have been foreseen were the political
and religious changes which led to much closer English involvement (or,
reinvolvement) in Ireland and Scotland.
So far as Ireland was concerned, the choice facing Whitehall was
whether to be content with a policy of ‘sober ways, politic drifts, and ami-
able persuasions’ exercised indirectly through a great Anglo-Irish mag-
nate like the earl of Kildare or to intervene more directly through an
English lord deputy. It was under Thomas Cromwell, Henry VIII’s chief
minister during the 1530s, that the decision was taken to overthrow the
Kildare ascendancy and to rule, so far as possible, from London. In 1537
six of the FitzGeralds including ‘Silken Thomas’, who had risen in revolt
in 1534 against Cromwell’s policy, were hanged at Tyburn.
Figure 23. Portrait of Henry VIII
The reign of Henry VIII (1509–47) was of revolutionary significance
in the history of the British Isles. In England the Reformation cen-
tralised control of the Church as never before. Northern and western
England now formed part of the new Church-state and Wales also now
fell increasingly under direct government control. Ireland, hitherto a
lordship, was proclaimed a kingdom in 1540, a shift which carried with
it long-term consequences for Church and State, including ownership
of land. Henry also attempted, in the ‘Rough Wooing’ (1546), to estab-
lish a foothold in Scotland although this failed. English success had to
wait until the reign of Elizabeth.
After some hesitation, the administration pressed ahead with an ‘angli-

cising’ policy of ‘surrender and regrant’ in those areas of Ireland where the
Irish system of landholding based upon the rights of the kinship group
prevailed. An English-style system was to be introduced in which the
rights of the kin would be converted into freehold transmitted by primo-
geniture. Though there was some alternation between force and persua-
sion during the middle years of the century, there was as yet no hint of a
full-blooded policy of conquest and colonisation. For much of this time
the pro-English landlords of the east coast (sc. ‘The Pale’) enjoyed a good
deal of indirect influence at court and their voice was raised in favour of
the peaceful extension of anglicisation. It was not until the 1570s, largely
in response to a growing threat from Philip II’s Spain, and after the pub-
lication of the papal bull Regnans in Excelsis, deposing Elizabeth, that the
die was cast in favour of a more forceful policy, under the auspices of Sir
Henry Sidney and his followers.
The model for this Irish policy was Wales. Wales was seen by these men
as an example of a ‘backward’ society successfully ‘modernised’ under
English auspices. Sidney was lord president of Wales, an office which
he held until his death in 1586. Perrot, who served as lord president
of Munster before his appointment as lord deputy in 1584, came from
Haverfordwest in ‘anglicised’ Pembrokeshire. To Sidney and Perrot the
success of English policy in Wales lay in replacing a traditional land-
holding system based upon kinship and gavelkind with an English-style
squirearchy and freeholders. Reforms were backed by a strong executive
in the shape of a Welsh equivalent of the Star Chamber, the Council
for Wales, with the power to appoint sheriffs and justices of the peace.
Ireland was to be ruled in a similar fashion by lord presidents appointed to
replace the great magnates and by an Irish equivalent of the Star Chamber
(‘Castle Chamber’) in Dublin.
This extension of southern English criteria of ‘law and order’ to north-
ern England, Wales and Ireland after two centuries of withdrawal was not
a simple task. It was made more complicated by being interconnected with
the religious changes of sixteenth-century Europe. Thomas Cromwell,
the administrative reformer, was also a religious reformer of Lutheran
views. It was during Cromwell’s years of power that the influence of the
London government was placed behind a Lutheran-style Reformation in
England under a ‘Godly Prince’. With Cromwell’s backing, a ‘magisterial
Reformation’ based upon reform from above was introduced into Ireland
and Wales and, after the failure in 1536 of the Pilgrimage of Grace, into
northern England. The symbols of change were the royal supremacy, the
translation of the Bible into the vernacular and the dissolution of the
monasteries.
For the first half of the sixteenth century, Scotland, as a client state of
France, remained largely untouched by these changes. Thirty years after
defeating the Scots at Flodden (1513), the English monarchy still found
it difficult to exercise political influence in the Scottish Lowlands. During
the 1540s in a campaign known as the ‘Rough Wooing’ an English army
invaded Scotland, but at the end of it French power seemed to be as
strong as ever, under the Regent, Marie de Medici. The heir to the Scot-
tish throne, Mary, was sent for her education to France, where she was
betrothed to the Dauphin. What made a Scottish revolution possible was
the outbreak of the wars of religion in France, which weakened the French
monarchy and made it possible for Elizabeth to support a pro-English fac-
tion in Scotland. During the 1560s the balance turned decisively in favour
of the Reformation in the Scottish Lowlands. Henceforth, the future of
Scotland was closely associated with that of England.
The history of England during the sixteenth and seventeenth cen-
turies has been distorted by a tendency among historians to write about
England without relation to other cultures of the British Isles. There has
also been an additional and related tendency to assume that there was a
single, national, ‘English’ culture. Indeed the contemporary rhetoric of
the period has lent itself to Anglo-centric interpretation. At least three
influential currents of political and religious rhetoric were couched in
terms of a single English nation. In Shakespeare’s play Henry V the king’s
speech before Agincourt links the history of the monarchy and the nation
as Henry cries ‘God for England, Harry and St George’. There was, sec-
ondly, the religious rhetoric of John Foxe’s Book of Martyrs which spoke
of ‘England’ as an ‘Elect Nation’ singled out by God as an instrument of
Divine Providence. In the third place there was the rhetoric of the com-
mon lawyers which looked upon the ‘Ancient Constitution’ of ‘England’
as the legacy of the Anglo-Saxons. Monarchy, Reformation and common
law were all powerful symbols of a national unity which was believed to
have existed over many centuries.
As is often the case with nationalist interpretations of the past, however,
such rhetoric concealed a more complex situation. The culture of London
and the south-east, with relatively high rates of literacy, growing numbers
of grammar schools, the expansion of colleges and halls at Oxford and
Cambridge, a growth of industry in the clothing villages of the south and
east and the development of London as a financial and trading centre,
was taking on a character different from that of the north and west.
The growing importance of London and the south-east had been con-
cealed during the Wars of the Roses, which were in effect a civil war
between rival factions of the feudal nobility in the north and west (includ-
ing the border counties of Wales). The reaction which followed upon the
Wars of the Roses made possible the rise of a monarchy based upon the
power of London and the south-east. The law courts had of course long
been centred upon London. To them were to be added during the early
sixteenth century the courts of Star Chamber, and the court of Wards
and Liveries. Star Chamber, though in theory a court, drew for its mem-
bership upon the privy council. It was indeed the government acting as
a court in matters which were regarded as serious breaches of the peace.
The court of Wards and Liveries was a department of state created for the
financial exploitation of the Crown’s position in the feudal hierarchy by
controlling the disposal of the estates and marriages of tenants in chief.
There were in addition the House of Commons and the House of
Lords. The Commons was far from being a political institution reflecting
the outlook of ‘England’ as a whole. It is true that members were elected
for each of the shires of England but the boroughs which elected the great
majority of members were concentrated largely south of the Trent. The
composition of the Lords also came increasingly to reflect the political
and cultural dominance of the south-east, since after the dissolution of
the larger monasteries, many of them in the north, their abbots ceased to
be members of the House of Lords. After the Reformation the bishops
became, even more than had been the case before, spokesmen for the
south. The role of new laymen in the Lords, such as William Cecil, Lord
Burghley, Robert Dudley, earl of Leicester, Charles Brandon, earl of Suf-
folk, reflected the dominance of London and the south. There was also
the educational preponderance of the south symbolised by the colleges
of Christ Church at Oxford and Trinity College at Cambridge. Other
foundations and grants such as St John’s College at Oxford linked the
universities more closely with London.
The growth in the influence of the south would no doubt have taken
place in any event. Until the growth of an ‘Atlantic economy’ in the
seventeenth century, English trade and industry was focussed upon the
traditional link with the Netherlands. The growth of the cloth trade in
the fifteenth century was accompanied by a rise in importance of
London and the south-east. The prominent place of the East Anglian
city of Norwich as the second city of the kingdom was a further indica-
tion of the important role of England, south of the Humber.
What provided an additional impulse towards the assertion of full cul-
tural dominance by the south over the rest of England and Wales and
in due course Ireland and Scotland was the impact of the Reformation.
The decisive decades were the 1530s, the 1540s and the 1550s, during
which the ideas of Luther, Zwingli and Calvin made rapid headway in the
literate areas of the south and east. It is understandable that this should
be the case, as it was elsewhere in other areas of high literacy throughout
western Europe. Without the support of the government, however, dur-

ing the 1530s when Thomas Cromwell with his Lutheran sympathies
was Henry VIII’s chief minister and during the reign of Edward VI when
the privy council was strongly Protestant it is unlikely that the reformers
would have achieved success so swiftly.
During the 1530s the London-born Thomas Cromwell struck a deci-
sive blow in the establishment of south-eastern supremacy by dissolving
the monasteries, a revolutionary step which was completed during the
early years of Edward VI’s reign by the dissolution of the chantries, insti-
tutions dedicated to saying (sc. ‘chanting’) masses and prayers for the
dead. During these years a revolutionary minority controlled the reli-
gious and political fortunes of the south. The repressive policies of Mary
(1553–8) did not succeed in establishing the status quo. On the contrary
there was a reaction against the Fires of Smithfield in which hundreds
of Protestant martyrs perished. The accession of Elizabeth ensured that
religious change would continue at a slower pace, though too slow for
many advocates of more radical change, the so-called ‘Puritans’.
The key role which was played in the spread of Reformation ideas by
radical groups in the south was illustrated during the 1530s and 1540s
by the reaction against them in the north and west. In 1536 the gentry
of Lincolnshire, Yorkshire and much of England north of the Humber
rose against changes in Church and State in the movement known as the
‘Pilgrimage of Grace’. It is clear from the demands of the rebels that the
north by and large was opposed to the growing religious, political and
economic influence of the south. Cromwell’s plan to dissolve the smaller
monasteries provided the immediate cause of revolt, but the Pilgrims’
demands for a parliament to be held at York, for the reversal of enclosures,
for the restoration of Princess Mary, for the banning of books which
propagated the new ideas and for the overthrow of Cromwell indicate
unmistakably that the north was attempting to put an end to what was
regarded as southern encroachment. In 1549 a similar reaction occurred
in the south-west when Cornishmen revolted against the imposition of
religious changes which originated in southern England.
Robert Kett’s rebellion in Norfolk (1549) illustrates the contrast
between north and south from a different perspective. In Norfolk, rebel-
lion originated in a sense of disappointment with the progress of the Ref-
ormation. Unlike the Pilgrimage of Grace and the Cornishmen’s Revolt,
Kett’s Rebellion pressed for the carrying out of the more radical aspects
of the Reformation, notably by participation in the choice of ministers,
wider access to education for the poor and the freeing of bondmen. There
was also a strong sense of radicalism among Kett’s followers, evidenced
by the sentiment ‘There are too many gentlemen in England.’ Kett’s
Rebellion was ruthlessly suppressed by the Duke of Norfolk, the largest

landowner in the country, and Kett was executed but his memory has
survived into the present day.
During the course of the sixteenth century the south succeeded in
establishing dominance over the cultures of the north and west. Victories
over the Pilgrimage of Grace of 1536, the Cornishmen’s Revolt of 1549
and the Rising of the Northern Earls of 1569 brought under southern
control areas of England which during the later middle ages had been
largely autonomous. Some modern historians have been tempted to see
these developments as a sign of progress. The work of Mervyn James,
however, suggests that the values of northern culture deserve more sym-
pathetic treatment than they had been accorded by the victors. Henry
VIII’s description of the county of Lincolnshire as ‘one of the most brute
and beastly of the whole realm’ need not be taken literally. James indeed
suggests that the values of northern society were different from but not
necessarily inferior to those of the south. In his view, the lineage culture
of the north placed loyalty to ‘good lordship’, ‘blood’ and ‘name’ above
loyalty to a bureaucratic southern-based Crown.
As the Reformation made headway throughout England during
the second half of the sixteenth century it began to lose whatever
unity it possessed. Broadly, what Professor Collinson has termed ‘the
Religion of Protestants’ (in The Religion of Protestants: The Church in
English Society 1559–1625 (1982)) began to polarise between those who
accepted the idea of a national Church based upon conformity in ritual
and those who demanded something more than external assent. A wide
spectrum of possible attitudes existed, ranging from those who recog-
nised some value in the Church of Rome to those who regarded the Pope
as Anti-Christ. Perceptions of the English past also covered a wide span,
from Shakespeare whose plays show a certain sympathy with the middle
ages to John Foxe for whom the thousand years after Constantine was
the millennium referred to in the Book of Daniel, when Satan ruled the
world.
War with Spain in the last two decades of Elizabeth’s reign kept polar-
isation in check to some extent. The early years of the seventeenth cen-
tury, however, brought a re-emergence of the Counter-Reformation in
Germany and a revival of ritualism in England itself. During the 1620s,
when Spanish troops were advancing in the Netherlands and the ritu-
ally minded Bishop William Laud enjoyed political influence in England,
English culture began to divide between ritualists and pietists, between
‘Anglicans’ (a nineteenth-century term but a convenient one to use here)
and ‘Puritans’, between those who regarded episcopacy as a necessary
foundation of a hierarchical Church and those who merely tolerated it as
convenient and, if circumstances warranted, capable of being dispensed

with.
A decisive split did not occur until the crisis years of 1640–2 and the
civil war which followed left an imprint upon English life which lasted
until the early twentieth century. For a time, during the 1650s, the Puri-
tans enjoyed power but the Restoration of the monarchy in 1660 led to
the creation of a profound divide between churchmen and dissenters.
A penal code passed during the 1660s was not seriously modified until
1828. Dissenters remained ‘second-class citizens’ until that date and to
a certain extent after it.
The events of the mid-seventeenth century thus offer a key to much
of English culture during the two centuries which followed. They cannot
be understood, however, entirely in English terms. As will be suggested
below, the so-called ‘English Revolution’ was very much an affair of three
kingdoms, influencing the course of history in Ireland and Scotland and
being in turn influenced by them.
What happened within the English polity during this period was par-
alleled in Wales and Ireland and to some extent in Scotland. In 1521 the
attainder of the duke of Buckingham carried out by Wolsey enabled the
Crown to reassert its influence on the Welsh borders. The dissolution of
the marcher lordships made possible the incorporation of the counties
of Monmouthshire, Herefordshire and Shropshire into the kingdom of
England, and the union of Wales with England during the years 1536–42
led to the opening up of Wales to direct intervention by the Westminster
government.
Westminster also became more closely involved in the affairs of Ireland
than had been the case in the later middle ages. During the course of the
century, from the 1530s onwards, English lord deputies played an ever-
increasing role in the running of Irish affairs. From 1541 Irish chiefs were
persuaded or cajoled into accepting a policy of ‘surrender and regrant’,
namely, the surrender to the Crown of land held by Gaelic forms of tenure
and its reassignment to the chiefs and their followers under common law.
Full English involvement in Ireland did not come, however, until the
reign of Elizabeth. Rebellions in Munster in the 1570s and 1580s and in
Ulster during the 1590s were actively encouraged by Spain as a ‘tit for
tat’ for English intervention in the Netherlands on behalf of Protestant
rebels. It proved to be impossible for the English to stay out of Ireland
and once there to reduce their military commitment.
In addition, active colonisation began for the first time since the early
fourteenth century. The situation underwent a further change when
James VI of Scotland succeeded to the English Crown. Ulster, which had
been a frontier province against unwelcome Scottish intrusions, now lost
its military raison d’être (as did the border counties of northern England).
The way was open for Scottish and English colonisation of the territories
of O Neill and O Donnell after the Flight of the Earls in 1607, the city
of London acting as a source of financing for the plantation of London-
derry. The affairs of the three kingdoms thus became closely intermeshed
in what by early seventeenth-century standards was a major colonising
project. O Neill and O Donnell did not vanish from history, however. In
1641 Sir Phelim O Neill led an insurrection against the Ulster plantation.
It was this ‘popish plot’ plus an apparent massacre of Protestant colonists
which had such a dramatic impact upon the English (and Scottish) polit-
ical scene in 1641. The bitter debate in the House of Commons which
led to the passing of the Grand Remonstrance in December 1641 took
place in the aftermath of the Ulster rebellion and the ‘Irish massacre’.
On several occasions during the 1640s the Irish issue acted as an obstacle
to successful negotiation between Crown and parliament. It seemed that
peace in Ireland was only possible at the cost of concessions on matters
of religion and state which were unacceptable to the parliamentary lead-
ers. Sir John Temple’s highly partisan account of the ‘massacre’ kept the
memory of 1641 fresh in English (and Scottish) minds.
The close involvement of Irish affairs in English politics had already
been a feature of the 1630s when Thomas Wentworth became lord deputy
of Ireland. Wentworth saw himself as a reformer in Ireland, completing
the anglicisation which had been advocated by Edmund Spenser and Sir
John Davies. In the eyes of Puritan leaders such as Pym and Hampden,
with whom Wentworth, though not himself a Puritan, had been asso-
ciated in the 1620s, the autocratic policies of the lord deputy seemed
to foreshadow the setting up of an absolute monarchy in England itself.
Wentworth’s record in Ireland provided much of the basis for his impeach-
ment in 1640 and subsequent attainder and execution. The downfall of
Wentworth indeed was a prime example of the way in which English and
Irish affairs had become closely intertwined.
The same point may also be made about the relationship between Eng-
land and Scotland. From 1560 onwards England replaced France as the
dominant partner in Scottish politics. In 1568 Mary Queen of Scots fled
to England and for the next two decades the Scottish queen became a
centre of political intrigue which was only resolved by her execution in
1587. The close involvement of English political leaders in Scottish affairs
continued during the 1590s as it became clear that James VI was the most
likely candidate to succeed Elizabeth.
James VI tended to keep Scottish and English affairs separate but dur-
ing Charles I’s reign, the English Crown became more closely involved in
the ‘reform’ of the Scottish Kirk on English lines. Archbishop Laud,
Charles I’s chief minister, was blamed for attempting to introduce

‘Popery’ into Scotland, and a religious crisis developed which led to the
signing of a National League and Covenant by disaffected elements in
Scotland. This was followed by a resort to arms which led to the defeat of
the royal army and the Scottish occupation of the English border counties
in 1640. Opposition leaders in England welcomed the Scottish crisis as
a means of breaking the political deadlock.
In 1642 civil war broke out in England between the forces of Crown
and parliament. In recent decades historians have tended to discuss it
as an ‘English Revolution’. To treat it merely in English terms, how-
ever, is to lose sight of the ways in which the affairs of Scotland and Ire-
land raised the political temperature in English politics. The Irish ‘mas-
sacre’ of 1641 in particular played into the hands of the Puritan leaders.
The ‘No Popery’ card was to be played on many occasions through-
out the seventeenth century. Since English Catholics were in fact few
on the ground, the potency of the cry of ‘No Popery’ is best explained
in the context of the three kingdoms, where Ireland and to some extent
Scotland and Wales were looked upon as centres of Papist disaffection.
In the framework of the three kingdoms, the civil wars may be seen as
taking on the character of savage ‘wars of religion’ such as had occurred in
France during the late sixteenth century and were occurring in Germany
during the Thirty Years War (1618–48). The Irish ‘massacre’ in partic-
ular left an enduring mark. In 1644, for example, Montrose, the royalist
general in Scotland, was denounced for having ‘joined with a band of
Irish rebels and mass-priests, who had, this two years bygone, bathed
themselves in the blood of God’s people in Ireland’. In 1645, 300 Irish
women were butchered after the Covenanting victory at Philiphaugh. In
1646, O Neill’s troops at Benburb gave the Scots no quarter. ‘The rebels’,
it was said, ‘had never such a heavy day of the Protestants.’
In England itself Charles I came increasingly to place his hopes of a
royalist revival upon the arrival of aid from Ireland. Rumours that Charles
was prepared to ally himself with Irish Catholic Confederates left him
open to charges of ‘Popery’. In 1643 it was said after the capture of
the royalist earl of Antrim that ‘the discovery of this plot did more to
work upon most men than anything that had happened during these
miserable calamities and civil wars of England, because it now seemed
that there was a fixed resolution in the Popish party utterly to extirpate
the true Protestant religion in England, Scotland and Ireland’. When
news arrived that the earl of Ormond had agreed to a ‘cessation’ of arms
with the Confederates in 1643 it was declared that this ‘will tend not
only to the utter ruin of themselves, but of all the Protestants in England
and Ireland also’. The arrival in Ireland of a Papal nuncio, Archbishop
Rinuccini, in 1645 added further fuel to the propaganda war of the three
kingdoms.
In 1648, it was the expectation of aid from Irish Catholics and Scottish
Presbyterians which led Charles to gamble upon a successful outcome to
a ‘second civil war’. The rise of Cromwell and the extremist faction in
the New Model Army, the exclusion of ‘Moderates’ from parliament in
Pride’s Purge and the subsequent execution of the king thus took place
against a background of the three kingdoms, not merely of England. It
was the expectation of what might happen as a result of Irish and Scottish
invasion as much as the fear of English royalism which led to so violent a
reaction on the Parliamentarian side. The crisis of 1648 in fact brings out
the extent to which Charles saw himself as a king of the three kingdoms,
not just of England, facing the problems created by a purely English
parliament.
The interaction of the three kingdoms was to continue during the rest
of the century. In 1660 it was the attitude of the Parliamentarian General
Monck in Scotland and the Puritan leader Broghill in Ireland which made
possible a peaceful Restoration. During the post-1660 years the Crown
was faced in Ireland with the problem of dealing with a Cromwellian
ascendancy, which was determined to hold on to the estates of former
royalists. In 1685–8 James II’s sympathy for the Irish royalists and his
appointment of Richard Talbot, earl of Tyrconnell, helped to weaken his
position in England and played an important role in his downfall. In
turn the knowledge that he could count on Irish support led James to
land in Ireland in 1689 and to use it as a base from which to regain his
crown. It was no accident that the decisive battle of the English ‘Glorious
Revolution’ should be fought on the river Boyne in 1690.
Scottish affairs also formed one of the strands of post-Restoration pol-
itics in England. Royal attempts to defuse religious bitterness in Scotland
by issuing a Declaration of Indulgence establishing a certain measure of
toleration led to reaction among the king’s ultra-Tory episcopalian sup-
porters.
It is, of course, possible to deal with the history of England during this
period exclusively in English terms. To do so, however, makes it difficult
to explain why the civil wars actually took place. Constitutional conflict
over such matters as Ship Money appeared to have been resolved by the
middle of 1641. What introduced a higher degree of emotion was the
Irish rebellion of 1641 with its accompanying ‘massacre’ of Protestant
settlers. This in its turn can only be explained against a background not
merely of Anglo-Irish affairs but also those of Scotland.
The real ‘English Revolution’ of this period was in fact the English
Reformation, the success of which in England and Wales brought about
further involvement in Ireland and Scotland. By the end of the seven-

teenth century an English empire had come into existence throughout
the British Isles. As a consequence the histories of Ireland and Scotland
cannot be understood in their own terms. Equally, however, the English
were to find in dealing with rebellion in Scotland in 1715 and in 1745 and
in Ireland in 1798 that they could not extricate themselves at will from
the historical situation which had been created by the decisions taken
during the seventeenth century.
The history of Wales during this period is not of such central impor-
tance as those of the three kingdoms proper. Nevertheless, the course
of events in Wales helps to illustrate by comparison or contrast what
happened in Ireland and Scotland. During the early middle ages, Welsh
history had been closely interwoven with that of the great Norman barons.
When the houses of Mortimer, Lancaster and Clare intervened in high
politics they drew much of their power from the resources of their marcher
lordships. During this period the border between England and Wales was
effectively moved further west from the Severn to the Wye. The politi-
cal and demographic crisis of the fourteenth century placed the colonial
regime in Wales on the defensive (as was the case also in Ireland). The
rebellion of Owain Glyndwr in the first decade of the fifteenth century
struck a blow from which the ‘Englishries’ and colonial boroughs did not
recover. It is true that after Glyndwr’s defeat in 1406 a series of penal laws
were placed on the statute book which recall the Statutes of Kilkenny in
their severity, but in Wales, as in Ireland, restrictive legislation of this kind
was as much a sign of weakness as strength. In theory, the Welsh were for-
bidden to dwell in boroughs, to take part in trade and to acquire land. In
practice it was the ‘Englishry’ in Wales which declined in strength during
the fifteenth century.
During the unsettled conditions of the Wars of the Roses, Welsh
marcher lords were provided with the opportunity to intervene in English
politics. The battle of Banbury in 1469 was regarded as a peculiarly
Welsh disaster. The rebellion of Buckingham against Richard III in 1483
involved south Wales. But the most decisive contribution which Wales
made was the support which it produced for Henry Tudor in 1485. Henry
landed at Milford Haven and rallied Welsh support at Welshpool. Welsh
troops enabled him to defeat Richard III at Bosworth. Welsh versions of
British history enabled him to prop up a weak claim to the throne, a move
which was followed up later by the naming of his eldest son Arthur. Henry
repaid his debt to his Welsh allies by appointing them to key offices in
north and south Wales and by naming Welshmen to the sees of St Davids
and St Asaph. In due course the penal legislation against Welshmen hold-
ing office and acquiring land was also repealed, not without protest from
the ‘Englishry’.
The use of the terms ‘Wales’ and ‘Welsh’ is almost unavoidable in

dealing with the history of this period. In fact, however, ‘Wales’ was still
very much a ‘geographical expression’, lacking in cultural and social unity.
The various contingents which joined Henry in 1485 were drawn from
contrasting areas in Wales itself. The troops of William ap Griffith of
Penrhyn and Richard ap Howell of Mostyn were northern clansmen who
brought their own droves of cattle with them. The Herberts, in contrast,
led feudal levies from the south-east. Rhys ap Thomas drew upon the
Welsh-speaking heartland of Carmarthen. Linguistic differences divided
Welsh-speakers in north and south. Wales was still a country divided by
its history into several sub-cultures each with its own view of past and
present.
The reign of Henry VII in many ways marked the end of a period rather
than a new beginning. Signs of more radical change came with the rise to
power of Wolsey and with the execution in 1521, at Wolsey’s instigation,
of the duke of Buckingham, the most powerful of the Welsh marcher lords.
In 1531 Rhys ap Griffith, the grandson of Rhys ap Thomas, was executed
on charges of treason, after incidents which anticipated events in Ireland
involving ‘Silken Thomas’ and the FitzGeralds. In 1529 the young Rhys
had challenged the authority of the royal chamberlain in south Wales,
Lord Ferrers, who had been appointed to succeed Rhys ap Thomas after
his death in 1525. The Crown was clearly challenging the ‘Old Order’
in Wales, as it was soon to do in Ireland. In 1536 the decisive shift came
with the passing of an Act of Union, completed by further legislation in
1543. The Acts of Union completed the attack on feudalism which had
been foreshadowed in 1521, with Buckingham’s execution.
As with so much else in Henry VIII’s reign, the Acts of Union formed
part of the ‘modernising’ policies of Thomas Cromwell, though they were
not completed until after his execution. The Norman empire in Wales
which had been in existence since the late eleventh century was in effect
dismantled. The marcher lordships were henceforth incorporated within
an administrative system of already existing shires, such as Carmarthen,
or amalgamated into new counties, Monmouth, Brecon, Radnor, Mont-
gomery and Denbigh, freshly created at the Union. The legal autonomy
of the lordships was done away with. The English common law was to
be enforced throughout Wales, with English as the sole language of the
courts though the need for translators long remained. The sheriff and
the justice of the peace took over from marcher officials. Primogeniture
in theory replaced partible inheritance, though, in actual fact, traditional
practice based upon the desirability of sharing land among all the sons
remained powerful at the local level for a long time to come. The border
between Wales and England was clearly drawn for the first time. The
border counties of Shropshire and Hereford were placed firmly within
England, though Hereford in particular contained Welsh-speaking com-

munities. Wales itself was now the first province within an English empire.
The Acts of Union were part of an administrative revolution but what
was intended in Whitehall did not necessarily happen on the ground.
A century later, local aristocrats such as the Herberts and Somersets in
south Wales and the Greys and the Wynns in north Wales were still pow-
erful. During the civil wars of the mid-seventeenth century the Somerset
earls of Worcester and the Herbert earls of Pembroke were key figures on
the royalist and parliamentary sides respectively, and Raglan Castle and
Pembroke Castle were both put to military use during the wars. But the
earls of Worcester and Pembroke for all their local importance were not
marcher lords in the old sense of the word. Their titles dated from the
sixteenth century and they, like the earl of Leicester in north Wales, were
essentially representatives of the English empire in Wales.
Much changed after the Acts of Union; much also remained
unchanged. The distinctive cultures of north, south and west Wales
embedded in kinship, land-holding and general outlook did not disap-
pear overnight. Powys, already partitioned under the Normans, was redi-
vided between the new county of Montgomery and the existing county
of Merioneth though bardic tradition kept the memory of the old king-
dom alive. The mountainous area of Gwynedd (today’s Snowdonia) was
resistant to change. Elsewhere, social divisions between ‘Englishries’ and
‘Welshries’ continued to influence behaviour. The county of Flint was
divided between its Welsh and its English areas. The town of Hay-on-Wye
was split between English and Welsh. The port of Haverfordwest retained
its distinctively Flemish character. Parts of Pembroke were known as ‘Lit-
tle England’. Ethnic differences existed in Wales as they did in Ireland
and Scotland. The inhabitants of ‘English’ Shropshire and Herefordshire
were conscious of the presence of Welshmen in their midst. During this
period, as earlier, the history of Wales cannot be written from a single
‘national’ point of view.
In Wales, as in England and Ireland, the 1530s were also marked by
a religious revolution, the main material result of which was the disso-
lution of the Welsh monastic houses. The lands of Tintern passed into
the control of the Somerset family. The Mansels acquired the lands of
Margam. Church wealth in the form of tithes also passed into the hands of
wealthy laymen. Far more than the so-called revolution of the 1640s, the
Henrician Reformation in Wales was a social revolution which marked
a breach between the medieval and the early modern period. The cre-
ation of an English interest in Wales, corresponding to similar groups in
Ireland and Scotland, dates from these years. The power of these new
families, the Wynns, the Vaughans, the Prices, was not to be challenged
until the nineteenth century, after industrialisation had wrought its own
revolution.
In Wales, as in Ireland, the Reformation initially made little impact at
the popular level. A Welsh translation of the Bible was produced in 1588
for use in churches and a smaller edition, the little Bible (y Beibl Bach),
in 1630, but in so dispersed and rural a society, with many local dialects,
no single translation sufficed. In some ways, the Counter-Reformation,
thanks to the support of such magnates as the Somerset earls of Worcester,
had more success. From their base at Cwm, on the English border near
Monmouth, a Jesuit mission operated in the early seventeenth century
in conditions comparable to those in the north of England and in Ire-
land. As with the Reformation, so too with the Counter-Reformation,
the challenge proved to be too great for the resources available. As a
consequence, rural Wales remained, like rural Ireland and the Scottish
Highlands, very much a traditional society in which local institutions
such as the ‘wise man’ of the village, the fair, the wake and kinship ties
retained their hold in the face of attempts at ‘anglicisation’ by an English-
orientated gentry and clergy. It was not until the eighteenth century that
these popular cultures finally collapsed in the face of Methodist denunci-
ations. It was then that dancing, harp-playing and fiddling began to give
way to a new popular culture based upon hymn-singing and the Sunday
school.
During the early modern period, it is probable that the impact of the
English food market was as powerful an instrument of social change as
either the Reformation or the administrative revolution. In the Welsh
Lowlands, farmers responded to the English demand for meat, butter,
cheese and wheat. The upland farmers exported thousands of head of
cattle to be fattened up in Shropshire and Herefordshire before being
sold in the markets of London. The vale of Glamorgan was described
as ‘the Garden of Wales and for good cattle of all kinds the nursery of
the West’. It was estimated that twenty-four Wynn farms in north Wales
would sustain nearly 3,000 head of cattle annually. Wales had 245 fairs
a year in 1602, over half of them in the five southern counties. As a
consequence of growth in demand from England, pressures grew for
enclosure on the English model. A class of gentry began to emerge from
the general run of yeoman farmers and as the pressure upon pasture
increased, traditional tenants complained of being deprived of common
grazing, of free access to fuel and of the free use of summer houses for
‘transhumance’. By the early eighteenth century, a class of anglicised
gentry had come into existence. In some areas, such squires, together with
an English-speaking clergy, were largely cut off from their Welsh-speaking
tenants and labourers. English became the language of the law, of politics
Figure 24. Mary, Queen of Scots (1541–87)

The monument to Mary, Queen of Scots in Westminster Abbey may
be seen as an ironic symbol of the union of the English and Scottish
Crowns in 1603. Mary had been executed in 1587 on the command of
her cousin Elizabeth, but when her son James became King of England
in 1603 he ordered her remains to be transferred to Westminster where
they now rest next to those of Elizabeth. The history of England and
Scotland after the Union of the Crowns was marked by civil war, regicide
and revolution, a future unforeseen when Mary’s remains were laid to
rest at Westminster.
and polite society. The gentry attended the universities of Oxford and
Cambridge, though the growing dominance of English culture did not
prevent some of the gentry from acting as patrons for Welsh scholarly
works.
In Scotland, radical religious and social change came a generation later
than in Wales. In July 1560 the French garrison in Scotland returned
home and the political connection which had linked France and the
Scottish Lowlands came to an end. Henceforth English influence was
to be dominant north of the border. Political change coincided with reli-
gious reformation. The Scottish Reformation, indeed, was successful in
its first stages thanks largely to English backing. John Knox, though Scot-
tish born, had taken an active part in the Edwardian Reformation and it
was English arms and money which helped Knox and his allies among
the nobles to overthrow the pro-French party in Scotland. The Bible
in English was to prove to be a formidable instrument of anglicisation.
Puritanism, ultimately defeated in England, had its greatest successes in
Scotland.
Scotland in the mid-sixteenth century was a country of two cultures
(three if Orkney, Shetland and the Norse counties of northern Scotland
are taken into consideration). The cultural and political balance of power
between Highlands and Lowlands still remained. The Gaelic-speaking
west was closer to Ulster than to the English-speaking Lowlands. The
MacDonalds of the Hebrides and the MacDonnells of Antrim saw them-
selves as sharing a common history which went back to the Three Colls
and Niall of the Nine Hostages. ‘Feudal’ culture survived in the High-
lands well into the eighteenth century long after it had been destroyed
in Ireland. With the coming of the Reformation, the cultural differences
between the two areas increased. In the Lowlands the long-term effect of
the Reformation was to replace ‘feudal’ loyalty with commitment to a par-
ticular religious persuasion. In the Highlands, even where the Reforma-
tion did make headway, it was associated with loyalty to a particular chief,
such as the earl of Argyll. The Lowlands, thanks to Puritan emphasis upon
Bible-reading, became a highly literate society. The Highlands remained
an oral culture throughout the early modern period. In the Lowlands,
strict observance of the Sabbath was regarded as a sign of godliness. In
1709, for example, the Kirk Session of Edinburgh, ‘taking into considera-
tion that the Lord’s day is profaned by people standing in the streets . . . as
also by idly gazing out at windows, and children and apprentices playing
in the streets, warn parents and threaten to refer to the civil magistrates for
punishment, also order each session to take its turn in walking the streets
on the sabbath’. In the Highlands, Sabbatarianism was to come much
later.
Within both Highlands and Lowlands, the Reformation intensified
internal differences. In the Highlands, conflict between the MacDonalds
and the Campbells, which had its origins in the later medieval period,
when the Campbells acted as the instrument of an expanding Crown,
at the expense of the MacDonald Lords of the Isles, was exacerbated
by Campbell acceptance of the Reformation. In the early seventeenth
century, the earl of Argyll attempted to plant Kintyre on lines similar to
those of the Ulster plantation. In the civil wars of the mid-seventeenth

century, the Campbells took up the Covenanting cause; the MacDonalds
in contrast, allied with their kinsman, the MacDonnell earl of Antrim,
supported the Crown. In 1692, a Campbell regiment was involved in the
massacre of a MacDonald clan at Glencoe. In 1746, in the aftermath of
the Jacobite rebellion of ’45, Captain Robert Duff RN reported to Argyll
how he had dealt with Argyll’s tenants, the Camerons, who had supported
Bonnie Prince Charlie against the wishes of their hated landlord.
On the tenth instant [March 1746] at four in the morning I landed Lieut. Lindsay
with the detachment of your regiment [the Scots Fusiliers] Captain Campbell
with 20 men . . . a lieutenant and fiftyfive men from my ship with orders to burn
the houses and destroy the effects of all such as were out in the rebellion.
When the land was leased out again, many of the beneficiaries were
Campbells. So far as the Highlands were concerned, the Reformation
led eventually to the victory of the English-backed clans, Campbells,
MacKenzies and MacLeods, over the rest.
In the Lowlands also, existing regional differences seem to have become
more marked as a consequence of the Reformation. In the north-
east, ancestral territory of the Gordon earls of Huntley, episcopalian-
ism flourished in a general atmosphere of social hierarchy. South of
the Tay, where the lairds and towns made common cause, a Presby-
terian form of Church government, giving wider scope to a ‘middle
class’, made headway. In the south-west, for reasons which may go back
to long-held resentment against a Normanised landowning class, the
small farmers became ‘Covenanters’, stressing godliness above inher-
ited status. During the civil wars of the mid-seventeenth century, the
Covenanters supported a theocratic regime which abolished patronage
and forced a sinful nobility publicly to admit its moral failures. During
the Restoration period the south-west was disturbed by peasant revolts,
which in their religious intensity resembled the ‘Camisards’ of southern
France. Throughout the seventeenth century, episcopalians, Presbyte-
rians and Covenanters contended for supremacy. Victory went finally
to the Presbyterians, leaving their rivals with the status of ‘second-class
citizens’.
These internal conflicts, in both Highlands and Lowlands, had their
own Scottish flavour. Throughout the early modern period, however, it
became increasingly difficult to keep the history of ‘Scotland’ distinct
from that of a wider ‘English empire’. In the Lowlands, during the late
sixteenth century, contending political groups of nobles depended for
success in seizing and retaining power upon English support. The flight
of Mary, Queen of Scots, to England in 1568 involved English politicians
more closely in Scottish affairs than ever before. For a Scottish noble
such as James Douglas, earl of Morton, ‘conformity with England’ was
the key consideration. For James VI, son of Mary, Queen of Scots, the
Union of the Crowns was the main long-term aim of political strategy,
and when it was achieved in 1603 he came to look upon the episcopal
state Church of England as the example to be followed in Scotland. One
of the rewards of the Union of the Crowns was the opening up of Ulster to
Lowland settlement. From the mid-sixteenth century onwards, Scotland,
which had enjoyed independence in the later middle ages, was drawn
increasingly into a Britannic framework.
If there were rewards in this situation, there was also a price to be
paid. In Charles I’s reign, the Crown became a more active instrument of
anglicisation than had been the case under James VI. The Lowland nobil-
ity were disturbed by secret royal plans to recover Church property and
alienated tithes. Presbyterians south of the Tay resented the influence of
the episcopalians of the north-east, who had found a powerful ally in the
English Lord Treasurer, Archbishop William Laud. The new departure
was symbolised in the creation of a bishopric of Edinburgh and the trans-
formation of the kirk of St Giles into a cathedral. In Ireland, Charles
I’s minister Strafford succeeded in uniting Old and New English alike
against him. In Scotland, Charles and Laud brought Kirk and nobility
into common opposition, based upon a Presbyterian National League
and Covenant (1638).
The National League and Covenant did not lead to greater national
independence in the long term, however. One of the consequences of suc-
cessful opposition to the Crown was to draw the Presbyterian leaders into
closer ties with the English Puritans. The reformation of the Church of
England on Presbyterian lines seemed possible and in 1643 Scottish Pres-
byterians and English Puritans joined in a Solemn League and Covenant.
At the same time, in Ireland, a Scots army under Monro fought to defend
the Ulster plantation against the Irish confederate forces of Owen Roe O
Neill. In Scotland, Charles looked for aid to the Highlanders under the
earl of Montrose, who in 1644 was joined by a force of MacDonalds and
MacLeans under Alasdair Coll Ciotach (the ‘left-handed’, anglicised as
‘Colkitto’). These MacDonalds had the backing of the earl of Antrim.
In 1648, Charles in the aftermath of defeat hammered out an unlikely
alliance between his Irish, English and Scottish supporters despite their
religious differences. As we have seen, the so-called English civil war was
essentially a war of the three kingdoms.
During the 1650s, after Cromwell’s victories at Preston, Dunbar
and Worcester, Scotland found itself incorporated within a wider
Figure 25. The Bible in Welsh
Bishop William Morgan’s translation of the Bible into Welsh in 1588
was to leave a lasting impression upon Welsh identity. The Reformation
in Wales became associated with the Welsh language and eventually with
Welshness in general.
commonwealth, in which England was very much the dominant partner.

The situation changed to some extent after the Restoration of Charles
II in 1660, when Scotland regained some measure of autonomy, though
English influence still remained strong. London backed an episcopalian
form of Church government, under which James Sharp, a north-easterner
and graduate of Aberdeen, became archbishop of St Andrews. Royal
attempts to achieve a general compliance met with little success, how-
ever. In the south-west, Sharp was regarded as a traitor to the godly
cause which he had once, as a former Covenanter, professed. His murder
in May 1679 was a signal for a general rising in the area. The Covenan-
ters’ success proved shortlived and, with the accession of James II, a
long period of episcopalian dominance seemed likely. In Scotland, as in
England, however, James alienated his supporters by adopting pro-
Catholic policies. The earl of Argyll, whose father had been executed,
returned to lead the resistance and, after an initial military setback at
Killiecrankie (1689), Presbyterianism was once again restored, this time,
as it turned out, permanently. The episcopalians of the north-east, now
without influence in London, turned to Jacobitism and the hope of a
return of the Stuarts. In the south-west, the Covenanters, also a minor-
ity, soon broke away from the Established Church to found their own
Associate Synod. Thus Scotland remained a deeply divided country, as
divided in its own way as Ireland.
The history of Ireland during this period is often regarded as having
followed its own distinctive path. In fact, however, the course of events in
Ireland to a considerable extent resembled that of other areas which were
incorporated within the English empire during the sixteenth century. In
Ireland, as elsewhere in the British Isles, this period saw the collapse of
feudalism. The resources of the state were mobilised to overthrow the pri-
vate armies and jurisdictions of the great magnates, both Anglo-Norman
and Gaelic. Gallowglasses, introduced into Ireland in the fourteenth cen-
tury, were still a familiar feature of the Irish scene in the sixteenth century.
The MacSheehys, the MacSweeneys and the MacDonnells still provided
the basis of the military power of the earls of Desmond, and the Gaelic
chiefs, O Donnell and O Neill, as they had done for so long. As indi-
cated above, it was on the basis of such armies that chiefs like O Donnell
were able to impose their own candidates upon chieftainries within their
‘sphere of influence’.
It is difficult to recognise any sense of common nationality in this polit-
ical world. In 1567 the MacDonnells of Antrim beheaded Shane O Neill
who had taken refuge with them and sent his head, ‘pickled, in a pipkin’,
to the royal administration in Dublin. Rivalries between the two great
magnates of Munster, the earls of Desmond and Ormond, compelled
lesser lords to take sides in the interest of self-preservation. Sidney com-

plained that many had ‘never heard of other princes than Ormond or
Desmond’. ‘Feudalism’ had in fact gone further in Ireland than it ever
had in England or Scotland.
The revolts which took place in Ireland during the sixteenth century
were the Irish equivalent of the Pilgrimage of Grace and the Rising of the
Northern Earls, in the sense that they were attempts to retain an estab-
lished feudal world against the unwelcome pressures of a ‘modernising’
state. What lent the struggle a particular intensity was that to these polit-
ical and social tensions was added the emotional fervour of the wars of
religion. Cultural differences also played their part in leading to charges
of atrocity and counter-atrocity. Nevertheless, the success of the English
government in reducing the power of the great magnates would scarcely
have been possible had they not enjoyed the support of powerful inter-
ests within Ireland, notably the towns, which, in Ireland as elsewhere in
western Europe, welcomed Crown support. Thus, in the rebellions of the
1570s, towns such as Cork and Galway and Kilkenny withstood attacks
by local magnates.
The English administration could also count on the support of the land-
lords of a wide area round Dublin, the ‘lords of the Pale’, who remained
aloof from any involvement in the Desmond rebellion. The O Briens of
Thomond and the Burkes of Clanricarde and even the O Neills took
a similar attitude. The Ormond interest also could generally be relied
upon to support the Crown though some of the Butlers were involved in
an attempt to overthrow a local effort at plantation. Later in the century,
in Ulster, traditional enemies of O Neill and O Donnell refused to join
in the Nine Years War. The ruling septs of Monaghan escaped plantation
as a consequence. Clearly there were many among the Irish elite, Gaelic
as well as Anglo-Norman, who welcomed the defeat of ‘overmighty sub-
jects’ and were willing to cast in their lot, however reluctantly, with the
Crown.
The decline of feudalism in Ireland had begun with the overthrow of
the house of Kildare in the 1530s. This still left untouched the great
‘pretendid palatinates’ of Ormond and Desmond as well as the Gaelic
and gaelicised chieftainries of the west and the north. Sidney established
lord presidencies in Munster and Connacht, each with a military force
at their disposal with the aim of replacing the authority of the magnates
with that of the Crown. In 1576 the various ‘countries’ of Connacht were
transformed into the English-style counties of Sligo, Mayo, Roscommon
and Galway. In 1583 the power of Desmond was overthrown. In 1585
the Crown arrived at a ‘composition’ with the lords of Connacht whereby
they agreed to pay a rent to the Crown, provide military service and
introduce the common law. For a time it seemed that Ulster also would
follow the example of Connacht in submitting to peaceful assimilation.
In 1595, however, Hugh O Neill who had enjoyed Crown support as earl
of Tyrone, took the great gamble of resisting the advance of the English
administration into his territories and rose in revolt, with Spanish support.
The gamble failed. O Neill’s defeat at the battle of Kinsale in 1601 marked
the downfall of feudalism in Ireland.
A social and political revolution had taken place comparable to that
which had occurred in England and Wales during much the same period.
The English common law was soon enforced throughout Ireland, though
in fact the courts took account of ‘brehon law’ where the circumstances
seemed to require it. The traditional order of coarbs, brehons and bards
which had survived in Ulster gradually collapsed. It was now possible for
an Irish parliament to meet which could draw upon representatives of
shires and boroughs from all over Ireland.
What then went wrong? Why should there have been a revolt in 1642
among the very pro-English elements which had acquiesced in the over-
throw of Desmond and O Neill? The plantation of the territories of O
Neill and O Donnell was not in itself a cause of unrest. The Catholic
earl of Westmeath benefited from the plantation of Cavan. The greater
landowners such as the Dillons accepted English titles. Such septs as the
O Hurleys, O Briens and O Dwyers made the transition from Gaelic
chieftain to landed aristocrat. Bishop O Hurley of Emly belonged to a
family which had a record of loyalty to the Crown during the Nine Years
War, and possessed an estate of 8,500 acres. Such landowners had a great
deal to lose. The reasons for unrest may be sought in the list of grievances
which was presented to the Crown in 1628 and is known as the ‘Graces’.
On the basis of this, it seems clear that the expectations aroused by the
victory of the ‘loyal’ groupings had not been fulfilled. Economic power
in both trade and land was overwhelmingly in the hands of the Catholic
‘Old English’ (using that term in the sense of ‘loyalists’, not in any ‘racial’
sense). Political and administrative influence, however, was passing into
the hands of those new Protestant settlers who had arrived in Elizabeth’s
reign. Administrative devices such as the court of Wards and Liveries had
introduced religious criteria as a condition for inheriting land. The plan-
tation of Connacht, attempted during the 1630s by the lord deputy, was
further evidence that the English administration intended to continue its
policy of anglicisation of the ‘Old English’ interest. Religious conformity
was to be the measure of loyalty, as the full implications of the English
Reformation began to work themselves out in Ireland.
In Ulster there was also another source of discontent which arose from
the plantation of the lands of O Neill and O Donnell after the Flight
of the Earls in 1607. In Ulster, as in Desmond, the aim of Crown pol-

icy in the sixteenth century had been to create a class of landlords and
tenants holding their estates under the common law. The decision to
replace this policy with one of colonisation was to have momentous
consequences, especially as the best land was reserved for Scots and
English colonists. The rising which took place in 1641, at a moment
when the English monarchy faced a severe political crisis in both Scotland
and England, was almost inevitable. It was accompanied by widespread
killing, though the figure of 200,000 victims was totally inaccurate. The
myth of ‘1641’, however, was accepted in England and formed the ratio-
nale for the punitive actions which followed under Cromwell in the next
decade.
In Ulster, during the 1640s, Old Irish and Presbyterian Scots were
engaged in almost continual warfare in which neither gained the upper
hand. Elsewhere, in the provinces of Leinster and Connacht and parts
of Munster, the ‘Old English’ party erected a polity which provided a
glimpse of one possible future for Ireland. An English-style parliament
was set up at Kilkenny, though the term ‘Confederation’ was used for
political reasons. In their statement of aims the Confederates looked
back to the ‘Great Charter’ and declared that the common law ‘shall
be observed throughout the whole kingdom’. Penal statutes against the
‘Roman Catholic religion’ were alone exempted from this statement of
principle.
There was no more striking monument to the success of the policies of
‘surrender and regrant’ than the Confederation of Kilkenny. The Con-
federates had risen in the name of the king and were willing to provide
him with military aid provided that their political and religious aims were
met. Among these, an independent parliament free of Poynings’ Law and
the public practice of their religion loomed largest. Negotiations with the
king, however, were made difficult by the problems of Ulster, by the fail-
ure of the king to promise more than a bare tolerance for the Catholics
and, in 1645, by the refusal of the papal nuncio Archbishop Rinuccini to
compromise with a heretic monarchy. When agreement was arrived at in
1646 (the first Ormond Peace) it was condemned by Rinuccini and the
‘Old Irish’ of Ulster. A second agreement (the second Ormond Peace)
signed in 1649 proved to be merely the prelude to the Cromwellian con-
quest of Ireland.
During the confederate period, the divisions between north and south,
a feature of Irish history in the later middle ages, once more re-emerged,
accentuated now by the plantation of Ulster. Even within the Catholic
episcopate there was a marked difference of attitude between the Old
English bishops, with social backgrounds in the urban patriciate or
the landed aristocracy, and those from Ulster, belonging to the Gaelic
nobility, whose families had been dispossessed. Ulster had its own set
of problems deriving from the large-scale settlement of Scots in Down,
Antrim and Derry. These long-standing differences of mentalité survived
amid the anguish of defeat, and exile, when one side sought to blame the
other for the catastrophe. The historical controversy between the ‘Old
Irish’ Richard O Ferrall and the ‘Old English’ John Lynch reflected this
clash of attitude. Exiled members of the bardic order also took up the
same themes.
The Cromwellian conquest brought about the downfall of the ‘Old
English’ interest in Ireland. The real beneficiaries of the conquest, how-
ever, were not the Cromwellian soldiers but the ‘New English’ planters of
the pre-1641 period who now styled themselves ‘Old Protestants’ to dis-
tinguish themselves from the Baptists and Quakers (‘New Protestants’) of
the Cromwellian army. It has been estimated that of the 36,000 soldiers
who stood to benefit from the original plantation, only 8,000 remained
twenty years later. The Protestant ascendancy was very much an ‘Old
Protestant’ ascendancy. The Cromwellian settlement also left intact the
hold which the Ulster Scots enjoyed in Down and Antrim.
It had originally been planned to transport all Catholics west of the
Shannon. Eventually only landlords suffered this fate, the actual occu-
piers of the soil being retained in the east as an indispensable labour force.
The Catholic urban patriciate also were displaced from the towns, which
henceforth became centres of the new colonial regime. From the eco-
nomic point of view, the effects were catastrophic. Of Galway it was said
in 1655, ‘her merchants were princes among the nations but now the city
which was full of people is solitary and very desolate’. The Cromwellian
plantation thus did not have the consequences which its exponents hoped
for. In the absence of large-scale colonisation from England, neither the
extermination nor the conversion of the Irish took place.
As in England, so in Ireland, the mid-seventeenth century marked the
peak of Reformation fervour. After the Restoration the Protestant interest
was placed on the defensive and even forced into full retreat during the
crisis of 1688–9. The victory of William III at the Boyne in 1690 decided
the future of Ireland for the next two centuries on the basis of a Protestant
landowning ascendancy.
For much of the period that we have been considering, the aim of suc-
cessive governments was to develop unity within different parts of the
English empire on the basis of religious conformity. When the political
and religious map of the British Isles was stabilised in 1690 religious unity
had not in fact been achieved. In England bitter hostility existed between
the Established Church and the dissenting sects, each of which had its
own version of the events of the civil war. In Scotland Presbyterians of
various persuasions contended for control of the Established Church and
were often united only in their hatred of episcopalianism and Popery. In

Ireland, the population was divided into ‘Protestants’ (sc. members of the
Established Church), Catholics and Presbyterians. In Wales the Estab-
lished Church confronted the dissenters. What seems to have occurred
during these two centuries was that for many the sense of belonging to a
particular Church replaced an earlier cultural identity. The divisiveness
of the feudal period gave way to a new form of divisiveness based on
religion.
Postscript
In this chapter I placed considerable emphasis upon the concept of an
‘English empire’ with its base in London and the south-east. So far as
Ireland is concerned, such an imperial model provides a convincing
framework for further analysis, and in fact in recent decades has been at
the ‘cutting edge’ of Irish history. Professor Nicholas Canny, in his mas-
ter work Making Ireland British (Oxford, 2000), has shown how, from
Spenser onwards to Strafford and Cromwell, ‘plantation’ (sc. coloni-
sation) was seen as a favoured solution to the Irish problem. Edmund
Spenser’s View of the Present State of Ireland (1633), though written ear-
lier, and Sir John Davies, Discovery of the True Causes why Ireland was never
subdued (1612) take their places as key treatises which were to be joined
in due course by Sir John Temple’s highly emotional pamphlet, The Irish
Rebellion (1646). The imperial dimension to Spenser’s The Faerie Queen
with its implications for Ireland is now generally accepted as a central
focus for discussion (see, for example, the introduction and bibliographi-
cal discussion in A. Hadfield and W. Maley, eds., Edward Spenser: A View
of the Present State of Ireland (Oxford, 1997), pp. xii–xiv, 177–89).
The English historian Victor Treadwell, in his substantial study Buck-
ingham and Ireland 1616–1628 (Dublin, 1998), has shown how Ireland
was treated as a colony to be exploited at will by royal favourites. The
literary critic Philip Edwards, in his Threshold of a Nation: A Study of
English and Irish Drama (Cambridge, 1979), quoted a description of Sir
Humphrey Gilbert’s ‘colonising’ methods in Elizabethan Ireland. It was
his practice, says Thomas Churchyard, a contemporary commentator,
That the heads of all those . . . which were killed in the day should be cut off from
their bodies and brought to the place where he encamped at night, and should be
laid on the ground by each side of the way leading into his own tent so that none
could come into his tent for any cause but commonly he must pass through a
lane of heads, which he used ad terrorem, the dead feeling nothing more the pains
thereby; and yet did it bring great terror to the people when they saw the heads
of their dead fathers, brothers, children, kinsfolk, and friends lie on the ground
before their faces, as they came to speak with the said colonel.
Not surprisingly, imperial policies led to violent reaction and in due

course to rebellion in the name of an Irish nation. In recent years Hiram
Morgan and others have drawn attention to the importance of Hugh
O Neill (d.1616) (see Morgan H. Tyrone’s Rebellion: The Outbreak of
the Nine Years War in Tudor Ireland (London, 1993)). But Ireland still
remained very much divided between Old English and Old Irish tradi-
tions, the old English looking back to Magna Carta, the old Irish to the
Sons of Mı́l, the Irish equivalent of the Arthur legend. Geoffrey Keating,
a priest of old English background, wrote a history in Irish c. 1634 in
which he attempted to create a tradition which could be shared by old
English and Irish alike. Bernadette Cunningham, in The World of Geof-
frey Keating: History, Myth and Religion in Seventeenth Century Ireland
(Dublin, 2000), has now provided us with a fascinating account of this
historian whose work helped to create a sense of Catholic Irish national
identity. Two other books may also be mentioned as making significant
historiographical advances in this field: Jane H. Ohlmeyer, Civil War and
Restoration in the Three Stuart Kingdoms: The Career of Randall MacDonnell,
Marquis of Antrim 1609–1683 (Cambridge, 1993), unusual in its emphasis
on the ‘Three Kingdoms’, and Tadgh O Annracháin, Catholic Reforma-
tion in Ireland: The Mission of Rinuccini (1645–1649) (Oxford, 2002), the
first substantial study of a figure who perhaps inadvertently exercised
decisive influence upon the course of events in the ‘Three Kingdoms’.
In many ways, however, the most striking contribution to debate has
been that of Professor Steven Ellis in his article ‘The Collapse of the
Gaelic World, 1450–1650’ (Irish Historical Studies, no.124 (November,
1999), pp. 449–69). Here he argues that Henry VIII’s adoption of the title
‘King’ of Ireland came eventually to undermine the idea of trans-Gaelic
polity (Gaedhaltacht) linking the Gaelic speakers of western Scotland
and of the island of Ireland. In due course the ambitions of the kings of
Scotland to extend their power in the west worked towards the same
result. Finally, the Reformation made headway in the west of Scotland
creating a crucial difference between Scottish and Irish Gaels. Professor
Ellis’ article has the merit in my view of making us question the inevitabil-
ity of a Three Kingdom or ‘Four Nation’ framework. It deserves to be
more widely known.
Scottish scholars have also made significant contributions. Thanks to
the work of Roger Mason and others we are now far more aware of the
Scottish dimension to the British Isles story. We now see much more
clearly the importance of the ‘invention of tradition’ which took place
in the fourteenth century providing Scotland with a monarchy which
stretched back to 330 bc and ultimately to the marriage of a certain
princess Scota who gave her name to Scotland. This myth, preposterous
to modern eyes, was no more so than the English equivalent tracing the
name Britain to a certain Brutus whose links were with Troy and to the
Emperor Constantine who was supposedly born in Britain. In the six-
teenth century the main outlines of the Scottish version were put forward
in print by two considerable scholars, Hector Boéce (c.1465–1536) in his
History of the Scots (1527) and George Buchanan (1506–82) in his History
of Scottish Affairs (1582), both books written in Latin. There was thus a
long-standing resistance in Scotland to the idea of an English empire.
The Henrician Reformation, however, brought about crucial changes
and for some time at least was able to provide the English monarchy
with a gloss of religious reform for its long-term ambitions. One striking
example of this was during the campaign known as the ‘Rough Wooing’
of 1544–50 during which the English general Somerset won a substan-
tial victory in 1547 at Pinkie. As Marcus Merriman (Mason, 1994) has
shown, it was during this period that the term ‘Great Britain’ entered the
political vocabulary as part of a policy which it was hoped would lead
to a marriage between Edward VI and Mary, Queen of Scots. Merriman
draws attention to the role of Somerset’s propagandist James Henrisoun
who had no hesitation in developing his defence of English policy upon
the fact that Brutus ‘conquered all this lande’ (Mason, 1994, p. 90). He
also argued on official Henrician lines that the Emperor Constantine pro-
vided a historical basis for the union of two nations based on ‘common
ethnic blood’ proving ‘that as Britayn was under one Emperor then was
Scotland and England but one empire’ (ibid. p. 92). Henrisoun also spoke
as a committed advocate of Reformation.
For how Godly were it that as these two Realms should grow into one, so should
thei also agre in the concorde and centre in one religion of Christ, setting a part
all fonde superstitions, sophisticacioun and other thousands of devileries brought
in by the bishop of Rome and his creatures.
Somerset’s plans for Scotland ended in failure and it was not until
Elizabeth’s reign that the English were again given the opportunity
to intervene, when in 1560 troops were sent to aid the Lords of the
Congregation in a move which led to the withdrawal of the French
from Scotland. In a fine article ‘Two Kingdoms or Three: Ireland in
Anglo-Scottish Relations in the Middle of the Sixteenth Century’
(Mason, 1987) Jane Dawson has shown how Cecil developed a strat-
egy which encompassed the whole of the British Isles. The key fact which
she highlights is the way in which Cecil planned to use the earl of Argyll’s
influence in ‘the north parties of Ireland’ to control the O Neills and
MacDonnells and the O Donnells. But the main thrust of English policy
in later decades was to bring about a union of crowns, an objective which
was finally achieved in 1603.
Political victory did not come without a price. James VI held strong
views about Anglo-Scottish Union. In his very first speech to parliament
he compared closer union to the consolidation of the seven Kingdoms
under Wessex or the merger of French duchies ‘one after another con-
quered by the sword’. Hitherto it had been England which had the upper
hand in influencing events in Scotland. Now James’ spokesmen Sir John
Hayward, Sir Thomas Craig and Edward Ayscu criticised the idea of an
ancient English constitution (Greenberg, 2002, p. 126). It seems to have
been resistance to what they saw as Scottish innovation that led lawyers
such as Sir Edward Coke to defend repeatedly the idea of the ancient
English constitution.
In this way Arthur once more returned to prominence. For example,
on the basis of a supposedly reliable source The Mirror of Justice, Coke
believed that Arthur held parliaments (Greenberg, p. 144). Thus English
lawyers provided a mythical basis for English identity which paralleled
that of Hector Boéce and George Buchanan in Scotland. It was a mythol-
ogy which lasted well into the seventeenth century and in the case of the
mythical Christian king Lucius into the nineteenth.
The history of the Three Kingdoms may thus be seen as a history of
contending national mythologies. In the case of England, Janelle Green-
berg has shown convincingly how the myth of the ancient constitution was
a key strand in the ideology of parliamentary opposition. In Scotland, as
Roger Mason and others have indicated, there was also an ‘ancient consti-
tution’ which was seen as a buttress of Scottish claims to independence.
In Ireland, Geoffrey Keating in his Foras Feasa ar Eireann (The Foun-
tain of Knowledge about Ireland) traced the ancient Irish constitution to
the High Kingship of Tara, complete with its own parliament. As both
English and Scottish historians had done, Keating traced Irish origins
to pre-Christian times, in the Irish case the arrival of the Sons of Mı́l.
Keating’s version of history came to be seen as having the great merit
of including all groups within a wider inclusive Irish history. The Stuart
kings could also be seen as descendants of the Sons of Mı́l, a fact which
helps to explain the continuing involvement of the Irish in Jacobitism well
into the eighteenth century.
There were also three (or more) contending religious mythologies. The
first, that backed by the English Crown, was that which looked back to the
Emperor Constantine as the model for a reformed monarch. It was a view
of the Church of England which stressed the role of bishops appointed
by the Crown. James VI had adopted this view before becoming King
of England, and after 1603 he continued to defend it in the strongest
terms (‘No Bishop, No King’). Against this view such figures as Andrew
Melville and George Buchanan advocated an elective system of Church
government and an elective monarchy which could trace its origins back
to the earliest times. James I dealt with Scotland successfully. His son
Charles I failed to do so and, during the 1640s Scottish problems, formed
part of an intricate political-religious pattern which led to civil war, and
indirectly to the execution of the king. The third mythology was that
which took root in Ireland where the papal nuncio Archbishop Rinuccini
became the spokesman for a resurgent Catholicism in the late 1640s.
An earlier generation of historians dealt with these charges under the
general rubric of ‘the English Revolution’. Today, following the lead of
Jenny Wormald and Conrad Russell, we are more likely to see them as the
problems faced by a ‘multiple Kingdom’ comparable to those confronted
by the Spanish monarchy in Catalonia and Portugal. By the end of the
century after the Glorious Revolution of 1688 and the Battle of the Boyne
the dominance of the English component of this multiple Kingdom was
assured, or seemed to be.
The English colonies in colonial America including the West Indies
were also thus very much part of the English success story. It was a posi-
tion of power which relied upon commercial success, which economic
historians explained as largely due to ‘re-export trade’ in certain enumer-
ated commodities such as sugar and tobacco. Until recently the role of
the slave trade in the rise of such Atlantic ports as Bristol and Liverpool
was ignored. In fact in the first edition of this book, for example, I myself
did not mention the slave trade. In recent years, however, the balance
has shifted. Historians can now turn to such works as David Ellis’ Rise of
African Slavery in the Americas (Cambridge, 2000) for a comparative crit-
ical treatment of the British role in the slave trade during the seventeenth
and eighteenth centuries.
8 The remaking of an empire
In orthodox interpretations of English history, the revolution of 1688

occupies a special place, as a landmark in the history of English liberty,
when the victory of Protestantism and progress was assured by the flight
of James II and the peaceful accession of William of Orange and Mary,
James II’s daughter. In the wake of revolution came a Toleration Act
allowing dissenters to erect their own places of worship. Though it was
not clear at the time, divine right monarchy had given way to parliamen-
tary sovereignty. In due course, the revolution acquired its permanent
appellation of ‘Glorious’.
In the context of the British Isles, however, the Glorious Revolution
takes on a more complex colouring. It was, in the first place, by no means
bloodless, nor was its success inevitable. The future of the revolution in
Scotland was still in doubt after the battle of Killiecrankie (1689) which
was won by James II’s supporters, though the effect of the victory was
destroyed by the death of their leader, Claverhouse. In 1715 the revolu-
tion, though buttressed now by the Act of Union (1707), was challenged
again when the Old Pretender, James VIII, landed in Scotland. Not until
after the battle of Culloden (1746) can it be said that the regime set up in
1689 was secure. In Ireland, the fate of the Stuart cause was unclear until
after the battle of the Boyne in July 1690 and perhaps not until the surren-
der of Limerick to Williamite forces a year later. Within the British Isles,
the result of William’s victory was not toleration but the establishment
of an episcopalian ascendancy in Ireland, and a Presbyterian equivalent
in Scotland. In Ireland, Catholics and Presbyterians found themselves
under episcopalian dominance. In Scotland, Catholics and episcopalians
were placed under the control of a Presbyterian establishment.
In England and Wales, the toleration which was extended to dissent
was very much a limited one. Religious tests imposed by the Corporation
Act (1662) and the Test Act (1673) still remained in force, their object
being to prevent dissenters exercising political influence at the local as
well as the national level, and various attempts made to repeal them in
the eighteenth century failed. Toleration remained confined to religious
189
observance. Outside this narrow range, the legacy of the civil wars of
the mid-seventeenth century led to the perpetuation of distrust and hos-
tility between the two cultures of Church and dissent, each with their
own interpretation of the recent past, the churchmen looking back to the
executions of Charles I and of Archbishop Laud, and the dissenters to
their ejection from the Established Church after the Restoration. As Dr
Jonathan Clark has emphasised (in English Society 1688–1832 (1985)),
an Anglican ascendancy retained control of the institutions of power and
influence long after 1688. Episcopalian culture was dominant in the uni-
versities, the major public schools and the army and navy as well as in the
Church itself. Dissenting culture was forced to create its own institutions
of higher education, the dissenting academies in London and the north
and west, where they had some numerical strength.
In Scotland, a similar clash of cultures took place though here it was
the episcopalians who found themselves in a subordinate position. The
Covenanters, now in a position of power, abolished episcopacy as an insti-
tution in the Established Church. In the Highlands, the renewed influ-
ence of the Campbells, which had been in decline since the Restoration,
was signalled by the massacre of the Catholic MacDonalds of Glencoe in
1692. During the first half of the eighteenth century, Jacobitism, drawing
support from bitter feelings of discrimination, remained far more of a
threat than the Whig historians implied. But the dominant culture, rein-
forced by the Act of Union of 1707 and enshrined in the power of the
Kirk, in the universities and the schools, remained Lowland Presbyteri-
anism. This is not to say that it was united. Throughout the eighteenth
century, Covenanting sects broke away from the Establishment because
it was not godly enough for their taste. In their hatred of Popery and of
such historical figures as Claverhouse, however, Presbyterians of all views
were at one.
In Ireland, defeat at the Boyne in 1690 marked the final eclipse of the
culture of the ‘Old English’. James II’s general, Richard Talbot, earl of
Tyrconnell, took his title from the O Donnells, chiefs of Tir Connail,
but his roots lay in the anglicised counties of the Pale. The same may be
said of the defender of Limerick, Patrick Sarsfield, whose estate was at
Lucan, near Dublin. The Cromwellian confiscations had dealt the Old
English a severe blow, from which they had made a partial recovery after
the Restoration. The Williamite confiscations, however, together with
the penal laws passed under William III and Anne, applied the coup de
grâce. Henceforth members of Catholic gentry families sought careers
as ‘Wild Geese’ in the armies of France and Spain. The dominant cul-
ture of eighteenth-century Ireland was to be that of the ‘Protestant’ (sc.
episcopalian) ascendancy. Dublin, Cork and Limerick became largely
Protestant urban centres, round which the great houses of the new elite
The remaking of an empire 191
Figure 26. Slave ship

This image of a Liverpool-based slave ship is a reminder of the impor-
tance of the slave trade in the economy of eighteenth-century Britain.
The transport of slaves from west Africa to the West Indies and the
American colonies formed a key element in a triangular pattern of trade
which led to the rise of Liverpool and Bristol. It was only in the late
twentieth century, however, that historians began to study the wider
implications of the slave trade for British history.
were soon to be clustered. In the north-east, Presbyterians, linked closely

with Scotland, formed a powerful bloc, though excluded from their full
say in political and social life. It was here during the 1790s that the United
Irishmen attracted many recruits for a movement which moved towards
republicanism, under the influence of the United States as well as France.
Among the Catholics, the bitter divisions between Gaelic and Old English
cultures, deriving from the outcome of the confederate wars of the mid-
seventeenth century, gave way ultimately to a sense of a common Catholi-
cism, which accepted, however unwillingly, a subordinate position in the
polity of Ireland.
Our attention cannot be confined solely to the British Isles, however.
One of the most remarkable changes which occurred within the English
empire during the period after 1688 was the growth of the American
colonies. The population of the thirteen mainland colonies grew from c.
250,000 in 1700 to c. 2,500,000 by the 1770s. Trade with the colonies
became a new and important feature of the economies of the British
Isles. The prosperity of London was in large measure built upon it. The
rise of Liverpool and Bristol in the course of the eighteenth century was
bound up with colonial trade, including the slave trade. Ireland, though
excluded from full participation in the English mercantile system, enjoyed
a burgeoning trade with the slave-based societies of the West Indies, which
provided a market for Irish salt beef and linens. In Scotland, the rapid
growth of the port of Glasgow was connected with the tobacco trade.
Economically, the American colonies were an integral and increasingly
important part of the English empire; culturally, also they cannot be left
out of account in assessing the relative balance of Church and dissent.
The various cultures of dissent were much more strongly represented
within the thirteen colonies than was the case in England. In New Eng-
land, Puritanism formed the basis of the dominant culture though now
in more variegated forms than those held by the founding fathers of the
early seventeenth century. In the middle colonies of Pennsylvania and
New York, which expanded more rapidly during the eighteenth century
than the colonies to the north and south, the emigration of Scotch-Irish
Presbyterians from Ulster reinforced non-Anglican elements. Through-
out the colonies, the impact of various evangelical movements, known
collectively as the ‘Great Awakening’, found a ready response among
those opposed to a religious establishment. Taking the English empire
as a whole the rise of dissent in the colonies during this period led to a
shift in the balance of the cultures of Church and dissent. In England
itself there was no doubt about the dominance of the Anglican estab-
lishment, but beyond England dissenters could look westward across the
Atlantic for moral reinforcement in time of crisis. From this point of
view, the American revolution of the 1770s takes shape as a renewal of
the seventeenth-century conflict between the two cultures of Church and
dissent.
As suggested above, England during the eighteenth century was a soci-
ety deeply divided on religious grounds. The divisions created by the civil
war were still far from healed and the unity created by the fear of James
II’s Catholicism proved to be only temporary. During Anne’s reign suc-
cessful attempts were made by the High Church interest to reduce the
role of dissent in public life. The Occasional Conformity Act (1711) was
intended to prevent dissenters from complying with the letter of the law
by taking the Anglican sacrament once a year in order to qualify for office.
By the terms of the Schism Act (1714) dissenters were to be deprived of
their schools and academies. The fact that these two acts were repealed
after the accession of the Hanoverians cannot conceal the fact that the
rift between the two cultures of Church and dissent remained deep
for many decades to come. The dissenting deputies, drawn from each
Presbyterian, Independent and Baptist congregation within ten miles of
London, reported regularly upon the pressures of various kinds to which
the dissenters were exposed. In 1743 attacks by a riotous mob in Angle-
sey attracted their attention; in 1748 the refusal of burial to children of
dissenters in a Suffolk village; in 1767 the exaction of tolls upon chapel-
goers using a turnpike road. Perhaps the main factor tending to keep
these tensions under control during the first half of the century was the
fear of the return of Popery in the person of the Pretender.
The mutual animosity which existed between churchmen and dis-
senters derived in large measure from doctrinal and political differences
and from rival interpretations of the recent past. Cultural differences of
a less intellectual kind also played their part. The dominant Anglican
culture embodied attitudes towards leisure which were criticised in dis-
senting circles. Racing, gambling, theatre-going, card-playing, dancing
were all activities tolerated and often encouraged within the dominant
culture. At a popular level, the village alehouse was the secular counter-
part of the parish church.
The growth of a consumer society provides an indication of the strength
of the dominant culture. It was ‘at church’ that a commentator noted how:
in a populous city in the north, the macebearer cleared the way for Mrs May-
oress who came sidling after him in an enormous fan hoop of a pattern that had
never been seen in those parts. At another church [he] saw several negligees with
furbelowed aprons . . . but these were woefully eclipsed by a burgess’ daughter
just come from London who appeared in a Trolloppee of Slammerkin with treble
ruffles to the cuffs, pinked and gymped and the sides of the petticoats drawn up
on festoons.
Such fashions were unlikely to be seen in dissenting chapels.

In the face of this Anglican ascendancy, dissenters, at least until the
1760s, were on the defensive. In dissenting circles, it was commonly
held that ‘going to horse races, cricketing and playing at cards etc is
not to be practised and in no ways allowed by the professors of the
Gospel’. ‘Fiddling and vanity and singing vain songs’ were also discour-
aged. There were also some who regarded Christmas and other feasts
as pagan feasts, ‘dung . . . received from Baal’ in the words of the
sixteenth-century reformer Robert Browne. As some compensation, there
developed the practice of communal hymn-singing which was uncommon
outside chapel culture until the nineteenth century.
Excluded from the universities, the dissenters sought to preserve
their cultural identity by establishing academies. The attitudes of some
churchmen towards these institutions were represented in the dedication

to Clarendon’s History (first published during the reign of Anne). ‘What
can be the meaning of these several seminaries, and, as it were, universi-
ties, set up in divers parts of the kingdom by more than ordinary indus-
try, contrary to law, supported by large contributions, where the youth
is bred up in principles directly contrary to monarchical and episcopal
government?’ What it meant in fact is suggested by a remark made later in
the century about the teaching of history. ‘Eachard, Hume, Smollett and
others of their turn, write their histories upon the principle of tyranny for
the use of kings . . . Wilson, Osborne, Coke, Rapin, Mrs Macaulay, Har-
ris etc write for the use of the people.’ Joseph Priestley who was educated
at Daventry Academy and who taught at Warrington Academy declared
that, ‘while your universities resemble ponds of stagnant water, secured
by dams and mounds and offensive to the neighbourhood, ours are like
rivers which taking their natural course fertilise a whole country’.
To analyse English society in terms of two cultures is clearly an over-
simplification, however. Within the dominant Church culture itself, there
were the two major traditions of High Church and Low Church, the lat-
ter being more sympathetic to the dissenters. Within dissent, there were
marked differences between Presbyterians, Independents, Baptists and
Unitarians. The position was further complicated by the rise of the evan-
gelical movement of Methodism within the Church of England. Method-
ism was a missionary movement within the Church but in many ways
it owed its inspiration to the world of dissent. John Wesley ordered his
followers
to taste no spirituous liquors, no dram of any kind unless provoked by a physi-

cian . . . to pawn nothing, no not to save life, to wear no needless ornaments,
such as rings, ear-rings, to use no needless self-indulgence, such as taking snuff
or tobacco unless prescribed by a physician . . . To give alms . . . To be patterns
of diligence and frugality, or self denial and taking up the cross daily.
Their critics indeed looked upon the Methodists as crypto-dissenters

whose aim was to subvert the Church from within. Attacks made upon
Methodist meetings by church mobs bear witness to the enduring ten-
sions between Church and dissent during this period.
The dominance of the establishment was in many ways reinforced by
what was the most remarkable example of social change in eighteenth-
century England – the continued growth of London. London was already
a metropolis in the seventeenth century. During the eighteenth, however,
its dominance became even greater. Daniel Defoe noted in his Tour of
England that few areas were unaffected by the pull of the London market.
The population of London rose from 350,000 in 1,700 to nearly one
million at the end of the century. This market also influenced the
economies of the Scottish Lowlands, the Welsh border counties and
the counties of eastern Ireland. London also became the centre of a
rapidly growing re-export trade, most notably in sugar and tobacco, two
of the ‘enumerated commodities’ which by the terms of the Navigation
Acts could not be exported directly from the colonies to Europe. Trade
brought in its wake a demand for warehouses, docks and ancillary labour,
as well as for credit facilities and insurance services supplied by the ‘City’.
As mentioned earlier, the slave trade also played a key role in the rise of
Bristol and Liverpool.
London, already an administrative, political and legal centre and now
a commercial entrepôt on the grand scale, also became a centre of
consumption. Shops, theatres, clubs, coffee houses, drinking houses all
came to provide facilities for enjoyment. Dissent may well have been
over-represented in circles of trade and finance, though this often-made
assumption is by no means beyond challenge, but the values of the city
as represented by its architecture and day-to-day activities were an urban
extension of a broad-based ‘Church’ culture. Over much of the metropoli-
tan area the tone was set by the town-houses of the aristocracy in the newly
built squares near to the palace of St James. It was this life-style which
the dissenter Richard Price presumably had in mind in denouncing ‘an
abandoned venality, the inseparable companion of dissipation and extrav-
agance [which] has poisoned the springs of public virtue among us’.
During the reigns of George I and George II (1714–60), the balance
between Church and dissent was held by the Whig administrations of Sir
Robert Walpole and his successor, Henry Pelham, relying upon a system
of political ‘influence’ which their opponents denounced as ‘corruption’.
Several factors made possible this long-term success of the Whigs in the
face of what may well have been a Tory majority in the country as a
whole. The ‘Low Church’ Anglican episcopate, appointed under govern-
ment patronage, could be relied upon to support the government in the
House of Lords (at the local parish level, where the parsons were gen-
erally Tory, the situation was very different). The long period of war, or
fear of war, from 1688 to 1815, sometimes termed the ‘Second Hundred
Years War’, led to the growth of a patronage system linked to wartime
requirements. The army and the navy were a source of useful government
patronage. Government influence could be brought to bear upon dock-
yard towns such as Chatham, Gravesend, Deptford and Greenwich. The
Whigs were also able to control many small boroughs in the south-west.
Dissenters tolerated a government which was much better from their
point of view than a possible Tory alternative with High Church affili-
ations. In counties such as Cheshire and Lancashire in the north-west
and in Hertfordshire, Gloucestershire and Essex in the south, where dis-

senters accounted for one-fifth of the electorate, this support could be an
important consideration.
In the 1760s this ‘Age of Equipoise’ came to an end. The accession of
George III in 1760 brought his adviser John Stuart, third earl of Bute,
to a position of great influence. In 1762 the duke of Newcastle resigned
and the long period of Whig ascendancy came to an end. The change was
widely interpreted by its critics as a shift to Tory-style government and
Bute’s policies came under attack on these grounds. For reasons which
are still unclear, John Wilkes, a relatively obscure politician, became a
symbol of popular discontent in London and in some provincial towns.
The arrest of Wilkes for publishing a seditious libel in no. 45 of The North
Briton was the first in a series of events which led to repeated challenges
of the government. He was four times elected as MP for Middlesex from
1768 onwards, each election being followed by a government-inspired
annulment. In 1768, after the first election, several people had been shot
by Scottish troops at a meeting of Wilkesite supporters, an event known
as the ‘St George’s Fields’ Massacre’. Not surprisingly anti-Scottish sen-
timent came to form part of radical propaganda. Finally in 1774 Wilkes
took his seat as MP for Middlesex where he remained until 1790. By then,
Wilkesite agitation had become a symbol linking political opposition in
Britain and America.
The events of the 1760s and 1770s, culminating in the war of 1775–
83, are generally conceptualised in terms of the ‘American revolution’.
It makes equally good historical sense to see them in terms of a civil
war between the cultures of Church and dissent and recalling in some
of its particulars the first civil war of the 1640s. To some observers,
the attitudes of the Americans appeared to be a modern example
of ‘the principles of the Independents in Oliver’s time’. In the 1770s,
as in the 1640s, ‘No Popery’ became a stick with which to beat the gov-
ernment. To some, the Quebec Act of 1774, granting toleration to French
Canada, was part of a general conspiracy to plant ‘Popery and arbitrary
power in America’. It was said that ‘the Inquisition may erect her stan-
dard in Pennsylvania and the city of Philadelphia may yet experience the
carnage of a St Bartholomew’s day’. In England a certain Mr Hudson told
a pro-government candidate that he would not vote ‘for any Popery in
Canada and shutting up the port of Boston’. An observer less sympathetic
to the American cause commented that
if this rebellion in America proves successful, it will be in consequence of repub-
lican principles of the most levelling kind; and the victors will no doubt aim, with
the assistance of their restless friends in England, to overturn that happy limited
monarchy, which experience has taught us is best suited to a realm so extensive as
ours, and which has long been the glory of Britain and the envy of all the world.
The conflict which developed between the British government and

the American colonies after the end of the Seven Years War arose for
many different reasons, economic, political, constitutional. It may also
be seen as arising from a profound disharmony between the rival cultures
of Church and dissent. In the mother country, the Established Church
provided the basis of a dominant culture with deference built into the
fabric of society. Dissent, with its less deferential traditions resting upon
the notion of a ‘godly elect’, had been, since the defeat of the seventeenth
century, a subordinate culture. In the mainland colonies of North Amer-
ica, however, the balance of cultures during the course of the eighteenth
century shifted in favour of dissent. In New England dissent in its vari-
ous forms was a dominant culture. In the middle states of New York and
Pennsylvania, both of which expanded more rapidly than the colonies
of New England and the south, large-scale immigration of Scotch-Irish
and of German Lutherans tilted the balance away from Anglicanism.
According to one episcopalian, ‘Africa never more abounded with new
Monsters than Pennsylvania with new sects who are constantly sending
out their Emissaries around.’ It was said later of the Scotch-Irish (with
some exaggeration) that ‘with a very few exceptions, they are United Irish-
men, Free Masons and the most God-provoking Democrats this side of
Hell’. In Pennsylvania, in 1768, Scotch-Irish led the violent Paxton Boys
movement against the Anglican-Quaker dominance of Philadelphia. In
North Carolina, resentment arose from the fact that Presbyterian mar-
riages were invalid, a situation not remedied until 1766. The impact of
the religious revival known as the ‘Great Awakening’ also helped to swell
the ranks of the evangelicals. In Virginia the culture of the Anglican gen-
try, revolving around race meetings and other ‘festive’ occasions, found
itself on the defensive.
The crisis within the English empire lasted from 1763 when the gov-
ernment attempted to raise money from the colonies by means of the
Stamp Act (1765) to the recognition of American independence in 1783.
A series of British defeats from Saratoga in 1777 to Yorktown in 1781
led to what must have seemed inconceivable at the end of the Seven
Years War, overwhelming defeat for the mother country at the hands of
an alliance between the mainland colonies and the ‘Popish monarchy’
of France. Only Canada and the West Indies remained of a transatlantic
empire which had first come into existence nearly two centuries earlier.
The political and cultural consequences of the rift between Britain
and her former colonies were profound. The United States eventually
became a society without formal religious establishments, as Anglican
loyalists moved north to Canada or back to Britain. The result was to
give the cultures of dissent full play. The Declaration of Independence
and the Constitution of the new state were drawn up by men strongly
influenced by the values and traditions of ‘civic humanism’ deriving from

Machiavelli and Harrington. There can be little doubt, however, that the
Reformation was a more powerful influence upon the future of the infant
United States than either the Renaissance or the Enlightenment. The
‘Great Awakening’ set the tone for much that was to come. As Jonathan
Edwards declared half a century earlier,
It is not unlikely that this work of God’s Spirit the awakening so extraordinary
and wonderful is the dawning, or at least the prelude of that glorious work of
God so often foretold in the Scripture, which, in the progress and issue of it, shall
renew the world of mankind . . . We cannot reasonably think otherwise than that
the beginning of this great work of God must be near. And there are many things
that make it probable that this work will begin in America.
This was a note that was to be repeated throughout the nineteenth century
and which derived unmistakeably from the culture of dissent.
Though some individual states retained an established church (e.g.
Massachusetts) there was no national establishment. The sect was the
characteristic form of religious organisation and it was this which pro-
vided the basis of what Tocqueville later analysed in his Democracy in
America. In its lack of deference, in the absence of a formal hierarchical
structure in Church and State, in its egalitarian emphasis, the United
States developed along lines which derived from the dissenting tradition.
In the American view of history John Milton and Algernon Sidney enjoyed
a place which they were denied in the established English interpretation.
Not surprisingly Mrs Catherine Macaulay, critic of Hume’s ‘Tory’ his-
tory of England, came to visit George Washington in the years after the
revolution. The lack of an establishment in America, however, may well
have led to a certain anti-intellectualism and scorn for high culture.
Henry James, looking back to the earlier years of the infant republic,
was less enthusiastic than Jonathan Edwards when he commented:
No Sovereign, no court, no personal loyalty, no aristocracy, no church, no clergy,
no army, no diplomatic service, no country gentlemen, no palaces, no castles, nor
manors, nor old country houses, nor parsonages, nor thatched cottages, nor ivied
ruins; no cathedrals, nor abbeys, nor little Norman churches; no great Universities
nor public schools – no Oxford, nor Eton, nor Harrow; no literature, no novels,
no museums, no pictures, no political society, no sporting class – no Epsom, nor
Ascot.
It is worth noting how much James was here offering the viewpoint of the
southern English ‘core’ culture.
In England itself the result of defeat in America was to weaken the cul-
ture of dissent and to intensify the defensive attitude of the establishment.
In 1787 Pitt and North spoke out against the repeal of the Corporation
and Test Acts on the grounds that they were ‘the corner stone of the
constitution which should have every preservation’. In 1790 the vote

against repeal was larger than it had ever been. In 1794 Joseph Priestley
left for America where he died ten years later. The United States as much
as revolutionary France was a warning of the type of ‘levelling’ society
which might take root in England. During the half century which followed
the end of the American war, ‘class’ as a concept made its appearance and
it may well have been during this period that the hardening of class lines
and the growth of deference which foreign observers noted as being char-
acteristic of English society made their appearance. The loss of America
may thus help to explain why there was no English equivalent of the
French Revolution.
In terms of size and population (c. 350,000) the position of Wales
within the English empire may be compared, not unreasonably, to one
of the mainland American colonies. In Wales, as in colonies like Vir-
ginia and Pennsylvania, there was a ‘Great Awakening’ of ‘vital religion’
and a conflict between the cultures of Church and dissent, which ended
with the triumph of dissent. George Whitefield’s Calvinistic Method-
ism made as great an impact in Wales as it did in America. Wales did
not achieve political independence but in a sense the eventual victory of
nonconformity provided a substantial measure of cultural and linguistic
autonomy, though at too high a cost in the eyes of its opponents. Noncon-
formity became the religion of the majority in Wales as it did in the infant
United States, where Thomas Jefferson said that two-thirds of the pop-
ulation were dissenters. Calvinistic Methodism was particularly strong
in Welsh-speaking north Wales. Perhaps it was only by being allied with
a popular movement of this kind that the language survived. The alter-
native was absorption within England as happened in Cornwall (where
Cornish died out in the eighteenth century) and in the border coun-
ties of Shropshire, Herefordshire and Monmouth, which became heavily
anglicised.
At the beginning of the eighteenth century no single culture enjoyed
complete dominance in Wales. The squirearchy was Anglican, as were
the bishops and parochial clergy, and there were pockets of dissent in
the small English-speaking market towns of the borders and the south,
but the culture of the rural Welsh-speaking majority was an amalgam of
traditional ‘festive’ culture, varying from locality to locality. The bardic
culture of the elite had been undermined after the Union (1536–42)
with the coming of print and the growth of governmental pressures to
use English, but at a popular level Welsh oral culture, divided by its local
dialects, survived. Wakes, feasts and wassailing, and the practice of certain
rites of popular religion, such as the use of charms and holy wells to ward
off evil spirits, flourished in the Welsh countryside as they did in Ireland
and the Scottish Highlands.
During the course of the century, the situation was transformed, thanks
largely to the zeal of churchmen working within the establishment. Mis-
sionary activity came from within the Anglican Church, often with the
direct support of English clergy. The Society for the Propagation of
Christian Knowledge, founded in 1699, took Wales as one of its targets
and sponsored the foundation of a number of English-speaking charity
schools, most of them in south Wales. The real turning point came, how-
ever, when Griffiths Jones, an Anglican parson at Llandowror, turned
his attention to Welsh-speaking areas. Jones set up a system of scrip-
tural education, in Welsh where it seemed appropriate, using itinerant
(sc. ‘circulating’) teachers who taught Bible-reading to rural labourers
during quiet months of the agricultural year. Hundreds of these schools
introduced a primitive form of literacy based upon the Old and New Tes-
taments and the Book of Common Prayer to the rural world of Wales. At
much the same time, from the 1730s onwards, an evangelical movement,
comparable to the ‘Great Awakening’ in colonial America, led to the cre-
ation of ‘Methodist’ societies within the Established Church. The leader
of the movement was Howell Harris, whose views like those of Jonathan
Edwards in New England and George Whitefield were strongly Calvinist.
Welsh Methodism thus took on a different colouring from that of English
Methodism, which followed the Arminianism of John Wesley.
Much may be attributed to the charismatic gifts of the evangelists but
more is needed to account for their long-term success in transforming the
mentalité of rural Wales. In social terms it would seem that the Methodists
managed to adapt for their own purposes some of the institutions of
rural society. Methodist societies overcame the challenge of a dispersed
rural setting as the formal parochial structure could not. The evangelists
remained within the structure of the Established Church until a decisive
break came in 1810–11 but, well before this, Methodist institutions were
not truly part of the parochial structure. In the face of clerical hostility, the
Methodists were often forced to build their own chapels, which became
dissenting chapels after the final breach.
Throughout the eighteenth century tensions within the Welsh Church
were as bitter as those between the Church and the Old Dissenting bodies.
Churchmen complained that the Methodists asserted ‘that they and none
others are the elect and damn all others in order to terrify the illiterate
into their faction. They assure them that their fathers and grandfathers
are in hell; and that they see visible marks of damnation in the faces of
such as will not become Methodists.’ Others protested about ‘itinerant
preachers who alienated the affections of weak people still further from
the Established Church . . . [maintaining] that our most excellent liturgy
is a dead letter, a heap of Popish rubbish composed by devils’. To the more
orthodox churchmen the Methodists seemed to be crypto-dissenters bent

upon seizing power for themselves. When the breach came, however, it
was the Established Church which suffered the heavier blow. In both
north and south Wales it became the Church of a minority, yielding prece-
dence to the Calvinistic Methodists in the north and to the chapels of Old
Dissent, most notably the Independents and the Baptists, in the south.
The loss of the Methodists was the main cause of this shift, which was
to have significant consequences when, thanks to industrialisation, Wales
became more important than it had ever been before within the English
empire.
Although the language of Calvinistic Methodism was Welsh, the val-
ues and attitudes of the movement resembled those of other evangelical
movements in England and America. Indeed there was little that was
distinctively Welsh in their Sabbatarianism and their dislike of secular
amusements. Thus, when every allowance is made for the importance of
the Welsh language during this period, the fact remains that Wales became
subtly anglicised. Within the context of an English empire, Wales was in
many ways a sub-culture, drawing its standards from the metropolis. It
was reaction against this, to some, unpleasant truth which led to the
rise of a Welsh Romantic movement, reviving an interest in things Welsh.
Support was greatest among the London-based Welsh, themselves a sym-
bol of the incorporation of Wales within a wider political context. The
society of Cymmrodorion (still in existence) was founded in 1751. The
most active individual was Edward Williams, known usually by his self-
created bardic name of ‘Iolo Morganwg’. ‘Iolo’ revived the holding of
eisteddfoddau, not seen since the mid-sixteenth century. The first meet-
ing was held on Primrose Hill, London, an indication that the movement
drew its support from the ethnic enthusiasm of exiles. It was in Lon-
don that the need to preserve a sense of Welshness seemed most acute,
whereas in Wales itself local identities were still all-important. Edward
Williams himself came from an English-speaking background and spent
much time in England before returning to Glamorgan. ‘Iolo’ and his
compatriots created a new Welsh past which ignored the complexities
of an earlier ‘British’ past. In so doing they were providing a Welsh
equivalent of similar cultural revivals in the Scottish Lowlands and in
Ireland.
In the late eighteenth century, several Welsh sub-cultures may be dis-
cerned, each operating within a larger imperial context. The first was
that of the ruling elite of episcopalian gentry, in whose hands parlia-
mentary politics rested, together with the control of local administration.
Within the Established Church a revival took place, with gentry back-
ing, later drawing much inspiration from the ritualism of the Oxford
Movement. Overall, however, it was the two forms of dissent which came
to exercise dominance. A broad distinction may be made between south
Wales, commercialised (albeit with some industry), anglicised and cos-
mopolitan, and the north, heavily Welsh-speaking and rural. In the south,
Anglicanism contended with a wide variety of dissenting sects which had
roots going back to the civil war period and among which demands for
political reform found a ready response. In the north, it was Calvinistic
Methodism, still at this date within the Established Church, which took
root among the rural population. Though both were ‘Welsh’, it is not too
much to say that north and south were in essence different sub-cultures.
It was from the cosmopolitan south that Richard Price and Iolo Mor-
ganwg came. Both men were heavily involved in the radical politics of the
day, especially the issues raised by the American and French revolutions.
As freemasons, they were both sympathetic to the ideas of the Enlighten-
ment. Pockets of similar radicalism existed further north but in general
it was the south, exposed to the influence of Bristol, which was most
sympathetic to opposition causes. Rural north Wales, by contrast, was
a more localised culture in which traditional elements were still strong
despite the activities of the Methodists. The contrast between the two
areas was to increase even more from the end of the eighteenth century
with the onset of industrialisation in south Wales.
The changes which took place in Wales during the eighteenth century
made little impact upon the other societies of the British Isles. However,
the rise of Wales as a factor in wider British politics during the nineteenth
century, when Welshmen became involved in the fortunes of the Liberal
party, is explicable only against the background of the eighteenth century.
In Ireland, the formative period of the Reformation ended with the
population divided into three distinct cultures: the episcopalians of east-
ern Ireland; the Presbyterians of Ulster; and the Catholic majority to be
found in all four provinces. Among the Catholics the reforms begun dur-
ing the Counter-Reformation had not progressed very far. The survival
of such popular rites of passage as the ‘wake’ suggests that in the west,
particularly, traditional patterns still survived. In times of active perse-
cution, informal religious gatherings such as the ‘patron’ (the festival of
local saints) were one of the few means by which religious identity could
be maintained.
The episcopalians, though probably the smallest in numbers, enjoyed
the greatest political power at the local and national level, since most of
the landowners belonged to the Established Church. The Presbyterians
were socially dominant in Antrim and Down but not well represented else-
where. The Catholics, largely deprived of leadership, had least influence
of all. Each of these groups constituted its own self-contained world. The
Presbyterians enjoyed close links with Scotland where issues involving the
Covenant and lay patronage loomed large in the early eighteenth century.
Ideological divisions in Scotland inevitably came to influence the various
branches of Presbyterianism in Ulster. Episcopalians in contrast were
closely involved with affairs in England, as the career of Jonathan Swift
suggests. Increasingly, however, the Protestant (episcopalian) ascendancy
became a society with its own distinctive outlook. Trinity College, Dublin,
for example, which had drawn its provosts from Oxford and Cambridge
during the seventeenth century, appointed men from its own ranks in
the eighteenth. There was, thirdly, the Catholic majority, whose leaders,
though deprived of prospects at home, sought military, ecclesiastical or
commercial careers on the continent. The outlook of most Irish-speaking
Catholics, it is safe to say, was largely bounded by their locality. A letter
written by a Cork landlord in 1702 describes how
The practice has been to let a great deal of land to some Irish gentleman who
has nothing of his own so that he may bring in his followers, and while he makes
them pay double the rent, he lives idly on the overplus himself. Besides, while all
these depend on his protection, they follow his bagpipe, whenever disturbances
happen.
In a state now dominated by an English-speaking elite, a largely Irish-

speaking society turned in upon itself. The landlords, overwhelmingly
English in origin, were content to deal with their Irish tenants through a
‘broker’, either a ‘middleman’ or the local priest.
In principle, there was little reason why this cultural balance of power
in Ireland should ever change. Indeed, the elaborate system of penal laws,
excluding Catholics from the exercise of political power, was intended to
ensure that it did not. Among the remaining rump of Catholic aristocrats
there was a steady drift into the Established Church. Among the Presby-
terians, emigration to North America seems to have acted as something
of a safety valve. The Irish Catholics remained tranquil during the pro-
Stuart risings of 1715 and 1745 in Scotland, although recent research by
Professor Brendan O Buachalla has now shown that Irish Jacobitism in
the first half of the century was much stronger than had been thought.
It no longer seems strange that the Young Pretender’s entourage at his
landing in Scotland in 1745 included Irishmen.
From the mid-eighteenth century, however, signs of change began to
appear. Defeat at Culloden undermined hope of a Stuart restoration and
by the late 1770s the Catholic bishops approved an oath of loyalty to
George III. Economic prosperity also helped. Ireland, like Scotland and
Wales, responded to the challenge of the growing markets of England and
the colonies: the result was to create three specialised economic areas in
the east of the country – the linen-producing counties of Ulster east of the
Bann, the wheat-producing counties of Leinster and the ‘dairying’ and
cattle-producing counties of Munster. The growth of economic activity

was reflected in the growth of market towns and larger centres, such as
Cork City, which became a centre of the export market in butter. Limer-
ick, once a military base, became a large provision market. Ballinasloe was
one of several large sheep markets in the midlands. In Leinster, Dublin
enjoyed remarkable growth during these years. In Ulster, Belfast became
the main market outlet for the linen industry, after the opening up of the
Lagan navigation in 1756.
The prime beneficiary of these changes was the ascendancy landlord
class, as the architecture of the second half of the eighteenth century
makes clear. The great houses of the ascendancy (the ‘Big House’ of
common parlance) were built within reach of the growing ports, on the
basis of the newly found prosperity. In Ulster, landlords took the ini-
tiative in encouraging the development of linen manufactures on their
estates. The marquess of Downshire became one of the richest men in
the kingdom as a result of such enterprise. In Leinster, the confidence
of the landlords was displayed in the building of the Grand Canal and
the Royal Canal as a means of opening up the midlands to the market.
The great victory of the landlords came in 1782 when they forced Lord
North’s government to grant them a larger measure of political auton-
omy. During the American war the Volunteers, raised to meet the threat
of French invasion and led largely by the landlords, proved to be a pow-
erful weapon in the hands of the ascendancy. Political reforms were kept
at arm’s length. The post-1782 Irish parliament may be called ‘Grattan’s
parliament’ but it was largely dominated not by the liberal Grattan but
by his die-hard opponents, who resisted any change which might weaken
the ascendancy.
The landlords were not the only class to benefit from the economic
revival. In Munster and Leinster a rural middle class of ‘strong farmers’
appeared, many of them Catholic. In this development, Irish agrarian
society was following the English pattern of change in response to the
market, which had brought about the replacement of small farmers by
a system based on large tenant farmers and labourers. There was also
the rise of a comparable urban middle class, much of it Catholic. Slowly
and cautiously these groups began to press for the repeal of the penal
laws which, though largely a dead letter in some areas, still remained
on the statute book. The Catholic Committee was formed in 1772 as a
lobby to bring pressure to bear on the government. As a consequence
of this, some important economic grievances were redressed during the
period of the American war. Penal prohibitions relating to officehold-
ing, voting and sitting in the House of Commons still remained, how-
ever, and were to become a major political issue before the end of the
century.
In Ulster, Presbyterian merchants, farmers and shopkeepers had also

profited from the expansion of the English and colonial market. Belfast
and Londonderry were both prosperous and growing ports. Belfast, in
particular, replaced Dublin as the outlet for much of the Ulster linen
industry. Presbyterians did not suffer from the same range of legal disabil-
ities as the Catholics. Nonetheless, they were excluded from playing their
full role in political life as a result of the operation of the Test Act of 1704,
requiring local officeholders to take the Anglican sacrament. At a local
level, Presbyterians saw key decisions being taken by unrepresentative
grand juries dominated by landlords or their agents. At a national level,
the choice of parliamentary candidates was frequently decided by closed
urban corporations, from which Presbyterians were excluded. Though
the offending act was repealed in 1782, many grievances still remained.
Many farmers had benefited from the expansion of the market. As in
England, however, there were those for whom economic change brought
the prospect of insecurity and downward social mobility. The rapid
expansion of new-style farming in parts of Leinster and Munster reduced
the land available for small farmers and turned many of them into labour-
ers. Agrarian unrest was the consequence, especially in the rich agricul-
tural land of the Golden Vale. This ‘Whiteboy’ movement of the 1760s
was followed by a similar ‘Rightboy’ movement in the 1780s. Though it is
possible to differentiate between the two movements, it seems clear that
they were both responses to the pressures of the market. The ‘Rightboys’,
for example, complained about the use of cheap labour, the rise in rents
and the practice of advertising vacant farms for sale, thus making them
available to non-locals. The areas affected were precisely those in which
the market economy was making most headway. Connacht, where sub-
sistence farming was the norm, was unaffected. In the north, however,
where the farmers were also exposed to market pressures, there were sim-
ilar outbreaks during the 1770s and 1780s by ‘Oakboys’ and ‘Steelboys’,
who drew their membership from Presbyterian small farmers. Here the
rise in rents, the payment of tithes and increased charges for the use of
turf for fuel were major grievances.
Rural violence often took a sectarian form especially where the pay-
ment of tithes was an issue. The main outbreak of sectarian violence,
however, took place in an area which had been affected by the onset
of proto-industrialisation. This was Co. Armagh, where the growth of
the linen industry had led to the creation of new industrial villages such
as Keady and Newtown Hamilton in parts of Ulster which had hitherto
been unaffected by the market. It is still not clear why conflict should have
arisen between episcopalian ‘Peep O Day Boys’ and Catholic ‘Defenders’
in the 1780s. Perhaps each regarded the other as intruders and a threat
to their standard of living. The rural population, largely Catholic, may
have seen the new villages as a danger. Whatever the reasons, sectarian
violence was a feature of the 1780s in these newly industrialised areas.
The antagonisms of the Reformation had returned, this time in a ‘mod-
ern’ environment.
The most serious crisis which the ascendancy had to face came in
the 1790s when the United Irishmen, after pressing unsuccessfully for
political change, rose in revolt in 1798. Fortunately for the landlords, the
rebels failed. The rebellion, however, did prove to be more widespread
than the country-wide outbreaks of rural protest which had taken place
from the 1760s onwards. In the north, the Presbyterian farmers of Antrim
and Down, or some of them, were ‘out’ (i.e. in rebellion) in 1798. South
of Dublin, in Wicklow, Wexford and Carlow, small farmers also rose in
revolt. But most of Ireland, especially the west, where a small French
force landed in 1798, was uninvolved.
Tom Paine’s Rights of Man circulated in the cities of the east coast
(Wolfe Tone called it the ‘Koran of Belfast’), but sectarian hostility proved
to be more powerful than ideals of universal brotherhood. In Co. Armagh,
sectarian conflict had already broken out in the 1780s. It became more
intense after the outbreak of the French Revolution and the rise of the
United Irishmen. In 1795, after a violent clash between Catholic and
Protestant at the Diamond (Co. Armagh), landlords placed themselves
at the head of a ‘Church and King’ organisation known as the Orange
Order. On the strongly episcopalian estates of the north, Protestant land-
lords and tenants were enabled to unite under the banner of ‘No Popery’.
Not all landlords followed this course. The Whig earl of Gosford was a
notable exception, but it was the general tendency among more conser-
vative landlords.
In the counties south of Ulster, where Catholics were in a majority, the
situation was different. Here a Protestant presence was looked upon as
an indication that landlords were attempting a policy of ‘colonisation’.
In Co. Louth, John Foster, former speaker of the Irish House of Com-
mons, openly advertised for Protestant tenants. In Wicklow, villages like
Newtown Mount Kennedy were newly established Protestant centres in
a largely Catholic countryside. Thus the south became a reverse image
of the north. In Armagh, a Protestant declared, ‘Sir, I hate a Papist as I
do a toad and none of my neighbours has gone further in their extirpa-
tion than I have.’ In Cavan, a group of Catholic Defenders stated their
intention to ‘destroy every Scotchman or Presbyterian they could find’.
The worst excesses, however, were reserved for Wexford in 1798. Nearly
one hundred Protestants were executed in Wexford town and a number
of others were burned alive in a barn at Scullabogue, near New Ross. The
shadow of 1798 lay heavily over nineteenth-century Irish history, both in
the north, where Scullabogue was remembered, and in the south where
the counter-atrocities perpetrated by the militia passed into popular con-
sciousness.
The rebellion of 1798 led Pitt to conclude that a union of Ireland with
Britain was a political necessity, in spite of the opposition of the ascen-
dancy. The result of two years of pressure upon the Irish parliament was
the Act of Union of 1800 which provided for Irish representation in the
House of Commons (100 members) as well as for the election of 25 repre-
sentative peers to the House of Lords. It was intended that the Act would
win Catholic support thanks to an additional measure admitting Irish
Catholic MPs, but George III refused to give way on what he regarded as
an essential element of the constitution. For some time, therefore, the full
implications of the Act of Union were concealed. Of the three cultures
of Ireland, it was only one, the Anglo-Irish episcopalian interest, which
was represented at Westminster. The Irish Catholic bishops gave their
support to the measure but reaped no reward. In Ireland, at least for the
moment, the ascendancy was victorious.
In Scotland, in the years following the Glorious Revolution, there were
three distinctive cultures: the Presbyterianism of much of the Lowlands
and those parts of the Highlands under Campbell influence; the episco-
palianism of the east coast, north of the Tay; and the residual Catholicism
of a few scattered areas, especially those under MacDonald control in
the Isles. Of these, Catholicism, despite Presbyterian obsessions with the
growth of ‘Popery’, was the least important. The real struggle in Scot-
land lay between the cultures of Presbyterianism and episcopalianism,
each with their own interpretation of the recent past. The episcopalians
who had been royalist in the civil war looked back to the memory of Mon-
trose, whose remains, scattered after his execution, had been recovered
and buried with due solemnity at the Restoration. (The Montrose legend,
however, was complicated by his Covenanting past.) The Presbyterian
version of recent history singled out the ‘Killing Time’ after the Restora-
tion, when their most zealous members had been persecuted. During the
rebellion of 1715, Jacobite commanders asked strangers, whose sympa-
thies were unknown, whether they attended the meeting house (episco-
pal) or the church (Presbyterian), a clear indication of how the battle lines
were drawn.
The Glorious Revolution replaced an episcopalian ascendancy with a
Presbyterian ascendancy. In 1690 the victors abolished lay patronage and
placed the presentation of ministers in the hands of the presbytery and
the heritor (chief landowner) of the parish. The Kirk Session, made up of
ministers and elders, became the chosen instrument for the enforcement
of Presbyterian views on private and public morality. With the backing
Figure 27. Statue of Robert Burns (1759–96)

The poetry of Robert Burns provided a powerful counterblast to the
Puritanism of official Scottish culture. Burns became a symbol of a pop-
ular democratic tradition, today annually renewed in the Burns Night
suppers. Burns was also popular among the Ulster Scots.
of the English government, the newly established Church was able to

exercise its authority south of the Forth. In the south-west, Glasgow,
Ayrshire and Galloway, the Covenanters were dominant. In Edinburgh,
William Carstares, who had once been tortured on suspicion during the
Rye House Plot, was the spokesman for William III. Episcopalian clergy
in strongly Presbyterian areas were ‘rabbled’ by hostile gangs and forced
to leave their parishes. Others were accused of immorality and ejected by

special committees set up by the General Assembly. In Scotland, more so
than elsewhere in the British Isles, the Glorious Revolution possessed a
revolutionary character, displacing one regime and establishing another.
North of the Forth, among the great landowners and gentry of the
east coast, the story was more complicated. Here there was no equivalent
of the great cities of Glasgow and Edinburgh. Episcopalian landowners,
secure in their estates and the backing of equally well-established relatives
or patrons, were able to resist the pressures of the General Assembly. The
universities of St Andrews and Aberdeen were purged of episcopalians
but even so it was said in 1749 that episcopalian schools in the north-east
‘poisoned the greatest part of the Young Gentry of those parts with Prin-
ciples that have since thoroughly appeared – For as the young gentlemen
came to their estates, Nonjuring meeting houses were instantly erected
on their Lands: and they were themselves almost to a man the officers in
the Rebel army in 1745’. Presbyterian ministers found it difficult to make
headway, in the face of gentry hostility, after lay patronage was restored
by the Patronage Act of 1712, during the Tory-dominated last years of
Anne. In Scotland as a whole the real power of the establishment was
confined to the area south of the Forth–Clyde line. Without the backing
of the English government, the Presbyterian cause might well have been
placed in jeopardy and it was the knowledge of this which created among
the Presbyterians a strong commitment to the Act of Union of 1707.
Among the Presbyterians there was a wide variety of opinion ranging
from the Cameronians at one end of the spectrum with their distrust of
the secular world and the Moderates at the other. The Kirk Session of
Morton may be taken as representing one powerful strain in its fierce
denunciation of dancing in 1715:
Considering that the great abuse that is commeted at wedding dinners and in
particular by promiscuous dancing betwixt young men and young women which
is most abominable, not to be practised in a land of light, and condemned in
former time of Presbytery as not only unnecessary but sensuall, being only an
inlet of lust and provocation to uncleanness of men and women in this loose and
degenerate age, wherein the devil seems to be raging by a spirit of uncleanness
and profanity.
Robert Woodrow, historian of the days of persecution, lamented in 1725

that ‘Wickedness is come to a new height.’ He protested that ‘all the
villainous, profane and obscene books and plays, as printed in London,
are got down by Allen Ramsay and lent out for an easy price, to young
boys, servant girls of the better sort, and gentlemen’. The Moderates,
represented by such figures as the historian William Robertson, friend of
David Hume, took a more detached view of the temptations of secular
culture, and it was from this end of the Presbyterian spectrum that the
Scottish Enlightenment, or much of it, emerged.
The first open conflict between the two cultures came after the acces-
sion of the Hanoverian George I in 1714. In 1715 the episcopalians rose
in revolt in the name of James VIII, counting upon widespread resent-
ment against the Act of Union to bring the uncommitted over to their
side. For a year, the future of Scotland, and perhaps of the British Isles,
was in the balance, much as it had been during ‘the troubles’ of the pre-
vious century. In the event, however, the Presbyterian regime survived,
though the gap between the two cultures remained as wide as ever.
The rebellion of 1745, though more celebrated in romantic legend
than the ’15, was much less of a threat to the government. The Young
Pretender found support only among a minority of Highland clans and
among a fringe of discontented episcopalian gentry. The initiative for the
rebellion seems to have come largely from France as a means of cre-
ating trouble in northern Britain. The great magnates and substantial
gentry stayed aloof from what they saw as an ill-conceived venture. One
of the MacDonald chiefs urged Charles to go back home. However lim-
ited the support which Charles received among the episcopalians, one
of the consequences of the rebellion was to widen the rift between them
and the Presbyterian establishment. The penalties levied on unqualified
clergymen were increased in 1746 and again in 1748. Clergymen found
breaking the law by preaching to more than four people were made liable
to six months’ imprisonment for the first offence and to banishment for
life after the second. Meeting houses were plundered or burned down. It
was not until 1792, four years after the death of Charles, that these penal
laws were repealed.
The tensions between Presbyterian and episcopalian culture were well
exemplified in the life of Sir Walter Scott (1771–1832). There were epis-
copalians in Scott’s background but he was brought up by a father who
was a strict Presbyterian. Scott recalled how his father observed the Sab-
bath by preaching three sermons to the household, cross-questioning his
audience at the end to see how well they had listened. When one of the
family praised the Sunday broth as ‘good’, Scott’s father poured a cup
of cold water into his plate, saying ‘Aye, too good’. Scott himself reacted
against this upbringing. He married an episcopalian and his children were
christened by episcopalian ministers. His novels Waverley and Old Mor-
tality indicate how Scott looked upon the recent history of Scotland as a
clash between two cultures.
The battle of Culloden in 1746 was the Scottish equivalent of the battle
of the Boyne. Victory gave the Presbyterians a new confidence in their
own future, creating conditions which made possible the rise of open
divisions within the Established Church, between the ‘Moderate’ and
‘Popular’ parties. In the absence of a Scottish parliament, the General

Assembly provided the occasion for debates upon issues of the day. In
the main, the Moderates could be relied upon to support government
policy, notably during the American wars. The Popular party, which was
more critical of the role of government patronage in the Kirk, supported
the Americans. On a different issue, the passing of a Catholic Relief Act in
1778, the parties also took different sides, the Moderates being in favour
of the official policy of toleration. Outside the establishment lay a number
of seceding sects, divided among themselves and from the establishment
about the correct relationship between Church and State.
The confidence of the establishment was also bolstered by the eco-
nomic revival of mid-century. The initial impact of the Union had been
disappointing. Such economic changes as took place were on a small
scale. In the south-west, Glasgow merchants began to take advantage of
the opening-up of trade with the American colonies though Edinburgh
remained the largest city in Scotland. In the Highlands, first in Kintyre
and then, in 1737, on the rest of his estates, the duke of Argyll introduced
a system of cash rentals, replacing the indirect link through the ‘tacks-
men’ (the Scottish equivalent of the Irish ‘middleman’). But in Scotland,
as in Ireland, it was not until mid-century that the various regions began
to respond to the stimulus of the growing English and colonial market.
Signs of economic change become much more numerous in the second
half of the eighteenth century. The Clyde grew as a centre of trade with the
colonies. In Glasgow the building of Virginia Street (1753) and Jamaica
Street (1761) was evidence of a growing faith in a colonial future. In
Edinburgh, after the draining of the North loch and the construction of
the North Bridge in 1767, the building of the New Town began, with its
long list of streets dedicated to the British link.
Change was slow to come in the rural world but here also opportunities
offered by a wider English market proved difficult to resist. Most of the
better land in the Lowlands was enclosed during the second half of the
eighteenth century with commercial production as the end in view. Old-
style runrig (the equivalent of Irish rundale), with its communal sharing
of land, gave way gradually to individual farms on the English model
of tenant farmer and labourer. For the farmers this meant prosperity.
For the labourers the barrack-like bothies had little to recommend them.
‘Improvement’ on these lines made headway first in the Lothians of the
south-east, with its rich soils. In the north-east the pace of change was
slower. It was not until the 1790s that roads up to the new standards
began to be built on any scale in Aberdeenshire. In all areas landlords
came to see the planned village on the English model as a means of
stimulating economic growth on their estates, though in many cases the
experience proved less than satisfying. Planned villages such as Gifford
and Ormiston survive as a reminder of this phase of Scottish economic

history when an ‘Anglomania’ affected the Scottish landlords as much as
it did the French. (In Ireland also at this time, the planned village made
its appearance.)
Changes in the Lowlands were undramatic. The most dramatic changes
occurred in the Highlands in the aftermath of the defeat of the clans at
Culloden in 1746. Traditional dress was banned and hereditary jurisdic-
tion, the source of the legal powers enjoyed by the chiefs, abolished by
act of parliament in 1747. The chiefs’ estates were put into the hands
of Lowlanders who lost little time in replacing traditional land-holding
with cash rentals. To some extent these changes had been taking place
piecemeal. The ’45 rebellion itself may be seen as an attempt to halt
the process of change, but overwhelming defeat at Culloden in 1746
left the Highlands defenceless. Planned villages made their appearance
in the Highlands, sometimes with the aim of providing quasi-colonial
settlements for demobilised troops. When, in 1773, Dr Johnson visited
the Highlands in the company of Boswell, he was conscious of seeing a
culture in decay.
The middle of the eighteenth century may be taken as marking the
end of a period. Two centuries earlier there was by and large a balance
between two cultures, Highland and Lowland. The long-term effects
of the Reformation, the connection with England and the plantation of
Ulster led to a shift in the balance in favour of the Lowlands (now split
over the issue of episcopacy). When the kilt and the tartan returned in
the nineteenth century, it was as part of the Romantic movement. Low-
landers flocked to identify themselves with the clans from which they had
fled less than a century earlier. The cult of ‘Ossian’ (Oisin was the son
of Fionn MacCumhail in Irish legend) added to the confusion. James
Macpherson claimed to have discovered long-lost Scottish manuscripts
which were earlier than their Irish counterparts and, though Dr Johnson
among others denounced him as a forger, the Ossianic myth continued
to exercise an extraordinary fascination. In this way Highland culture
survived in transmogrified form in the Lowlands long after the social
reality had passed away in the Highlands themselves.
For a good deal of the eighteenth century the significance of Scotland
within a British Isles context was political, in the sense that successive
governments used episcopalian discontent under the guise of ‘Jacobitism’
to keep alive the prospect of a ‘Popish’ king. During the seventeenth
century Irish Catholicism had played the part of bogeyman. During the
next century the Whig ministry in London cast the episcopalians in a
similar role. The long Whig ascendancy after 1714 rested in large measure
upon the way in which the Whigs played the ‘Jacobite card’. The passing
Figure 28. The United Irishmen 1798
Henry Joy McCracken (1767–98) was one of the leaders of the United
Irishmen. He took part in the battle of Antrim and was later executed.
‘Henry Joy’ symbolises the role of Ulster Presbyterians and freethinkers
in the wider movement first of reform and then of rebellion through-
out Ireland which culminated in the rising of 1798. The term United
Irishmen was intended to link all religious persuasions, Catholic and
Protestant alike; ‘1798’ left a lasting impression upon Irish history.
of the Septennial Act in 1716, extending the life of parliament from three
to seven years, was made possible by the fear of Jacobitism. Scotland
influenced the course of English history in the seventeenth century; it
did so equally, if less dramatically, during the eighteenth.
Under the influence of Sir Lewis Namier, historians of the eighteenth
century have been particularly prone to see the history of England in nar-
rowly English terms. If the approach adopted here is correct, however,
this is a self-defeating procedure. England, as a consequence of deci-
sions made during the Reformation period, had become the centre of an
empire, the various cultures of which interacted with those of the mother
country as well as with each other. The culture of the English establish-
ment undoubtedly became more powerful than it had been earlier but
the fact remains that the cultures of the ‘periphery’, especially those of
Scotland and colonial America, influenced the course of events in Eng-
land itself. Ireland was more isolated, but even here, as we have seen,
the Scotch-Irish came to form part of the story of 1776. In England,
the names of Swift, Burke, Goldsmith and Sheridan indicate that the
Anglo-Irish element in the culture of the metropolis cannot be ignored.
In addition, though the ‘Irish Question’ did not assume the proportions
which it reached during the nineteenth century, unrest in Ireland during
the crisis years of 1796–1800 became an object of great concern for Pitt’s
administration. Pitt was willing to risk alienating Protestant opinion by
granting concessions to Irish Catholics in order to make Ireland more
secure. The Irish rebellion of 1798 also made possible an Act of Union
between Great Britain and Ireland. This was an enactment which proved
to have profound consequences for the history of the British Isles during
the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
Over much of the history of the English empire during the eighteenth
century there looms the shadow of the Reformation rather than the
Enlightenment. In order to understand the outlook of the various cul-
tures which went to make up the empire, it is the events of the century
earlier rather than those of the eighteenth century itself which provide
the key. In England, the execution of Charles I was still a live issue, in
Ireland, the massacre of 1641, in Scotland, Montrose and Claverhouse,
in colonial America, the memory of Hampden and Sidney. The Glorious
Revolution of 1688 was merely one of a number of events which gave
meaning to particular pasts.
Postscript
Since this book was first published a spate of scholarly studies have
appeared concerned with what we may now call the ‘British’ empire,
a political reality from 1707 when the Act of Union made it possible for
the Scots to take full advantage of the opportunities of imperial expan-
sion. Mention may first be made of An Imperial State at War: Britain from
1689–1815 (Stone, ed., 1994) which, building upon John Brewer’s The
Sinews of Power (1989), stresses the importance of the imperial dimen-
sion to the British State and by implication highlights the deficiencies of
the narrowly Anglo-centric approach of the Namier school. As already
mentioned, this new interest in empire also raised awareness of the role of
the slave trade in the development of ports such as Bristol and Liverpool.
As mentioned above, David Ellis, in The Rise of African Slavery in the
Americas (Cambridge, 2000), showed how Britain took a leading role in
developing this highly profitable trade in human beings. Historians were
always aware of the slave trade but it is only in recent years that it has
come to be a central topic for research. Professor N.A.M. Rodger’s fine
study The Command of the Ocean: A Naval History of Britain, 1649–1815
(London, 2004) is essential reading.
In many ways, however, the most influential piece of history concerned
with the eighteenth century has been Professor Linda Colley’s recent
study Britons: Forging the Nation 1707–1837. In this book she argues that
the period from the passing of the Anglo-Scottish Union in 1707 wit-
nessed the creation of a new British identity based in large measure upon
a shared Protestantism, a deep hatred of Britain’s chief enemy and rival,
France, and a newly developed respect for the British monarch. James
I (VI) had hoped that the Union of the Crowns in 1603 would lead
to a common British identity in his newly named Kingdom of Great
Britain but in the face of English political opposition this did not come
about. In 1707, however, the government itself took the lead in promot-
ing the Anglo-Scottish Union amid the fears of French invasion, and in
due course after 1714, the Hanoverian monarchs came to symbolise a
common Protestantism opposed to the Catholic Stuarts.
This new sense of British identity, which is the central theme of Colley’s
book, was symbolised most dramatically in the building of Edinburgh’s
‘New Town’ after 1760 with its George Street, Hanover Street, and Char-
lotte Square. ‘Britishness’ was an identity sponsored and encouraged
from the ‘top down’, ‘officially constructed’ in Colley’s words (p. 145)
but also calling upon popular support. The key period in her view was
after 1783.
In the half century after the American War, there would emerge in Great Britain a
far more consciously and officially constructed patriotism which stressed attach-
ment to the monarchy, the value of military and naval achievement and the desir-
ability of strong, stable government by a virtuous, able and authentically British
elite. (L. Colley, Britons: Forging the Nations 1707–1837 (Yale, 1992), p. 145)
Colley here uses the term ‘patriotism’. Elsewhere she refers to the ‘evo-
lution of what must be called British nationalism’ and to the creation
of Great Britain as an ‘invented’ nation (p. 5). Colley is in effect pro-
viding a case study in nationalism and it is in this, I believe, that much
of her originality lies. Colley’s ‘Britain’ is not a special case. Indeed, as
she herself comments, her approach is a landmark in the sense that it
enables us to compare British nationalism with other European nation-
alisms. Colley’s ‘Britain’ is not a special case. Indeed, as she herself com-
ments, her approach resembles that which Eugene Weber took in his
study of French nationalism, Peasants into Frenchmen (Stanford, 1976),
but whereas Weber was concerned with the impact of ‘modernisation’ in
the form of railways and mass education, Colley’s emphasis falls upon
religion and national hostility towards the French in what amounted to
xenophobia. It should also be added that the dominant French national
identity from 1870 was civic and secular in contrast to the ethno-religious
element in British nationalism.
A critical discussion of the implications of Britons lies beyond the scope
of this ‘postscript’. Two points may be made, however. The first is that
by stressing the creation of national unity Colley invites us to re-evaluate
what had been seen in the standard interpretation of the 1790s and later
decades as a period of ‘reaction’. In this sense she has provided a Tory ver-
sion of this period which challenges that offered by Edward Thompson in
his The Making of the English Working Class (London, 1967). Colley plays
down the role of class conflict and takes a more positive view of religion
than does Thompson, but in order to do justice to the complexities of this
period, however, we perhaps need to read each historian in relation to the
other, testing their contrasting but not mutually exclusive hypotheses.
Our second point relates to Colley’s treatment of the Act of Union of
1801 which created a United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. In
my view, she fails to make her readers aware of the full impact of this
upon the British (sc. Anglo-Scottish) State which had been in existence
since 1707. In 1821 the population of Ireland amounted to 6.8 million
compared to 0.7 million for Wales, 2.0 million for Scotland and 11.2 mil-
lion for England (see L. Stone, ed., An Imperial State at War (1994), p.
73). Thus the incorporation of Ireland had immense implications for the
United Kingdom, especially as 4 million of its inhabitants were Catholic.
Had the political identity of this British state been ‘civic’, the problems of
assimilating its new members would still have been considerable. As Col-
ley has demonstrated, however, the predominant national identity was
Protestant. Catholic Emancipation had been refused in Ireland in 1793
and was still being refused in 1801 partly as a consequence of George III’s
belief that his coronation oath required him to stand by ‘the Protestant
Constitution’. As if to emphasise the point that the religious situation
would not change, the Protestant Church of Ireland remained an estab-

lished church, with the legal right, based upon the constitution, to levy
tithes. In effect after 1801 a Protestant Ascendancy was left in power.
Colley’s ‘Britons’, or some of them, had been very much involved in
the suppression of the United Irishmen in Ulster after 1796. Welsh and
Scottish ‘fencibles’ (i.e. troops raised for defence) took part in the bloody
campaign of 1797 known as ‘the dragooning of Ulster’ (Ian MacBride,
Scripture Politics (Oxford, 1998), p. 183). In the eyes of one general, Ulster
was the equivalent of England’s Vendée, namely a rebellious province to
be brought to heel by means which seemed appropriate, including hang-
ing, half-hanging or pitch capping. The year 1798 brought the French
Revolution to Ireland with all its violence. Leinster and Connaught as
well as Ulster were now fully involved in what amounted to civil war. To
ignore it as Professor Colley does in confining her attention to Britain is
to leave out of account an episode which provides an illuminating case
study of British nationalism in action. Thus ‘The Ancient Britons, a Welsh
fencible regiment which arrived in Ulster in April [1797], was particu-
larly feared and hated’ (MacBride, Scripture Politics (1998, p. 183). One
observer later recalled that ‘the established clergy, whom he christened
the “church militant” were among the most zealous exponents of this
policy’ (ibid., p. 184). The ‘Ireland’ which joined Great Britain in the
political union of 1801 was in fact a society emerging from a decade of
revolutions and counter-revolutions with a recent history very different
from that of Scotland and Wales. To understand the Irish problem of the
nineteenth century requires some awareness of this.
Finally, in making her point about the strength of British national-
ism Professor Colley tempts us to ignore the existence of what we might
call ‘Radical Britain’. It is true that radical opinion was much weakened
after the loss of America and was much weakened after the outbreak of
war with France in 1793. Even so, however, we expect some mention of
Jeremy Bentham and philosophical Radicalism, of Peterloo, of Shelley’s
reference to ‘An old, mad, blind depressed and dying King’ (from his
sonnet, ‘England in 1819’) and to the Extraordinary Black Book. Daniel
O Connell deserves much more than a brief reference to Catholic eman-
cipation and a note about support for women’s rights (Colley, Britons,
pp. 279–80). It would be unfair, however, to conclude these comments
on too critical a note. Britons is an extraordinarily rich and original book
which among its valuable features provides informed comment upon the
historical implications of individual works of art. Above all it makes its
readers aware of a phenomenon whose existence is often denied – British
nationalism.
It remains to mention important studies in Scottish and Irish history
which have appeared since 1989 and which are relevant to our ‘British
Isles’ model. Colin Kidd, in his Subverting Scotland’s Past (Cambridge,

1993), shows how the dominant version of Scottish identity, tracing it
back to early Celtic times, was undermined during the Scottish Enlight-
enment only to be replaced by the image of the Scot as Highlander.
Kidd has illuminating chapters in Fr Innes (who first exploded the estab-
lished myth), William Robertson, Sir James Macpherson and Sir Wal-
ter Scott, all important influences upon the creation of a new sense of
Scottish identity. His later book British Identities before Nationalism: Eth-
nicity and Nationhood in the Atlantic World 1600–1800 (Cambridge, 1999)
discusses ethnic identities in the British Isles as a whole with the aim
of demonstrating their secondary importance in relation to confessional
loyalties. These two works are a remarkable scholarly achievement. Clare
O’Halloran’s Golden Ages and Barbarous Nations: Antiquarian Debate and
Cultural Politics in Ireland, c.1750–1800 (Cork, 2004) is a parallel study
raising comparisons between Ireland and Scotland. Part of the interest
of O’Halloran’s book lies in her description of the search for an inclusive
civic identity in Ireland in the mid- and late eighteenth century.
There has also been a remarkable efflorescence of Irish historiography
dealing with the eighteenth century. S.J. Connolly provides an illuminat-
ing overview in his chapter in D. George Boyce and Alan O’Day (eds.),
The Making of Modern Irish History: Revisionism and the Revisionist Con-
troversy (London, 1996). The extent to which Ireland should be seen as
an ancien régime rather than a colony is now a matter for debate. Brendan
O Buachalla has also raised new issues for historians of the British Isles
by demonstrating that Irish Jacobitism was much more powerful than has
been supposed hitherto (see Irish Review 12, 1992). His work has been
followed up by Vincent Morley in his Irish Opinion and the American Rev-
olution 1760–1783 (Cambridge, 2002) and Eamonn O Ciardha, Ireland
and the Jacobite Cause 1685–1766 (Dublin, 2002). The centenary of the
Rebellion of 1798 also gave rise to a lively debate which may be followed
in Kevin Whelan’s The Tree of Liberty (Cork, 1996) and other works by
him and in Tom Dunne’s fascinating study Rebellions: Memoir, Memory
and 1798 (Dublin, 2004). Ian MacBride’s Scripture Politics: Ulster Presby-
terians and Irish Radicalism in the Late Eighteenth Century (Oxford, 1998)
is essential reading for Ireland as a whole. The journal Eighteenth Century
Ireland also provides an invaluable guide to current debate, as does Jim
Smyth’s general survey, The Making of the United Kingdom 1600–1800:
Religion and Identity in Britain and Ireland (London, 2001).
9 The Britannic melting pot
During the course of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries the balance
of cultures within the British Isles once more shifted radically. In Eng-
land, the social, demographic and economic changes, which are usually
subsumed under the portmanteau concept ‘Industrial Revolution’, led
to the creation of a new urban culture in ‘the north’, a term which may
be used to include the industrial areas of the west midlands as well as
the areas north of the Trent. ‘The north’ in this sense comprised the
large cities of Birmingham, Liverpool, Manchester, Sheffield, Leeds and
Newcastle, the factory towns of Lancashire and Yorkshire and the min-
ing villages of the counties north of Nottinghamshire. Historians have
tended to treat ‘the midlands’ as if it were different from ‘the north’.
In fact, however, there seems to be no good reason why we should
not look upon ‘the midlands’ as a sub-culture within the north. From
this point of view, the midlands, Merseyside, Manchester and its hinter-
land, the West Riding, Tyneside and Teesside all constituted sub-cultures
within an overwhelmingly industrial ‘northern’ culture. (An exception
to this general northern pattern was Cornwall with its tin and copper
mining.)
The new economic importance of ‘the north’ appeared all the more
striking when contrasted with the decline of London as an industrial cen-
tre. Industries, such as shipbuilding and silk weaving, unable to compete
with northern competition, sank into insignificance. Other skilled trades
such as coopering and watch manufacture declined, especially after 1850.
In 1870, Sir Charles Trevelyan described the metropolis as ‘a gigantic
engine for depraving and degrading our population’ and ‘a common sink
of everything that is worst in the United Kingdom’. In some London-
based occupations, such as dock labour, brewing and transport, wages
were driven down by the importation of cheap labour from the depressed
agricultural counties of the south-west, from Wales and from Ireland. The
immigration of many thousands of east European Jews in the 1880s led
to fierce competition in the tailoring and shoemaking industries, already
hard-pressed by provincial competition. London retained its importance
219
Figure 29. The Palace of Westminster
After the fire of 1834, the palace at Westminster was rebuilt on lines which followed the traditional
constitution of king, lords and commons together with the four nations of the 1801 Act of Union.
Since then much has changed. Scotland has its own parliament, Wales its assembly and there is now
a Republic of Ireland. The British monarchy and the House of Lords still have a prime place in the
ritual of opening parliament but constitutionally the House of Commons is dominant. The art and
architecture of the Palace of Westminster repay study. It is noticeable, for example, that images of
the mythical King Arthur are prominent, whereas such figures as Jeremy Bentham or the Chartists
are absent.
The Britannic melting pot 221
as a banking and insurance centre but in general it now faced severe

competition from ‘the north’.
Changes in the cultural balance also took place in other parts of the
British Isles. In Scotland, the growth of Glasgow and the towns which
surrounded it led to the rapid rise of Clydeside as a centre of industry and
mining, rivalling the English west midlands. Social and economic changes
were accompanied in due course by religious change, in this case by the
split known as the ‘Disruption’ (1843) within the established Presbyte-
rian Church. In terms of Scotland as a whole the Highlands became less
important. The division between Highlands and Lowlands was overshad-
owed by a new divide, that between the heavily industrial south-west and
the more conservative and rural east, with Edinburgh as its capital. As
in Wales and Ireland, there was an anglicised gentry in Scotland, which,
as an ascendancy class, retained much of its power and influence. Amid
all this change there took place the rise of new sub-cultures created by
the influx of Catholic and Protestant immigrants from Ulster in search
of employment.
In Wales, similar changes took place as a consequence of the industri-
alisation of south Wales and to a lesser extent of north-west Wales. As we
have seen, there had always been regional differences in Wales, but the
contrast between the Welsh-speaking rural north and the more anglicised
industrial south was intensified by the economic and social changes of
the nineteenth century. Cardiff became a ‘melting pot’ attracting English
and Irish immigrants as well as internal migrants from Cardiganshire and
rural counties. Welshmen also poured into Liverpool, and any history of
Wales which left out the role of Liverpool during this period would be
unbalanced. In the early twentieth century a revivalist preacher said that
he preferred to speak in ‘Welsh Liverpool’ rather than ‘English Cardiff’.
A third culture, that of the English-orientated gentry, lost ground during
this period. Gentry families which dominated the parliamentary repre-
sentation of Wales in 1800 had vanished from view by 1900.
It remains to mention Ireland. Here the counterpart of the rise of north-
ern England, Clydeside and Glamorgan was the industrial expansion of
Belfast and the Lagan valley. It was Ulster which benefited from the Act of
Union in spite of the initial fears of Orangemen. The south, by contrast,
suffered from considerable de-industrialisation and the infant industries
which had made their appearance under the wing of the protectionist
legislation before 1800 found it impossible to compete with the flood of
cheap goods from England. Dublin became an economic backwater as
Belfast prospered. Ulster, which had taken very much a second place to
the south for much of the later medieval and early modern period, became
the centre of a confident, expanding culture. One of the casualties of the
Map 16. The railway age during the nineteenth century.
nineteenth century was the Anglo-Irish ascendancy, which, like its equiv-
alent in Wales, gradually lost its political grip, outside the province of
Ulster.
The Great Famine of 1845–9, however, was a key event or series of
events, which over a century later has lost none of its power to shock. It has
been estimated that over a million died of starvation or disease, the west of
Ireland being the hardest hit. Massive emigration followed, often under
conditions of severe deprivation. Irish immigration had massive social
consequences for the English north-west and for the west of Scotland. It
is the impact of the Famine on the United States which has attracted most
attention, in the process creating parallels with the Jewish Holocaust.
The famine provides a necessary background for the history of immi-
gration into the British Isles during the nineteenth century. It was not
the only factor, however. Historians once argued that the rapid growth of
British industrial cities was made possible by a shift of population from
the rural south to the industrial north. Their emphasis now is upon the
influx into the cities from local areas. Looked at in the context of the
British Isles, however, it is clear that there was a good deal of population
movement from one cultural zone to another. The result was to create
in cities such as Glasgow, Liverpool, Belfast and Cardiff a ‘melting pot’
effect, marked by inter-ethnic hostility. Football teams such as Celtic
and Rangers in Glasgow, Hearts and Hibernian in Edinburgh, Dundee
United and Dundee FC in Dundee, Belfast Celtic and Linfield in Belfast,
and Everton and Liverpool on Merseyside drew their support from dif-
ferent ethnic communities. In Wales, internal migrants from the rural
north faced the hostility of the southerners who denounced the ‘Cardies’
from Cardiganshire.
In northern England, Jack Lawson looking back from 1932 described
the way in which ‘the county of Durham has become a sort of social
melting pot owing to the rapid development of the coalfield during the
nineteenth century’.
By the time of which I write [1890s] there was a combination of Lancashire,

Cumberland, Yorkshire, Staffordshire, Cornish, Irish, Scottish, Welsh, Northum-
brian and Durham accents. All these and more tongues were to be heard in
a marked way; and not only that, but the families in each group gravitated
together and formed a common bond. (Jack Lawson, ‘A Man’s Life’, quoted in
W. H. B. Court, British Economic History 1870–1914: Commentary and Documents
(Cambridge, 1965), p. 97.)
Lawson also commented on the difference between the relatively settled

older collieries in the east of the county and the mobile populations of
the new collieries in the west: ‘A new colliery or a new seam meant bigger
money and there was always an emigration followed by the incoming of
new people to take their place’ (ibid.).
One of the main consequences of the intermingling of cultures within
the British Isles was the rise of inter-ethnic hostility particularly in rela-
tion to Irish Catholics and, in the late nineteenth century, to Jews also.
Catholic Emancipation, which was a relatively minor reform proposal

in some eyes, aroused strong feelings because it implied the entry of
Catholic Irish into parliament. In the 1840s the Maynooth Grant issue
became, in Harriet Martineau’s words, ‘the great political controversy of
the day – the subject on which society is going mad’ (quoted in E. R.
Norman, Anti-Catholicism in Victorian England (London, 1968), p. 23).
‘No Popery’ and hostility to new migrants became an explosive political
mixture. In Stockport in 1842, where the proportion of Irish-born had
risen from 7 per cent to 10 per cent, a large crowd carried an effigy of
the Catholic parish priest through the Irish quarter and tore it to pieces.
William Murphy, leader of the Protestant Electoral Union, surrounded
by the bodyguard of ‘Stalybridge lads’, held a series of violent ‘No Pop-
ery’ meetings in 1867–8. During the 1868 general election at Stalybridge,
Conservative party placards were headed
t h e q u e e n o r t h e po pe
which will you have to reign over you – will you suffer Mr Gladstone to destroy the
supremacy of your sovereign and substitute the supremacy of the Pope? Sidebot-
tom calls to English freemen to assert their rights. (Neville Kirk, ‘Ethnicity, Class
and Popular Toryism 1850–1870’, in K. Lunn, Hosts, Immigrants and Minorities
(London, 1980))
In 1868, English reaction to Irish sympathy for executed Fenian prison-

ers, known as the ‘Manchester Martyrs’, led to widespread rioting. The
rise of the Home Rule movement in Ireland from the 1880s onwards led
to a further intensification of ethnic rivalries throughout the British Isles.
Historians have become accustomed to thinking of the British Isles
in terms of four national histories each of which could be dealt with
separately in its own terms, English, Welsh, Scottish or Irish. As we have
seen, however, there were at least two cultures in England, three in Wales,
three in Scotland (four if we include Shetland and Orkney) and two in
Ireland (or three with the Gaelic west). A source of additional complexity
is the fact that in some areas these cultures overlapped, thus introducing
problems arising from inter-ethnic rivalries. The influx of east European
Jews in the 1880s was another factor in the situation. The early modern
period (c. 1500–c. 1700) had been marked by heavy outmigration into
Ireland and the American colonies from Britain. The modern period was
characterised by large-scale movement of population into the industrial
areas of Britain from Ireland and elsewhere. The history of the British
Isles during this period resembles that of the United States more than is
commonly realised. From this point of view the multi-ethnic character of
modern Britain is a continuation of nineteenth-century trends.
There is, finally, the additional complication that the various cultures of
the British Isles were an immense source of emigrants to North America,
the United States as well as Canada, and to Australia, New Zealand and
South Africa. This nineteenth-century migration was much less exclu-
sively English than that of the seventeenth century. The Catholic Irish
who had avoided emigration in earlier periods now came to accept emi-
gration as an unavoidable, if unwelcome, necessity. The Scots also emi-
grated in large numbers from both Highlands and Lowlands. Only the
Welsh who had the mines of south Wales as their ‘New World’ were not
represented in proportion to their numbers. The new empire of the nine-
teenth century was very much the creation of the British Isles as a whole
and as a consequence reflected the tensions of the cultural complex from
which it originated.
From the late eighteenth century onwards the structure of English
society changed radically under the impact of rapid industrialisation and
urbanisation. By the early twentieth century over four-fifths of a vastly
increased population lived in towns, compared with one third in the mid-
eighteenth century. The proportion of the population engaged in agricul-
ture dropped to 5 per cent from well over 33 per cent earlier. In broad
terms the continuing ‘Industrial Revolution’ is the most important fact
with which the historian has to deal. It is not the only fact, however. The
Act of Union with Ireland (1800) brought the complexities of Irish poli-
tics and society into the heart of the Westminster parliament, where they
could not be ignored. Irish immigration into England also introduced eth-
nic problems, which were aggravated by a ‘nativist’ reaction in particular
areas. ‘Ireland’ during this period became a new feature of the English
political landscape at both the national and local level. There was also the
fact of religious revival among all the Christian denominations. Though
half the population remained uninterested in organised religion, the pro-
portion of religious activists rose dramatically in the course of the century.
The most noteworthy change was the rise of dissent from the position of
a minority to numerical equality with the Established Church. Class feel-
ing, religious consciousness and ethnic rivalries were interrelated poles
around which much of English life revolved.
At the end of the Napoleonic wars the dominant culture was still that
of the Anglican establishment, encompassing a wide variety of opinion
and life-style. It was agreed by such influential spokesmen as Blackstone,
Burke and Paley that an Established Church was essential for the preser-
vation of social order. In the early nineteenth century, as in the eighteenth,
membership of the Established Church was needed for full participation
in politics, in the army and the learned professions. Anglican control
of the universities and the great public schools led almost inevitably to
this consequence. At Oxford, acceptance of the thirty-nine articles of the
Church of England was necessary for matriculation and at Cambridge,

for admission to a degree.
As we have seen, during the eighteenth century, the conflict between
the cultures of Church and dissent was a major theme of the history of the
English empire, with victory going to the Church in England itself and
to dissent in the American colonies. In England, during the nineteenth
century, industrial and demographic expansion in ‘the north’ provided
an opportunity of which the dissenting sects took more advantage than
the Established Church. The towns of the West Riding were strongholds
of nonconformity and in cities such as Birmingham, Liverpool, Leicester
and Sheffield the city council came to be dominated by dissenters after
the electoral reforms of the 1830s.
The attention of some historians has been concentrated in recent years
upon the ‘Making of the English Working Class’. In fact, however, it seems
to have been the relative deprivation which the dissenters experienced that
fuelled most of the agitation against the establishment during the 1820s
and 1830s. The repeal of the Test and Corporation Acts in 1828 and the
establishment of University College, London, in the same year testified
to the new strength of the dissenters. It was followed by pressure for
further political change which led eventually to the passing of the Reform
Act of 1832. This in its turn led to a growing demand for the remedy of
specific dissenting grievances, especially the payment of tithes, the levying
of Church rates to pay for the upkeep of the fabric of the parish church, the
legal requirement that dissenters should be married within a Church of
the establishment and the continued exclusion of dissenters from Oxford
and Cambridge. In 1833 dissenting leaders attacked the union of Church
and State as unjust and unscriptural. In 1834 a dissenting conference of
400 delegates under the chairmanship of Edward Baines, a prominent
Leeds nonconformist, demanded the disestablishment of the Church.
The animosity between the two cultures of Church and dissent domi-
nated English politics throughout the nineteenth century. During a period
of considerable industrial change it might have been expected that ‘class
conflict’ would come to the fore. This was true of some areas during the
late 1830s when the Chartist movement reached its peak. In general, how-
ever, sectarian animosity seems to have been far more important. In his
Autobiography ‘Mark Rutherford’ commented that, ‘Generally speaking,
there were two shops of each trade; one of which was patronised by the
Church and Tories, and another by the Dissenters and Whigs. The inhab-
itants were divided into two distinct camps – of the Church and Tory camp
the other camp knew nothing’ (‘Mark Rutherford’ (sc. W. H. White),
Autobiography (London, 1981), p. 34). Hostility between Church and
dissent broke out not infrequently into violence or near violence.
Figure 30. Statue of Caractacus

This statue of Caradoc (in Latin Caractacus) is of a mythical Briton.
In itself it symbolises the revival of ‘Welshness’ in industrial Britain.
Commissioned in London and carried out by an Irish artist in 1859 it
also illustrates the ‘Britannic melting pot’.
At Newark the parson ordered the fire engine to be wheeled out to hose a
dissenting preacher. Dissenting chapels continued to seek the obscurity
of the back streets in some towns. In Cambridgeshire, dissenters were
unacceptable as tenants on the estates of strongly Tory squires. There is no
doubt that as England became more religious in the nineteenth century,
in the sense that the power of organised religion grew, a sharper awareness
of rivalry developed between the cultures of Church and dissent.
The Lancashire towns of Blackburn and Ashton may be taken as illus-
trating what the contrast between the cultures of Church and dissent
meant in practice. It was said of Blackburn by a critic that
it is a thoroughgoing Tory community. Strong drink is the secret of its own and
Britain’s greatness; after that its heart has been given for long years to the Church
and cockfighting. Be sober, lead a decent and respectable life and your genuine
Blackburner will wax red at the mention of your name and dismiss you as ‘a ∗∗∗
Dissenter’.
In general, Tory millowners were less interested in inculcating ‘improv-

ing’ virtues and more tolerant of the working man’s beer. In the liberal
areas of Blackburn, the most important mills were those of the Pilkington
brothers, one of whom, James, was Liberal MP for the town. Here the
headquarters of the Liberal party at election times were to be found in
the Congregational chapel and the schoolroom, both built with Pilkington
patronage. In Ashton and Stalybridge, where dissenters were in a major-
ity, working men’s educational classes and mutual improvement societies
were popular, and temperance was much more of an issue. At Ashton
the Mason works became a centre of moral improvement with ‘library,
baths, burial society, mothers class (Sunday devotional meetings), bowl-
ing green, gymnasium, brass band and weekly lectures’. The local Tory
newspapers regarded all this munificence as an attempt to impose moral-
ity by authoritarian means. At a higher social level the passion of Lord
Derby for whist, horse-racing and gambling offers an interesting contrast.
The contrast between the cultures of Church and dissent was, to a
great extent, one between a largely rural ‘south’ and a heavily industri-
alised ‘north’. Asa Briggs has remarked that ‘a nineteenth century con-
flict between North and South was as much a leading theme of English
as of American history’ (The Age of Improvement 1783–1867 (London,
1959), p. 50). As the dominant Toryism of Blackburn makes clear, how-
ever, the dominance of dissent in the north was never absolute. Cobden,
spokesman for the ‘Manchester School of Free Trade’, was an Angli-
can. John Fielden, the Tory critic of the factory system, was MP for the
northern town of Oldham, and owner of a cotton mill at Todmorden.
The north was industrialised England, stretching from Newcastle in
the north-east to Birmingham in the west midlands. The textile industries
in Lancashire and Yorkshire, the metal industries in Birmingham, pot-

teries at Stoke-on-Trent, and mining in the north-east were the cen-
tres of a continuing process of industrialisation. New towns made their
appearance, such as Oldham in the first half of the century and Bar-
row and Middlesbrough in the second. The eighteenth-century ports
of Bristol and Liverpool, once heavily dependent on the slave trade for
their prosperity, found themselves functioning as outlets of the industrial
north. Within this region there were large areas given over to agricul-
ture and pastoral farming. The North Riding of Yorkshire and north
Lancashire were mainly rural, but the main trend within the north was
towards ever greater industrialisation on the basis of its rich deposits of
coal and iron. In what was once a relatively unpopulated highland Zone,
there were by the early twentieth century five large conurbations: Mersey-
side, Leeds, Manchester, Sheffield and Birmingham. In Northumber-
land, one in every four workers was a miner, one in five a worker in heavy
industry. In Durham the proportion was one in three and one in four
respectively.
‘The south’, with the large exception of London was, in contrast, dom-
inated by great landed estates, whose landlords were, on the whole, Tory
and Anglican. (The existence of Whig landlords does not alter the general
validity of this picture.) In rural areas the expectation was that tenants
would vote as their landlords wished. In Suffolk a witness declared that
‘the individual feeling among farmers is that their vote is their landlords’.
In 1841, a landlord stated that ‘I did think that interference between a
landlord with whose views you were acquainted and his tenants was not
justifiable according to those laws of delicacy and propriety which I con-
sider binding in such cases.’ Another advised his tenants to vote ‘in such
a manner as should appear to them to be right and according to good
conscience and as most likely to uphold that Church in which the purest
doctrines of our religion are taught in the best manner’. In 1831 the duke
of Northumberland ‘desired’ of his tenants to sign a petition against the
Reform Bill, asking to know the names of those who did not. In return
for rent reductions in bad times, landlords expected some recognition of
their generosity at election times. As Sir Frederick Pollock put it in his
discussion of the Land Laws,
The landlord in return expects a certain amount of deference and compliance in

various matters from his tenants. Not only does the farmer meet him halfway on
questions of shooting rights, and allow free passage to the hunt, but his political
support of the landlord is not infrequently reckoned on with as much confidence
as the performance of the covenants and conditions of the tenancy itself. In the
case of holdings from year to year it may be not unfairly said that being of the
landlord’s political party is often a tacit condition of the tenancy. (F. Pollock, The
Land Laws (London, 1883), pp. 150–1)
An attempt to identify a distinctive ideology of northern dissent would

need to take into account such figures as Samuel Smiles and John Bright.
Though born in Scotland, Smiles lived in Leeds from 1838 to 1858. His
best-selling book, Self Help, which had sold a quarter of a million copies by
1905, put forward the self-made man as a praiseworthy social ideal. His
heroes were the innovators and engineers of the new northern industrial
society, Wedgwood, Brindley and Stephenson, whose success he thought
could be emulated at a humbler level by the average working man. Thrift
and temperance were habits which could enable working men to become
capitalists themselves. ‘A glass of beer’, he wrote, ‘is equal to forty five
shillings a year. This sum will insure a man’s life for a hundred and thirty
pounds payable at death or placed in a savings bank, it would amount to
a hundred pounds in twenty years.’ A man with savings in hand could
‘boldly look the world in the face . . . He can dictate his own terms. He
can neither be bought nor sold. He can look forward to an old age of
comfort and happiness.’
John Bright (1811–89), son of a Rochdale millowner, began his polit-
ical career in 1830 with a speech advocating temperance. In 1840 he
fought a successful campaign at Rochdale against the imposition of
Church rate upon dissenters. His later denunciations of the establish-
ment cannot be separated from his dissenting background. His view of
English history derived from the Puritans of the seventeenth century. He
thought Milton was ‘the greatest man who had ever lived’. In 1866 he
wrote to a friend that ‘blows must be struck from this historical stand-
point. Our forefathers thought so also, 200 years ago.’ He attacked the
southern aristocracy. ‘The [Anti-Corn Law] League is the foe of aris-
tocratic injustice and the State Church is the creature and tool of the
aristocracy.’ Bright’s radicalism was not typical of all dissenters (the
Wesleyans were always more conservative), but his views found a home in
the Liberal party which was very much the party of the north against the
south.
Puritanism, as the widespread influence of Smiles and Bright shows,
was a key element in this northern culture. Bright found Shakespeare unfit
to read and only came round to accepting novels after a good deal of heart-
searching. Methodists, when in power locally, were likely to suppress the
theatre. Fiction was banned from the Methodist school at Woodhouse
Green near Leeds. Novels which did enter a Methodist household were
described as ‘the deceitful bakemeats of some huxtering heathen smug-
gled into a Levite’s tent’. It was such attitudes as these which Matthew
Arnold was to criticise in his Culture and Anarchy (1869).
If dissent found its spokesmen in such figures as John Bright
and Samuel Smiles, the establishment found an eloquent defender
in Benjamin Disraeli. Disraeli (1804–81), of Bohemian temperament,

middle-class background and Jewish origins, was an unlikely candidate
for such a role, but his success was greater than that of a not dissimilar
‘outsider’, Edmund Burke. Disraeli’s opportunity came in 1846 in the
parliamentary debate over the Corn Laws. He launched a fierce attack on
the ‘school of Manchester’, of which Cobden and Bright were the prime
representatives. He defended the aristocracy on the ground of history.
England possessed a territorial constitution and it was the land which
bore the burdens of ‘the revenues of the Church, the administration of
justice, and the estate of the poor’. He saw his aim, he said later, as ‘to
uphold the aristocratic settlement of this country. That is the only ques-
tion at stake however manifold the forms it assumes.’ The aristocracy,
in his view, was ‘the only security for self government, the only barrier
against that centralising system which has taken root in other countries’.
It was not surprising that he should sympathise with the ‘aristocratic’
south during the American Civil War.
In an industrial age, Disraeli waxed eloquent on the joys of rural life.
In 1860 he held a summer fête on his small estate of Hughenden (bought
with a loan from his patron Lord George Bentinck in 1846 as an entrée
into the world of the squirearchy).
There are 100 school children, [he wrote] as many farmers with their wives and
all the county families for ten miles around – Sir George and Lady Dashwood,
Colonel and Mrs. Fane, Sir Anthony and Lady Rothschild and a great assemblage
of squires and clergymen. Lord Tredegar who never forgets that I made him a
peer sent me a buck. They feasted in the open air and danced until sunset amid
trees that were planted in the reign of Queen Anne and when Bolingbroke was
Secretary of State.
Later he wrote to a friend, ‘We have realised a romance we have been

many years meditating; we have restored the house to what it was before
the Civil Wars and we have made a garden of terraces in which cavaliers
might roam and saunter with their lady loves.’ Disraeli’s view of English
history was clearly very different from that of John Bright. In his Young
England days before 1846, Disraeli had admired Laud and Strafford, and
this Tory view of history remained an important element in conservative
perceptions of the past. In 1910, when the constitutional position of the
peerage was under attack, a defender wrote how ‘In 1641 the English
House of Commons abolished the Second Chamber and the House of
Commons became the greatest tyrant to the democracy of England that
there has been seen.’ In contrast, the ‘Whig’ interpretation of Stuart
history in which Laud and Strafford were the villains of the piece found
a more sympathetic audience among the dissenters of the north.
Disraeli, though a self-made man himself, was no admirer of meritoc-

racy. He criticised Gladstone for introducing competitive examinations
into the Civil Service and when he was in power himself he wrote, ‘I want
a man of the world, and of birth, breeding, culture and station to be the
chief of the Civil Service Commission so that if any absurd or pedantic
schemes of qualification are put before him he may integrate and modify
them and infuse them with a necessary degree of commonsense.’
Disraeli’s political career spanned the years of greatest crisis for the
establishment. It began in the 1830s when to an ambitious young politi-
cian like Disraeli the future seemed to be with the Whigs. It continued
in the 1840s when he became identified with opposition to the policies
of the Peelite leadership of the Tory party. In 1845 Disraeli attacked the
renewal of the Maynooth Grant. In 1846 he remained with the majority
of the Tory party after Peel decided to repeal the Corn Laws. For the next
two decades the establishment was on the defensive until Disraeli led it
to victory in the general election of 1874.
What requires explanation is how the establishment managed to sur-
vive, in spite of the rising power of dissent. To churchmen of the 1830s
the outlook for the establishment seemed gloomy. The 1832 Reform Act
appeared as the first step in a process of revolutionary change, and the
disendowment measures which the Whig government proposed to take
with respect to the Church of Ireland had obvious implications for the
Church of England. That the establishment did survive during the crit-
ical years of the 1830s was due in large measure to four factors. In the
first place, the Whig leaders were by no means united on the issue and
one of the ablest of them, Edward Stanley, resigned on the Irish Church
issue. More important, perhaps, were the fears of social and political rev-
olution aroused by the Chartist movement during the late 1830s. The
violent rhetoric of the Chartist leaders and the rising at Newport in 1839
played into the hands of the defenders of the establishment. Thirdly,
the dissenters themselves were divided. Wesleyan Methodists, who were
the largest of the dissenting bodies, kept clear of advocating disestablish-
ment. Fourthly, what appeared to be the advance of ‘Popery’ encouraged
the cultivation of good relations between evangelical churchmen and their
counterparts in the world of dissent. Disestablishment did not go away as
an issue, however, and during the middle years of the century it was kept
alive by radical dissenters under the leadership of Edward Miall, a for-
mer nonconformist minister, who founded the British anti-state Church
association, later known as the Liberation Society.
Though it makes good sense of much of English history during this
period to see it in terms of a clash of two cultures, English involvement
in the affairs of the British Isles cannot be left out of account. Ireland in
Figure 31. Statue of Oliver Cromwell (1599–1658)

It was not until the last decade of the nineteenth century that this statue
of Oliver Cromwell was erected outside parliament. The decision to do
so was a victory for the forces of English dissent within the Liberal party.
Cromwell was a symbol of a non-Anglican view of English history. For
Irish nationalists, however, he remained a religious fanatic who slaugh-
tered Catholics at Drogheda in 1649.
particular came to occupy a more central place than had hitherto been
the case. After the Act of Union there was direct Irish representation at
Westminster. The fact that Irish Catholics were excluded from member-
ship of the House of Commons despite Catholic forty-shilling freeholders
being able to vote fuelled the flame of constitutional agitation during
the 1820s. Catholic Emancipation was looked upon as the first step in
the overthrow of the constitution. During the 1830s Whig proposals to
reform the Church of Ireland led to cries of ‘the Church in Danger’
within England itself. During the 1840s, the crisis over the Maynooth
Grant question and the challenge presented by the Irish Famine led to
serious divisions within the governing Conservative party. The long-term
effect of the Act of Union was to thrust Irish issues upon the atten-
tion of successive Westminster governments, which found it difficult to
treat them on their own merits, irrespective of their implications for
England.
In April 1848, the following appeared in The Economist:
Thank God we are Saxons! Flanked by the savage Celt on the one side and the
flighty Gaul on the other – the one a slave to his passions, the other a victim to
the theories of the hour – we feel deeply grateful from our inmost hearts that we
belong to a race, which if it cannot boast the flowing fancy of one of its neighbours,
nor the brilliant esprit of the other has an ample compensation in [a] social, slow,
reflective phlegmatic temperament.
The ‘racial’ interpretation of Irish history appealed to many in the nine-

teenth century and is still not quite dead even in the best academic circles.
As an explanation of the complexities of Irish history, however, it is quite
inadequate. In Ireland, as in England, the concept of culture provides a
better source of enlightenment as to why Irish history in the nineteenth
century took the course it did.
In the late eighteenth century, Ireland, like England, was a society
dominated by the landed estate. In any particular locality the inhabitants
identified themselves as being within the jurisdiction of a particular land-
lord or his agent. Estates were made up of ‘townlands’ which formed the
basic rental unit, but, though the townland provided the framework for
day-to-day living, it was the landlord or his agent who made the crucial
decisions about a particular tenant’s future. The ‘Protestant ascendancy’
was an ascendancy of landlords. The Irish parliament was dominated
by the landlord, or the borough representatives which they chose. At
the parliamentary level, political differences related to such matters as
the ‘Absentee Tax’ which smaller landlords periodically proposed to levy
upon larger, absentee magnates. The siting of roads or canals, impor-
tant for the prosperity of an estate, was another issue which politics
might decide. The perquisite of political power included patronage in

the Church, the army and the administration.
The history of Ireland in the nineteenth century thus revolves by and
large around the decline and fall of the Protestant ascendancy and its
key institution, the landed estate. The ‘Golden Age’ of the ascendancy
is frequently associated with ‘Georgian Ireland’. The demise of the Irish
parliament, brought about by the Act of Union of 1800, is thought to
mark the beginning of the end. In fact, the power of the ascendancy
reinforced by urban elements was to last for a century after the Act
of Union. The landlords continued to enjoy considerable local power
and influence until the Local Government Act of 1898 did away with
the Grand Jury. In many respects, it may be argued the ascendancy
lasted in Northern Ireland until 1972 when the last of the old-style
landlords, Chichester Clark, finally gave way to a businessman, Brian
Faulkner.
During the course of the nineteenth century, the balance of power
within the ascendancy shifted in favour of the north. Industrial growth
was centred on Belfast which rose in population from 37,000 in 1821
to nearly 350,000 by 1901. The population of Dublin which had been
336,000 in 1821 had risen to only 448,000 in 1901 and much of this
increase had taken place without any industrialisation. Dublin remained
a centre of consumption while Belfast became a centre of production in
linen spinning and weaving and in shipbuilding. In Ulster by the end
of the century there were 900,000 Protestants, of whom 670,000 lived
in Belfast and its hinterland. Within a radius of about 65 miles around
Belfast, Protestants amounted to over 75 per cent of the population.
Nearly half the factories in Ireland and over 75 per cent of factory work-
ers were concentrated in the north-east. In the three southern provinces,
Protestants, mostly episcopalian, amounted to only 10 per cent of the
population, mainly concentrated around Dublin and Cork. The north-
ern Protestants were divided almost equally between episcopalian and
Presbyterian but the old animosities between the two groups had died
away to a large extent in an environment of industrialism and in the face
of a revived Catholicism.
In the south the influence of such magnates as the marquess of Lans-
downe and the duke of Devonshire remained. More and more, however,
power shifted to the Catholic middle class which found a charismatic
leader in Daniel O Connell, lawyer, brewer, banker and landowner. Ire-
land is often described as a ‘peasant society’ but this vague concept tends
to obscure the complexity of Irish social structure. Catholics were under-
represented in the middle class in proportion to their numbers but they
cannot be ignored. It has been estimated that in Cork and Waterford
they made up one third of all merchants. In 1861, the first year that
statistics are available, Catholics formed roughly a third of the medical
and legal professions. They also formed a high proportion of ‘strong farm-
ers’. Finally, but not least importantly, the Catholic clergy seem to have
been drawn in large measure from the middle class. In 1826 a student at
Maynooth declared: ‘I conceive my parents to belong to that state of life
which we call the middle class of society; and with regard to the general-
ity of students at Maynooth it is my opinion that their parents belong to
the same order of persons.’ By ‘the middle class’ he went on to explain
that he meant those persons in commerce or agriculture ‘who can live
independently and who, perhaps, could provide for their children a situ-
ation that could be more lucrative than the priesthood’. The president of
Maynooth also stated in 1826 that ‘our students are generally the sons of
farmers who must be comfortable in order to meet the expenses I have
already mentioned: of tradesmen, shopkeepers: and not a very small pro-
portion of them are the children of opulent merchants and rich farmers
and graziers’. The rise in status of the Catholic clergy during the nine-
teenth century was symptomatic of the general rise of a Catholic middle
class.
Though denied the right to sit in parliament in 1795, the Catholic
middle class had held aloof from the rebellion of 1798. Archbishop Troy
of Dublin declared in 1793 that ‘society implies different classes and
orders of men, necessarily subordinate and dependent’. In 1793, Bishop
Coppinger of Cloyne and Ross asked, ‘How can there be cultivation
where there are no tillers? And where shall you find tillers if all become
gentlemen?’
Rank and property must go hand in hand, the inequality of both in every civilised
country must be as various as the talents of men. Were every individual in the
land possessed at this day of an equal share of property, a lapse of twelve months
would exhibit numerous gradations. The industrious, the thrifty, the honest, the
temperate would soon surpass the idle, the squanderers, and the licentious.
It was anticipated that loyalty would be rewarded after the passing of the
Act of Union which the Catholic bishops supported on the understand-
ing that Catholics would be eligible to sit in the House of Commons. In
the event, it took two more decades before O Connell, who himself had
opposed the 1798 rebellion, was able to force the issue after a good deal of
agitation. In 1828, O Connell defeated a popular Protestant landowner
in a Clare by-election and the British government finally gave way on
the issue of Catholic Emancipation, in the teeth of opposition from the
ascendancy. ‘Catholic Emancipation’ was a success for the Catholic mid-
dle class in Ireland comparable to that which the dissenters obtained in
1832, in England. As with 1832, however, the Catholic victory of 1829

left the landlords in possession of much of the field.
Though it would be easy to press the analogy too far it may be argued
that the perceptions of the northern English dissenter paralleled those
of the Catholic middle class in Ireland. Both groups felt themselves to
be excluded from the full life of their society. O Connell’s Repeal pro-
gramme of 1832, which called for the abolition of tithes, and taxes such
as Church rates and vestry cess was similar to the reform programme
of the dissenters. Like the dissenters, the Irish Catholic middle class
objected to the control which the Established Church exercised over
higher education and, like them, they established their own university,
Newman’s Catholic University in Dublin in the one case, and Owens
College, Manchester in the other. In both groups there were strongly
‘democratic’ sentiments. Tocqueville, on a visit to Ireland in 1835, com-
mented about the political outlook of the higher clergy: ‘The feelings
expressed were extremely democratic. Distrust and hatred of the great
landlords; love of the people and confidence in them. Bitter memories of
past oppression. An air of exaltation at present of approaching victory.’
He might very well have found a similar outlook among the leaders of
northern English dissent. Though poles apart in theology, the Liberation
Society of dissenting England and the Catholic National Association of
Ireland saw eye-to-eye on the question of disestablishment and agreed to
work with one another.
Links between English dissent and the Irish middle class were expanded
upon in a letter from John Bright which was read out at a meeting of the
National Association in Dublin in 1864. Bright applauded their efforts
at land reform and indeed urged them to go further. He went on to say
with regard to the State Church:
[it] is an institution so evil and so odious under the circumstances of your country
that it makes one almost hopeless of Irish freedom that Irishmen have borne it
so long. The whole Liberal Party in Great Britain will, doubtless, join with you
in demanding the removal of a wrong which has no equal in the character of a
national insult in any other civilised and Christian country in the world.
(Bright, however, opposed Home Rule in 1886.)

In 1800, there were three cultures in Ireland, episcopalian, Presbyte-
rian and Catholic, each with its own tradition of Christianity, its own
ethnic identity and its own version of Irish history. By mid-century,
joined by a common fear of resurgent ‘Popery’, episcopalians (of English
background) and Presbyterians (of Scottish background) were tending
to merge their differences under the common label ‘Protestant’, which
had hitherto been confined to episcopalians. Among the episcopalians,
evangelicalism gained ground. Among the Presbyterians, ‘Old Light’ uni-

tarianism lost influence in the face of a militant ‘New Light’ movement,
led by Henry Cooke of Belfast. Among the Catholics, Moderates such as
Daniel Murray, archbishop of Dublin, were succeeded by Ultramontanes,
whose acknowledged leader was Cardinal Paul Cullen.
Another major cause for the continued division between Catholic and
Protestant cultures in Ireland must be sought in their contrasting expe-
riences during the years of famine 1845–9. The Protestant north, where
oats rather than potatoes were the main element of popular diet, was
spared from famine when the potato crop failed. It was the Catholic small
farming and labouring classes in the south and west, heavily dependent
upon the potato, which bore the main brunt of famine. As Professor
Joseph Lee has shown (in The Modernisation of Irish Society 1848–1918
(1973)) the labouring class, overwhelmingly Catholic, was decimated by
disease and starvation during these years. By 1847, small farmers, also
Catholic, who had managed to survive three years of potato failure, were
forced to emigrate in large numbers if they were not to suffer the fate of
the labourers. By 1851, Ireland had lost a quarter of its population by emi-
gration or by death, a social tragedy which had its greatest impact upon
the Catholic poor. Memory of the Famine became part of the mentalité
of Catholic culture, differentiating it from that of Protestant Ireland. It
was a memory which many emigrants took with them to the New World,
where in due course it provided an emotional reservoir for Irish Catholic
nationalism.
In the mid-eighteenth century, Wales was in many ways a smaller ver-
sion of Ireland, its population of about half a million being roughly an
eighth of the population of Ireland. Like Ireland, it was a society of landed
estates, whose proprietors, or their agents, controlled the political and
economic life of their area. There was also an Established Church which
was cut off from full communication with the mass of the people by lin-
guistic and social barriers. The cleavage between the episcopalian ascen-
dancy and the great majority was not as sharp in Wales as it was in Ireland,
since it was not based upon recent conquest. It was there nonetheless.
When one of the Wynn family was thrown from his horse after a hunt,
the event coincided with a petition at a Methodist prayer meeting: ‘O
Arglwydd cwympa Ddiawl Mawr y Wynnstay’ (‘O Lord, cast down the
Great Devil of Wynnstay’). Dissent became the religion of most Welsh
religious activists much as a ‘reformed’ Catholicism became the creed
of the Irish majority, and perhaps for much the same reasons. Dissent-
ing ministers, like the Catholic clergy, were able to express openly, or
at least to symbolise, the resentments which fear of eviction kept con-
cealed among the tenantry. Political representation, as in Ireland, was in
the hands of the ascendancy and the survival of the Test and Corpora-
tion Acts on the statute book until 1828 served as a reminder that the
dissenting majority was excluded from full participation in national life.
Given these political and social circumstances, it is not surprising that
there should have been some reaction in Wales to the revolutions in
America and France. Two of the most prominent individuals involved
were Richard Price, the Welsh-born minister of a congregation at Stoke
Newington, and David Williams, a friend of Benjamin Franklin. Price’s
pamphlet Observations on the Nature of Civil Liberty (1776) was an attempt
to place American resistance in a wide context of political rights and it
was his sermon in 1789, praising the French revolution, which provoked
Edmund Burke’s Reflections. David Williams was closely involved with the
Girondins during the French revolution and after their fall he returned to
England. Radical ideas were also put forward by the London-Welsh soci-
ety Gwyneddigion, whose most prolific member was Edward Williams
(‘Iolo Morganwg’). In Wales itself, however, there was no equivalent of
the United Irishmen. When a French landing took place at Fishguard in
1797 it aroused confusion and consternation rather than enthusiasm. To
some Welsh Baptists the French revolution presaged the coming of Anti-
Christ. There were food riots during the war years as well as anti-militia
and anti-press gang riots but these were local demonstrations rather than
an indication of widespread revolutionary sympathies. The hatred of the
crowd was directed against farmers and corn dealers rather than the
landowning classes.
The attitude of dissenting ministers in Wales towards the French revo-
lution was similar to that of most of the Catholic clergy in Ireland. Other
parallels may also be drawn. Both groups looked upon popular oral cul-
ture as the enemy of Christian morality. In 1791 the great Methodist
reformer, Thomas Charles of Bala, wrote to a friend: ‘No harps but the
golden harps of which St John speaks, have been played in this neigh-
bourhood for several months past. The craft is not only in danger but
entirely destroyed and abolished.’ In another letter he wrote: ‘The revival
of religion has put an end to all the merry meetings for dancing, singing
with the harp, and every kind of sinful mirth, which used to be so preva-
lent amongst young people here’ (quoted in Eric Hobsbawm and Ter-
ence Ranger, eds., The Invention of Tradition (Cambridge, 1983), p. 55).
Such statements recall episcopal denunciations in Ireland of ‘all unbe-
coming, disorderly and irreligious assemblages of people at Patrons’ from
the 1780s onwards.
Another resemblance between Wales and Ireland lay in the resent-
ment felt over the payment of tithes to support what was regarded as the
Church of a minority. In Ireland, the expectations aroused by Catholic
Emancipation in 1829 had not been fulfilled. The result was the Tithe
War of the 1830s in which the Catholic clergy of some areas took a promi-
nent part. In Wales, discontent was aroused by an act of 1836, which in
the name of tithe commutation seemed to be raising the obligations of
the tithe payers. An unpopular issue was made less tolerable by eco-
nomic distress. The ‘Rebecca Riots’ which broke out in 1839 may be
seen as the Welsh equivalent of the Irish Tithe War though what finally
put the match to the fire of rural discontent was not payment of tithes
but the exaction of tolls upon parish roads. (The title ‘Rebecca’ was said
to derive from the scriptural passage declaring that ‘Rebecca should pos-
sess the gates of her enemies.’) Tolls levied at a growing number of toll
gates acted as an internal tax system which lay heaviest upon hard-pressed
small farmers taking their produce to market. The area originally affected
was on the Carmarthen–Pembroke border but it spread in 1842 to other
counties. The New Poor Law workhouses were also an object of attack.
The Rebecca Riots were firmly put down by the government, but major
concessions over the turnpike system removed this particular source of
discontent. Tithes still remained a major grievance, as was to be shown
in the ‘Tithe Wars’ of 1886–91.
The course of the rural history of Wales thus clearly offers some par-
allels with that of rural Ireland during the late eighteenth and early nine-
teenth centuries. In south Wales, however, from the 1760s, changes were
already in train which were to make the counties of Monmouth and Glam-
organ one of the most heavily industrialised areas of the British Isles. The
booming market for iron during the Seven Years War provided the take-
off for the exploitation of Welsh coal and iron at Wrexham in the north
as well as Merthyr in the south. The American and French wars and the
growing demand for steam power led to further expansion. By 1815 the
south Wales iron industry was producing one third of the total of British
iron production. Barry and Swansea began to grow as ports during this
period, though Cardiff and Newport were still undeveloped. In 1801, the
population of the counties of Glamorgan and Monmouth amounted to a
little over 100,000 in a population of over half a million. By 1901, the two
counties accounted for over half the total population of 2 million. The
north-east of Ireland underwent considerable industrialisation during the
nineteenth century but the proportion of the Irish population involved
was never more than a quarter of the total.
The consequences of industrialisation were very important for Wales
since it saved the country from the massive emigration which took place
in Ireland. South Wales became a melting pot in which Welsh, English
and Irish were intermingled, though the great majority was Welsh. There
was no equivalent of the Irish Famine, no mass emigration to America
under conditions of great hardship and no Welsh equivalent of the intense

involvement which Irish-Americans often displayed in the affairs of their
homeland. There was thus no counterpart in Welsh history of Fenianism.
A movement for Welsh Home Rule did make its appearance in the 1880s,
but its strength lay in the rural areas of west Wales. When it came to
the point of setting up an independent Home Rule party on the Irish
model the industrial cities of south Wales stood in the way. The parallels
with Ireland existed but the industrial sector of Welsh society was much
stronger than its Irish counterpart.
There were, indeed, two cultures in nineteenth-century Wales. In
the Welsh-speaking counties of the west, wage-labour was still relatively
uncommon. The social structure in many ways resembled that of parts
of the west of Ireland, with its division into large farms (lle mawr), small
farms (lle bach) and cottagers (pobol tai bach, people of the little houses).
This was a heavily localised world in which there was a good deal of
interdependence. Small dairy farmers needed the services of the bull,
which only large farms could provide. In return they provided help at
harvest time. Cottagers paid with their labour for the potato land which
the farmers provided. The gentry, y gwyr mawr (the great people), con-
stituted a distinctive sector of society. The problems facing Welsh rural
society were related to such questions as security of tenure, rent increases
and survival during a time of bad harvests and the price of beef cat-
tle and salted casked butter on which most depended for cash. This
was the world of Welsh nonconformity. The Established Church found
its support among the gentry, and the wage labourers of the border
counties.
This culture was in sharp contrast with that of the industrialised,
partially English-speaking counties of the south-east, Glamorgan, Mon-
mouth and east Carmarthen, which were to grow in importance through-
out the nineteenth century. In due course the ports of Newport, Swansea,
Barry and above all Cardiff were to become the Welsh equivalents of
the industrial towns of northern England. In the first half of the nine-
teenth century signs of industrial unrest had already made their appear-
ance in the south. Chartism enjoyed considerable support, notably at
Newport, where John Frost led a Chartist rising. During the 1820s and
1830s a secret society known as the ‘Scotch Cattle’ operated in the
iron-mining and coal-mining villages of Monmouthshire. ‘Boom’ con-
ditions from mid-century on, however, brought prosperity to the south,
whose main problem was that of absorbing the large numbers of immi-
grants who flocked to the mining villages of the Rhondda. It was the
grievances of rural Wales that provided the impetus which lay behind
the rise of Welsh Liberalism. Disestablishment, tithes and evictions, not
trade unions, payment in truck and strikes, were the issues on which
Welsh Liberalism was to be based.
The influence of the landlords had survived the 1832 Reform Act in
most Welsh counties and with them the privileges of the Established
Church. In Denbighshire and Merioneth, the Wynn family retained the
political power which it had enjoyed since the eighteenth century. Anti-
ascendancy feeling had been expressed in 1859 in Merioneth, where an
attempt to unseat a Wynn had been followed by a number of politically
motivated evictions. The 1868 election, in which a wider franchise based
upon the 1867 Reform Act was in operation, made possible another
attack. In Denbighshire, Sir Watkin Wynn retained his seat but the Whig
candidate, with whom he had agreed to ‘share’ the county, was defeated.
The 1868 election marked the beginning of a trend which left the Liberals
totally dominant in Wales. In 1885, there were thirty Welsh Liberals in
the Commons and only four Welsh Conservatives.
The political pressures which led to this change came largely from the
dissenting Churches, which in 1851 numbered nearly 400,000 compared
with just over 100,000 attending the Established Church. Dissent, like
Catholicism in Ireland, was the religion of the great majority. Hence,
grievances such as Church control of education in rural areas were felt
to be particularly galling. New fervour was added by the religious revival
of 1859 which was a ‘Year of Grace’ in Wales as it was in Ulster. The
growth of Tractarianism within the Established Church also made ‘No
Popery’ an issue. The most significant change, however, was the attempt
to bring temperance into politics. The advocates of temperance reform
looked upon alcohol as the main cause of social problems and they aimed
to control its use by legislative action instead of moral persuasion, as had
been the case earlier in the century. It was during the middle decades
of the century that temperance together with Sabbatarianism and dis-
establishment came to be seen by many Welsh Liberals as expressing a
particularly ‘Welsh’ outlook on life.
Though it is tempting to speak of nineteenth-century Scotland as a
single unit, there were at least three ‘Scotlands’ during this period, each
with their own distinctive characteristics. The Highlands (including the
Hebrides) still retained their own individuality. The other two regions
were the eastern and western Lowlands, which, as industrialisation gath-
ered pace in the west, became divided into a largely rural east and a
largely industrial west. For most of the century, the east maintained its
traditional political, legal and cultural dominance. Edinburgh the capital
was on the east coast. Three of the four Scottish universities, Edinburgh,
St Andrews and Aberdeen were in the east. The best land, which was
now being ‘improved’ under the impact of the ‘Agricultural Revolution’,
was also in the east. Edinburgh was very much the centre of the Scottish
Enlightenment and though Adam Smith was a professor at Glasgow for
a time he soon settled at Kirkcaldy, within reach of Edinburgh and his
friends. The Edinburgh Review, drawing much of its inspiration from the
Enlightenment, provided intellectual leadership for the reform movement
before and after 1832. (Thomas Babington Macaulay was a member for
Edinburgh from 1839 to 1847 and 1851 to 1856.) It was not until the
1880s, after the Reform Acts of 1884 and 1885, that the west was in a posi-
tion to exert the political power to which its economic and demographic
growth entitled it. It was then that Glasgow showed itself to be a centre of
Chamberlainite radicalism, aiming to assert itself against the ‘Whiggish’
east. If the history of England can be seen as a struggle between north
and south, that of Scotland during this period revolves around the rivalry
between west and east.
The division between the Gaelic-speaking Highlands and the English-
speaking Lowlands continued to be a major cultural divide. In the course
of the nineteenth century, however, the significance of the Highlands
within a general Scottish context began to decline. In 1801 the Highland
counties contained nearly a fifth of the population. By 1901, even though
some counties grew in population, this had dropped to 8 per cent and
by 1939 to 6.5 per cent. The balance shifted inexorably in favour of the
urbanised and industrialised Lowlands. By 1901 the population of the
western Lowlands, with the Glasgow conurbation as their centre, rose
from one fifth to just under half the total population of 4.5 million.
The history of the Highlands during this period closely resembled that
of the west of Ireland, in so far as it was marked by a rapid growth of
population, famine and heavy emigration. Like Ireland, Highland society
became heavily dependent on the potato, a change in diet which made it
possible to feed a larger population. In some parts of the Highlands the
production of kelp, an alkaline ash made from burnt seaweed, became
a major local industry and a source of temporary prosperity. With the
coming of peace in 1815, however, the linen, glass and soap industries
were able to turn to cheaper Spanish alkalis. The economic and demo-
graphic problems of the Highlands were now intensified and whereas at
an earlier period landlords had opposed emigration they now began to
encourage it. Estates were turned over to the more profitable activity of
sheep farming. It was during these years that the notorious ‘Highland
Clearances’ took place on the Sutherland estate where Patrick Sellar was
the agent from 1810 to 1819. Sellar also acquired an estate of his own
in Morvern, when the spendthrift sixth duke of Argyll was forced to sell
part of his property. Emigration now became a way of life in the High-
lands, whether as the result of conscious decision or as a consequence
of eviction. Many went to Nova Scotia, Cape Breton Island or Prince

Edward Island. Others made their way to Glasgow, where in such towns
as Greenock there were Gaelic-speaking congregations.
The failure of the potato crop first in 1837 and then again in the blight-
ridden years after 1846 added a further turn of the screw. There was no
equivalent in the Highlands of the Irish Famine, however. The authorities
were able to cope with the shortage more successfully, in part because
the affected areas could be reached by steamship. The numbers of those
affected were much smaller and the landlords, or most of them, seem
to have played a more generous role than their counterparts in Ireland.
Though emigration was heavy, the allocation of so much land to sheep
farming meant that there was a chronic shortage of land. Beneath the
surface there was a good deal of resentment among the crofters against
landlords and graziers, which flared up into open hostility in the early
1880s. The crofters were hard-pressed in the lean years following 1879,
and they turned to the example of the Irish League in an attempt to gain
security of tenure. In 1882, the Highland Land League was founded and
in 1885 five crofter candidates were returned to parliament. The result
was the Crofters Act of 1886 giving some measure of security on the lines
of the Irish Land Act of 1881. There was to be no equivalent in Scotland
of the decline of the landed ascendancy in Ireland or Wales, however.
The great landed estates survived, more often than not as large-scale
game preserves.
Profound cultural changes also occurred in the Highlands as a conse-
quence of the missionary activities of the evangelicals. What the
Methodists achieved in Wales and what evangelical missionaries attemp-
ted in the west of Ireland, ‘the Free Church of Scotland’ accomplished
in the Highlands. Gaelic oral culture gave way to a biblically orientated
literacy, also in Gaelic. Of the 474 ministers who left the Church at the
‘Disruption’ of 1843, 101 used the Gaelic language in public worship.
A ship run by the evangelicals, the Breadalbane, which was used to ferry
ministers between the islands, played a prominent part in famine relief
work in the late 1840s. The temperance movement and the strict Sab-
bath took root. Despite the survival of Gaelic, it may be argued that the
Lowlands radically transformed the culture of the Highlands. By a curi-
ous turn of events, while this was taking place, a romanticised version of
Highland culture was making headway in the Lowlands. In the wake of
the Ossianic forgeries of James Macpherson and of the novels of Walter
Scott, the cult of the Highlander achieved extraordinary success. The
newly invented kilt and tartan were taken over by Lowland families as
emblems of ethnic identity. For many, Scottish Romanticism replaced
Scottish Enlightenment.
In the Highlands, conflict of interest between grazier and crofter cre-

ated a situation which in many ways resembled that of the west of Ireland.
In the rural areas of the eastern Lowlands, a very different social struc-
ture developed, under the impact of the Agricultural Revolution. During
the ‘Age of Improvement’, which lasted well into the nineteenth cen-
tury, changes occurred which involved the disappearance of traditional
rural units. The shared farming arrangements of ‘runrig’, which in some
ways resembled the strip system of the middle ages, gave way to indi-
vidual farms run by hired labour. In the Lothians, labour was provided
by the ‘hind’ whose family were expected to serve as additional helpers
(‘bondagers’). In the north-east the use of unmarried labourers, hired for
six months at a time, was more common and barrack-like bothies were
built to accommodate them. One Aberdeenshire labourer complained
that ‘Feeing markets [sc. hiring fairs] always remind me of the old days
when slaves were bought and sold by their general physical appearance,
as one would buy a horse at St. Sair’s Fair. I myself have had my wrists
examined by farmers, to see what appearance of strength there was about
them.’
The political reforms of 1832 had little effect upon this social struc-
ture. The Reform Act increased the Scottish electorate from c. 5,000 to
c. 60,000 but the main beneficiaries were the urban and rural middle
class. In the counties, the electorate remained very small, most notori-
ously in the case of Sutherland, which with under 150 electors was in
effect a rotten borough for the duke of Sutherland. Until the 1880s Lib-
eralism tended to reflect the interests of the lairds, graziers and wealthy
small-town merchants of the east, who were against ‘landlordism’ but hos-
tile to trade unions. Profound economic and social changes were taking
place in the western Lowlands but for the most part the Liberal party was
controlled by the ‘Whiggish’ east. The Conservative party was the party
of the large landowners and the Established Church but the Liberals,
though less conservative on some issues, also had landlords among their
leaders. In the Lothians, the Elliotts, wealthy ‘Liberal’ landlords, con-
tested elections with their traditional rivals, the Douglases of Buccleuch,
as they had done since the fifteenth century. The wealthy landlord Lord
Rosebery, with his estate near Edinburgh, became leader of the Liberal
party. It was against this type of landlord dominance that the crofters
rebelled in the 1880s.
The social conservatism of eastern Liberalism was revealed perhaps
most clearly in attitudes towards education. The traditional view of Scot-
tish education had been that it encouraged the rise of a ‘Scottish democ-
racy’ since the parochial system placed no obstacle in the way of a
‘lad of parts’ from passing from local school to university. In practice,
fee-paying schools of an exclusively middle-class character made

their appearance during the nineteenth century. When the Edinburgh
Academy was founded in 1824, the reformer Henry Cockburn com-
mented that this would be ‘an important day for education in Scotland,
in reference to the middle and upper classes’. In 1870, the charitable
endowments of Edinburgh hospitals were taken over by the Merchant
Companies to found five fee-paying schools catering for the middle class.
In both town and countryside the evidence suggests a hardening of class
boundaries. In nineteenth-century Edinburgh there was a sharp social
divide between the New Town occupied by the professional middle class
and the ‘colonies’ of artisan dwellings to the north and east. Educational
arrangements merely reflected this fact of Edinburgh life.
In due course, the dominance of the east was to be challenged by
an expanding west. The ‘rise of the west’ had its origins in the late eigh-
teenth century with the establishment of cotton-spinning factories in New
Lanark, Catrine and elsewhere. But it was not until the 1830s that the
growth of heavy industry on a significant scale began to take place. In
1801, the population of Glasgow was still only 77,000 inhabitants com-
pared to Edinburgh’s 83,000. In 1881, Glasgow with 587,000 inhabitants
was almost double the size of Edinburgh, with its 295,000 inhabitants. In
1911, Greater Glasgow had reached the million mark. Edinburgh, with
401,000, had less than half Glasgow’s population. More was involved
than the growth of Glasgow itself since it was surrounded by a network of
substantial industrial towns, Hamilton, Paisley, Kilmarnock, Greenock,
Dumbarton and others, which helped to make it the Scottish equiva-
lent of Birmingham. The relative decline of Edinburgh was comparable
with that of Dublin in relation to Belfast. The counties of Lanarkshire and
Renfrewshire, which together had well over a million inhabitants in 1881,
were the Scottish equivalent of Glamorgan and Monmouth. In 1830 the
Lowland iron industry produced 40,000 tons of iron. By 1844 this had
risen to c. 400,000 tons. In 1855 Scotland was producing a quarter of the
total output of the United Kingdom. The Bairds factory at Gartsherrie
was the largest iron works in the world after Dowlais in south Wales.
The ability of the western Lowlands to compete successfully with Welsh
and English iron was largely due to the introduction of the Neilson hot
blast process, patented in 1828, which made it possible to exploit the
blackband ore of the Monklands areas near Glasgow. The Scottish lead
did not last long, however, and by the 1860s the Lowlands were taking
second place to the Cleveland field in the English north-east. By then,
the growth of shipbuilding on the Clyde more than compensated for
the changes. During the period 1850–70 Glasgow shipbuilders were in a
position to meet the rapid growth in world demand for steam ships, and
during the 1860s Glasgow’s share of launchings in the United Kingdom

rose from 30 per cent to 70 per cent, compared with a meagre 5 per
cent earlier in the century. Glasgow also competed successfully in marine
engine technology during this period and in the building of railway loco-
motives.
It was this rapidly expanding industrial economy which from the 1830s
became a vast melting pot for migrants from neighbouring rural coun-
ties as well as from the Highlands and Ulster. In the east there was a
steady flow of migrants from the eastern Highlands into Aberdeen and
Edinburgh but the only industrial city on the east coast which matched
the experience of the west was Dundee whose expanding jute industry
attracted immigrants, many of them female, from Ireland. The flow of
Ulster immigrants became a flood during the famine years 1846–51. It
has been estimated that 1,000 immigrants a week arrived in Glasgow from
Ireland in 1848. The result was to transform the religious and social com-
position of the western Lowlands, and to a lesser extent of the east, in
Fife and Dundee. The number of Irish migrating into England and Wales
was two or three times larger than that entering Scotland but in relation
to the size of the Scottish population the proportion was much higher.
It has been estimated that Irish-born inhabitants accounted in 1851 for
7.9 per cent of the population of Scotland, compared with 2.9 per cent
for England and Wales. An additional complicating factor was that nearly
half congregated in nine towns, Glasgow accounting for nearly 30 per
cent. The result was that in western towns like Glasgow, Paisley and
Kilmarnock the Irish-born amounted to between 10 and 18 per cent of the
population. (Dundee had 18 per cent, Edinburgh only 6 per cent.) What
has been described as the most Calvinist society in Europe was confronted
with the problem of absorbing a largely Catholic, often Irish-speaking,
immigrant population. This was the plantation of Ulster in reverse which
had the effect of creating a new sub-culture in the Scottish Lowlands.
The long-term result of Irish immigration into the western Lowlands
was to raise ethnic and religious tensions to a pitch unequalled else-
where in the British Isles outside Belfast and Liverpool. Here, as in Ulster
and Liverpool, the Orange Lodge took root. The Irish, like the Slavs in
nineteenth-century Pennsylvania, were looked upon as a source of cheap
labour. On the whole (Dundee excepted) the east escaped the problems
presented by ethnic diversity. As a consequence, in the 1880s, when the
‘No Popery’ card was played in politics as a counter to Home Rule, it had
much less success in the east than in the west. Gladstonian Liberalism
survived in the east when it was being defeated in the west.
Another source of contrast between east and west had its origins in the
‘Disruption’ within the Church of Scotland. In 1843, over 470 ministers,
representing some two-fifths of the total, left the Established Church, tak-
ing with them a similar proportion of elders and laity. It was an extraordi-
nary event, which to some extent was an expression of Scottish national-
ism against the control of Westminster symbolised by Sir Robert Peel. It
was also a protest against the power of ecclesiastical patronage exercised
by landlords. Perhaps also it was something of a middle-class movement
drawing support from shopkeepers and skilled artisans. Certainly the
speed with which the Free Church was able to organise and finance a
rival organisation to the Church of Scotland indicates that it was able
to draw upon local resources of wealth and expertise. Above all it drew
upon the evangelical revival of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth
centuries.
Resentment against state control and patronage was of long standing
and had already led to secessions from the Established Church during the
eighteenth century. The Covenanting tradition with belief in a ‘gathered’
Church as opposed to an all-embracing establishment was still strong in
the west, where memories of Claverhouse and Drumclog were kept alive.
But the ‘Disruption’ in numbers and organisation represented a division
of much greater proportions. It had its origins in the rivalry between
‘moderates’ and ‘evangelicals’ from the late eighteenth century onwards,
which grew in intensity in the 1830s. A trial of strength took place in the
courts over such issues as the control of the ‘quoad sacra’ chapels which
had been built largely by the evangelicals to supplement the parish church
in some areas. The right of patrons to present ministers to a living over
the wishes of the presbytery was another key question.
The verdict of the courts went against the evangelicals and the ‘Dis-
ruption’ took place led by Thomas Chalmers, whose views were Tory and
who still believed in the desirability of an establishment. Chalmers him-
self may have believed this, but increasingly the logic of events took over
and the Free Church, after Chalmers’ death in 1847, moved towards
the position of the dissenting churches on disestablishment. The Free
Church had found itself in conflict with the state. After the ‘Disrup-
tion’, it also met with active opposition from many of the landlords, who
refused sites for churches and schools. Tenants without written leases
found themselves threatened with eviction. Shopkeepers were told that
‘they would forfeit the custom and countenance of the wealthy and influ-
ential in the country’. It was said about Cromarty that ‘the spirit in
this part of the country is bitterness itself. Servants dismissed, labour-
ers thrown out of employment, angry interviews between landlord and
tenant – we hear of little else in this corner.’ Chalmers complained that
‘the upper classes looked on us [the Free Church] as so many Radicals or
revolutionaries’.
During the first half of the nineteenth century, what we may call the
‘peripheral’ cultures of the British Isles were exposed to forces of change,
emanating, in the main, from the ‘centre’. The onset of industrialism in
south Wales, the north of Ireland and the south of Scotland occurred
largely in response to the demands of the English market or as a conse-
quence of English investment. Hence, during this period, the individual
histories of Wales, Ireland and Scotland can only be understood in rela-
tion to a wider British Isles context in which England, by virtue of its
demographic and economic superiority, took a leading role.
Ireland, newly incorporated within the United Kingdom, experienced
government intervention most during these years. During the 1830s, in
particular, the Whig government introduced a series of reforms in educa-
tion (the National Schools), poor relief, the abolition of tithes, municipal
government and policing. In the 1880s Gladstone was to look back to
these years, when Thomas Drummond had been Under-Secretary for
Ireland (1835–40), as a model to follow.
In general, it may be said that the ‘periphery’ played a restricted role
during these years. Resistance to pressures which were perceived as com-
ing from England was sporadic and localised. In Wales, serious unrest was
confined to the Merthyr Rising of 1831, the Chartist attack on Newport
in 1839 and the local outbreaks of ‘Rebecca’. In Ireland, the agrarian
violence of the Ribbonmen, though endemic, was of a local character.
In Scotland, the troubles of the 1820s were confined to the Glasgow
area. For much of the time the pattern of government within the United
Kingdom rested upon tacit alliances between Westminster and the local
ascendancies of Wales, Ireland and Scotland. This situation began to
change in mid-century when Irish Catholicism, Welsh nonconformity
and the Free Churches of Scotland formed an alliance with English dis-
sent to bring pressure to bear upon the English establishment. It was this
working entente, whose basis lay in a common antagonism to the English
establishment and its local allies, which led to the formation of the Liberal
party towards the end of the 1850s. The ‘centre’ was now to be exposed
to political pressures from the ‘periphery’.
Postcript
This chapter takes the concept of ‘melting pot’ as its organising theme.
This has certain advantages from the standpoint of ‘four nations’ history,
of highlighting the significance of ethnicity. With the advantage of hind-
sight, however, I now see that it is open to criticism for playing down
the role of class-based politics and in particular for ignoring the Chartist
Movement of the 1830s. There has been something of a reaction against
E.P. Thompson’s classic The Making of the English Working Class. This
work, despite all its emotionalism, did have the merit, in my view, of
stressing the role of class conflict. His title perhaps would have been
more appropriate to the Chartist Movement itself. The traditional work-
ing class with which Thompson was concerned in his book was that of
handloom weavers and of workers adversely affected by the Industrial
Revolution. In contrast the Chartist Movement, aiming at Universal Suf-
frage and the Ballot among other reforms, drew its support from the
new industrial working class. Thus the banners of a Chartist procession
in Manchester in August 1840, representing dyers, dressers and boiler-
makers among others, called for ‘the Prosperity of the Working Classes’.
Their targets included ‘Aristocracy, Shopocracy, White slavery and State
Paupers’. Flags carrying the Irish Shamrock and the Scots Thistle as well
as the English Rose were carried, indicating a multi-ethnic dimension,
going beyond the ‘Englishness’ of which Thompson was so passionate
an advocate. The Irishman Fergus O Connor played a key role in the
movement during these years, providing a more class-based British Isles
approach to Irish problems than that of the nationalist Daniel O Connell.
The clash between the two men over what they meant by reform may be
seen to symbolise the radical difference between class-based and ethnic
approaches.
At the end of the 1840s the Chartist Movement resulted in failure.
Indeed Thompson’s book might have been better entitled ‘The Breaking
of the English Working Class’. In Ireland the Great Famine was the end
of a period, marked also by the death of O Connell in 1847 and the col-
lapse of the Young Irelanders in 1848. The 1850s saw English radicalism
collapse in the face of English nationalism led by Palmerston.
10 The rise of ethnic politics
By the mid-nineteenth century a system of road, rail and sea communi-

cations brought the various communities of the British Isles more closely
together than had ever been the case hitherto. To the network of roads
built by Telford in the years after 1815 were added regular services of
steam packets linking Britain and Ireland and a well-developed railway
system. Road and rail routes from London to Dublin via Holyhead across
the Menai Straits became a matter of routine. Ireland, Wales and Scot-
land were now open more than ever to English influences. Ireland in
particular became more anglicised than either Wales or Scotland and
the number of ‘native’ Gaelic-speakers declined drastically in the second
half of the nineteenth century. The culture of southern England seemed
destined to reach a position of total dominance throughout the British
Isles.
In fact, however, this period (c. 1860–1914) witnessed a remarkable
growth of ‘ethnic’ consciousness throughout the British Isles. During the
first half of the nineteenth century ‘class’ issues had predominated in
such movements as Chartism in England, Ribbonism and the Tithe War
in Ireland, the Rebecca Riots in Wales and the Highland Clearances in
Scotland. From mid-century, however, it was the dominance of England,
particularly that of the south-east, which came to seem objectionable
to influential groups in Ireland, Wales and Scotland. In Ireland, the
catastrophic death toll of the Famine, accompanied as it was by mas-
sive emigration, was blamed, by and large, on the failure of the English
government to provide adequate relief. Enforced emigration came to be
seen as tantamount to eviction. In Wales, the affair of the Blue Books
(1847) gave rise to outbursts of anti-English sentiment. Welsh critics of
the Blue Books, in which the quality of Welsh education had been cen-
sured for its narrow biblicism, spoke of the ‘Night of the Long Knives’, a
reference to the popular belief that in c. ad 600 Welsh princes had been
massacred by Saxons. In Scotland, the ‘Disruption’ of 1843, when the
Church of Scotland split into two bitterly hostile factions, led to the rise of
nationalist feelings among those who left the establishment. It was they,
251
with their memories of the Covenanters, who seemed truer, at least by

their own lights, to the Scottish past.
There was, finally, the growing power of English nonconformity. In
1851 a census taken on church attendance indicated that dissent in
England (and Wales) had gained a position of near-equality with the
Established Church. During the second half of the century, nonconfor-
mity, despite its divisions, came to play an increasingly prominent role in
English national life. More obvious examples of discrimination against
the nonconformists had been done away with during the 1830s. In sev-
eral fields, however, particularly that of higher education, nonconformists
could feel that they were treated as second-class citizens.
The Crimean War (1854–6) distracted attention from class issues, and
during the long ascendancy of Palmerston, who was Prime Minister for
most of the decade 1855–65, a strident English nationalism took the
centre of the political stage. After Palmerston’s death in 1865, however,
the ‘ethnic communities’ of Ireland, Scotland and Wales together with
those of English nonconformity began to express their grievances more
vocally. It was the combination of these various ethnic (or quasi-ethnic
in the case of northern England) groups which made possible the rise
of the Liberal party under Gladstone. In 1868 after his victory in the
election of that year Gladstone declared that ‘our three corps d’armée,
I may almost say, have been Scottish Presbyterians, English and Welsh
Nonconformists and Irish Roman Catholics’.
During the second half of the nineteenth century and the first years of
the twentieth century, ethnic issues became of immense importance in the
politics of the British Isles. Ireland in particular presented problems which
no government, Liberal or Conservative, was able to ignore. The slow rise
of the Home Rule party in Ireland began after the general election of 1874,
the first election when the secret ballot was normal practice in all three
kingdoms. Irish issues, particularly land reform, raised implications for
landlord–tenant relations elsewhere in the British Isles. Irish-American
groups also became involved with the affairs of the homeland to an ever-
increasing extent.
During this period, as we have seen for earlier periods, the course of
English history cannot be understood purely in narrowly national terms,
a judgement which applies with equal validity to the histories of Wales,
Ireland or Scotland. Despite the impact of the various improvements
in transportation and communications during the nineteenth century,
ethnic divisiveness became a dominant characteristic of the British Isles
during this period.
In England itself, during the second half of the nineteenth century, the
pattern of politics was transformed by the emergence during the 1860s of
The rise of ethnic politics 253
the Liberal party. The issues which led to the creation of the party from an
alliance of Whig landlords and radicals were in large measure English in
character. In particular, the social divide separating Church and Chapel
helps to explain the dominance of nonconformity in the new party. As
Augustine Birrell put it, the cultural split between Anglicans and dis-
senters was like ‘Offa’s Dyke – broad, deep and practically impassable,
cutting clear through social life’. Montagu remarked to Asquith about
the Liberal party: ‘There is no getting away from the fact that ours is a
Nonconformist Party with Nonconformist susceptibilities and Noncon-
formist prejudices.’ Such issues as the disestablishment of the Church of
England, the removal of educational grievances and the pressure for con-
trol of the drink trade derived from the English nonconformist heritage
of the Liberal party. The English past, especially from the seventeenth
century, looked very different from a nonconformist vantage point than
it did from an Anglican one.
But the Liberal party was something more than an English political
party. The reform of the franchise in England, Wales and Scotland in 1867
and in Ireland in 1868 made possible a more effective popular approach
to British Isles politics than had been the case hitherto. Irish Catholic
grievances in particular came to occupy a central position in Liberal pol-
icy. Under Palmerston the Whigs had been the party of the Protestant
ascendancy. Lord Palmerston was an Anglo-Irish landlord descended
from the Sir John Temple whose work on the 1641 massacre became
the standard Protestant account. Under Gladstone, however, the Liberal
party made an Irish Catholic issue, the disestablishment of the Church
of Ireland, the main plank of its platform during the 1868 election. Glad-
stone’s Land Act of 1870 was a first attempt to deal with the problems
of tenant right in Ireland. Another Irish issue, university education for
Irish Catholics, brought the government down. These years were also
marked by the execution of the ‘Manchester Martyrs’, Allen, Larkin and
O Brien, in the last public hanging in Britain. Fenianism, the demand for
an Irish Republic, did not decline but was fuelled by what was seen as
the unjust execution of three innocent men. Irish-American nationalism
also became increasingly important and in due course a factor in politics.
For the next fifty years Irish issues were to influence the course of
English politics. Irish ‘reforms’ were not seen by the political elite as
of localised significance: they were considered to have serious implica-
tions for the rest of the British Isles and for the British empire at large.
This had already been the case during Gladstone’s first administration
when the disestablishment of the Church of Ireland and the 1870 Land
Act were looked upon as the Irish end of a large wedge. Gladstone’s Irish
Land Act of 1881, which was designed to undermine the basis of political
agitation by making concessions to Irish farmers, caused serious misgiv-

ing at the Whig end of Gladstone’s Liberal coalition, particularly among
those landlords with large Irish or Scottish estates.
Political reforms which were aimed primarily at changing the character
of the English electorate were also looked upon as having wider implica-
tions. The Reform Acts of 1884–5, involving redistribution of seats and
an extension of a wider franchise to include the counties as well as the
boroughs, are normally discussed in terms of a purely English context. In
fact, however, unlike 1832 and 1867 the reforms of 1884–5 attempted to
deal with Ireland as uniformly as the rest of the United Kingdom. English
politicians were well aware of the possible effects of these changes. Hart-
ington declared at one stage that ‘if this franchise [is] now given [we shall]
be forced to concede Home Rule’. He spoke of
a system which will exclude . . . more than a million protestants . . . [all those]
opposed to Home Rule . . . the owners of landed property and the great majority
of capitalists, manufacturers, merchants, men of business and professional men
in Ireland – and will not only exclude them but will misrepresent them by a
body . . . hostile to every interest they possess and every opinion they hold.
In this passage we may recognise the voice of an Anglo-Irish landlord,

possessor of estates which originated in the Elizabethan plantation. As a
Whig aristocrat Hartington had been a follower of the Anglo-Irish land-
lord Palmerston. The marquess of Lansdowne, descendant of Sir William
Petty, was another prominent Whig, with Anglo-Irish connections.
Of all these issues, it was Irish Home Rule which had the most profound
influence upon the course of English politics during this period. Any
threat to the stability of the Union during the early and middle decades of
the nineteenth century had been contained by successive British govern-
ments. O Connell had campaigned for ‘Repeal’ during Tory administra-
tions while compromising with Whig governments for redress of specific
grievances. The attempted rebellion of the Young Irelanders in 1848 had
been a fiasco. Politically the Ireland with which British governments had
to deal was the Ireland of the Protestant ascendancy. The situation began
to change during the 1860s when Gladstone, in response to the threat
posed by the Fenians, attempted to woo middle-class Catholic Ireland.
Disestablishment, land reform and educational reform proved insuffi-
cient, however, to meet the challenge of a growing nationalism, and Home
Rule became an important political issue after the 1874 election. It was
to become even more important during the 1880s when Parnell leading
a disciplined Irish party made it impossible for the British government to
ignore it.
Figure 32. Belfast postcard – ‘No Home Rule’

This pre-1914 ‘No Home Rule’ postcard illustrates the strength of polit-
ical opposition in the north of Ireland to the Home Rule policy of the
Liberal government under Asquith. ‘The Ulster Crisis’ brought Ireland
to the brink of civil war and created the threat of mutiny within the
British Army Officer Corps. Partition, at first an almost unthinkable
option, became a reality in 1920 when six counties within Northern
Ireland were granted Home Rule.
Home Rule in the eyes of many Liberals and most Conservatives was
an imperial issue as much as an Irish one. During the second half of the
nineteenth century England became the centre of a world-wide empire
of which the centrepieces were the settlement colonies of Canada, Aus-
tralia and New Zealand, and the Indian empire together with a number
of colonies in East, West and South Africa. For a mixture of strategic
and economic reasons this imperial commitment led to an extension of
responsibilities in the Near East where the Suez Canal became an indis-
pensable link between the Indian Ocean and Britain. Alongside the formal
empire lay a wide commercial network in Central and South America and
the United States.
It was the new significance of empire, with England at its centre, which
made Irish Home Rule much more than a matter of administrative reor-
ganisation. Gladstone’s decision in December 1885 to take up the cause of
Home Rule raised issues of ‘empire’ and ‘race’. Within the confines of the
Liberal party, Gladstone’s conversion to Home Rule was seen by some as
a means of continuing his personal dominance of the party, and no doubt
resentment against this helps to explain the decision of his colleagues

Hartington and Chamberlain to dissociate themselves from him. Profes-
sor John Vincent has suggested (in The Governing Passion (1974)) that the
significance of the Home Rule issue as a matter of principle has been mis-
understood. In his view politicians sought out policies not because they
believed in them but as a means of gaining political power. The extraor-
dinary impact which the Home Rule issue had for three decades after
1886, however, suggests that something more was at work than political
machination. The Home Rule issue refused to go away. It survived the
downfall of Parnell in 1891 and returned to haunt English politics in
1910. During the crisis years of 1912–14 English politicians were forced
to confront the possibility of a rebellion by Ulster Unionists against the
Home Rule Bill.
The Home Rule crisis of 1886 led to bitter divisions within the Lib-
eral party, culminating in the formation of a separate group of ‘Liberal
Unionists’ who in due course joined the Conservative party. Among them
was the historian of empire, Sir John Seeley, who wrote: ‘In talking with
a Home Ruler I am obliged to close my lips on almost all topics that
interest me. I cannot trust myself to speak for I can scarcely speak with
common civility.’ About Gladstone he declared: ‘I seriously think that
if all the wicked men in England were rolled into one wicked man, he
would be a mere muffer and bungler in mischief compared to Glad-
stone as Gladstone is now.’ Seeley’s hostility to Home Rule was typical of
most prominent academics in Cambridge. The moral philosopher Henry
Sidgwick noted that at Cambridge ‘Unionists [were] gaining slowly but
steadily. [I] Dined in Hall and was surprised to find the great preponder-
ance of Unionist sentiment among the Trinity fellows – a body always,
since I have known Trinity, preponderantly Liberal.’ Sidgwick was utterly
critical of the Home Rule Bill:
to abandon the landowners of Ireland to the tender mercies of the people who
for eleven years carried on an unscrupulous private war against their rights of
property – rights which those of us who supported the Land Bill of 1881 morally
pledged ourselves to secure to them – this is a national crime and deep moral
disgrace in which I can have no part. (Quoted in J. Roach, ‘Liberalism and the
Victorian Intelligentsia’, Cambridge Historical Journal, xiii (1957), 83, 80)
The departure of the Whig landlords from Gladstone’s government

was perhaps not unexpected. The Land Act of 1881 and the Reform Acts
of 1884–5 had placed a severe strain upon the loyalty of Hartington to
his leader. What could hardly have been foreseen was the decision of the
radical politician Joseph Chamberlain to place loyalty to the Union above

his commitment to the politics of ‘class conflict’.
Within the Liberal party the future had seemed to many to lie with
Joseph Chamberlain (1836–1914), who was to his generation of northern
radicals what John Bright, his fellow member for Birmingham, had been
for the 1850s and 1860s. Indeed his attacks upon the aristocracy recalled
those of Bright. In 1883, in a famous speech, he launched a fierce attack
upon the Conservative party leader, Lord Salisbury.
Lord Salisbury [he said] constitutes himself the spokesman of a class – of the class
to which he himself belongs who toil not neither do they spin; whose fortunes –
as in his case – have originated in grants in times gone by for the services which
courtiers have rendered kings, and have since grown and increased while they
have slept, by levying an increased share on all that other men have done by toil
and labour to add to the general wealth and prosperity of the country.
Chamberlain’s political reforms by extending the franchise to the rural

labourers were intended to undermine the political power of the landed
proprietors. In fact, the later 1880s ushered in twenty years of dominance
by the Conservative party, which, once based upon the support of the
rural areas and the small agricultural boroughs, transformed itself into a
city-based party.
Chamberlain’s ‘fiefdom’ of Birmingham was lost to the Liberals when
he broke with Gladstone over Home Rule. In the Birmingham area a
mixture of imperialism and protectionism proved to be more potent as a
vote-catcher than Home Rule. In Lancashire, as Peter Clarke has written,
‘the greatest single mainstay of the Conservative party was the presence
in the towns of an Irish immigrant community living uneasily among the
indigenous population’ (Lancashire and the New Liberalism (Cambridge,
1971), p. 37). Disraeli had already played the ‘ethnic’ card with some
success in the 1874 election. The rise of Irish Home Rule as a key issue
in politics further consolidated the position of the Conservatives. The
politics of ‘nativism’ triumphed in Preston, St Helens and other Lan-
cashire towns. Manchester, once a Liberal stronghold, went Conserva-
tive. The issue of Home Rule made it possible for the Conservatives
to divide the north by appealing to a potent combination of nation-
alism, imperialism and anti-immigrant feeling. In the early twentieth
century, party pamphlets criticised ‘the present mongrel combination of
teetotallers, Irish revolutionists, Welsh demagogues, Small Englanders,
English separatists and general uprooters of all that is national and good’.
They attacked a government which allowed ‘foreign blacklegs and every
other foreign undesirable to come in hundreds . . . Any numbers of ships

may now land parties of . . . diseased and criminal aliens on our shores.’
To this was now added a stress on national unity:
Shoulder to shoulder, strong in pride of race

What fire shall thrust us from our ancient place
The union safe ruled with an even hand
The sister isle once more a prosperous land.
The Liberals (termed Radical-Socialists by their opponents) were

described as
A mob of factions, taught to shirk and steal

But not to fight awaits the Conqueror’s heel.
The union sold, a British Isle no more,
Ireland breeds treason at the Empire’s core.
The Liberal party which won the election of 1906 was different in some
striking ways from the party of Gladstone. Of course, the nonconformist
north still remained the heartland of the party. In the Methodist mining
villages of the north-east, temperance was a live issue in 1906. As one Sun-
day school teacher commented: ‘After the Wilderness the Promised Land.
And we have entered Canaan at last.’ The Sunday School Journal declared,
‘No Christian patriot can, on reflection, afford to stand idly by in supine
indifference or pharisaic cynicism while the Drink Scourge, which com-
bines in itself the evils of war, famine and pestilence put together, rolls
its fiery tide of destruction o’er the land.’ Among the leadership of the
party, however, the balance of power was shifting towards those who
argued that fundamental social reforms involving the intervention of the
state were the answer to social evils and not individual regeneration on
the lines advocated by Samuel Smiles. In the eyes of the ‘Progressives’,
the politics of ‘class’ was the answer to the politics of ‘empire’.
When the new Liberal government was formed, traditional issues such
as Welsh disestablishment, Irish Home Rule and licensing reform were
very much part of its agenda. Increasingly, however, the initiative was
seized by the Progressives. Social reforms such as old age pensions, unem-
ployment and health insurance, the reform of the Poor Law and the intro-
duction of labour exchanges now came to the fore under pressure from
Asquith, who became Prime Minister in 1908, and Lloyd George who
was Chancellor of the Exchequer from 1908 to 1915. There was no indi-
vidual item in this programme of reform to which the Unionists could
object. Indeed, it could be argued that the Liberals, once the party of
laissez-faire, had taken over the mantle of Tory Paternalism. What was at
stake, however, was the means by which the changes were to be financed.
Chamberlain had seen indirect taxation as the main source of new rev-
enue. The New Liberals, from the 1907 budget onwards, proposed to
tax the wealthy, especially those who had benefited from the huge rise in
urban land values. As Churchill put it, the Chancellor wanted to know
‘How much have you got? and how did you get it?’
The voice of the Progressives was the Manchester Guardian, which,
under the editorship of C. P. Scott (1846–1932), achieved a national
importance. The success of the Guardian indicated that the Liberals were
still very much a northern party; Scott himself was a Manchester man.
Other writers for the paper such as C. E. Montague and J. A. Hobson
were also from the north. But ‘Progressivism’ was more than a northern
movement even though most of its leaders came to write for the Guardian.
Though some of its members such as R. H. Tawney remained Christian,
others were influenced by the wave of agnosticism which swept the intel-
ligentsia in post-Darwinian England. The ‘New Liberals’, as the Progres-
sives were also termed, were in many ways nearer to Socialism than to the
old-style Liberalism of Gladstone. As L. T. Hobhouse declared, ‘The Old
Liberalism, we thought, had done its work . . . What was needed was to
build a social democracy on the basis so prepared and for that we needed
new formulas, new inspirations. The old individualism was standing in
our way and we were for cutting it down’ (quoted in S. Collini, Liberalism
and Sociology (Cambridge, 1979), pp. 60–1).
The Unionists, now in a minority in the Commons, turned to the
House of Lords as their main line of defence. The battle was joined over
Lloyd George’s ‘People’s budget’ of 1909 in which he sought to raise extra
revenue by such measures as ‘super tax’ on incomes over £5,000, higher
rates for death duties and a levy on land values. The constitutional crisis
which followed in 1910 was marked by two general elections fought on
the issue of the right of the Lords to veto the budget. What was at stake,
however, was the social policy of the ‘New Liberalism’.
Victory went to the New Liberals in 1910. The future seemed to lie
with the politics of class. The social cleavage, in Hobson’s view, lay with
‘organised labour against the possessing and educated classes on the one
hand and against the public house and unorganised labour on the other’.
He argued that the contrast between north and south was between a Pro-
ducer’s England, which was Liberal, and a Consumer’s England, which
was Conservative.
The actual facts of the political situation proved to be more complex.
Religion and ethnicity returned once more in the shape of Irish Home
Rule, as they had done in 1886. Liberal leaders had turned lukewarm
on Home Rule after Gladstone’s death. Asquith had argued in 1905 that
a Home Rule Bill ‘would wreck the fortunes of the party for another
20 years’. Haldane believed that ‘it was vital that there should be a Lib-
eral party that was completely independent of the Irish’. The election
results of 1910, however, made the Liberals dependent upon the Irish
parliamentary party.
The United Kingdom in 1914 may well have been on the brink of civil
war on the key issue of the Union with Ireland. Other questions, the
violent strikes of 1911 and the challenge offered by women suffragettes,
took second place to the Home Rule issue. From 1911 onwards, Unionist
party leaders encouraged the Ulster Unionists to make a show of force.
Bonar Law, the leader of the party, declared his support in unambiguous
terms. In 1914 the army entered on the political scene, when, in the
so-called ‘Mutiny on the Curragh’, officers stationed in Ireland made
clear their unwillingness to be used in operations against Ulster. What
changed the whole situation was the outbreak of war in August 1914.
When hostilities ended in November 1918 a new set of factors had come
into play which may be said to mark the beginning of a new period in the
history of England, and of the British Isles.
The Ireland whose grievances this legislation was intended to redress
was virtually an unknown country to most English politicians (and, it
must be said, to most English historians). As Professor Vincent has
pointed out (in Gladstone and Ireland (London, 1977)), Gladstone went
to Ireland only once on a short visit and while there stayed largely in the
company of Anglo-Irish landlords. From the vantage point of Westmin-
ster, Ireland appeared to be a simpler society than it was in fact. Political
issues in Ireland were presumed to be essentially religious in character.
Religious issues were, of course, important. In the 1852 election in
Ireland, the anti-Catholic riots in Stockport became a key electoral ques-
tion in Co. Mayo and an electoral placard read
Massacre and Sacrilege at Stockport!
Irish Catholics murdered in their beds!
Twenty-four houses wrecked and plundered!
The priest’s house burnt!
The Chapel sacked and pillaged!
Catholics of Ireland! Whoever votes for a supporter of Lord Derby’s
government votes for a massacre of his countrymen!
The violation of the House of god; and
The pollution of the b o dy and b lo o d o f h i s r e d e e m e r !!!
Down with Derby and McAlpine!
Such religious issues could override internal social divisions within

the Catholic body. The fact remains, however, that the ‘Catholic’ south,
though it might appear to be united behind its priests, was torn by inter-
nal social conflict for much of this period. Before the Famine, serious
Figure 33. Stormont and the Edward Carson statue
The lawyer Edward Carson (1854–1935), a Dubliner by birth, was a key figure in the anti-Home
Rule movement which led eventually to the establishment of autonomy for much of Ulster (excluding
the counties of Donegal, Cavan and Monaghan). The parliament at Stormont near Belfast was the
grandiose symbol of a regime which was brought to an end in 1972 by the Conservative government
of Edward Heath.
antagonisms could, and did, develop between farmers and labourers

(both Catholic) over the price of potato land (termed ‘conacre’) on
which the labourer depended for his very survival. It was this rather than
landlord–tenant conflict which seems to have lain behind much of the
rural violence in southern Ireland during the pre-Famine period. The
underground movement known as ‘Ribbonism’ (from the ribbon worn
by its members) seems to have originated in the resentment of labourers
and cottiers against the mainly Catholic ‘strong farmers’. It survived in
spite of repeated denunciation by bishops and clergy. Demographic pres-
sures lay behind such unrest. Indeed, the population of Ireland rose from
over four million in 1781 to over eight million in 1841.
In the north, industrialisation acted as a safety valve, preserving its
social fabric from overpopulation and famine. In the south, by con-
trast, the social structure was transformed in the late 1840s by the Great
Famine, a cataclysm which led to the deaths of nearly one million people
and the emigration under appalling conditions of one and a half million
more. Many died of starvation but the chief cause of death, it appears,
was disease in the form of typhus, relapsing fever and dropsy, brought
on by lack of nourishment. How much of this suffering was avoidable
is still very much a matter of debate. Malthusians looked upon it as the
inevitable consequence of overpopulation. Other commentators believed
that government aid came too little and too late. Nationalists like John
Mitchel put the blame directly on the British government (a thesis which
is still very much alive among some groups in both Ireland and the United
States). It seems clear, however, that the dependence of so many upon
the potato as their main item of diet involved great risk of famine, which
had indeed occurred on a lesser scale several times before 1845. It is
worth pointing out that the incidence of mortality was much less while
the Tories, with their paternalist traditions, were in power than under
the laissez-faire Whigs, who insisted until too late in the day that any
long-term solution must be found in the laws of supply and demand.
The impact of the Famine was not felt equally throughout the south.
Its main effect was upon the poorer, heavily populated areas of the west
and south-west, where dependence upon the potato was high. The chief
victims came from the labouring class who had fewer resources to fall
back on in time of crisis. Emigration was heaviest among the small farm-
ers, many of whom held on until the third failure of the potato crop before
deciding to leave. The north, where oats rather than potatoes formed the
main item of diet, was unaffected by the trauma, whereas in the south
population control became a major cause for concern. A distinctive cul-
ture developed, marked by late marriage and strict sexual taboos which
had the result of controlling the growth of population. The arranged
marriage or ‘match’ had been a feature of ‘strong farmer’ society before

the Famine. It now became more widespread. At the same time the pro-
portion of unmarried men and women in the population rose. In this as
in so much else north and south drew apart. In the north there seems to
have been a greater degree of sexual permissiveness in rural society (e.g.
in Island Magee where one fifth of women getting married were pregnant
or believed themselves to be). Labourers also survived as an important
segment of the population of the north, a fact which was to have impor-
tant consequences in the 1880s when Protestant landlords appealed over
the heads of the tenant farmers to their labourers.
If the contrast between north and south was accentuated as a result
of the Famine, there were other, cultural, factors at work in the same
direction after mid-century. In the south, the post-Famine decades were
marked by what Professor Emmet Larkin has termed the ‘Devotional
Revolution’ (in ‘The Devotional Revolution in Ireland, 1850–75’, Amer-
ican Historical Review, xxvii (1972)), a movement of ecclesiastical reform
introduced with papal backing by Paul Cullen, archbishop of Dublin
(1803–78). The ‘Devotional Revolution’ was in part a response to mis-
sionary endeavours by the Established Church, with the backing of such
Ulster landlords as the duke of Manchester and the earl of Roden. It also
may be seen as the continuation of attempts made before the Famine to
‘reform’ a still vigorous popular culture which in many respects was at
variance with Catholic orthodoxy. Institutions such as the ‘wake’, where
games with an obvious sexual implication were played, and the ‘pattern’
(the celebration of the feast day of local saints), which was an accepted
occasion for courting, came under attack. Until the Famine, the cam-
paign enjoyed only partial success. After the Famine, the task of reform
was made much easier since the areas affected by depopulation were
in many cases the poorer Irish-speaking sectors where popular culture
had been strongest. Cullen went much further than had been attempted
earlier. Under his leadership, clerical discipline was tightened, and new
churches built. He was also responsible for introducing Italian-style devo-
tions such as Quarante Ore (Forty Hours), Benediction, Devotions to the
Sacred Heart and the Immaculate Conception. Rosary beads, the scapu-
lar, holy pictures and holy medals also became part of the routine of
religious life. The apparition of the Blessed Virgin at Knock (Co. Mayo)
in 1879 may well have been one of the fruits of ‘Devotional Revolution’.
While this was happening in the south (and among Catholics in the
north) northern Protestantism was taking a more evangelical direction.
The 1850s saw the rise of a ‘Protestant Crusade’ which had the backing
of such Ulster landlords as the duke of Manchester and the earl of Roden.
The aim of the enterprise was to bring biblical Christianity to the west
of Ireland and though the intentions of its backers were, no doubt, laud-
able, the effect was to create religious tensions between themselves and
the Catholic bishops, led by the nationalist John MacHale. In the north
itself the preaching of the Reverend Thomas Drew about the menace of
‘Popery’ led to several days of rioting in Belfast in 1857.
The real Protestant equivalent of the Devotional Revolution was the
Second Great Awakening in 1859. That year, the ‘Year of Grace’, was
marked by an extraordinary religious revival which began at the village
of Kells near Ballymena (Co. Antrim), and spread throughout Ulster.
The Presbyterian Church in Ulster reported an accession of 10,000 new
members in the first three months of the revival, which later spread to
Wales, Scotland and part of England. Unusual physical manifestations
were seen by its participants as a sign of divine grace, though critics
maintained it was religious hysteria. There were obvious links between
this movement and the American Great Awakening of 1858. Professor
William Gibson, soon to be moderator of the General Assembly of the
Presbyterian Church of Ireland, visited the United States and wrote about
his experiences under the title Pentecost or the Work of God in Philadelphia.
The effect of the religious revivals in both north and south was to
accentuate already existing cultural and economic differences. More and
more in the south the distinguishing feature of Irish identity was seen
to lie in Catholicism. Father Tom Burke, a Dominican preacher, said in
1872:
Take an average Irishman – I don’t care where you find him – and you will find
that the very first principle in his mind is ‘I am not an Englishman because I am
a Catholic.’ Take an Irishman wherever he is found all over the earth and any
casual observer will at once come to the conclusion ‘Oh he is an Irishman, he is
a Catholic.’ The two go together.
Attitudes like this, though not universal, seem to have become more
common, no doubt in part because they corresponded to the experience
of emigrants in the United States, where segregation took place between
the Catholic Irish and the Protestant ‘Scotch-Irish’. The financial con-
tribution of Irish-Americans was directed inevitably towards the cause of
Catholic nationalism. Protestant Ulster could count upon the sympathy
and active help of Orange groups in Canada, especially Toronto.
The difference between the two cultures was also revealed in contrast-
ing attitudes towards the past. A ‘Catholic’ interpretation was likely to
single out Hugh O Neill, Owen Roe O Neill, the penal laws and Daniel O
Connell for emphasis. ‘Protestant’ interpretations of Irish history would
almost certainly centre upon the massacre of 1641, the battle of the Boyne
in 1690 and the foundation of the Orange Order, while ignoring the role
of Presbyterians in the united Irish movement of 1798. Political songs

became the vehicle for these interpretations in popular culture.
To the effect of religious revival as a cause of division should be added
that of ‘Fenianism’. The ‘advanced’ nationalism of the 1860s drew much
of its inspiration from the Italian nationalist movement of Mazzini. In
contrast, Paul Cullen, Catholic archbishop of Dublin and a dominant
figure in the hierarchy, looked upon the Fenians as the Irish counterparts
of those who had driven Pius IX from Rome in 1848 and later had led the
campaign for Italian unification, to the detriment of the Papal States. The
Fenians themselves also looked back to 1798 and to the Young Ireland
movement which had inspired the abortive 1848 insurrection in Tip-
perary. The founders of the Fenian movement hoped to find support for
their ideas among the post-Famine exiles of the United States as well as in
Ireland itself. Where they differed from O Connell and those, like Cullen,
who took him as a model for Irish politicians was in their intention to
establish a republic, if necessary by force. Cullen in 1864 declared, ‘it is
foolish, it is wicked to speak of having recourse to violence and blood-
shed or to expect anything good from illegal combinations and secret
societies . . . It is our duty to walk in the footsteps of the great Libera-
tor, Daniel O Connell.’ In spite of such condemnation, the Fenians did
make headway in southern Ireland. Their attempted invasion of Canada
may have misfired and their insurrection in Ireland was a failure, but
what they lost in the field they gained in publicity. The execution of the
‘Manchester Martyrs’ in 1869 undoubtedly helped the Fenian cause. A
leading Fenian, O Donovan Rossa, was elected to parliament in 1873.
Michael Davitt, who had experienced hostility towards the Irish as an
immigrant in Lancashire, joined the movement and was imprisoned.
Not the least important effect of Fenianism was to drive yet another
wedge between north and south. The very events which led to a growth
of sympathy towards the Fenians in the south discredited them in the
north. The Fenians were by no means typical of the general attitude
of Irish-Americans, many of whom, under the influence of their clergy,
steered clear of secret organisations. In the eyes of the north, however, the
Fenians seemed to be the most active of Irish-American groups. When
in 1882, Lord Frederick Cavendish, the newly appointed Chief Secre-
tary and Thomas Burke, his Under-Secretary, were brutally murdered
in Phoenix Park, this merely confirmed northern suspicions about the
immoral methods and aims of Fenianism.
The Famine left bitter memories, but the middle decades of the nine-
teenth century were a period of prosperity for many Irish farmers, as they
were for those in Britain also. In 1855 Michael Donohoe, a Co. Carlow
farmer, wrote to his brother in the United States:
All the accounts that I have seen represent America to be in a bad state, particu-
larly the working class Irish. Well, when America is getting bad, Ireland is getting
good. The last two years were the best perhaps that were in Ireland for the last
twenty years. The price of every description of agricultural produce was very high
and the crops were pretty good, so that farmers and indeed everyone recovered
from the shock they received since 45. I believe old times are returning to us again.
In the late 1870s, however, again as in Britain, Irish farmers were hard
hit by a combination of bad harvests, competition from American wheat
and a drop in demand in England. The worst year was 1879/80 especially
among the smallholdings of the west, where Michael Davitt and a group
of local Fenians organised what was in effect a rural trade union, known as
the Irish National Land League. The movement might well have remained
of largely western significance but it was brought into the mainstream of
national politics by Charles Stewart Parnell. Parnell, a Protestant landlord
from Co. Wicklow, was a member of the loosely organised group of ‘Home
Rule’ members of parliament but not yet its leader. The land question,
together with a policy of parliamentary obstruction, provided him with a
platform which eventually gave him the leadership in 1880.
Parnell spoke at Westport in June 1879 and told his audience of small
farmers ‘You must show the landlords that you intend to hold a firm
grip on your homesteads and lands. You must not allow yourselves to
be dispossessed as you were dispossessed in 1847.’ During the same
year he also managed to win the support of influential Irish-American
groups, including the Fenians. However, the ‘Parnellites’ in the House
of Commons after the 1880 general election numbered only twenty-four.
The Church was still at this date suspicious of those who had a whiff of
Fenianism about them. Sometime between 1880 and 1885, however, the
Catholic bishops, or most of them, came down on Parnell’s side. The
results were to be seen in the election of 1885 when Parnell’s Home Rule
party, now much more of a ‘machine’ than it had been in 1880, won
eighty-five seats, putting it in a position to hold a balance between the
Liberal and Conservative parties in the House of Commons.
Parnell’s success is normally seen, and rightly, as a major change in
the history of Irish nationalism. Of not less significance, however, was
the reaction which it evoked in the north, as well as among southern
landlords. If Parnell united the disparate elements in the south, he also
made possible a counter-coalition in the north. Northern Protestants
were divided by class, ethnicity and religion. There was little in com-
mon between the Orange Lodges drawing their membership from rural
and urban labourers and the Presbyterian tenant farmers. Fear of Home
Rule, however, drew these varied social and religious groups together in
a political alliance which lasted well into the twentieth century.
The Home Rule populist coalition had in fact called into existence a
populist coalition against it. The extension of the parliamentary franchise
in 1884 which made possible Parnell’s victory also gave the vote to the
Orange Lodges of the north. Serious divisions still remained between
Liberal Unionists and Conservatives and, within the Conservative party,
between the official leadership and the Orange Lodges, but the threat of
Home Rule in 1886 led to the creation of the Ulster Loyalist Anti-Repeal
Union. Unionists controlled the north-east as completely as the Home
Rulers controlled the south.
Class conflict, between tenant and landlord, provided much of the
impetus behind Home Rule in the south. It was countered in the north
by an appeal to religion and ethnicity. Clerical leaders in Ulster made
contact with the Scottish Protestant Alliance and the Protestant Institute
of Great Britain. As James Henderson, owner of the Belfast News Letter,
put it: ‘It is greatly to be desired that we should stir up the feeling of
Scotland in favour of this movement . . . I believe that if we can stir up
religious feeling in Scotland we have won the battle.’ On a visit to Belfast
in February 1886, Lord Randolph Churchill assured the Unionists of
the support which they enjoyed in England and a little later coined the
phrase ‘Ulster will fight and Ulster will be right.’ Here was the equivalent
of Parnell’s equally stirring sentence ‘No man has the right to fix the
boundary of the march of a nation.’
In the 1860s Gladstone and Bright had planned to unite Irish Catholics
and Irish Presbyterians. The disestablishment of the Church of Ireland
in 1869 was calculated to please both groups and the Land Act of 1870,
though unsatisfying in many respects, was intended to appeal to ten-
ant farmers of each denomination. As a consequence the Liberals who
had lacked support in Ulster began to build up a base there as the anti-
landlord party. In the nine Ulster counties, the number of Liberal seats
rose from two in 1868 to fourteen in 1880. Gladstone must also have
hoped that he would do even better in the 1885 election after the extension
of the franchise. In the event, however, the Conservatives won twenty-
one seats in the counties compared to nine for the Liberals. The results
were even worse in 1886 when Gladstonian Liberals won only three seats
in the counties. Elsewhere in Ireland the Home Rule party took every
seat. Outside the north-east the political power of the ascendancy had
been wiped out. The 1880s thus brought into the open a polarisation
which had existed for many decades. In the south, a largely Catholic
middle class now held power, a shift which had been first revealed deci-
sively in the elections to the Poor Law Boards in the late 1870s. It
remained now to see what the long-term consequences of this division
would be.
The years since 1879 had been full of incident. In 1879 there had been
the spectacular murder of Lord Leitrim. In 1880 the ‘Boycott’ had been
invoked against Captain Boycott, the agent of the earl of Erne, and an
expedition of fifty Orangemen left the Farnham estate to give him aid.
The year 1880 had been marked by hundreds of rural outrages in the
west. In 1882, the Phoenix Park murders took place. Gladstone’s Land
Act had been passed in 1881 with the intention of detaching land agitation
from general political issues. It had enjoyed some success. But agitation
among leaseholders, who were not covered by the Act, continued. There
was further radical development with the so-called ‘Plan of Campaign’,
from 1885 onwards, which directed hostile attention towards particular
estates. Gladstone’s decision to bring a Home Rule Bill before the House
of Commons should be seen against this background. What seemed like
statesmanship in the eyes of the south appeared more like capitulation to
anarchy in the view of northerners, Liberal and Conservative alike.
As suggested above, though there may not have been two nations in
Ireland, there are clear grounds for believing that there were two politico-
religious cultures. Home Rule did not come about in 1886 but the cultural
gap continued to exist and even to widen. The 1880s saw the growth of
the Gaelic Athletic Association in the south while association football
spread in the north. With the foundation of the Gaelic League in 1893
an interest in the Irish language became one of the symbols of south-
ern Irish identity, though only a minority were involved. Not least, the
Church came to favour Home Rule on moral grounds. If Home Rule
meant Rome Rule for the Ulster Unionist, the Union came to stand for
a type of modernity which the Catholic clergy found equally threatening
from its own standpoint. For some Irish clergy, the Irish mind which had
once been ‘chaste, idealistic, mystical’ had been sullied by ‘an invading
tide of English ideas’. The young Fr Lethaby in Canon Sheehan’s novel
My New Curate warned his rural parishioners against the perils of infi-
delity, from which Jews and freemasons benefited. The old parish priest
of My New Curate also mocked the dangerous doctrines of religious mod-
ernism which the Higher Criticism was bringing in its wake. Home Rule
promised moral as well as economic regeneration.
The elections of 1910 which left Redmond’s Irish parliamentary party
holding the balance in the House of Commons once more raised the
spectre of Home Rule before the eyes of the northern Unionists. Threats
of violence had been made in 1886. They were now renewed under the
leadership of the Dubliner Edward Carson and with the backing of the
Conservative party under Bonar Law, whose father had been an Ulster
Presbyterian minister. The importation of arms into Ulster and the
drilling of Ulster Volunteers were answered by similar demonstrations
in the south, though Redmond who had everything to gain from con-
stitutionality kept matters under control. The Home Rule Bill in fact
became law in September 1914 with the proviso that Ulster should be
allowed to opt out for six years. Early in 1916 the British administration
in Dublin fully expected to be handing over power to Redmond in the
near future. Though there was still rural unrest in certain western coun-
ties against encroachment by large graziers, the passing of Wyndham’s
Land Act in 1903 had made possible the creation of a ‘peasant proprietor-
ship’ and, with it, agrarian peace. ‘Landlordism’ had been undermined
in the south though cynics suggested ‘gombeenism’ (from the Irish word
gamba, ‘a little portion’ – of interest) had replaced it. With the land ques-
tion solved and Home Rule on the statute book, it seemed not unlikely
that the post-war years in Ireland would be peaceful.
After the outbreak of war most of the Ulster Volunteers and the Irish
National Volunteers joined the British army and went off to fight on
the Western Front or at the Dardanelles. Elsewhere in the British Isles,
the common experience of the war seems to have reduced the intensity
of religious and ethnic divisions. In Ireland, a similar development was
ruled out by the Rising of Easter 1916. The extent of Irish-American
involvement in the decision to attempt a rebellion with German aid is
still unclear but it was certainly the Fenian-linked organisation, the Irish
Republican Brotherhood, which took the decision to rise in 1916, against
the wishes of the Volunteer commander, Eoin MacNeill. The surge of
sympathy for the rebels after the executions of 1916 made possible the
success of the Sinn Fein party in 1918. But ‘1916’ also made partition,
already a possibility in 1914, far more likely. Unionists were in key posts
in Lloyd George’s coalition government when the Home Rule Act was
repealed in 1920 and the Government of Ireland Act substituted. Six of
the nine counties of Ulster were partitioned from the rest and given the
equivalent of Home Rule, with their own parliament under Westminster
sovereignty. It was a ‘solution’ which the Treaty of 1922 with the Sinn
Fein forces left unaltered.
It was during these years (1850–1914) that Welsh politicians came to
the forefront of British Isles politics, so much so that historians have been
tempted to speak of the ‘Rebirth of a Nation’. In fact, however, Wales
remained almost as deeply divided between two cultures as did Ireland.
The prominence of Welsh nonconformity within the Liberal party tended
to conceal the extent of these divisions. Thus, in 1881, the temperance
lobby achieved their first real victory with the passing of the Welsh Sun-
day Closing Act. But this success revealed the extent of the rift which was
growing between rural Wales and the industrial south-eastern counties
of east Carmarthen, Glamorgan and Monmouth. A Merthyr workman
wrote a letter to the Merthyr Express in which he put forward a very dif-
ferent point of view from that of the temperance reformers.
How would these very good people like to live days, weeks and months under-
ground without a sight of the pub and then on a wet Sunday to keep within doors
all the sunless hours, except while attending divine worship? Oh, these very gen-
erous people have their nice cosy clubs or homes which they enjoy every day. But
the collier has to live in discomfort in a small home, and for nearly six months in
every year never sees the sun, except on the first day of the week.
There were other signs that temperance was not seen in the same light in
the south as it was in the north. Between mid-1882 and mid-1883 over
3,000 working men became members of clubs in Cardiff, an increase of
90 per cent over the year before. In 1889 there were nearly 500 shebeens
in Cardiff. By the 1890s drunkenness was much more common in Glam-
organ, Monmouthshire and Pembrokeshire than it was in Merioneth,
Radnorshire and the rural counties. There were also indications that the
number of supposedly ‘bona fide’ travellers markedly increased, since a
journey of three miles entitled the thirsty wayfarer to be served a drink.
The second half of the nineteenth century had seen the great expansion
of the south Wales coal fields, in particular those of the Rhondda valley.
This was a ‘boom’ period during which the population of Cardiff rose
from 18,000 in 1851 to 164,000 in 1901. By 1911, two-thirds of the pop-
ulation of Wales lived in Glamorgan and Monmouth and the industrial
area of east Carmarthen. During the same period, there was a net loss of
400,000 from the rural counties. The vast modern pubs of the Rhondda
valley were one indication that this was a very different world from that
of the rural counties. The distinction was not as sharp in all areas of the
south. In the Welsh-speaking valleys of the anthracite-mining area, con-
ditions were more settled. It was not uncommon for miners to ‘set out’
potatoes on the land of a nearby farmer in return for help at harvest time.
In general, however, the contrast between rural and industrial cultures
was clear-cut. A miner from these areas commented that
Life to us in the Rhondda was exceedingly artificial . . . There is not a farm to be
seen anywhere . . . The tink of the damn pit, the tink of the tramcars on the road,
that’s all you would hear. Rhondda people are acclimatised to what I would say is
a very uncouth proletarian life . . . in the sense that there is nothing natural about
it. (Quoted in D. Smith, A People and a Proletariat (London, 1980), p. 175)
The social problems which the miners faced could hardly be alleviated
by exhortation to temperance and self-help.
Despite the growing imbalance in favour of the south, the political
leadership of the Welsh Liberals remained with the rural counties, where
Welsh-speaking dissent was strong. To the small farmers, the example of
Ireland seemed to provide a possible answer to their difficulties. In June

1886 an assembly of tenant farmers at Rhyl in north Wales pressed for
a Land Act on the lines of Gladstone’s 1881 Irish Land Act. Tom Ellis,
member for Merioneth, and descendant of a tenant evicted in 1859, was
described as the ‘Parnell of Wales’. Ellis’ movement Cymru Fydd (Young
Wales) put forward a programme in 1886 advocating tenant rights, dises-
tablishment and the abolition of tithes. The young David Lloyd George
ran successfully as a Home Ruler for the Caernarfon borough in 1890. In
1892, Welsh members imitated the earlier obstructionist tactics of Parnell
in the House of Commons. These developments are often seen as signs of
a growing rift between Welsh and English Liberalism. Equally important,
however, was the fact that ‘Young Wales’ focussed its attention exclusively
upon the problems of the rural counties. It was the agrarian crisis of the
years following 1879 which engaged their energies. They seemed to be
uninterested in the problems of industrial Wales. There were the possibil-
ities here of a division between industrial and rural areas comparable to
that which came about in Ireland during the 1880s. That it did not occur
was due in large measure to Lloyd George, who, more than Tom Ellis,
deserves the title of ‘Parnell of Wales’ for his skill in keeping an uneasy
coalition together.
Signs that the south might try to go its own way came after the failure
of the coal strike of 1898. The decision to go on strike had been a defeat
for the established leader of the miners, William Abrahams (nicknamed
‘Mabon’), who preferred to use a sliding scale based upon the relation-
ship between wages and the price of coal as the basis for negotiation
with the mineowners. Mabon, a Welsh-speaking dissenter, strongly
committed to Welsh cultural causes, represented a traditional Liberal
approach to industrial relations. The failure of the strike brought a new
departure. Influences from outside Wales began to make themselves felt.
The Independent Labour party (independent from the Liberal party) sent
organisers to south Wales. The English radical newspaper, Blatchford’s
Clarion, was placed on sale. The Scottish socialist Keir Hardie made reg-
ular trips to south Wales and denounced the leadership of ‘Mabon’. In the
‘Khaki’ election of 1900, Keir Hardie was elected for one of Merthyr’s
two seats and became the first Labour member of parliament. Labour
also ran against a Liberal candidate at Gower, though without success.
In the 1905 local elections Labour did well, and in the 1906 general elec-
tion miners’ representatives were elected for Merthyr, Gower and South
Glamorgan. In 1905 Mrs Snowden predicted that Wales, ‘a hot bed of
Liberalism and Nonconformity in the past . . . would become a hot bed
of Socialism and real religion in the future’ (K. O. Morgan, ed., Wales in
British Politics 1868–1922 (1963), p. 210).
This was the language of faith. The great majority of Welsh MPs were
still Liberal. Indeed, the 1906 general election brought an overwhelm-
ing victory for the very forces which Mrs Snowden condemned. Lloyd
George’s ‘People’s budget’ of 1909 brought him great popularity in Wales
and the social democracy of the ‘New Liberalism’ was clearly directed to
the problems of an industrial society. Labour candidates were defeated by
Liberals in mid-Glamorgan and east Glamorgan in 1910 despite the bitter
strikes of 1909 and the violence at Tonypandy in 1910, when a miner had
been killed. The signals coming from south Wales were ambiguous. At
Swansea the dockers’ candidates came bottom of the poll. At Merthyr,
the Scot Keir Hardie, though duly elected, polled fewer miners’ votes
than Edgar Jones, a Welsh-speaking Baptist. Syndicalism with its empha-
sis on direct industrial action was making some headway in the eastern
valleys but there were few signs of the ‘Strange Death of Liberal Wales’.
In Wales, as in Ireland, it was the war years which produced a decisive
shift of direction, but the direction in which the two societies moved was
very different. In southern Ireland, popular reaction to the 1916 Rising
set in motion the rise of ‘Sinn Fein’ which in turn evoked the counter-
nationalism of the Protestant north-east. At the end of the war Ireland was
divided not by class but by culture. In Wales, by contrast, class became
increasingly important and the ethnic and religious issues of the past
moved into relative insignificance. Mounting tension in the coal fields
in 1917 evoked pessimistic comments from the Commission of Enquiry
set up to look into the problem. The success of the Russian revolution
inspired enthusiasm among those whom critics termed the ‘Bolsheviks
of the south’. In the general election of 1918, however, Lloyd George’s
Liberals with twenty-one seats still enjoyed a comfortable majority over
Labour which won ten seats. But the old Liberal issues had lost their hold.
In 1919 a Welsh Disestablishment Act was passed which took this once
emotional question out of politics. The tithe problem was solved at much
the same time. The break-up of the great estates, which paralleled similar
changes in England, removed one of the main targets of traditional Welsh
Liberalism. The war also seems to have reduced the power of organised
dissent and along with it the emotive power of the cause of temperance.
The issues which had enabled the rural west to maintain its political
dominance had lost their potency.
To all this must be added the sharp decline in the influence of Lloyd
George. In 1918 as the architect of victory his position seemed almost
unchallengeable, but his political power in south Wales was soon to be
undermined by his handling of the problems of the coal fields. During
the war the mines had been under government control and the miners
hoped that this would lead to nationalisation. The Sankey Commission
which was set up in 1919 to discuss the matter did not reach a clear-cut
decision and in March 1921 the Lloyd George government decided to
hand back the mines to the owners. By this time the post-war boom was
over. Unemployment had doubled between December 1920 and March
1921. The government decision not to nationalise the mines marked the
end of Lloyd George’s personal influence in south Wales. The miners went
on strike and, though they were defeated, the Labour party reaped the
benefits of Liberal decline in the elections of the 1920s. By 1929 Labour
held twenty-five seats in Wales. After the war, the politics of class proved to
be more important than the politics of religion and ethnicity. The balance
shifted away from rural, Welsh-speaking counties to the industrial areas
where English was strong and which looked to the Socialism of the Labour
party. The nationalism of the south was to be expressed in the symbolism
of sport, especially rugby football. National sentiment was satisfied in the
south with the ritual ‘slaughter’ of English teams at Cardiff Arms Park.
In Scotland, up to the late eighteenth century the most significant cul-
tural divide was that between Highlands and Lowlands. With the coming
of the Industrial Revolution and the consequent growth of population
in the Lowlands, however, the Highlands dropped into relative insignif-
icance, although in the south the kilt and the tartan became symbols
of Scottish cultural identity. Within the Lowlands itself the main split
was between the heavily industrialised west centred upon Glasgow and
its satellite towns, and the largely rural east, in which Edinburgh and
Aberdeen were the ‘capitals’ and Dundee and the mining areas of the
east coast were industrial outposts.
Though the contrast must not be pressed too far, ‘east’ and ‘west’ also
enjoyed different political outlooks. In the industrial west, the Chamber-
lainite programme of disestablishment, free education and land reform
carried a greater appeal than in the Whiggish east where the Liberal party
was led by such landowners as Rosebery and Elgin. In the industrial
cities of the west, the Free Church and the Voluntaries had coped more
successfully than the ‘Moderates’ with the challenge of industrialisation.
Liberalism, though dominant throughout Scotland for the period after
1832, was more radical in the ‘west’ than in the ‘east’, more ‘Whiggish’
in Edinburgh than in Glasgow.
As a corollary to this, ‘No Popery’ was stronger in the west where
Irish immigration had been heaviest. The Maynooth Grant issue of 1845
carried as much resonance north of the border and especially in the
west as it did in England. There was thus always the possibility later
in the century that the ‘No Popery’ card could cause the Liberal party
to become polarised along the west/east divide. Issues of class kept the
Liberal party in existence in the sense that it was the anti-landlord and
anti-establishment party. Issues involving ethnic hostility, such as were

raised by Home Rule in the 1880s, were a source of division.
From 1868, the odds seemed to favour a permanent Liberal majority
in Scotland. Even in 1874, the year of an overall Conservative majority
throughout the United Kingdom, Scottish Liberals took more seats than
the Conservatives. In 1885 only eight Conservatives were elected out of a
total of seventy Scottish MPs. Gladstone seemed well able to handle the
internal divisions which arose inevitably in such a miscellaneous alliance.
His critics declared that ‘the Church people have swallowed Gladstone’s
soothing syrup’.
Gladstone’s acceptance of Home Rule for Ireland in December 1885
transformed the situation in Scotland as it did elsewhere. Home Rule
proved to be an issue which distracted attention away from disestablish-
ment to the fear that ‘Home Rule would mean Rome Rule’. The Glasgow
Herald had begun to give expression to these fears in December 1885.
In the Glasgow Chamber of Commerce, the Liberal Unionist candidate
for the College division expressed the view that, after Home Rule, Ire-
land might ‘become the choice refuge of all the dynamitards of Europe’.
Fears were expressed about the future of ‘the merchants, the manufac-
turers, the bankers, the traders of Ulster who have made the North of
Ireland what it is, trusting to the protection of the United Kingdom of
which they are proud to be subjects’. In May 1886, representatives of the
Irish Presbyterian Church told a meeting of Glasgow Liberal Unionists
that Home Rule would lead to ‘a Romish ascendancy’ and to ‘the ulti-
mate extinction of Protestantism [in Ireland]’. In April, a collection was
taken up at a huge Orange demonstration against Home Rule ‘to assist
men such as Dr. Hanna to stir up the people’. A Catholic chapel nearby
was stoned and the Good Friday services were interrupted. In the elec-
tion of 1886 the Unionists gained eleven seats in the west of Scotland, the
Liberal Unionists nine. A mixture of ethnic, religious and economic issues
had led to the defeat of Gladstonian Liberalism in the west of Scotland.
Home Rule remained an emotional issue in the 1890s. In 1893 the
eighth duke of Argyll made a speech attacking Gladstone’s second Home
Rule Bill in which he declared:
I have been spending the last few weeks in a part of Scotland whence we can look
down on the hills of Antrim. We can see the colour of their fields and in the sunset
we can see the glancing of the light upon the windows of their cabins. This is the
country, I thought the other day, which the greatest English statesman tells us
must be governed as we govern the Antipodes. Was there ever such folly?
In this and other speeches Argyll played the card of ethnicity. ‘Mr Glad-
stone says we are foreigners to the Irish. I say we are flesh of their flesh
and blood of their bone. We are responsible for their liberties and will not
betray them . . . Above all remember your duty to your fellow countrymen
across the Channel.’
Ethnic issues remained important in certain areas of industrial Scotland
such as Greenock where the Orange Order was closely linked with the
Conservatives. Increasingly, however, class issues came to the fore. In
1906 the number of Unionist seats fell from thirty-six to ten. In 1911
it was declared that ‘Scotland has stood by the Liberal Government so
solidly because it hates the House of Lords and the landlords.’ With
the advantage of hindsight, however, it is possible to see that given the
right circumstances, the radical Liberalism of the west and the Whiggish
Liberalism of the east might divide.
Many thousands of miles away from Scotland and Ireland, the cultural
tensions of the British Isles were reproduced in parts of the empire. As we
have seen, the English empire in North America achieved independence
from the mother country, leaving only Canada and the West Indies tied
formally to the United Kingdom. During the course of the nineteenth
century, however, emigration from the British Isles took place on a grand
scale. The United States was the most popular destination for British Isles
emigrants but Canada, Australia, New Zealand and the South African
colonies of Cape Province, Natal and, eventually, parts of the Transvaal
also came to attract many thousands of settlers. In the early twentieth
century, Rhodesia and Kenya also became colonies controlled by white
settlers from the British Isles. India and West Africa drew only civil ser-
vants or missionaries, and the direct impact of the cultures of the British
Isles as distinct from government policy was correspondingly much less.
Nonetheless, it could be a matter of some significance for the future
whether the missionaries were Irish Catholics, Scottish Presbyterians or
Anglicans from England.
In Canada the cultures of the British Isles were all strongly represented,
from the Gaelic-speaking Highlanders of Prince Edward and Cape Breton
islands to the Waterford fishermen of St Johns, Newfoundland. Ontario,
which was exposed to the threat of Fenian invasion in the 1860s, became a
centre of ‘Orangeism’ and anti-Gladstone feeling. Such figures as Bonar
Law, leader of the Conservative party from 1911 to 1923, and Lord
Beaverbrook, who was born in New Brunswick, were products of this
Canadian Unionist tradition. J. K. Galbraith, in his autobiography The
Scotch (1963), has described the outlook of a rural Ontario culture which
had its roots in Ulster. Tension between English-speaking Ontario and
French-speaking Quebec provides a major theme of Canadian history but
political and religious differences deriving from the cultural history of the
British Isles also formed an essential element in the ‘Canadian Mosaic’.
The history of Australia during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries

was also strongly influenced by attitudes which originated in the interac-
tion of the cultures of the British Isles. New South Wales was founded
as a penal colony in 1788 and together with Tasmania became the recep-
tion area for thousands of convicts, among whom were many Irishmen
sentenced to transportation after the 1798 rebellion or the many out-
breaks of rural disorder in Ireland during the early nineteenth century.
In view of this it was inevitable that Irish nationalism should find a sec-
ond home in Australia. It was almost equally inevitable that Unionism or
‘Orangeism’ should reach a sympathetic audience among other sections
of the population.
Most of the cultures of the British Isles were represented in nineteenth-
century Australia. English culture was dominant but the popularity of St
Patrick’s Day as a public holiday in many areas indicated a significant
Irish presence. In proportion to the population, there were twice as many
Catholics, mainly of Irish descent, in Australia as in England. In New
South Wales in the mid-nineteenth century, the Irish amounted to one
third of the population. In 1842 the governor of New South Wales wrote
in support of the appointment of an English Catholic bishop: ‘It is most
important that an Englishman should have the preference, the Catholics
being, I believe, all Irish.’
The rise of Fenianism had some repercussions in Australia especially
after the attempted assassination of the duke of Edinburgh in 1867. It
was widely believed at the time that the assassin, Patrick O Farrell, was
part of a Fenian network, and in Melbourne particularly this gave rise to
anti-Irish demonstrations, and the establishment of a Protestant Political
Association. The rise of the Home Rule issue in the United Kingdom from
the 1880s onwards also had political effects in Australia. At an Orange
Lodge meeting in 1914 at Melbourne Town Hall during the Home Rule
crisis at Westminster one speaker declared that ‘The victory on the Boyne
had been a victory, not only for Ireland, but the civil and religious liberty
throughout the world.’ Edward Carson was seen as ‘another William III’.
In 1916, government attempts to introduce conscription were defeated
by the pro-Irish lobby. Mannix, the Irish-born archbishop of Melbourne,
was regarded as so dangerous that he was refused permission to land in
Ireland during the post-war ‘Troubles’. It is clearly impossible to under-
stand the mentalité of Australia during this period without adopting a
British Isles approach.
The same point may also be made about New Zealand, where emi-
grants from England, Scotland and Ireland set the tone. The Anglican
and Presbyterian religious traditions were both strongly represented.
The Catholic bishop of Dunedin declared ‘In Otago it is Presbyterian
Protestantism: in Canterbury, Anglican Protestantism: and in Welling-

ton, Protestantism of any and every kind.’ In the province of Otago, the
Free Church of Scotland predominated, as the name of Port Chalmers,
commemorating the leader of the ‘Disruption’, suggested. But through-
out New Zealand, the Irish, of either Catholic or Protestant background,
were also an important element in society. The problems of Ireland after
1916 led to the formation of a Protestant Political Association in New
Zealand which was pledged to fight ‘Rum, Romanism and Rebellion’.
The election of 1919 was fought on sectarian issues and the Conserva-
tive ‘Reformer’ Massey, who had negotiated an informal alliance with the
PPA, gained an overall majority over his Liberal and Labour opponents.
Apart from political issues relating to Ireland, temperance, Sabbatar-
ianism and the place of Bible-teaching in the schools were as impor-
tant in New Zealand politics as they were in the United Kingdom itself.
The Protestant Churches repeatedly mounted moral crusades which were
designed to preserve ‘the fitness of the race . . . the safety of the streets
and the security of the family’. In all this the influence of the cultural
divisions of Ireland loomed large. ‘Well into the twentieth century’, it
has been said, ‘the Anglo-Irish, the Scots-Irish and the Catholic Irish [in
New Zealand] viewed each other suspiciously through the kaleidoscope
of Irish history.’
In August 1914 a war broke out in Europe which was expected to be
over within a short time but which in the event lasted for over four years.
Inevitably such a prolonged conflict carried with it immense political,
social and economic consequences for the United Kingdom as it did
for the British empire. Broadly speaking throughout most of the British
Isles, the war had the effect of reducing the importance of ethno-religious
issues and placing ‘class’ at the centre of politics. In Wales and Scotland,
after 1918, disestablishment was carried out without fuss. The creation
of the Irish Free State in 1922 removed the highly emotional issue of
‘Home Rule’ from British politics. Ethnic hostility remained strong at the
local level in such cities as Glasgow and Liverpool. In national politics,
however, the Irish issue in the sense that it had existed since the Act of
Union of 1801 ceased to be relevant.
Wales and Scotland found themselves caught up within the general
pattern of class politics. The industrialised areas of south Wales and of
west Scotland provided solid support for a rejuvenated Labour party
which took over the political inheritance of Liberal radicalism in Wales
and Scotland as it did in England.
The great exception to this shift from ethno-religious to class politics
was Ireland, where north and south divided upon largely ethnic lines. In
1914, the Protestants of Ulster had been willing to go to the brink of civil
war in order to preserve the Union. In September 1914, however, the

Home Rule Bill became law, though it was not put into effect because of
the war. Home Rule, within a United Kingdom, seemed to be the most
likely future for Ireland. In 1916, however, the Sinn Fein rebellion set in
train a course of events which led to the overthrow of John Redmond’s
moderate nationalist party and ultimately, after three years of military
struggle (1919–22), to the partition of Ireland between the six counties
of Northern Ireland and the twenty-six counties of the Irish Free State.
Within each polity, ethno-cultural issues took precedence over class.
Socialists had taken part in the Irish Rising of 1916 but Socialism found
no place in the Irish Free State. Within the six counties of Northern
Ireland the supremacy of the Unionist party rested upon the war cry of
‘No Surrender’ which could be relied upon to outflank any appeal to
class issues among the electorate. For fifty years the politics of Northern
Ireland remained frozen in an ethno-religious mould, with a two-thirds
majority of Protestants maintaining its unity against the supposed threat
presented by the Catholic minority.
In England itself the affluent south-east provided a secure basis of Con-
servative political power. The Liberal party, divided between its radical
and its ‘Whiggish’ wings, gradually ceased to exist as a serious political
force. English politics, like those of Wales and Ireland, were increasingly
based upon class issues, although the Conservatives were always able to
draw upon working-class Toryism in areas such as Liverpool and Glasgow
where ethno-religious issues still had some life. Even here, however, class
unity on occasion could outweigh ethnic diversity. In Liverpool during the
transport strike of 1911 an observer noted how ‘from Orange Garston,
from Roman Catholic Bootle and the Scotland Road area, they come.
Forgotten were their religious feuds . . . The Garston band had walked
five miles and their drum-major proudly whirled his sceptre twined with
orange and green ribbons as he led his contingent band, half out of the
Roman Catholic, half out of the local Orange band.’ In broad terms,
however, one of the most lasting effects of the First World War was the
creation of a system of British politics in which Irish issues, northern or
southern, ceased to count.
Postscript
As I revise Chapter 10 for a new edition, I am conscious that England
needs much more emphasis than I provided. George Dangerfield, in his
book The Strange Death of Liberal England, drew attention to the impor-
tance not merely of Ireland but also of labour unrest and feminist agitation
in the years before the First World War. These questions clearly require far
more analysis than was given here. I also tend to ignore the significance
of the First World War for English politics. The split between Asquith
and Lloyd George in 1916 led to a permanent divide in the Liberal party,
making possible the return of the Conservatives to power after the war
and the rise of Labour. The Irish Question was not the whole story.
I am also conscious, however, that more attention should have been
given to the ‘advanced nationalism’ of Sinn Fein and other groups. Recent
work by Irish historians has now made this possible. Patrick Maume
has brought out the significance of the ‘Irish-Ireland’ movement led by
D. P. Moran. His study of Daniel Corkery in Life that is Exile: Daniel
Corkery and the Search for Irish Ireland (Belfast, 1993) is also very
illuminating. Senia Paseta, in her brilliant study Before the Revolution:
Nationalism, Social Change and Ireland’s Catholic Elite (Cork, 1999), pro-
vides an invaluable guide to the various currents of thought among the
emerging Catholic elite. Tom Garvin, in Nationalist Revolutionaries in Ire-
land, 1858–1928 (Oxford, 1987), also makes an important contribution,
as does Michael Laffan in The Resurrection of Ireland: The Sinn Fein Party
1916–1923 (Cambridge, 1999). A ‘revisionist’ study of Patrick Pearse by
Ruth Dudley Edwards in Patrick Pearse: The Triumph of Failure (London,
1977) has given rise to a fierce debate which may be followed in Ciaran
Brady, ed., Interpreting Irish History: The Debate on Historical Revisionism
(Dublin, 1994) and D. George Boyce and Alan O Day, eds., The Making
of Modern Irish History: Revisionism and the Revisionist Controversy (Lon-
don, 1996).
So far as Wales and Scotland are concerned I have found Dai Smith’s
Wales! Wales? (London, 1984) and Tom Devine’s The Scottish Nation
1700–2000 (London, 1999) most illuminating.
11 Between the wars
The World War of 1914–18 undoubtedly had a profound impact upon

Great Britain and Ireland and it is tempting to see it as a watershed of
revolution. On balance, however, despite the undoubted changes which
occurred, the period between 1918 and 1939 appears more as an inter-
lude in which old and new elements were still intermingled and the future
of Britain and Ireland was still unclear. It was still presumed, for example,
that Britain was a great world power, an attitude which seemed persuasive
because of the fact that the United States and the Soviet Union largely
retreated from their full roles in world affairs. The real weakness of the
British empire was not to be exposed until 1940 when it became clear that
Britain was dependent upon American aid for the continuance of the war.
Of the internal changes which occurred within the British Isles during
this period one of the most important was the emancipation of women,
although the impact of this varied throughout ‘the British Isles’. It was
most marked in southern England, less so in northern England and least
of all in Ireland, particularly in the newly established Irish Free State.
In the context of the history of the United Kingdom, the impact of
the First World War in 1914 had been to arouse a sense of ‘Britishness’
among many sections of the population. The war was seen as fought in
a just cause for the rights of small nations and there was a huge surge of
volunteers throughout Britain and Ireland in 1914. Home Rule seemed a
real possibility to such Irishmen as Tom Kettle, a brilliant young politician
who died on the Western Front. What changed all this was the Dublin
Rising of 1916, when a group of ‘advanced’ nationalists led by Patrick
Pearse took control of the General Post Office in Dublin and proclaimed
an Irish Republic.
The rebels were booed in the streets by Dubliners when they surren-
dered but sympathy soon swung around to them when their leaders were
executed singly over two weeks. The date ‘1916’ throughout most of the
United Kingdom came to signify the heroic sacrifice of the battle of the
Somme (in which many Irish troops took part). In Catholic Ireland, how-
ever, ‘1916’ increasingly took on a different connotation. In the words
280
Between the wars 281
of W.B. Yeats, ‘All was changed, changed utterly, A terrible beauty was
born.’ In Protestant Ireland, and especially in Ulster, the date ‘1916’
referred to the heroism of the Ulster division in 1916. Thus, within the
United Kingdom, a bitter division opened up which was the British and
Irish equivalent of the changes which took place within central and east-
ern Europe. An Irish nation-state took shape, claiming roots in the past,
but in fact the equivalent of other ‘imagined communities’, which gained
their independence after 1918. Within most of the United Kingdom a
sense of common Britishness developed more deeply, symbolised by the
Cenotaph on Whitehall or the tomb of the Unknown Warrior in West-
minister Abbey. In England this was increasingly a non-sectarian identity.
In Scotland and Northern Ireland, however, being ‘British’ still implied
a strongly Protestant dimension. The newly established Irish Free State
in contrast moved rapidly towards a Catholic, Gaelic identity.
In Ireland, the election of 1918 had seen the destruction of John Red-
mond’s Irish parliamentary party with its policy of Home Rule. It was
replaced (in the south) by the more ‘advanced’ nationalist party of Sinn
Fein whose members refused to take up its seats in the Westminster par-
liament. By 1919, there was open violence which led to atrocities on both
British and Irish sides, culminating in the events of ‘Bloody Sunday’
(21 November 1920). There was, however, no outright victory for either
side and by the end of 1921 both were glad to accept a compromise.
The result of three years of guerrilla warfare was the partition of Ireland
into the Irish Free State consisting of twenty-six counties including three
belonging to the traditional province of Ulster (Monaghan, Cavan and
Donegal) and six counties of ‘Northern Ireland’, which were given a mea-
sure of ‘Home Rule’. For some nationalists, however, the Treaty of 1921
seemed like a betrayal of the ideals of 1916 and a bitter division devel-
oped between a pro-Treaty party of Michael Collins and an anti-Treaty
party led by Eamonn De Valera. The civil war which followed created
profound divisions which had a lasting effect, one of which was to ensure
the survival of the six-county unit of Northern Ireland.
The Irish crisis of 1919–22 rarely receives its due from English his-
torians. In fact, however, the prolonged and bitter struggle between the
British government and the forces of Sinn Fein had wide repercussions
not merely within the British Commonwealth but also in the United
States.
Within the Conservative party a split developed between the official
leadership headed by F. E. Smith and Austen Chamberlain who came
to accept, reluctantly, the need for compromise with Sinn Fein, and the
‘Die-hards’ who regarded the Treaty as a ‘Scuttle’. In June 1922, Field
Marshal Sir Henry Wilson, an Anglo-Irishman who in 1914 had been
Figure 34. Eamonn De Valera (1882–1975)

This image of Eamonn De Valera illustrates his role as an elder statesman
at the end of his long career. A controversial figure, his vision of a Gaelic-
speaking Ireland set the tone for many aspects of life within the Irish Free
State after 1932. His successor Sean Lemass (1879–1971) represented
a very different vision of Ireland, one which eventually found expression
in the economic successes of ‘the Celtic Tiger’.
involved in the ‘Mutiny on the Curragh’, was assassinated by a splinter

group of Irish nationalists. Leo Amery wrote:
Down to the House hearing, just before the end of questions, of Henry Wilson’s
assassination. The whole House very much upset and adjourned at once. I have
lost one of my best friends and his death raises in my mind again all the doubts I
have felt about the whole hateful Irish business. I cannot help feeling that it is to
these very men that we have handed over Ireland.
The issues raised by the prospect of Irish independence undoubtedly

strengthened the hand of the ‘Die-hards’ within the Conservative party
and helped to bring down the Lloyd George Liberal-Conservative coali-
tion at the end of 1922. The way was clear for a Conservative party in
which men sympathetic to business, such as Stanley Baldwin and Neville
Chamberlain, would have a much greater say. Salisbury’s cabinet in 1895
was filled to overflowing with marquesses, dukes, earls and barons. With
the victory of Baldwin over his noble rival, Lord Curzon, the balance
tilted towards the world of business.
Perhaps more important than the Irish crisis itself was the long-term
effect of Irish withdrawal from Westminster. Since 1801 there had been an
active Irish presence in parliament and Irish issues possessed a centrality
which successive British governments had been unable to ignore. From
1922, however, after the signing of the Anglo-Irish Treaty, Ireland, north
and south, in effect dropped below the political horizon. There were
periods, notably during the 1930s and the war years, when the British
government and the Free State were at loggerheads, but Irish questions
no longer dominated the political scene as they had done at intervals
since the Union. The absence of eighty-plus Irish nationalist members
deprived the Liberals of their ‘natural’ allies and made a Liberal recovery
more difficult.
The full implications of the establishment of an independent Irish Free
State were slow to appear, however. ‘Ireland’ was still in theory a member
of the British Commonwealth and even Mr De Valera when he drew up
a new Irish constitution in 1937 left room for Ireland’s ‘external associ-
ation’ with the Commonwealth. The Treaty itself had been drawn up on
the assumption that the partition of Ireland would not be permanent. It
was perhaps not until ‘Eire’ adopted a neutral stance during the war of
1939–45 that attitudes finally hardened.
The Irish revolution of 1916–22 brought political changes which were
the nearest approximation within the British Isles to those of central
and eastern Europe. Ireland, however, remained very much the polit-
ical exception. In England, Scotland and Wales, the war did not have
the social repercussions which many anticipated. A wave of strikes in the
immediate post-war years had little effect and the General Strike of 1926
petered out after a week. The two decades before the outbreak of the Sec-
ond World War were on the whole an age of isolationism, in which the
majority of the population wanted at almost all costs to avoid a recurrence
of the mass slaughter on the Western Front. Another wartime event,
the Russian revolution of 1917, also had lasting consequences during the
post-war period. Conservatives were able to play as successfully upon
the general fear of ‘Bolshevism’ as they had upon ‘Home Rule’ in the
1880s.
In 1923 Stanley Baldwin became leader of the Conservative party, in

succession to Bonar Law. Baldwin self-consciously created the image of
a politician more interested in domestic tranquillity (the equivalent of
America’s ‘normalcy’) than in world politics. In so doing, his aim was
to counter the main asset upon which his Liberal rival Lloyd George
relied, i.e. his status as a key figure in international politics, organ-
iser of victory in the war and of the peace which followed. Baldwin
won most seats in the 1923 election but was forced to yield power to
Labour. In 1924, however, he won a resounding victory and remained
in power until 1929. During the 1930s he once more became Prime
Minister, during the troubled years which followed the 1931 financial
crisis.
The Conservative party which Baldwin and later Chamberlain led was
very much the party of south-eastern England. Here lay its electoral
strength, in the suburban middle class of outer London and the Home
Counties. One of the long-term effects of the war, indeed, had been to
upset the economic balance of power within the British Isles. Northern
England, south Wales and Clydeside (and Belfast) were no longer the
‘booming’ areas of Britain. As was to become clear during the rest of
the twentieth century, the First World War marked the beginning of yet
another period of dominance by London and the south-east, a dominance
symbolised by the decision of the Bank of England to restore the Gold
Standard in 1925, which had the unforeseen consequence of impeding
economic recovery in the north and west.
Stanley Baldwin may have led a party whose strength lay in the sub-
urban middle class. His own rhetoric, however, revealed in the volume
of his speeches On England which ran into six editions during the year
1926–7, struck a note of English nationalism. He recalled Disraeli in
a speech made in 1924: ‘I want to see the spirit of service to the whole
nation [as] the birthright of every member of the Unionist Party – Union-
ist in the sense that we stand for the union of those nations of which
Disraeli spoke two generations ago . . . to make one nation of our peo-
ple.’ In a speech made after Curzon’s death in 1925 he spoke of ‘the
same spirit that would have been welcomed by Young England in the
days of Disraeli’s youth, of which period, in many ways he seemed to
be a member’. In another speech he stated: ‘My party has no political
bible. Possibly you might find our ideals expressed in one of Disraeli’s
novels.’ Repeatedly his rhetoric referred to an exclusively English past
in a way which would have been impossible for the Welshman Lloyd
George or for the Scot Ramsay MacDonald (or Campbell-Bannerman).
In Baldwin’s speeches the most consistent note is that of English
nationalism.
The power of managing our own affairs in our own way is the greatest gift of
Englishmen.
Nowhere was the village community so real and so enduring a thing as it was
in England for at least three centuries of its history . . . to these twelve centuries
of discipline we owe the peculiar English capacity for self-government.
But though Baldwin spoke in the name of England the strength of the
Unionist party lay in the south of England. When it came to the point
of a trial of strength between south and north, as it did in the General
Strike of 1926, Baldwin acted in the interests of the south.
The rhetoric of the Conservative party during these years was based
upon a threefold appeal – to English nationalism, to the fear of Socialism
and to pride in the British empire. Labour was portrayed by Baldwin as
a party dominated by foreign ideas. ‘Many of those [he declared] who
have been eager for the progress of our country have only succeeded in
befogging themselves and their fellow countrymen, by filling their bellies
with the east wind of German Socialism and Russian Communism and
French Syndicalism.’
Within the Labour party itself there was a struggle for dominance
between its leader Ramsay MacDonald, who favoured a ‘gradualist’
approach to social change, and the ‘Clydesiders’ led by Maxton and
Wheatley, who pressed for radical socialist solutions to the problem of
unemployment. During the months leading up to the 1929 election Mac-
Donald came off best. In drawing up the party manifesto he was helped
by R. H. Tawney, Professor of Economic History at the London School
of Economics and a former member of the progressive wing of the Liberal
party in the pre-war period.
In Tawney’s approach to English history, there was a clear contrast with
that of Stanley Baldwin (and of Baldwin’s friend G.M. Trevelyan). In a
series of studies of which the most notable were The Acquisitive Society
(1921), Religion and the Rise of Capitalism (1926) and Equality (1931) he
produced an interpretation of history in which exploitation rather than
freedom was seen as the chief characteristic of English history. Of the
Church of England he wrote: ‘Deprived of its vitality, it had allowed its
officers to become by the eighteenth century the servile clients of a half-
pagan aristocracy, to whose contemptuous indulgence they looked for
preferment. It ceased for some 200 years to speak its mind and, as a nat-
ural consequence, it ceased to have a mind to speak.’ About nonconfor-
mity he was equally dismissive: ‘The personal piety of the Nonconformist
could stem that creed – (“a persuasive self-confident and militant Gospel
proclaiming the absolute value of economic success”) – [but] with a few
individual exceptions they did not try to stem it, for they had lost the
spiritual independence needed to appraise its true moral significance.’
Tawney’s vision of an ideal society was one which approximated in some

way to that of the medieval social order when moral restraints had been
placed upon economic appetites.
Behind the rhetoric of Baldwin and Tawney there lay the inescapable
fact of mass unemployment in northern England, south Wales, Clydeside
and Belfast. All of these had been areas of economic expansion before
the war and it was presumed at first that any setbacks would be tem-
porary. Looking back from 1929 one Lancashire observer recalled the
extraordinary confidence of the period before 1914. He quoted a cotton
manufacturer’s views about Lancashire superiority.
My lad, never again let anybody in Lancashire hear you talk all this childish stuff
about foreign competition. It’s right enough for Londoners and such like but it
puts a born Lancashire man to shame as an ignoramus. It’s just twaddle. In the
first place, we’ve got the only climate in the world where cotton pieces in any
quantity can ever be produced. In the second place, no foreign Johnnies can ever
be bred that can spin and weave like Lancashire lasses and lads. In the third place,
there are more spindles in Oldham than in all the rest of the world put together.
And last of all, if they had the climate and the men and the spindles – which they
never can have – foreigners could never find the brains Lancashire cotton men
have for the job. We’ve been making all the world’s cotton cloth that matters for
more years than I can tell and we always shall.
This outlook did not survive the post-war depression when unemploy-
ment in the cotton industry became endemic, rising to over 40 per cent
in 1930. What happened to cotton happened also in shipbuilding, towns
such as Barrow and Jarrow being particularly hard hit.
Culturally, Walter Greenwood’s novel Love on the Dole (1933) reflects
the mood of depression in northern England. The songs of Gracie Fields
in Sing as We Go (1934) were an attempt to raise morale in the north, but
observers such as George Orwell and J. B. Priestley on their visits to the
northern cities found a deep-seated malaise. The hunger marches made
by the Jarrow unemployed in 1936 were one way of attempting to cope
with the situation. Another was to emigrate to the prosperous industrial
areas of the south.
The politics of the inter-war period revolved around the contrast
between the south-east and the depressed areas of the north and west.
The north (and its associated areas) had been the product of an age of
coal and iron, industries which were hit by the new technology of oil,
electrical power and chemical engineering. During the First World War
these new industries found a home in the south, where they were nearer
to the Channel ports and the Western Front. As a consequence, it was
southern towns such as Bristol, Gloucester, Oxford, Luton and Slough
which became centres of the automobile and aircraft industries and the
new light industries. Coventry became part of the ‘new south’. Statis-
tics relating to unemployment during the 1920s and 1930s indicate that
rates were much higher for the older industries of the north than the new
industries of the south. In the coal-mining areas unemployment was well
over 30 per cent in 1932 and 1933 and over 20 per cent for much of the
time. In 1939 it was still over 12 per cent. In the shipbuilding industry,
there was 62 per cent unemployment in 1932 and it was still at the rate
of 20 per cent in 1939. Similar rates applied to dock-workers, and to
workers in linen and cotton textiles. The new southern industries were
more fortunate. For much of the period unemployment among the elec-
trical engineers was under 10 per cent. From 1936 it was under 5 per
cent. The same was true of the industries involving the construction and
repair of cars, aircraft and cycles. Service industries also did well in the
south. Statistics relating to unemployment in individual towns tell the
same story.
The North, Scotland

and Wales The south
Jarrow 67.8% Luton 7.7%

Merthyr 61.9% Coventry 5.1%
Maryport 57.0% Oxford 5.1%
Motherwell 37.4% St Albans 3.9%
Economically the period after the First World War was marked by sub-
stantial change, when what had once been ‘boom’ areas were affected by
economic depression. Politically also the post-war scene was markedly
different from what it had been before 1914. After the signing of the
Anglo-Irish Treaty in 1922, the Irish dimension in British politics ceased
to occupy its once central position. Religious issues also became of
marginal importance. In particular, nonconformity, for so long a major
force in the Liberal politics of northern England and Wales, increasingly
lost ground. The bitter split within the Liberal party between the followers
of Asquith and Lloyd George left many nonconformists without obvious
political allegiance. For some, Conservatism became increasingly attrac-
tive in the face of the growth of Socialism, and Stanley Baldwin, in his
speeches, went to some pains to stress his nonconformist background.
In 1924 he spoke to the National Free Church Conference, stating that
‘I owe a great deal of my public and private life to my Nonconformist
ancestry.’ ‘No less than half my great grandfathers’, he declared ‘were
Presidents of Conference [and] one was a follower of John Wesley.’ In

1926 he appealed to the Wesleyans, saying that ‘There is nothing this
country needs so much as another Wesley or Whitefield.’
Many nonconformists, such as Kingsley Wood, a Wesleyan, gravitated
towards the Conservative party, out of fear of Socialism. Others found
a home in the Labour party. Ernest Bevin was a Baptist lay preacher,
as was Arthur Cook, the miners’ leader. Aneurin Bevan was the son of
Welsh Baptists. Arthur Henderson was a Wesleyan lay preacher, Philip
Snowden was a Wesleyan. Within the context of the British Isles, the
Labour party thus inherited part of the mantle of the Liberal party in the
sense that it drew far more for its support upon ‘Outer Britain’. If the
Conservative heartland was the south-east, and in parts of Scotland, that
of Labour was northern England, south Wales and Clydeside, all of them
heavily industrialised areas.
The appeal of the post-war Labour party was, however, more limited
than that of the pre-war Liberal party, its predecessor as the party of ‘the
left’. In Scotland, before the war, the Liberal party had been able to rely
upon support in the rural east as well as the industrialised west, and in
Wales upon the rural north as well as the industrialised south. During the
post-war years, however, Labour found it difficult to make headway in
the rural areas. In Scotland from 1924 the Conservatives did well in the
east, where farmers reacted against the growth of trade unionism among
the farm labourers, and in north Wales, the Liberal party maintained its
position in part at least because of nonconformist fears about the growth
of Socialism in south Wales.
The tensions between ‘Inner Britain’ (i.e. the south-east) and ‘Outer
Britain’ (northern England, south Wales and Clydeside) reached a climax
in the General Strike of 1926. Large-scale strikes had already occurred
before the war and they continued after it in industries such as mining and
shipbuilding which were seriously affected by the post-war depression.
The General Strike was made possible, though not inevitable, by the
deflation which followed upon the Conservative government decision to
return to the Gold Standard in 1925.
The General Strike, so often viewed in purely English terms, was very
much a struggle between Inner and Outer Britain. The strength of the
government rested in large measure upon its control of the communica-
tion network of Inner Britain, with its centre in London. The strike drew
its support in the main from the industrial north, Clydeside and south
Wales, with the East End of London as an additional bastion. In Scot-
land there was a contrast between the east, exemplified by Edinburgh,
where the strike failed disastrously, and the west, where such towns as
Motherwell, Hamilton and the Vale of Leven were solidly behind it. In
Wales, the north remained aloof from the strike, while the south, in con-
trast, was largely in favour. In south Wales, however, there were clashes
in the coastal cities of Cardiff, Swansea and Newport between pro- and
anti-strike groups.
The General Strike collapsed after a week, leaving bitter memories,
especially among the miners, who continued their resistance long after
the other unions had capitulated. Within the Labour party the fail-
ure of the strike helped the cause of the ‘gradualists’ led by MacDon-
ald. The General Strike may also be seen as highlighting in dramatic
fashion the tensions which existed within Britain between an increas-
ingly prosperous and powerful south-east and a depressed north and
east. It was a pattern which was temporarily reversed during the Sec-
ond World War when Britain depended for its survival upon its Atlantic
ports and its traditional industries, especially shipbuilding and min-
ing. After the war the victory of Labour restored the influence of the
periphery, in the persons of such cabinet ministers as Emmanuel Shin-
well (of Glasgow Jewish background), Aneurin Bevan (from Tredegar
in south Wales) and Harold Wilson (of Yorkshire nonconformist back-
ground). After the victory of the Conservatives in 1951, however, the
drift to the south-east once more picked up momentum, accentuated by
the decision to apply to enter the European Economic Community in
1962.
For much of the inter-war period Ireland, both north and south,
remained largely insulated from the course of events on the other side of
the Irish Sea. Economically, Ireland, north and south, was as depressed
as Wales, Scotland and northern England. In Belfast, employment in the
shipbuilding yards, heavily dominated by a Protestant labour force, fell
from 20,000 in 1924 to 2,000 in 1933. The linen industry enjoyed some
degree of prosperity in the early 1920s as a result of American demand
but after 1927 it also declined. In 1937 there were only 15,000 linen
workers in Belfast, less than one third of the numbers in 1927. The Irish
Free State was also badly hit during the depression though the extent
of unemployment was partially concealed by underemployment in the
rural areas, where the great majority of the population lived. When De
Valera came to power in 1932 a tariff war broke out with Britain over
the payment of annuities due under the Land Acts of an earlier period.
The decision of the Irish Free State to remain neutral during the Second
World War acted as an obstacle to economic development.
Culturally also both the Free State and Northern Ireland remained iso-
lated. Within the Free State, Church and State were in general agreement
about the need to keep Ireland uncontaminated from the pressures of
‘modernity’. Divorce and contraception were prohibited and a stringent
system of literary censorship was enforced. Partition, though rejected

in theory, was tacitly accepted on the grounds that it made possible the
development of Ireland as a ‘Catholic’ society. Neutrality during wartime
accentuated the trend towards cultural isolation. In a wartime broadcast
De Valera spoke eloquently of how ‘That Ireland which we dreamed of
would be the home of a people who valued material wealth only as a basis
for right living, of a people who were satisfied with frugal comfort and
devoted their leisure to the things of the spirit.’ In 1972, however, this
pre-industrial vision was to be decisively rejected when the population of
the Republic voted overwhelmingly in favour of joining the EEC.
In the Irish Free State, Catholicism was the religion of the great major-
ity. In Northern Ireland, two-thirds of the population were Protestant
and one third Catholic. As it became clear that partition was likely to
be a permanent feature of Irish life for the foreseeable future, a situation
was created in which the two cultures lived side by side with a minimum
of social contact. Each had its own churches, schools, newspapers and
forms of recreation. In small towns, Protestant and Catholic grocers had
their own clientèle. For one community, soccer and rugby were appro-
priate games, for the other, Gaelic football and hurling. Each had its own
interpretation of Irish history. At Queen’s University, Belfast, Irish his-
tory began with Elizabeth. In Catholic colleges, the Gaelic past received
its share of attention. In mixed rural areas, as Rosemary Harris’ study
of Ballygawley has shown, a complex and subtle system of relationships
came into existence in which both sides took great pains to avoid causing
offence.
From time to time, the IRA, a legacy from the days of Fenianism,
attempted ‘offensive’ operations to overthrow partition. The main con-
sequence of these episodes, however, was to confirm the Unionists in
their entrenched position, backed as they were by a Special Powers Act
and an armed constabulary. At times of general elections to the North-
ern Ireland parliament, official rhetoric (‘A Protestant Parliament for a
Protestant People’) easily overcame any attempt to introduce class-based
politics on the British model.
In Wales and Scotland, after the end of the war, legislative reforms
removed the sense of grievance which had provided support for the Lib-
eral party. In 1920, with the backing of Lloyd George, the Church of
Wales was disestablished, in a reform which marked the culmination of a
series of changes which had begun in 1881 with the Welsh Temperance
Act. Anti-landlordism, linked with anti-English feeling, also ceased to be
a live political issue as the large landed estates in Wales were split up
and sold. Over a quarter of the land in Wales changed hands, a social
shift of the highest importance. Specifically Welsh issues lost much of
'Figure 35 is not available in this edition of The British Isles'
Figure 35. Hunger March

The Hunger Marches of the 1930s were the response of those areas
which were hard hit by economic decline and massive unemployment.
Their aim was to bring pressure to bear on the National (Conservative)
government. A more prosperous aspect of the decade was found in the
midlands and south where new industries were established.
their appeal. Chapel membership declined. In effect the Welsh had been
granted a large measure of ‘Home Rule’ under the aegis of a Welsh-
speaking, temperance-minded, nonconformist middle class, with which
power and status now rested.
There was little support during these years for the Welsh Nationalist
party (Plaid Cymru) which had emerged during the 1920s. Its leader
Saunders Lewis became a Roman Catholic in 1932, hardly a sure recipe
for political success in nonconformist Wales. The party itself admired
the conservative French group Action Française and looked back to an
idealised medieval social order as a model for Wales to follow. In some
ways, Saunders Lewis indeed was the Welsh equivalent of Eamonn De
Valera.
If Wales enjoyed a considerable degree of ‘Home Rule’ during this
period so also did Scotland. The Scottish legal and educational systems
retained their traditional distinctiveness. The Church of Scotland also
remained influential. In 1929 prolonged negotiations between the Church

of Scotland and the United Free Churches ended in agreement, leaving
only a minority group, the ‘Wee Frees’, outside the main Presbyterian
fold. The ‘Disruption’ had come to an end. In law, religion and edu-
cation national symbols existed, acceptable to the great majority. The
Education Act of 1918, providing state assistance for building and main-
taining Roman Catholic schools, met the grievances of the immigrant
minority. Insistence upon teachers at secondary level possessing a four-
year degree effectively excluded immigration of English-trained teachers.
The symbolic independence of Scotland was recognised by the formal
visits of the Royal Family to Holyroodhouse. In England, the King was
head of the Church. In Scotland, he was merely a member of the Church
of Scotland.
In such circumstances it was not surprising that a more ‘advanced’
nationalism should have little appeal. A Scottish National party was
formed in 1934 on the basis of two groups founded earlier, the Scot-
tish party and the National party. It failed to make much headway in the
1935 election, its best result being in the Western Isles with 28 per cent
of the vote, its worst in Greenock with 3.3 per cent. The Labour party
did toy with the idea of Home Rule in the early 1920s but by 1925 had
moved away from it. The Labour leader Ramsay MacDonald, though
himself a Scot, displayed a distinct lack of enthusiasm for the nationalist
cause. Labour in Scotland as in Wales saw its future as part of a wider
socialist movement in Britain.
In Scotland throughout this period political issues to some extent
revolved around questions of ethnicity, partly in reaction to the presence
of large numbers of Irish immigrants. In 1922, within the General Assem-
bly of the Church of Scotland, a ‘Church and Nation’ committee was set
up to discuss ‘The Menace of the Irish Race to our Scottish Nationality’.
In response, Scottish Catholics of Irish background turned towards the
Labour party. Ethnic rivalries remained of great significance, in both the
workplace and football, where Celtic and Rangers represented differing
religious affiliations. In the Glasgow constituency of Kelvingrove, poli-
tics still had ethnic overtones and in Edinburgh during the 1930s ‘No
Popery’ once again became a live issue. In contrast with the Irish nation-
alism of the pre-1914 period, however, Catholics, who amounted to 25
per cent of the population in some areas, voted consistently for Labour.
And until the late twentieth century Catholics showed little enthusiasm
for the Scottish Nationalist Party.
The majority of Scots lived in the central Lowlands and it was there
that the main clash of Labour and Conservatives (Unionists) took place.
The Highlands may be seen as the Scottish equivalent of north Wales.
It was there, as in north Wales, that nonconformity in the shape of the

‘Wee Frees’ predominated, and that issues of language, temperance and
Sabbatarianism were central. The Borders also had their own distinctive
character.
Ethnic questions which had exercised so powerful a gravitational pull
upon the politics of the British Isles during the late nineteenth century
began to lose ground in the twentieth. The Liberal party had drawn much
of its strength from the sense of ‘relative deprivation’ which various group-
ings in Ireland, Scotland and Wales experienced. In one way or another,
these grievances had been met in the immediate post-1918 period. The
challenge of Socialism now became a key issue linking nonconformists
with the Established Church. Outside Scotland, Catholics also were sus-
picious of the Left. Outside Ireland, class-based politics thus became the
norm.
Perhaps the one great exception to this in England was Liverpool where
the politics of ethnicity survived until after the Second World War. A
Catholic did not become Lord Mayor of Liverpool until 1944. T. P. O
Connor, the Irish nationalist MP for the Scotland division of Liverpool,
thought that the likelihood of this happening was as good as the chance
of a Christian becoming Caliph of Baghdad. A tacit alliance between the
Conservative ‘Tammany Hall’-style organisation and Protestant party led
by H. D. Longbottom, long-serving chaplain to the Orange Order, led to
a split in the working-class vote, comparable to that which occurred in
Belfast. As late as 1948, Dr Heenan, Catholic archbishop of Liverpool,
was stoned in the Scotland Road area. But the ethnic politics of Liverpool
were increasingly untypical of the rest of England. For this period at least,
Peter Pulzer’s uncompromising generalisation is justified: ‘the basis of
[English] politics is class – all else is embellishment and detail!’ (Political
Representation and Politics in Britain (London, 1972), p. 44), though what
was true of England was not necessarily the case in other parts of the
British Isles.
12 Withdrawal from empire
Winston Churchill once declared that he had not become the King’s chief
minister to preside over the dissolution of the British empire. In fact,
however, the process of decolonisation which had begun before 1939
with the Statute of Westminster (1931), and perhaps even earlier with
the Anglo-Irish Treaty of 1921, gathered momentum after 1945. The
granting of independence to India, Pakistan, Ceylon and Burma in the
late 1940s was accompanied by withdrawal from Palestine in 1948 and in
1954 from the Suez Canal Zone. An attempt to restore British influence
in the Middle East with the Suez expedition of 1956 broke down in the
face of American opposition.
During the 1960s, withdrawal from empire continued apace under
Harold Macmillan and his colonial secretary Iain MacLeod. It was
accompanied by a policy of drawing closer to the European Economic
Community. Macmillan made the first application to enter Europe in
1962 but it was not until 1973 that Britain, together with the Republic of
Ireland, was finally admitted to membership. Looked at in retrospect, this
apparently inexorable process of moving from overseas empire to Euro-
pean community would seem to be the most significant trend of post-war
Britain.
Within Britain the long-term impact of commitment to Europe was
to intensify the drift to the south-east. The economic decline of the
north and west which had been halted during the Second World War was
resumed. As they had been during the 1920s and 1930s, rates of unem-
ployment were much higher in ‘Outer Britain’. The core prospered, the
periphery languished. A. J. P. Taylor concluded his study England 1914–
45 with the reflection ‘Few even sang “England Arise”. England had risen
all the same.’ His point was wrongheaded in relation to England, but may
be allowed to stand in relation to the south-east.
Alongside the currents of change there were elements of continuity.
The key to Welsh attitudes as so often before lay in the division between
the largely rural north (in which the industrial area of Flintshire was an
exception) and the largely industrial south. The attempt of Plaid Cymru
294
Withdrawal from empire 295
to create a unified nationalist movement ran into great difficulties in the

face of this divide. It was not until 1966 in a by-election at Carmarthen
that Plaid Cymru won its first parliamentary seat, only to lose it in the
general election of 1970. The cruellest blow which Welsh nationalism
received was in the referendum of 1979 when there was an overwhelming
vote against devolution (46.5 per cent against, 11.8 per cent for).
The most powerful force in Wales, the Labour party, set its face against
nationalism. Aneurin Bevan (1897–1960) throughout his political career
spoke out against any concession to Welsh nationalist sentiment. It was
only with the greatest reluctance that he accepted a proposal to establish
a Secretary of State for Wales on the Scottish model, backed by the more
nationally minded James Griffiths. In the 1979 election Plaid Cymru
came a poor third with two seats compared to eleven for the Conservative
party and twenty-two for Labour.
There was indeed no national issue which was capable of uniting north
and south Wales. In 1960, debates on the question of Sunday opening of
public houses aroused old antagonisms. The northern counties in which
Welsh-speaking nonconformity was strong voted heavily against the sale
of drink on Sundays. The southern counties voted in favour. Though
the voting was largely symbolic since alcoholic refreshment was available
throughout Wales in innumerable small social clubs, the results did point
to the continued influence of Sabbatarian attitudes in the north which
went back to the heyday of Gladstonian Liberalism and the 1881 Sunday
Closing Act.
In Scotland, Scottish nationalism also remained surprisingly weak. Dis-
content with the dominance of south-eastern England took the form of
an increased vote for Labour. Scottish nationalism hit the newspaper
headlines but the realities of power remained with Labour. The contrast
between east and west Scotland remained important though the balance
shifted increasingly towards the west in the sense that Labour, the party
of the industrial west, continued to make headway there. In the 1959
election the east returned twelve Conservatives to thirteen Labour. On
Clydeside, Labour won nineteen seats, the Conservatives eight, a better
result for the Conservatives than it was to be seven years later. In the 1966
election, which marked a high point for Labour, the east stretching from
Aberdeen to Edinburgh still returned ten Conservative seats to Labour’s
fourteen. In the industrial west, however, it was a different story. On
Clydeside, Labour won twenty-four seats, Conservatives three.
There were some signs in the 1960s that this system of ‘informal Home
Rule’ was beginning to break down. In November 1967, with a Labour
government in power, Hamilton, the second safest Labour seat in Scot-
land, was won by an SNP candidate, Mrs Winifred Ewing. From late
1970, the discovery of a series of important oil fields off the east coast of
Scotland provided an issue on which the SNP capitalised. The demand
that ‘Scottish Oil’ should be used for the benefit of the Scottish people
gave new life to Scottish nationalism. In the first general election of 1974,
the SNP gained seven seats with 22 per cent of the Scottish vote. In the
second general election of that year they gained eleven seats with 30 per
cent of the vote. Devolution became an issue which the Labour govern-
ment could not ignore and in 1979, in Wales as well as Scotland, it was
put to a referendum. In Wales, to the consternation of Plaid Cymru, devo-
lution was decisively rejected with less than 12 per cent of the votes cast.
In Scotland it attracted 52 per cent of the votes cast but this amounted
to only 33 per cent of the total electorate, short of the 40 per cent which
the government had laid down as an essential prerequisite. In the 1979
election, there was a decisive swing against the SNP, which was left with
only two seats. Labour, though losing the general election in the United
Kingdom as a whole, retained its position as the main party of protest in
Scotland.
Despite the importance of class and of nationalism, religious issues still
remained very much alive in some areas of Scottish life. In this respect the
central Lowlands and especially the Clydeside area resembled Northern
Ireland. As J. G. Kellas stated in his study Modern Scotland (1968), it is
still possible to see graffiti urging passers-by to ‘F—k the Pope’ (an anti-
Irish sentiment rather than an anti-papal one). Ulster Unionists found a
more sympathetic audience on Clydeside than they found elsewhere in
the British Isles.
In Ireland, as in Wales and Scotland, long-standing historical patterns
continued to reveal themselves. The Republic of Ireland was an indepen-
dent state. Culturally, politically and economically, however, its affairs
remained inextricably intertwined with those of the United Kingdom.
The relationship of Ireland and Britain was full of paradoxes. Many of
the leading figures in ‘English’ literature during the twentieth century,
Yeats, Joyce, Synge, O Casey, Heaney, were Irishmen. In certain sports,
such as golf and rugby, the difference between the Republic and North-
ern Ireland was virtually ignored and ‘Ireland’, a non-existent political
entity, fielded a united team. In horse-racing also there were the closest
of ties between English and Irish communities. Irish actors such as Cyril
Cusack and T. P. MacKenna were familiar figures on the London stage.
Profound tensions remained, however, in the relationship between the
Republic and the United Kingdom. Each had different interpretations of
the recent past. The Sinn Fein rebellion of 1916 was heroic in nationalist
eyes, but an act of treachery to Unionists. Irish neutrality in the Second
World War continued to be a source of resentment in Britain long after
the war ended. In Ireland, Churchill’s criticism of De Valera in 1945

was looked upon as a piece of spite against a small nation by a victor
lacking in magnanimity. During the northern crisis of 1969 and the years
following, relations between Britain and the Irish Republic continued to
reflect deep-seated historical emotions.
Irish emigration to England had been low during the depressed 1930s
and during the war years. After the war, however, Irish men and women
once more made their way to England in search of a job. During the
1950s an ‘Irish presence’ in the south-east became noticeable after the
emigration of 375,000 Irish men and women to the United Kingdom.
These were figures higher than in any period since the 1880s and were a
consequence of the depressed state of the Irish economy.
In Ireland itself partition was in some respects more notional than real.
Trinity College, Dublin continued to draw many of its students from
the ‘north’ (a fact no longer true today). The archbishopric of Armagh,
north of the border, was the primatial see for both the Catholic Church
and for the Church of Ireland. During the 1960s, indeed, it seemed as
though good relations between Stormont and Dublin were about to make
the border irrelevant. In 1965, Sean Lemans, the Irish Taoiseach, and
Terence O Neill, Prime Minister of Northern Ireland, met.
Cultural divisions within Northern Ireland, however, proved to be less
amenable to resolution. The Protestant community in Northern Ireland
had been badly hit by the collapse of the linen industry in the face of com-
petition from man-made fibres and by the decline of the Belfast shipbuild-
ing industry. In contrast, among northern Catholics, there was a sense of
rising expectations, fuelled in part by the long-term effects of the 1944
Education Act which made higher education more accessible to poorer
sections of the population. Terence O Neill’s promises of reform aroused
further hopes. In 1967 members of the newly articulate Catholic middle
class protested against discrimination and founded a Civil Rights Associ-
ation on the model of similar movements in the United States. However,
the largely unanticipated consequence of Terence O Neill’s reform pro-
posals was a fierce Protestant backlash which led to violence in 1969.
A prolonged crisis began which was partially resolved in 1972 when the
British government took over direct responsibility for Northern Ireland.
A fifty-year period of ‘Home Rule’ had come to an end.
The ‘Irish Question’ once more entered British politics, and the ‘British
Question’ re-entered Irish politics. Violence in Northern Ireland had the
consequence of bringing the Republic of Ireland into closer contact with
the United Kingdom. After a long period of mutual isolation the govern-
ments of the two states were once more involved with each other. In 1973
both countries became members of the EEC.
Figure 36. Bobby Sands mural

Robert (Bobby) Sands died in 1981 in the Maze prison after sixty-five
days on hunger strike. He was a leader of a movement which demanded
political status for the IRA prisoners. After his death he was seen as a
martyr and since then his image has appeared on many murals within
nationalist areas. Murals with an anti-IRA, pro-Ulster Volunteer mes-
sage are a feature in many Unionist areas.
The Northern Ireland crisis of 1969 and the years following illustrate
once again the difficulty of treating the different national units of the
British Isles in isolation. The influence of history, since the plantation
of Ulster in the early seventeenth century and the battle of the Boyne in
1690, was too powerful to be ignored. Historians of Britain since 1922
have dealt with the problem of the ‘Irish dimension’ by ignoring it. To
resort to this solution, however, leads inevitably to oversimplification. The
cultural influence of Ireland is still strong in Glasgow and Liverpool and
in the new Irish communities of London and Birmingham. The politics of
Northern Ireland itself cannot be understood in a specifically six-county
context. The IRA itself adopts an interpretation of Irish history which
takes it back at least to Wolfe Tone and the rebellion of 1798 and its
allied party Sinn Fein began to take an active role in politics south of the
border. There is, in addition, the British Isles dimension of the former
dominions, particularly in Australia, where there is a strong Irish presence
in the Labour party.
Twentieth-century British history (especially in the south-east) has

been complicated by an additional ‘ethnic’ factor. As has been indicated
earlier, ethnic diversity had been a characteristic of the newly industri-
alised areas of the British Isles during the nineteenth century, with the
Irish and, to a lesser extent the Jews, making up the bulk of the new immi-
grants. In Scotland, Lithuanians and Italians added to the mix. Between
the wars, however, emigration rather than immigration was a more typi-
cal phenomenon. Between 1921 and 1930, for example, 261,000 British
emigrants arrived in Australia, four-fifths of them on government-assisted
passages. After the war, the situation changed. There was now a huge
demand for unskilled labour in Britain and in western Europe generally.
London Transport set up a recruiting office for bus drivers in Barbados.
Woollen mills in Yorkshire dispatched representatives to the Punjab to
recruit labour for night shift work and lower-paid jobs. In Bradford by
1971 there were 30,000 Pakistanis out of a total working population of
300,000.
The earliest post-war immigrants were from the West Indies, many of
them ex-servicemen from Jamaica, who arrived on the Empire Windrush
in 1948. West Indian immigration on a large scale did not begin, however,
until 1953, after restrictions were imposed on entry into the United States
by the MacCarran Act of 1952. A second phase began in the early 1950s
after the granting of independence to Britain’s East African colonies.
Indians had settled there in large numbers with the encouragement of
the British government. In 1901 the British Special Commissioner in
Uganda declared that ‘East Africa is, and should be, from every point of
view, the America of the Hindu.’ Fifty years later the wheel had come
full circle. The newly independent colonies began to implement policies
of ‘Africanisation’, which placed the Indians under pressure. It was this
‘push’ factor which led to a mass exodus of Indians from East Africa to
the United Kingdom from 1967 onwards.
After the 1971 census it was estimated that over one and a half million
immigrants of ‘New Commonwealth’ ethnic origins were resident within
the United Kingdom. Of these, over half were from India and Pakistan
or were East African Asians. Between a quarter and a third were from
the West Indies. These bald statistics, however, do not convey any sense
of the wide variety of internal cultural differences, particularly among
Indians and West Indians.
Immigrants from the New Commonwealth made up only a small pro-
portion (between 2 and 3 per cent) of the total population of the United
Kingdom. They tended to congregate in specific areas, however, drawn
there partly by the prospect of employment and partly by cheap hous-
ing. In 1971, statistics for certain London boroughs, especially Brent,
Haringey, Hackney, Islington and Lambeth, indicated that new immi-

grants accounted for between 20 and 30 per cent of the entry into local
schools. The largest concentration of Commonwealth immigrants was in
the south-east, especially in Greater London. Other towns such as Derby,
Huddersfield, Bradford and Wolverhampton attracted large numbers of
immigrants. Other areas, Scotland and most of northern England, were
largely untouched.
Mention should also be made of ‘New Irish’ immigration, which was
much higher than that of any single group of New Commonwealth immi-
grants. In 1969 it was estimated that there were c. 750,000 immigrants
from the Irish Republic, as well as many thousands from Northern Ire-
land. The New Irish did not settle in the depressed areas of Liverpool
and Glasgow where there were old-established Irish populations but in
London (especially Kilburn), Bristol and Birmingham.
Many of these newcomers, the Irish excepted, were highly visible
because of their colour and, in the case of such groups as the Sikhs,
because of their costume. It was thus not surprising that legislation was
passed to restrict entry in 1962 and again after the arrival of other Indi-
ans from East Africa in 1968. But attempts made to whip up ‘nativist’
hysteria against the immigrants on lines which recalled anti-Irish and anti-
Jewish propaganda in the nineteenth century fell largely on deaf ears. In
April 1968, Enoch Powell, perhaps in an attempt to challenge Edward
Heath’s leadership of the Conservative party, made a speech which has
been compared to Randolph Churchill’s playing of the ‘Orange Card’ in
1886. Powell, a former Professor of Classics, declared that ‘Those whom
the gods wish to destroy they first make mad. We must be mad, liter-
ally mad, as a nation, to be permitting the annual flow of some 50,000
dependants . . . It is like watching a nation busily engaging in heaping
up its own funeral pyre.’ He spoke in highly emotional terms of a for-
merly ‘quiet street’ which had become ‘a place of noise and confusion’
and where ‘a single white old lady, had been shouted at by her coloured
neighbours’ and had ‘excreta pushed through her letter box’. Ironically,
after playing the ‘Orange Card’, Powell found himself consigned to the
relative obscurity of an Ulster constituency. Several decades later, dur-
ing the election campaign of 2005, Michael Howard, then leader of the
Conservative party, advocated measures to control immigration in the
hope of political gain. In the aftermath of the Tube bombings of 7 July
2005 new concerns arose, with identity cards, police powers and racial
discrimination to the fore.
As with Britain’s entry into the EEC, it remains to be seen what the
long-term impact of the New Commonwealth immigration upon British
society will be. Clearly, important distinctions must be drawn between
the different immigrant groups. One West Indian stated that ‘We are not
immigrants in the true technical sense: after all we are members of the
Realm. We are British.’ A prominent Trinidadian observed, ‘Like every
West Indian, I am part Englishman. I mean this, of course, in the sense
that, having acquired the English language, the traditions and institutions
of this country, it is natural for me to want to be here. The West Indian
is essentially what British culture and influences have made him.’
We may conclude this brief survey of post-war trends by stressing
once again the continuing dominance of the south-east. In the field of
higher education, many of the new universities founded in the 1960s in
Sussex, East Anglia, Essex, Kent, Surrey and elsewhere, were situated
in the southern and eastern counties in an arc with Greater London as
its centre. The public schools, also heavily concentrated in the south
and east, were attacked during the first Labour government but suc-
cessfully beat off the challenge. The ‘Media’ in broadcasting, publishing
and the press remained based upon London. The ‘City’ continued to
grow in importance. It was thus not surprising that the finest sight in the
north, as in Scotland and Wales, continued to be the High Road to the
south. Even Ireland was not immune to the cultural influence of Lon-
don. One of the most striking sights of the Dublin area during the 1960s
was the forest of high-rising TV aerials, constructed to receive British
television programmes from across the Irish Sea. ‘Sinn Fein’ had bro-
ken down with a vengeance in the newly urbanised Ireland. In the early
years of the twenty-first century, however, the success of the Celtic Tiger
and the prominence of the Irish Republic in Europe led to ‘the Irish
model’ being viewed in nationalist circles as appropriate for Wales and
Scotland.
South Wales drew closer to south-eastern England during the post-war
period, as new high-speed trains and motorways made communication
easier. North Wales became a culture under pressure, partly as a conse-
quence of unemployment, partly owing to the influence of tourism.
In western Scotland, Clydeside was particularly hard hit by unemploy-
ment in shipbuilding and mining. The shipbuilding industry in particular
found it difficult to compete with competition from Japan, South Korea
and Germany. Eastern Scotland, after the discovery of North Sea oil,
enjoyed something of a ‘boom’ period. Of all the peripheral areas of the
United Kingdom, Scotland may well have retained its autonomy more
successfully than any other.
However, the drift to southern England continues, with a seventy-mile
area around London linked to the metropolis by high-speed trains for the
benefit of daily commuters. The balance between ‘core’ and ‘periphery’
has shifted unmistakeably in favour of the core.
Figure 37. The Black Watch

‘The Black Watch’ is a Scottish regiment in the British Army originally
formed in the early eighteenth century and taking its name from the
dark-coloured tartan of its uniform. The retention of such units within
a modernising post-imperial British Army became a sensitive political
issue in the late twentieth century and was seized upon by the Scottish
National Party (SNP). The tartan as a symbol of Scottish identity retains
considerable though not universal popularity.
In 1985, a tutor at a Cambridge college told me that it was the custom

of the college to steer his students away from Scottish, Irish or Welsh
history should they show unhealthy signs of interest in such peripheral
topics. For him, British history was English history. The problem about
this, as has been suggested repeatedly throughout this study, is that the
history of ‘England’ has overlapped repeatedly with that of other cultures
within the British Isles (a term which should include the Isle of Man, the
Channel Islands, Shetland and Orkney, as well as the larger islands of
Britain and Ireland). It would, no doubt, have simplified the historian’s
task had England, Ireland, Scotland and Wales been distinctive, stable
historical units over long periods of time. In fact, however, the history of
the British Isles, for at least a thousand years, resembles that of the Italian
peninsula, the Iberian peninsula or the Swiss Confederation more than
is generally supposed. In modern times English culture has achieved a
general dominance much as German culture did within the dominions
of the Habsburgs. The advance of the English language has squeezed the
Celtic languages to the periphery of the British Isles.
The fact remains, however, that during the past two millennia, ‘Eng-
land’, ‘Ireland’, ‘Scotland’ and ‘Wales’ have not lived in mutual isolation.
Since the Viking invasions, and even earlier, the cultures of the British
Isles have reacted to each other. In 1973 a new historical page was turned
when the United Kingdom and the Irish Republic entered the Common
Market. Clearly this was a new beginning, the implications of which are
being worked out. Clearly also, Britain and Ireland are exposed to pow-
erful cultural influences from across the Atlantic. When all this is said,
however, the influence of history itself cannot be left out of account. The
conflict between Celtic and Germanic cultures, the Norman Conquests,
the impact of Reformation and Counter-Reformation, the effect of migra-
tion within the British Isles, the consequences of imperial expansion – all
these have left a lasting mark upon cultural and political relationships
within these islands.
The story did not end in 1973 with British and Irish entry into the Com-
mon Market, nor can it be confined merely to the relationship between
Britain and Ireland. The impact of new ethnic groups began to be felt in
1989 after the publication of Salman Rushdie’s The Satanic Verses, which
was publicly burned in Bradford by Islamic fundamentalists. The possible
entry into Britain of Hongkong Chinese after the return of Hong Kong
to China in 1997 also showed signs of becoming an important political
issue in 1990. The debate about what constituted ‘British identity’ con-
tinued in 1990 against the background of governmental involvement in a
national history curriculum. Scottish and Welsh nationalism simmered.
The Northern Ireland issue, which involved Dublin as well as London,
Belfast and Washington, DC, refused to go away. Class issues were still
dominant in British politics but ethnicity remained as a factor of great
political significance for the future.
13 Post-Imperial Britain: Post-Nationalist
Ireland
At the end of the twentieth century, Britain retained many external

features of a tradition-bound society – an hereditary monarchy, an heredi-
tary peerage, and a system of public honours which included the medieval
title of knighthood. In England there was also an established church of
which the monarch was the supreme governor. The annual opening of
parliament provided a ritual setting in which these institutions found a
place. In the flourishing modern tourist industry such traditional features
are emphasised. In fact, however, rituals conceal the extent to which rad-
ical changes have taken place in the political, social and economic con-
figuration of the United Kingdom as a whole as well as in the Republic
of Ireland. In 1999 the Anglo-Scottish Act of Union dating from 1707
was substantially modified with the establishment or (re-establishment as
many saw it) of a Scottish parliament elected by proportional representa-
tion and possessing considerable financial and political powers. In Wales
also, in 1999, a Welsh Assembly was opened in Cardiff, giving expression
to Welsh distinctiveness. Scotland and Wales had indeed gained ‘Home
Rule.’ Within Ireland, the six-county unit of Northern Ireland created
in 1920, had long possessed its own devolved parliament. In 1972, how-
ever, soon after ‘Bloody Sunday’ when thirteen civilians were shot by
British paratroopers, the Westminster government imposed Direct Rule.
On Good Friday in 1998 after almost twenty years of communal vio-
lence a provisional form of self-government based on power sharing was
set up, although this also ran into difficulties and at time of writing still
faces an uncertain future. The problems of Northern Ireland brought the
Republic of Ireland into much closer contact with the British government
than had been the case for many years and by 2000 a joint institutional
framework had been created. In England itself Greater London was now
represented by an elected mayor whose political influence in the capital
could not be ignored by the governments of the day.
Large-scale economic shifts ran parallel to political change. In North-
ern England, South Wales, the south of Scotland, and Northern Ireland,
industrialisation went into reverse. Industries which had been so recently
304
Post-imperial Britain: post-nationalist Ireland 305
a defining feature of northern Britain proved unable to survive the chal-

lenge of foreign competition or of modernisation. Shipbuilding, once so
important in Glasgow, Birkenhead, Belfast and the north-east, continued
to decline despite government support. The steel industry in south Wales,
Scotland and Yorkshire suffered a similar fate. Coal mining, which had
once been dominant in south Wales, northern England and Scotland, was
reduced to a few pits. Indeed by the year 2000 the only remaining deep-
shaft mine in south Wales survived as a tourist attraction. In the midlands
the only independent British car manufacturer Rover was forced into liq-
uidation in 2005. In Sheffield and in the pottery towns of Staffordshire it
was the same story. As a result the numbers and power of the industrial
trade unions also declined.
By contrast London and the south-east together with the M4 corri-
dor enjoyed remarkable prosperity, as a consequence of their success in
attracting modern electronic and pharmaceutical industries as well as in
promoting tourism. The success of the City of London as a financial
centre was also important in making possible the regeneration of the for-
mer docklands area of Canary Wharf. Another unexpected development
took place in the Republic of Ireland, whose economy was transformed in
response to overseas investment coupled with development grants from
the European Community. This startling economic success carried with
it implications as a model for Wales and Scotland, as well as Northern
Ireland, in providing the example of a small ‘Celtic’ country combining
economic success with political independence.
Within the United Kingdom there were also significant changes in its
ethnic makeup. ‘The UK’ had, of course, long been a multi-ethnic society,
although this had been largely concealed by the widespread use of the
inclusive term ‘British’. In Scotland, South Wales, Northern Ireland,
Liverpool, and not least London, the ‘four nations’ co-existed sometimes
in less than harmonious propinquity. But the concept of ethnicity was
still an unfamiliar one as late as the 1970s. During the post-war years
after 1945, however, large-scale emigration from the Caribbean, India,
Pakistan, Bangladesh and parts of Africa added a new dimension to the
ethnic mix. There was also heavy migration from Ireland during the 1960s
into London (especially Kilburn) and Birmingham.
New religious identities were a key aspect of ethnicity. Islam and Hin-
duism are now a conspicuous presence in many urban areas of Britain.
In the London borough of Tower Hamlets, one third of the population
is Muslim. During the election of 2005, the ethnic vote was considered
to be a significant factor in such areas as Birmingham and Leicester.
In terms of the total population of the United Kingdom, the num-
bers of post-war immigrants are relatively small. However, the impact of
Figure 38. Muslim community life in Britain

The arrival of Muslim and Hindu immigrants from India and Pakistan
during the post-war period may be compared with that of Jews and
Irish during the nineteenth century. In all these cases, religion became
the basis of social identity, separating ethnic minority from national
majority. At first British government policy seemed to favour ‘multi-
culturalism’ but anxieties after 11 September 2003 in the United States
and the suicide bombings in London (7 July 2005) brought assimilation
on to the political agenda. This image of a mosque is a symbol of the
presence of Islam in post-war Britain. It has been estimated that by 2040
there will be twice as many Muslims at prayer in mosques on Friday as
Christians worshipping in church on Sunday. Hindus and Sikhs rival
Muslims in numbers.
immigration raised questions about the nature of British identity. Immi-

gration became a key issue in the election campaign of 2005 when the
Conservative leader Michael Howard, himself the son of Romanian immi-
grants, called for a limit to immigration.
As we have seen, the United Kingdom underwent substantial change
from 1945 when the retreat from Empire gradually forced a re-evaluation
of Britain’s place in the world. Britain’s decision to enter the European
Common Market in 1973 brought about an inevitable weakening of ties
with Australia, New Zealand and Canada. World competition began to
threaten hitherto secure industries such as shipbuilding and car manu-
facture.
Government subsidies were required to rescue traditional industries
from collapse. By the 1970s wage control had become a key issue for the
Labour government as a means of protecting jobs, but their attempt to
bring about a measure of industrial peace failed. The way was open for
more radical measures.
During the post-war decades there had been general agreement
between the two main political parties about the need to maintain the Wel-
fare State. The term ‘Butskellism’ was shorthand for this policy, implying
as it did common ground between the Conservative politician R.A. Butler
and the Labour leader Hugh Gaitskell. During the late 1960s and the
1970s, however, inflation and industrial unrest stretched political consen-
sus to breaking point. These years had also seen the outbreak of serious
unrest in Northern Ireland. The climax came in 1979 with the so-called
‘Winter of Discontent’ when a combination of inflation and strikes led
to a general election which was won by the Conservative party under a
new leader Margaret Thatcher. The result was to bring a government to
power which reversed the Butskellite consensus and set in train radical
social and economic changes.
The radicalism of the Thatcher government began to appear during
her first administration (1979–83) when financial decisions were taken
which led to the cutting of state expenditure and to a massive rise in
unemployment. Unpopularity inevitably followed, but successful prose-
cution of the Falklands War in 1982 led to a surge of nationalist fervour
from which the government benefited and in 1983 Mrs Thatcher was re-
elected. Her second ministry proved to be far more radical than the first.
It was marked in particular by her decision to confront the challenge
of the National Union of Mineworkers, whose opposition to the clos-
ing of uneconomic pits was seen as a central political issue. Successive
governments had yielded to the miners, and even Mrs Thatcher in her
first ministry had decided to avoid full confrontation. By 1984, however,
she was prepared to do battle with the miners’ leader Arthur Scargill in
a conflict which lasted for almost a year and which led to victory for the
government.
The implementation of the Thatcherite programme had unpleasant
implications for northern England, the Midlands, south Wales and the
industrial areas of Scotland. The Butskellite consensus had made indus-
trial and social peace a major objective and the general effect of such poli-
cies had been to subsidise areas dominated by traditional ‘smokestack’
industries in which established trade union practices impeded rises in
productivity. A notorious example was the newspaper printing industry
where unions opposed all attempts to modernise and persisted in the
practice of over-manning. In the age of the computer, however, their
resistance proved futile and their bluff was called by Rupert Murdoch in
1985. By 1990 the only nationalised industry to survive was British Rail
and even this was soon to be privatised under John Major, Mrs Thatcher’s
successor.
One of the consequences of the Thatcherite revolution was to re-
emphasise the dominance of London and the south-east in the United
Kingdom, as the heartland of the Conservative party. In contrast, the
recent leadership of the Labour party was drawn from northern England
(Harold Wilson), Wales (James Callaghan) and Scotland (John Smith).
The so-called ‘dream ticket’ of Neil Kinnock and Roy Hattersley in the
election of 1992 brought together a Welshman and a Yorkshireman.
The trade unions also were institutions which represented the inter-
ests of northern England, Wales and Scotland. The impact of succes-
sive Thatcherite governments was thus to reduce the political and eco-
nomic influence of “the North” (together with Scotland and Wales) in the
interests of what came to be known as “Middle England” (in effect the
south-east).1 There was also a marked class element in Mrs Thatcher’s
victories. Indeed she saw herself as a representative of the industrious
middle class, opposed to a largely idle upper-middle class as she saw it,
and a self-centred working class, symbolised for her by the unions.
Another feature of Thatcherism during the 1980s was a powerful cur-
rent of nationalism reinforced both by the Falklands conflict and by her
struggle with the European Community over the level of British contribu-
tions to its budget. In Northern Ireland she was strongly pro-Unionist.
Mrs Thatcher was also suspicious of the effects of overseas immigra-
tion, an outlook shared by one of her ministers Norman Tebbitt, who
1 By 1986 the rate of unemployment in Scotland was 11.1 per cent, over double the figure
of 5.7 per cent in 1979. In Wales it rose from 5.5 per cent in 1979 to 13.2 per cent in
1986. In the United Kingdom as a whole there were over 3 million unemployed in 1986
(11.8 per cent of the workforce); see E. Powell, Patriots, p. 586.
questioned the loyalty of the newcomers to such national symbols as the

England cricket team.
Thatcherite nationalism paid apparent political dividends for the Con-
servative party. Victory in the Falklands in 1982 was accompanied by
success in her long-drawn-out campaign to reduce Britain’s financial con-
tribution to the European budget. Later in the 1980s she was sounding a
similar nationalist note when in Bruges in September 1988 she declared:
We have not successfully rolled back the frontiers of the State in Britain, only to
see them re-imposed at a European level with a European superstate exercising a
new dominance from Brussels. (J. Campbell, Margaret Thatcher, vol. II, The Iron
Lady (London, 2003), p. 605)
This time, however, her nationalism rebounded on her by encouraging

Eurosceptics within the party and causing a serious rift between pro- and
anti-Europe groups. Her successor John Major inherited a party which
was soon to be out of control. Mrs Thatcher’s Bruges speech had the unin-
tended consequence of dividing the Conservative party and ultimately,
by 1997, making possible victory for Labour within the Conservative
heartland of the south-east.
Mrs Thatcher’s policies in other parts of the United Kingdom also
had unintended consequences, particularly in Scotland and in Northern
Ireland. So far as Scotland was concerned, she saw herself as a staunch
defender of the Union, a view which seemed to receive support in the
1979 election, when the Scottish National party lost nine of its eleven
seats. But Mrs Thatcher’s economic policies had disastrous repercus-
sions in Scotland, the heavy industries of the west of Scotland and the
clothing industries of the Borders being particularly hard hit. Mining and
shipbuilding collapsed and the steel industry survived only with difficulty
until finally in 1993 the giant Ravenscraig plant itself closed. During the
1980s Scottish manufacturing lost about one fifth of jobs (T. M. Devine,
The Scottish Nation 1700–2000 (London, 1999), p. 598), although there
was some compensation to be found in the oil industry of the north-east
and in electronics.
Mrs Thatcher herself tended to see the United Kingdom as a unitary
state and this led her to underestimate the extent of Scottish resentment
nationwide. One revealing incident took place in May 1988 when she
addressed the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland in the so-
called ‘sermon on the Mound’ (the Mound being a familiar Edinburgh
landmark). The tone of her speech in which she placed the economic
virtues of thrift and hard work as central to the Christian message aroused
fierce criticism among those who knew of the effects of Thatcherite poli-
cies in Scotland. The election results of 1987 had already made it clear
Figure 39. The new Parliament building in Scotland

In 1999, after a referendum in favour, a Scottish parliament met for the
first time since 1707. The long-term effects of Scottish independence
on the UK have yet to appear but in the short term it has led to a decline
in support for the Scottish National party. In England there may well
be growing resentment at Scottish MPs being able to vote on English
matters.
that her brand of Conservatism was unpopular. Labour was now much
the largest party with fifty of the seventy-two Scottish seats, whereas the
Conservatives had lost eleven of their twenty-one seats (Devine, The Scot-
tish Nation (1999), p. 605).
The effect of Mrs Thatcher’s ‘sermon on the Mound’ was intensified
when a year later, in 1989, her government decided to introduce the
unpopular ‘Poll Tax’ into Scotland, a year ahead of England and Wales.
It was a decision which took no account of Scottish sensitivities and pre-
dictably led to civil disobedience on a wide scale. As Professor Devine
points out, the leaders of the three largest Scottish Churches condemned
the tax as ‘undemocratic, unjust, socially divisive and destructive of com-
munity and family life’ (Devine, The Scottish Nation (1999), p. 604). Not
surprisingly the Scottish nationalism which Mrs Thatcher thought she
had defeated in 1979 reappeared more effectively than ever before. In

1988 ‘A Claim of Right for Scotland’ was published calling for a national
convention to be summoned. The SNP refused to participate but the
Labour party, in a new departure for it, agreed to do so, thus providing
a decisive measure of political support for devolution. It was not until
July 1999, however, after an overwhelming Labour victory in the election
of 1997, that Home Rule became a reality, by which time the Conser-
vative party had ceased to hold any parliamentary seats in Scotland. In
2005 it regained one seat out of the fifty-nine available. The dominant
party remained Labour but the Liberal Democrats were now second.
The Scottish National Party which had pressed for independence rather
than devolution, came a poor third with only six seats. Within the Scot-
tish parliament itself, power was shared between Labour and the Liberal
Democrats. Mrs Thatcher’s policies in Scotland had thus brought about
the almost total eclipse of her party.
Mrs Thatcher’s long period in office undoubtedly made the British
economy more competitive. The price which she paid, however, was the
alienation of Scotland, Wales and the north (including much of the mid-
lands) from the Conservative party. Her brand of nationalism rested upon
success in the south-east. Not surprisingly her chosen heir as Prime Min-
ister was John Major, a Londoner to the core, a devotee of cricket, and a
self-made man, who in many ways symbolised the appeal of Thatcherism
in the south-east and who in 1992, to general surprise, won the general
election with a narrow majority. Soon, however, Major’s badly judged
entry into the European monetary system led to the financial debacle
known as ‘Black Wednesday’ and to a further decline in the prestige of
the Conservative party.
A similar reversal of what Mrs Thatcher had intended took place in
Northern Ireland. As discussed earlier, the compromise reached between
the British government and Irish nationalists in 1921 left unfinished busi-
ness in the shape of partition. ‘Ireland’ was both outside the United King-
dom and within it. The Republic of Ireland was an independent state.
Northern Ireland was an autonomous six-county unit within the United
Kingdom but what looked like a tidy division of territory on the map was
complicated by the fact that the inhabitants were divided on religious
grounds. In the south, ‘ethnic cleansing’ during the early 1920s had cre-
ated a largely Catholic state. In the north, however, partition led to a
situation in which a two-thirds Protestant majority controlled a one-third
Catholic minority. By the 1960s this was a situation which had come
to appear intolerable to many Catholics. Part of the reason for Catholic
unrest lay in expectations raised by the creation of a warmer relation-
ship between the governments of north and south. The example of the
American civil rights movement was also important. Hence in the

mid-1960s there were growing hopes of reform particularly among
the Catholic middle class. At the same time, however, fears grew
among the Protestant population at the prospect of radical change. It
was a situation which soon became violent and confused, leading even-
tually to a policy of massive internment without trial (1971) and to an
ill-judged attempt to disperse a crowd by armed force on Bloody Sunday
(1972) when thirteen civilians were shot by British paratroopers. By 1974
the British Prime Minister Edward Heath had performed a U turn with
an attempt (at Sunningdale) to set up a power-sharing administration
on which Protestant and Catholic politicians would serve. Here again, as
in 1969, liberal intentions were thwarted by Protestant ‘die-hards’ who
viewed any concessions as tantamount to surrender. The later 1970s were
marked by deadlock. In his memoir Shooting History (London, 2004)
Jon Snow, the British journalist, described his own reaction on a visit to
Northern Ireland.
I had absolutely no prior sense of the scale of the deprivation and discrimination
suffered by the Catholic population. But the poverty proved undiscriminating:
the squalor and sense of hopelessness on the catholic Falls Road were matched
on the working class Protestant streets around the Shankill Road . . . I could not
believe that my own country had sustained and encouraged such a grossly unjust
state of affairs.
Broadly speaking this was the situation that Mrs Thatcher inherited
in 1979. It seems clear that she saw the military defeat of the Provisional
IRA as her main priority, especially after the assassination in 1979 of Airey
Neave, her intended candidate as secretary of Northern Ireland. It was
thus unsurprising that she opposed any compromise over the status of
IRA prisoners in connection with the so-called ‘dirty protest’ which had
become a trial of wills between the British government and IRA prisoners
from 1979 onwards over the wearing of prison uniform. In 1981 a num-
ber of IRA prisoners went on hunger strike, the most prominent being
Bobby Sands who was elected MP for Fermanagh and South Tyrone in
April 1981, just before he died. Despite the urging of John Hume, leader
of the largely Catholic Social and Democratic Party, that she should avoid
creating ‘martyrs’, Mrs Thatcher refused to seek a compromise. But her
victory proved to be a pyrrhic one. The IRA did not disappear and in
fact the publicity it received over the ‘martyrdom’ of Bobby Sands led
to a surge of sympathy among many Irish-Americans. The bombing of
the Grand Hotel in Brighton in 1984 during the Conservative party con-
ference was perhaps the most dramatic indication that the problem of
Northern Ireland was not likely to wither away.
Mrs Thatcher treated the problems of Northern Ireland as the exclusive

concern of the United Kingdom. In fact, however, by 1981 the ‘Dirty
Protest’ had widened into a question which deeply involved both the Irish
Republic and Irish-Americans in the United States. The ‘Irish Problem’,
familiar since the passing of the Act of Union in 1801, had returned in a
new guise. Since the signing of the Anglo-Irish Treaty in 1921, successive
British governments had largely been able to ignore the concerns of the
Irish Free State (since 1949 the Republic of Ireland). In its turn ‘Ireland’
under De Valera adopted a policy of economic self-sufficiency and later,
during the war, of neutrality. Surprisingly De Valera was unsympathetic
towards the IRA, many of whose members he interned during the Second
World War, and when IRA activity revived in the south during the 1950s
De Valera’s reaction was to intern over a hundred of its members. The
problems of Northern Ireland thus had a low priority within the new state
which had largely accepted partition as the price of its own independence.
The Catholic episcopate in the south was also conscious that it enjoyed
such immense influence because the Irish state, though nominally secular,
was to a large extent a Catholic state.
De Valera resigned as Taoiseach (i.e. chief minister) in June 1959 to
be replaced by Sean Lemass, whose period of office, though short, inau-
gurated a period of radical change. Indeed the 1960s proved to be as
much of a turning point in the Irish Republic as they did in the United
Kingdom. Sean Lemass moved away from the protectionism which had
hitherto been accepted as the essential underpinning of the Irish state.
His change of course in economic matters also coincided fortuitously with
John XXIII’s pontificate, and almost imperceptibly the dominance of the
Catholic Church came under challenge in such matters as censorship,
contraception, divorce and even abortion. In 1973, at the same moment
as Britain, the Irish Republic became a member of the European Com-
mon Market, a decision which brought with it massive financial aid, and a
measure of political influence within Europe. The Republic embraced its
new European identity far more enthusiastically than did Britain and had
no problems in converting to the euro. By the end of the century there
was a clear contrast between Northern Ireland, still seeking a solution for
its own problems in the context of the UK, and ‘the Celtic Tiger’, as the
newly prosperous Republic was nicknamed.
An equally significant change occurred in Irish-American relations.
During the war years De Valera’s determined neutrality created tensions
with the United States, which at one moment considered the option of
invasion. In contrast, Britain and the United States forged a ‘special rela-
tionship’, which was strengthened during the Cold War by the establish-
ment of American bases. During this period, ‘Ireland’ seemed a poor
relation. Within the United States itself, however, the Irish-American

Catholic community acquired a new confidence based upon growing eco-
nomic power and political influence. In 1960 John F. Kennedy became the
first Catholic President. But this was not an isolated phenomenon. Irish-
men such as Anthony O Reilly became influential in corporate America.
In the House of Representatives ‘Tip’ O Neill was Speaker. The Irish
Catholic vote was also a key consideration in northern industrial cities
such as Boston and Chicago. The Irish lobby was not yet as influential as
the Jewish lobby; it nevertheless was a new factor in post-war America,
to which Irish governments could now turn for support. Britain and Israel
already enjoyed a special relationship with the United States but it became
clear in the 1980s that the Irish Republic also enjoyed one. Irish-American
backing in fact encouraged successive governments of the Irish Republic
to demonstrate that Britain could not ignore its views on the status of the
Catholic minority in the north.
Irish America was also a significant factor in the rise of Sinn Fein in
Northern Ireland. Middle-class opinion lent support to the moderate
Social and Democratic party. At a popular level, however, and among
recent Irish immigrants into the United States, Sinn Fein had more appeal
and when its leader Gerry Adams was admitted into the United States
in 1995 he attracted large audiences. Sinn Fein propaganda laid great
stress upon the injustice of British policy in Ireland over the centuries, in
particular the Great Famine of the 1840s which, in the tradition of the
Irish nationalist John Mitchel, was seen as a deliberate conspiracy. Sinn
Fein also stressed parallels with the Jewish holocaust. Indeed in certain
states, such as New Jersey, this view of the Famine was incorporated
in the schools curriculum, yet another instance of the influence of Irish
America. (In New York State, however, respected academics, with the
backing of the School Authority, were able to publish a collection of
documents intended to make possible a more detached discussion.)
When Mrs Thatcher came to power in 1979, Northern Ireland was
seen by her as essentially a British problem. Within the Republic of
Ireland, however, successive British attempts in the late 1970s and
in the 1980s to crush nationalist unrest were viewed with growing
disquiet. In 1984 the Irish government sponsored a New Ireland
Forum which proposed three possible solutions to partition: the uni-
fication of Ireland, a federal or confederate Ireland or a form of joint
sovereignty with Britain. At a meeting with Mrs Thatcher, the Irish
Taoiseach Garrett Fitzgerald expounded these proposals, which also had
the backing of leading Irish-American politicians. Mrs Thatcher, how-
ever, proved to be unsympathetic and at a press interview afterwards
vehemently uttered the words,‘Out’ ‘Out’ ‘Out’ in rejecting all three
proposals. Her confidence in her own decision-making proved to be ill-

founded and in December 1984 the American President himself, needing
the support of key senators and Congressmen, including the speaker ‘Tip’
O’ Neill, pressed her to seek a compromise. Ronald Reagan told her in
effect the public reaction to the outcome of the November summit was
unfavourable, and he pressed her to make the ‘central task of conciliation’
a priority. This incident makes clear how much influence the Republic of
Ireland enjoyed with the government of the United States. Mrs Thatcher
did indeed concede reluctantly that there should be a joint consultation
with the Irish Republic on issues concerning Northern Ireland. She also
agreed to the setting up of a commission jointly chaired by the Secretary
of State for Northern Ireland and an Irish Minister with a permanent sec-
retariat housed near Belfast. This was an extraordinary change of course
for the lady who boasted that she was ‘not for turning’. It was indeed a
shift of policy which led to the Anglo-Irish Agreement of 1995 and to the
Good Friday agreement of 1999. Within the Republic itself, the constitu-
tion was amended by a referendum, and its claim to sovereignty over the
whole island was abandoned. This was a fundamental change of attitude.
By the end of the twentieth century a new political situation had arisen
within ‘the British Isles’. Two states, Great Britain and the Republic of
Ireland, were now jointly involved in attempts to solve the problems of
Northern Ireland. The two chief ministers Tony Blair and Bertie Ahern
were in close and friendly contact. At the end of November 2004 agree-
ment seemed to be possible between the Democratic Unionist party led
by Ian Paisley and Sinn Fein led by Gerry Adams in the hope of restoring
a power-sharing administration. Sinn Fein itself also had plans to take
a greater part in the politics of the Irish Republic. The future course of
events, as always, remains unknown but it seems likely that the United
Kingdom and the Republic of Ireland will be much more closely associ-
ated than seemed possible earlier in the last century.
It remains to consider the question of immigration. Within the United
Kingdom the census of 2001 revealed fundamental changes in its social
and cultural structure. Immigration from the Caribbean, India, Pakistan,
Bangladesh and parts of Africa, which began in the years after the end
of the Second World War, continued during the subsequent decades.
The effect of this was to be seen in the south of England, particularly
in parts of London, and in certain towns outside the metropolitan area
such as Leicester. In Bradford, for example, the inhabitants of Pakistani
origin amounted to 14.5 per cent of the population, the highest in the
United Kingdom. In Blackburn and Darwin (Lancashire) the proportion
was 8.7 per cent and in Wycombe (Middlesex) 6 per cent. Those of
Indian background formed 16.5 per cent of the population of the London
suburb of Ealing and 21.9 per cent of Harrow. In Redbridge, another

London suburb, Indians amounted to 14 per cent of the population and
Pakistanis 6.2 per cent. In 2001 there were approximately half a million
Black Caribbean people, half of whom were concentrated in thirteen
districts, such as Tottenham. Unlike the Indian and Pakistani population,
however, the Black Caribbean population had remained largely static in
numerical terms since the 1950s and 1960s. The second largest ethnic
group after ‘white’ is Indian with 1.1 million people claiming this ethnic
identity, although in the 1960s there had also been large immigration from
the Irish Republic, resulting in the creation of an Irish ethnic minority
whose existence was largely unrecognised.
In the context of a total population of 60.7 million within the United
Kingdom as a whole, post-war immigrants constitute a small proportion.
However, their tendency to concentrate in certain areas for reasons con-
nected with employment opportunities or in order to maintain contact
with relatives has sometimes led to ethnic tensions. Racial segregation
comparable to that found in the United States had occurred in such towns
as Bradford or Oldham. Racial incidents also occur at football matches
and Yorkshire Cricket Club has been accused of prejudice against non-
white players, despite their Yorkshire accents. Racial prejudice also seems
to exist in the police force and the army. There is also no doubt that the
terrorist attacks in New York on 11 September 2001 and the contin-
uing war in Iraq have had repercussions within the United Kingdom.
Pakistanis and other groups associated with Islam complain of increas-
ing prejudice against them. On the other hand the success of a young
British Muslim boxer Amir Khan in the Olympic Games aroused general
enthusiasm in his home town of Bolton and among the nation at large.
Of course prejudice against the influx of immigrant groups has been
equally marked in other periods, notably in the case of Irish in the mid-
nineteenth century and of Jews in its later decades. In Scotland, where
there was a massive influx after the Famine, prejudice still survives. In
2004, for example, Martin O Neill, the manager of Glasgow Celtic foot-
ball team, declared after an incident at the Glasgow Rangers match
I am not going to be blamed for 500 years of history that better people than me
have been unable to solve. (Sunday Times, 28 November 2004)
In the face of the challenge posed by Mrs Thatcher, however, Presby-

terians and Catholics made common cause, the key being the decision
of the Labour party to join the Scottish Convention of 1990. The pace
of change towards a more civic identity is slow, as is indicated in. T. M.
Devine, ed., Scotland’s Shame: Bigotry and Sectarianism in Modern Scot-
land (Edinburgh, 2000) but it is nevertheless real.
Figure 40. Millennium Building, Cardiff

In the post-war period nationalism was much weaker in Wales than
in Scotland and it was largely thanks to pressure from the Westminster
government that a measure of devolution was approved in a referendum.
The Welsh assembly now has a recognised place in Welsh political life
although Plaid Cymru, the Welsh nationalist party, is still very much in
a minority.
In Wales, the influence of the Free Churches, linked with the causes of
temperance and the Welsh language, once provided a general framework
of a Welsh national identity which was ethnic rather than civic. The prob-
lems which arose were illustrated by Richard Llewellyn in his best-selling
novel How Green Was My Valley (1939), in which ethnic tension within a
small village provides the theme of an important chapter.
Around each public house and all round the three rows of houses, where the
half breed Welsh, Irish and English were living . . . These people did the jobs
that colliers would never do, and they were allowed to live and breed because
the owners would not spend money on plant when their services were to be had
so much the cheaper. For a pittance they carried slag and muck, they acted as
scavengers, and as they worked so they lived. Even their children were put to work
at eight or nine years of age so that more money could come into the home. They
lived most of them only to drink. (Quoted in Dai Smith, Wales! Wales? (London,
1984, p. 114)
Clearly, it was not easy for newcomers to assimilate into a Welsh society.
By the end of the twentieth century, the Free Churches and their allied
cause, temperance, had lost ground. The cultural space was filled by a
general revival of the Welsh language, which, since the passing of the
Welsh Language Act of 1993, is taught in schools throughout Wales and
is now generally accepted by all parties as the main civic symbol of nation-
hood. There has also been growing support for Plaid Cymru, the Welsh
nationalist party which in 1997 achieved a swing of 35 per cent in the
Rhondda Valley, an area once regarded as an impregnable Labour seat.
In terms of national politics the great majority of votes in Wales was pro-
Labour but Plaid Cymru now offered more of a challenge than it once
did. Before the 1990s, Plaid Cymru’s commitment to the Welsh language
restricted its appeal to the Welsh-speaking heartland of north and west
Wales. What changed the situation was the party’s decision to move
beyond its commitment to the language to more bread-and-butter issues.
It was this ‘new departure’which brought it success in the 1999 election
for the newly created Welsh Assembly. The Rhondda Valley, hitherto a
Labour stronghold, fell to Plaid Cymru along with other Labour seats,
although in the general election of 2005 the seat was captured by an inde-
pendent. Plaid Cymru, despite its advances, still remains a minority party
in the Welsh Assembly and has only a handful of seats at Westminster.
In the Republic of Ireland, as we have seen, there has been a shift away
from the ethno-religious nationalism of De Valera’s day. In particular the
decline of the influence of the Catholic hierarchy has led to the acceptance
of a more ‘liberal’ approach to such matters as contraception and divorce.
The prosperity of the Republic, however, has led to immigration from
Europe and beyond, a phenomenon hitherto unknown. The result has
been a degree of racialism but in general a civic-minded nationalism
is in the ascendant within the Irish Republic. In contrast, the political
and social scene in Northern Ireland is dominated by two rival ethno-
cultural nationalisms, the Democratic Unionist party led by Ian Paisley
and Sinn Fein led by Gerry Adams. Civic nationalism, represented by
the Social Democratic and Labour party and the Alliance party, has now
lost ground. At the present moment the only possible future for Northern
Ireland lies in the hope of an agreement between the DUP and Sinn Fein,
which in 2005 was unlikely. A ‘civic’ future for Northern Ireland seems
only a remote possibility.
Of the nations making up the United Kingdom, England is of course
by far the most important in terms of wealth and population (51 million
compared to 5 million in Ireland, north and south, 5 million in Scotland
and 3 million in Wales). Here the most significant development since
the 1990s has been the rise of New Labour, which seems to draw more
upon the secular liberalism of Lloyd George than the socialism of R. H.
Tawney. England has become de facto a civic society. Of course there is

an established church in England, unlike the situation in Wales, Scotland
and Ireland. In practice, however, the general mass of the population
in England is unconcerned with religious observance, unlike elsewhere
in the United Kingdom where attendance at church or chapel is still
common.
Looking back over the past half century, it would seem that Britain’s
decision to abandon its imperial role was more decisive than any other sin-
gle factor. Entry into the Common Market brought the United Kingdom
into much closer contact than ever before with France and Germany, and
forced it to compete for a voice in Europe with other powers. The British
imperial past counted for less and less in the context of the present and
the term ‘British’ no longer evoked visions of world empire but the sense
of belonging to a middle-ranking European state. Slowly the British have
had to think of themselves as European.
But who were ‘the British’? As this book makes clear there is no sim-
ple answer to this question. The history of these islands, the so-called
‘British Isles’, has been bound up for a thousand years or more with the
interaction of cultures in a process of change which shows no sign of com-
ing to an end. ‘British’ history has thus long been a multi-ethnic history,
whose character is suggested, somewhat inadequately, by the term ‘Four
Nations’. Post-war immigration has now added to the multi-ethnic char-
acter of British society particularly in the south-east and many official
forms routinely ask for some indication of ‘ethnic identity’.
This new world of multifarious identities has created a challenge for
successive governments. It was most obvious in Northern Ireland where
tensions between two rival communities led to a thirty-year-long civil war.
As we have seen there has also been a resurgence of national feeling in both
Scotland and Wales. English nationalism also exists although at present
it seems to be largely a form of cultural nationalism, identifiable in such
works as England: An Elegy (London, 2001) by the Tory intellectual Roger
Scruton. The flag of St George is now displayed far more widely than was
once the case and St George’s Day also seems to be moving towards more
general recognition on the lines of St Patrick’s Day or St David’s Day. The
Conservative party may in due course come round to playing the card of
English nationalism but under Mrs Thatcher its nationalism, though real
enough, remained resolutely British, and Unionist. It was Labour which
eventually and reluctantly came to embrace ‘Home Rule’ for Scotland
and Wales, a decision which enabled them, at least so far, to outflank the
nationalists.
In the context of ‘Four Nations’ history, England, and especially its
prosperous south-east, has been the country most affected by Caribbean,
Indian, Pakistani and African immigration. In 1968 the conservative

politician Enoch Powell attempted to introduce a racial dimension into
politics when he declared ‘in this country in fifteen or twenty years time
the black man will have the whip hand over the white man’ (R. Weight
(London, 2002), p. 433). In later years he asked ‘What’s wrong with
racism? Racism is the basis of nationality. Nations are upon the whole,
united by identity with one another . . . and that’s normally due to sim-
ilarities which we regard as racial similarities’ (ibid. p. 431). Such racial
views linked to English nationalism have not as yet found a political outlet
except in the British National Party (BNP). They pose a question, how-
ever, about the nature of future national identity in the new multi-ethnic
England.
For some, such as Professor Parekh (in his Rethinking Multiculturalism:
Cultural Diversity and Political Theory (2000), Britishness implies a form
of multiculturalism in which distinctiveness of Islamic, Hindu and other
cultures will be recognised. For others, however, such as Brian Berry (in
Culture and Equality (2001)), writing in the tradition of John Stuart Mill,
the rights of individuals override the rights of cultures. Gordon Brown,
Chancellor of the Exchequer in successive Labour governments, made
his own contribution to the debate in 2004 by stressing the importance
of what he terms the ‘British’ idea of fair play – for individuals it would
seem, rather than cultures. In contrast, for some Muslim groups, the right
to practise their own ‘sharia’ law is a vital issue.
In European terms the situation within these islands clearly parallels
that in Spain where Castile, Catalonia, Galicia and Euskardi (the Basques
excluding ETA, the extreme Basque nationalist party) have agreed upon
constitutional arrangements recognising their linguistic and legal dif-
ferences. In the United Kingdom Welsh, Scots Gaelic and Irish have
achieved legal recognition. In Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland, reli-
gious affiliation is still significant but, as we have seen England, despite
its Protestant monarchy, is very much a secular society. It is also a society
in which inter-racial marriage is now commonplace. At the level of pop-
ular culture all English football teams regularly include black players. It
remains an open question, however, whether civic identity and ethno-
religious tradition will reach a lasting accommodation in the United
Kingdom as a whole.
The election of 2005 provided a test of the extent to which immi-
gration and nationalism were key issues. In general it would seem that
they did not play as important a role as some commentators expected.
The Conservative party consciously played the ‘immigration card’ but
to little effect. Nor did nationalist parties in Wales and Scotland make
much of an impact. In Wales Plaid Cymru lost one of its four seats and
in Scotland the SNP was able to gain only one, to bring its total to four
of the fifty-nine seats available. For the moment at least New Labour’s
policy of granting devolution seemed to have been successful in drawing
the teeth of Welsh and Scottish nationalism. It was a different story in
Northern Ireland, where two ethnic nationalist groupings, Sinn Fein and
the Democratic Unionists, made headway at the expense of the centre,
leaving the Good Friday Agreement in limbo. English nationalism was
largely silent, voiced only by the United Kingdom Independence party
(UKIP) and by the British National party (BNP). The question of UK
membership of the European Union remained largely in abeyance during
the election. Since public opinion in Wales and Scotland is pro-Europe
it remains to be seen whether some future referendum on the European
Constitution will be a crucial issue for an English- , as opposed to a
British-wide, nationalism.
Englishness, as opposed to Britishness, remains very much a key issue
in some Conservative circles. Calls for a return to narrative history are
regularly made in the press, most recently in the conservative newspaper
The Daily Telegraph (June 2005) which advocated the reprinting, a century
after its first appearance, of a once-familiar volume Our Island Story. But
the framework of such narratives is invariably Anglo-centric, linked to a
succession of English monarchs, as the spoof history 1066 and All That
showed. What is not made clear is that England is merely part, albeit the
wealthiest and most populous part, of a multi-national state – the United
Kingdom. As is the case with Spain, the history of such a state must
make room for multiple narratives, if it is to move beyond the purveying
of myths – a comment which applies of course to all four nations, as well
as to what is now perhaps a ‘fifth nation’, Islam.
Afterword
In 1931 Herbert Butterfield published a critical account of what he called

the Whig interpretation of History, i.e. the abridgement of English history
according to which freedom broadened down from precedent to prece-
dent. In 1944, however, at the height of the Second World War he wrote
The Englishman and His History, providing an eloquent defence of the
Whig view.
Some nations have had a broken and tragic past. Others are new or have only
recently arisen after a long submergence. Some have been torn by a terrible breach
between past and present – a breach which, though it happened long ago, they
have never been able to heal and overcome. We in England have been fortunate
and we must remember our good fortune, for we have actually drawn strength
from the continuity of our history. (Butterfield, The Englishman and His History
(Cambridge, 1944), p. vi)
Earlier he had spoken of such a view as associated with ‘certain fallacies

to which all history is liable’. Now he chose to celebrate it with ‘a robust
but regulated pride, observing the part which an interpretation of history
has played in building up the centuries [sic] and creating the England
that we know’. He saw Englishmen developing that ‘whig interpretation
which was never more vivid than in the great speeches of 1940’.
The Englishman and His History itself is a remarkable illustration of
the strength of a nationalist interpretation of English history, one which
was dominant in both schools and universities. Its primary spokesman
in the last half of the twentieth century was George Macaulay Trevelyan,
Regius Professor of Modern History at the University of Cambridge,
whose books were constantly reprinted. Trevelyan’s English Social History
(1944) was a best-seller at the height of the war. Butterfield may have
called this type of approach ‘The Whig Interpretation of History’ but
it was surely a prime example of English nationalism. Butterfield’s own
comments in The Englishman and His History shared Trevelyan’s nation-
alism. The critic of nationalism bore witness to its power during a time
of crisis.
322
Afterword 323
In view of this it is all the more surprising that modern scholars have
shown an extraordinary reluctance to consider the possibility that English
nationalism existed. Thus Kenneth Morgan, an expert in the field, stated
that England is a nation that had ‘relatively little nationalist experience’.
Anthony Smith, another authority on nationalism, argued that England
experienced no fully developed nationalist movement.
The Whig interpretation, with its assumption of a peaceful progression
in the spread of freedom from generation to generation, was not the
only example of a nationalist view of English history. Throughout the
nineteenth century belief in the importance of defending the Protestant
constitution provided the basis of a rival interpretation, linked with the
Tory party and the Church of England, and equally nationalist. As D.G.
Paz has shown, Anglican Evangelicals believed, as against the Tractarians,
that Protestantism has been the basis of the constitution since the reign
of Edward VI and had been reaffirmed by the Glorious Revolution of
1688. According to this view Roman Catholicism was a prime enemy,
‘subversive of order and of English institutions’. Not surprisingly the
historical teaching at Oxford and Cambridge, both strongholds of the
Established Church, provided support for this interpretation of English
history.
English nationalism also informed the writing and teaching of such
influential historians as James Anthony Froude and Edward A. Freeman,
each of whom held the regius chair of history at Oxford. Froude regretted
that the English and the Germans, ‘the two great streams of the Teutonic
race, though separated by but a narrow range of difference were unable to
reach a common ground’ (Hugh A. MacDougall, Racial Myth in English
History (London, 1982), p. 98). Freeman wrote that Englishmen could
boast that their nation was ‘the one among the great nations of modern
Europe . . . can claim for its potential institutions the most unbroken
descent from the primitive Teutonic stock’ (ibid., p. 101). Sir John Seeley,
in his book The Expansion of England, which remained in print well into the
twentieth century, struck a somewhat different note but he too stressed
the significance of ‘blood and religion’.
However, as The British Isles has been at pains to point out, England
itself was not a state but part of a multi-national conglomerate, from 1801
the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland (from 1921 Northern
Ireland). Butterfield throughout his book refers to ‘we’, to ‘our history’
and to ‘England’, but as we have seen England by itself cannot supply
an appropriate framework for English. Celtic, Roman, Scandinavian and
Norman-French influences also played their part and, as the work of Rees
Davies, Nicolas Canny and others has shown, colonisation forms a key
aspect of the intermingling history of these islands. Butterfield’s ‘we’ is
324 Afterword
quite misleading as a reference point. The ‘we’ of our history is multi-

national and today is even more so, as ‘we’ enter a multi-cultural phase of
‘our’ history. Nationalism is thus not sufficient as a framework for English
history. The same point may also be made about Ireland, Scotland and
Wales, whose histories are intertwined with each other as with that of
England.
In a Four Nations approach to the history of these islands it is impos-
sible to ignore the influence of southern England and its key institutions,
the monarchy, the Established Church, Oxford and Cambridge, the Inns
of Court and not least parliament, upon the course of events within ‘the
British Isles’. But English nationalism inevitably provoked a reaction in
the form of Welsh, Irish or Scottish nationalism. A major theme of Four
Nations history must be the ways in which English racial and other myths
evoked their equivalents in Ireland, Scotland and Wales and a top-down
nationalism created a ‘bottom-up’ version outside the areas of English
dominance.
A Four Nations framework thus makes it possible to introduce a com-
parative dimension not merely within ‘the British Isles’ but also within
Europe. Recent work by Roger Brubaker, Citizenship and Nationhood in
France and Germany (1992), has proved most illuminating on the con-
nection. Brubaker draws a distinction between the French assimilationist
view of nationhood, linked to territory (‘ius soli’), and the German view
resting upon descent and ‘ethno-cultural considerations’ (‘ius sangui-
nis’). With this in mind Seeley’s stress upon ‘blood and religion’ and
Freeman’s appeal to ‘the most unbroken descent from the primitive Teu-
tonic stock’ clearly place an important strand in English historiography
within the ethno-cultural racial camp. The same point may be made about
the ‘Irish-Ireland’ view of Irish history with its insistence upon the Gaelic
Catholic element and its view of England as pagan and immoral. But,
as is the case in France and Germany, there have always been rival, con-
tested versions of what constituted nationhood, and in English historiog-
raphy civic voices such as those of Lecky, Bury and Maitland and later
Tawney made themselves heard. Nevertheless, today when calls for a truly
national history are made, it is important to raise the question of what
‘nation’ and ‘nationhood’ has meant and might mean today in an ever
more multi-ethnic society.
Selected reading list
G E N E R A L WO R K S W I T H A B R I T I S H I S L E S A P P R OAC H
ov e rv i e ws
Brocklehurst, H. and Phillips, R., eds., History, Nationhood and the Question of
Britain, Basingstoke 2004.
Grant, A., and Stringer, J., eds., Uniting the Kingdom. The Making of British His-
tory, London 1995.
Parekh, B., Rethinking Multiculturalism: Cultural Diversity and Political Theory,
Cambridge, MA: 2000.
Pittock, M. G. H., Celtic Identity and the British Image, Manchester 1999.
Pocock, J. G. A., ‘The Limits and Divisions of British History: In Search of an
Unknown Subject’, American Historical Review, 87 (1982), 311–36.
Pocock, J. G. A., The Discovery of Islands: Essays in British History, Cambridge
2005.
Ross, A., Pagan Celtic Britain, London 1967.
Samuel, R., ‘In Search of Britain’, New Statesman and Society (25 Aug. 1989),
21–4.
ed., Patriotism: The Making and Unmaking of British National Identity, 3 vols.,
London and New York 1989.
Samuel, Raphael, Island Stories: Unravelling Britain, London 1998.
Weight, R., Patriots: National Identity in Britain 1940–2000, London 2002.
p r e - ro m a n
Childe, V. G., The Prehistoric Communities of the British Isles, Edinburgh
1947.
Dillon, M. and Chadwick, N. K., The Celtic Realms, 2nd edn rev. by D. A. Binchy,
Dublin 1972.
Laing, L., The Archaeology of Late Celtic Britain and Ireland, London 1975.
Moore, D., The Irish Sea Province in Archaeology and History, Cardiff 1970.
Piggott, S., Early Celtic Art, Edinburgh 1970.
ro m a n
Barley, M. W. and Hanson, R. P. C., eds., Christianity in Britain 300–700, Leicester
1968.
325
326 Selected reading list
Sawyer, P. H., From Roman Britain to Norman England, London 1978.

Thomas, C., Christianity in Roman Britain to AD 500, London 1981.
po s t - ro m a n
Dumville, David N., Histories and Pseudo-histories of the Insular Middle Ages,
Aldershot 1990.
Dumville, David, ‘Ireland and North Britain in the Earlier Middle Ages: Contests
for Minuigud Senchasa Fher na nAlban’ in Rannsachadh na Gáidhlig 2000,
Aberdeen 2002.
Morris, J., The Age of Arthur: A History of the British Isles from 350 to 650, London
1973.
Thomas, C., Britain and Ireland in Early Christian Times AD 400–800, London
1972.
t h e n o r m a n co n q u e s t
Davies, R. R., Lordship and Society in the March of Wales 1282–1400, Oxford 1978.
Davies, R. R., ed., Domination and Conquest: The Experience of Ireland, Scotland
and Wales 1100–1300, Cambridge 1990.
Davies, R. R., ed., The British Isles 1100–1500: Comparisons, Contrasts and Con-
nections, Edinburgh 1988.
Davies, R. R., The First English Empire: Power and Identities in the British Isles
1093–1343, Oxford 2000.
Le Patourel, J., The Norman Empire, Oxford 1976.
Warren, W. L., Henry II, Berkeley, Calif. 1973.
t h e r e f o r m at i o n a n d i t s a f t e r m at h
Bradshaw, B. and Morrill, J., eds., The British Problem, c. 1534–1707: State For-
mation in the Atlantic Archipelago, London 1996
Bradshaw, B. and Roberts, P., British Consciousness and Identity: The Making of
Britain, 1533–1707, Cambridge 1998.
Clark, J. C. D., ‘English History’s Forgotten Context: Scotland, Ireland, Wales’,
Historical Journal, 32 (1989), 211–28.
Colley, Linda, Britons: Forging the Nation 1707–1837, Yale 1992.
Karsten, P., Patriot Heroes in England and America: Political Symbols and Changing
Values over Three Centuries, Madison and, London 1978.
Kearney, H. F., Scholars and Gentlemen: Universities and Society in Pre-Industrial
Britain, London 1970.
Kidd, C., Subverting Scotland’s Past: Scottish Whig Historians and the Creation of
an Anglo-British Identity, Cambridge 1993.
Kidd, C., British Identities before Nationalism: Ethnicity and Nationhood in the
Atlantic World 1600–1800, Cambridge 1999.
Lecky, W. E. H., A History of England in the Eighteenth Century, 8 vols., London
1878–90.
Lecky, W. E. H., A History of Ireland in the Eighteenth Century, 5 vols., London

1892.
Mathew, D., The Celtic Peoples and Renaissance Europe, London 1933.
Morrill, J., The Nature of the English Revolution, London 1993.
Pocock, J. G. A., The Ancient Constitution and The Feudal Law, Cambridge
1957.
Rich, P. B., Race and Empire in British Politics, Cambridge 1986; rev. edn 1990.
Russell, C., ‘The British Background to the Irish Rebellion of 1641’, Historical
Research, 61 (1988), 166–72.
Russell, C., The Causes of the English Civil Wars, Oxford 1990.
The Fall of the British Monarchies 1637–1642, Oxford 1990.
Schwyzer, P., Literature, Nationalism and Memory in Early Modern England and
Wales, Cambridge 2004.
Trevor-Roper, H. R., Religion, the Reformation and Social Change, London
1967.
‘The Unity of the Kingdom: War and Peace with Wales, Scotland and Ireland’,
in The English World, ed. R. Blake, London 1982, pp. 100–10.
Catholics, Anglicans and Puritans, London 1987.
Young, J. R., Celtic Dimensions of the British Wars, Edinburgh 1997.
t h e i n d u s t r i a l r evo lu t i o n
Curtis, L. P., Jr, Anglo-Saxons and Celts, New York 1968.
Durkacz, V. E., The Decline of the Celtic Languages: A Study of Linguistic and
Cultural Conflict in Scotland, Wales and Ireland from the Reformation to the
Twentieth Century, Edinburgh 1983.
Flanagan, T., The Irish Novelists 1800–1850, New York 1958.
Gash, N., Politics in the Age of Peel, London 1953.
Halévy, E., A History of the English People in the Nineteenth Century, 6 vols., London
1924–34.
Hanham, H. L., Elections and Party Management: Politics in the Time of Disraeli and
Gladstone, London 1959.
Hechter, M., Internal Colonialism: The Celtic Fringe in British National Development,
Berkeley 1975.
Lunn, K., Hosts, Immigrants and Minorities: Historical Responses to Newcomers in
British Society 1870–1914, London 1980.
Pelling, H., Social Geography of British Elections 1885–1910, London 1967.
Robbins, K., Nineteenth Century Britain – England, Scotland and Wales – the Making
of a Nation, Oxford 1988.
Vincent, J., The Formation of the Liberal Party 1857–68, London 1966.
g e o g r a ph i c a l
Baker, A. R. H. and Butlin, R. A., Studies of Field Systems in the British Isles,
Cambridge 1973.
Roberts, B. K., Rural Settlement in Britain, London 1977, repr. 1979.
N AT I O N - B A S E D H I S TO R I E S
general
Briggs, A., A Social History of England, London 1983.
Devine, T. M., The Scottish Nation 1700–2000, London 1999.
ed., Scotland’s Shame? Bigotry and Sectarianism in Modern Scotland, Edinburgh
2000.
Ferguson, W., The Identity of the Scottish Nation: An Historic Quest, Edinburgh
1998.
Ferriter, D., The Transformation of Ireland, Dublin 2004.
Foster, R. F., Modern Ireland 1600–1972, London 1988.
Haigh, C., The Cambridge Historical Encyclopedia of Great Britain and Ireland,
Cambridge 1985.
Mitchison, R., A History of Scotland, London 1982.
Morgan, K. O., The Oxford Illustrated History of Britain, Oxford 1984.
Stubbs, W., The Constitutional History of England, 3 vols., Library edn, Oxford
1880.
Whittington, G. and Whyte, I. D., An Historical Geography of Scotland, London
1983.
Williams, D., A History of Modern Wales, London 1950, repr. 1977.
PRE-ROMAN
Binchy, D. A., ‘The Linguistic and Historical Value of the Irish Law Tracts’,
Proceedings of the British Academy, 29 (1943), 195–227.
Binchy, D. A., ‘The Fair of Tailtiu and the Feast of Tara’, Eriu, 17 (1918), 113–38.
ed., Crith Gablach, Dublin 1941.
Byrne, F. J., ‘Tribes and Tribalism in Early Ireland’, Eriu, 27 (1971), 128–66.
Irish Kings and High Kings, London 1973.
Cunliffe, B., Iron Age Communities in Britain: An Account of England, Scotland and
Wales from the Seventh Century BC until the Roman Conquest, London 1974.
Dillon, M., ed., Early Irish Society, Dublin 1954.
Greene, D., The Irish Language, Dublin 1966.
MacCana, P., Celtic Mythology, London 1970.
Rivet, A. L. F., The Iron Age in North Britain, Edinburgh 1966.
Taylor, J. A., Culture and Environment in Prehistoric Wales, Oxford 1980.
ROMAN
Breeze, D. J. and Dobson, B., Hadrian’s Wall, London 1976.
Collingwood, R. G. and Myres, J. N. L., Roman Britain and the English Settlements,
Oxford 1937.
Dudley, D. R. and Webster G., The Roman Conquest of Britain AD 43–57, London
1965.
Frere, S. S., Britannia, London 1967.
Johnson, S., Later Roman Britain, London 1980.
Nash-Williams, V. E., The Roman Frontier in Wales, 2nd edn, Cardiff 1969.
Rivet, A. L. F., Town and Country in Roman Britain, London 1958.

Salway, P., Roman Britain, Oxford 1981.
Wacher, J., The Towns of Roman Britain, London 1974.
POST-ROMAN
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Bassett, S., The Origins of the Anglo-Saxon Kingdoms, Leicester 1989.
Bonser, W., Anglo-Saxon and Celtic Bibliography 450–1087, Oxford 1957.
Bruce-Mitford, R. L. S., The Sutton Hoo Ship Burial: A Handbook, London 1979.
Campbell, J., ed., The Anglo-Saxons, London 1982.
Campbell, James 2000, The Anglo-Saxon State, London 2000.
Finberg, H. P. R., Lucerna, London 1964.
ed., Agrarian History of England and Wales, vol. i, Cambridge 1972.
Hill, D., An Atlas of Anglo-Saxon England, Toronto 1981.
Hunter Blair, D., An Introduction to Anglo-Saxon England, Cambridge 1956.
John, E., Orbis Britanniae, Leicester 1966.
Loyn, H. R., Anglo-Saxon England and the Norman Conquest, London 1962.
Mayr-Harting, H., The Coming of Christianity to Anglo-Saxon England, London
1972.
Myres, J. N. L., ‘The Teutonic Settlement of Northern England’, History, 20
(1935), 250–62.
Sherley-Price, L., Bede – A History of the English Church and People, Har-
mondsworth 1955.
Stenton, F. M., Anglo-Saxon England, 2nd edn, Oxford 1947.
Taylor, H. M. and J., Anglo-Saxon Architecture, 2 vols., Cambridge 1965.
Whitelock, D., ed., English Historical Documents, c. 500–1042, vol. i, London 1955.
Wilson, D. M., The Anglo-Saxons, London 1960.
The Archaeology of Anglo-Saxon England, London 1976, repr. Cambridge 1981.
ireland
Binchy, D. A., ‘The Background of Early Irish Literature’, Studia Hibernica, i
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‘St. Patrick and his Biographers: Ancient and Modern’, Studia Hibernica, ii
(1962), 7–173.
Binchy, D. A., ‘Irish History and Irish Law’ in Studia Hibernica, xv, 7–36; xvi,
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Binchy, D. A., ‘The Fair of Telteann and the Feast of Tara’, Eriu, 18 (1958),
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Celtic and Anglo-Saxon Kingship, O Donnell Lectures 1967–8, Oxford 1970.
Campbell, James 2000, The Anglo-Saxon State, London 2000.
DePaor, M. and L., Early Christian Ireland, London 1958.
Flower, R., The Irish Tradition, Oxford 1947.
Greene, D., ‘The Celtic Languages’, in The Celts, Thomas Davis Lectures 1960,
ed. J. Raftery, Cork 1964, pp. 9–22.
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O Corráin, Donnchadh, ‘Irish Origin Legends and Genealogy: Recurrent Aeti-
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O Croı́nı́n, Daibhı́, Early Medieval Ireland 400–1200, London 1995.
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Anderson, A. D. and Ogilvie, M., Adomnan’s Life of Columba, London and New
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Ritchie, J. N. G., Scotland, Archaeology and Early History, London 1981.
wa l e s
Davies, W., Wales in the Early Middle Ages, Leicester 1982.
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THE VIKING PERIOD

Binchy, D. A., ‘The Passing of the Old Order’, in Proceedings of the Dublin Congress
of Celtic Studies, ed. B. O Cuiv, Dublin 1962, pp. 119–32.
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169–82.
Stenton, D. M., ed., Preparatory to Anglo-Saxon England Being the Collected Papers
of Frank Merry Stenton, Oxford 1970.
Wainwright, F. T., Scandinavian England, ed. H. P. R. Finberg, Chichester 1975.
T H E N O R M A N C O N QU E S T
england
Ashley, W., An Introduction to English Economic History, London 1909.
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Clanchy, M. T., England and its Rulers 1066–1272, London 1983.
DuBoulay, F. R. H., An Age of Ambition: English Society in the Late Middle Ages,
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Goldstein, R. J., The Matter of Scotland, Nebraska 1993.
Hallam, H. E., Rural England, London 1981.
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1941.
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tion, 1000–1135, Chapel Hill 1979.
Keen, M. H., England in the Later Middle Ages, London 1973.
Kirby, D. P., The Making of Early England, London 1967.
Knowles, M. D., The Monastic Order in England, 2nd edn, Cambridge 1949.
Lander, J. R., Conflict and Stability in Fifteenth Century England, London 1969.
Lennard, R., Rural England, Oxford 1959.
Le Patourel, J., The Norman Empire, Oxford 1976.
Platt, C., The English Medieval Town, London 1976.
Medieval England: A Social History and Archeology from the Conquest to 1600 AD,
New York 1978.
Pollock, F. and Maitland, F. W., The History of English Law, 2 vols., 2nd edn,
Cambridge 1898.
Postan, M. M., The Medieval Economy and Society, London 1975.
Reynolds, S., An Introduction to the History of English Medieval Towns, Oxford
1977.
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ireland
Frame, R., Colonial Ireland, Dublin 1981.
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Orpen, G. H., Ireland under the Normans, Oxford 1911, repr. 1968.
Watt, J. A., The Church and the Two Nations in Medieval Ireland, Cambridge 1970.
s cot l a n d
Barrow, G. W. S., The Kingdom of the Scots: Government, Church and Society from
the Eleventh to the Fourteenth Century, London 1973.
The Anglo-Norman Era in Scottish History, Oxford 1980.
Kingship and Unity: Scotland 1000–1306, London 1981.
Brown, J. M., Scottish Society in the Fifteenth Century, New York 1977.
Dodgshon, R. A., Land and Society in Early Scotland, Oxford 1981.
Duncan, A. A. M., Scotland: The Making of a Kingdom, Edinburgh 1975.
Nicholson, R., Scotland: The Later Middle Ages, London 1974.
Wormald, J., Lords and Men in Scotland: Bonds of Manrent 1442–1603, Edinburgh
1985.
wa l e s
Davies, R. R., ‘Colonial Wales’, Past and Present, 55 (1974), 3–23.
‘Kings, Lords and Liberties in the March of Wales’, Transactions of the Royal
Historical Society, 5th series, 29 (1979), 41–61.
Conquest, Co-existence and Change: Wales 1063–1415, Oxford 1987.
ed., The British Isles: 1100–1500 Comparisons, Contrasts and Connections, Edin-
burgh 1988.
Jones, Pierce T., Medieval Welsh Society, ed. J. Beverly Smith, Cardiff 1972.
Lloyd, Sir John Edward, A History of Wales from the Earliest Times to the Edwardian
Conquest, London 1939.
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ness in Medieval Wales’, in Nationality, ed. T. W. Moody, Belfast 1978, pp.
37–55.
Williams, G., The Welsh Church from Conquest to Reformation, Cardiff 1962.
Religion, Language and Nationality in Wales, Cardiff 1979.
T H E R E F O R M AT I O N A N D I T S A F T E R M AT H
england
Bossy, J., The English Catholic Community 1570–1850, London 1975.
Clark, J. C. D., English Society 1688–1832: Ideology, Social Structure and Political
Practice during the Ancien Regime, Cambridge 1985.
Collinson, P., The Religion of Protestants: The Church in English Society 1559–1625,
Oxford 1982.
Dickens, A. G., The English Reformation, London 1964.
Elton, G. R., Reform and Reformation, London 1977.
Hill, C., The World Turned Upside Down, London 1981.
James, M. E., Family, Lineage and Civil Society: A Study of Society, Politics and
Mentality in the Durham Region 1500–1640, Oxford 1974.
Levack, B., The Formation of the British State, Oxford 1987.
MacDougall, H. A., Racial Myth in English History: Trojans, Teutons and Anglo-
Saxons, Montreal 1982.
Malcolmson, R. W., Life and Labour in England 1700–80, London 1981.
Stone, L., The Crisis of the Aristocracy 1558–1641, Oxford 1965.
Tawney, R. H., The Agrarian Problem in the Sixteenth Century, London 1912, repr.
1967.
Thirsk, J., ed., Agrarian History of England and Wales, vol. iv, Cambridge 1967.
Thomas, K., Religion and the Decline of Magic, London 1971.
Wrightson, K., English Society 1580–1680, London 1982.
ireland
Bradshaw, B., The Irish Constitutional Revolution of the Sixteenth Century, Cam-
bridge 1979.
Bradshaw, B., Hadfield, A., Maley, W., eds., Representing Ireland: Literature and
the Origins of Conflict, 1534–1660 Cambridge 1993.
Brady, C. and Gillespie, R., Natives and Newcomers: Essays on the Making of Irish
Colonial Society 1534–1681, Dublin 1986.
Reformation to Restoration: Ireland 1534–1660, Dublin 1987.
Canny, N., The Elizabethan Conquest of Ireland, Hassocks 1976.
Connolly, S. J., ed., Conflict, Identity and Economic Development: Ireland and Scot-
land, 1600–1939. Edinburgh 1992.
Religion, Law and Power: The Making of Protestant Ireland, Oxford 1992.
Cullen, L. M., An Economic History of Ireland since 1660, Dublin 1972.
Ellis, S., Tudor Ireland 1470–1603, London 1985.
Ford, G. A., The Protestant Reformation in Ireland, 1590–1641, Frankfurt
1985.
Kearney, H. F., Strafford in Ireland 1633–41, Manchester 1959, repr. 1989.
Leerssen, Joseph Th., Mere Irish and Fior-Ghael: Studies in the Idea of Irish Nation-
ality, its Development and Literary Expression Prior to the Nineteenth Century,
Amsterdam 1986.
s cot l a n d
Campbell, R. H. and Skinner, A. S., The Origins and Nature of the Scottish Enlight-
enment, Edinburgh 1982.
Chitnis, A. C., The Scottish Enlightenment: A Social History, London 1976.
Cowan, I. B., The Scottish Covenanters 1660–1688, London 1976. Regional Aspects
of the Scottish Reformation, London 1978.
Cullen, L. M. and Smout, T. C., Comparative Aspects of Scottish and Irish Economic
and Social History 1600–1800, Edinburgh 1977.
Davie, G. E., The Democratic Intellect, Edinburgh 1961.
The Scottish Enlightenment, London 1981.
Devine, T. M. and Dickson, D., Ireland and Scotland 1600–1850: Parallels and
Contrasts in Economic and Social Development, Edinburgh 1983.
Donaldson, G., The Scottish Reformation, Cambridge 1960.
Donaldson, W., The Jacobite Song: Political Myth and National Identity, Aberdeen
1988.
Scotland James V–James VII, Edinburgh 1965.
All the Queen’s Men: Power and Politics in Mary Stewart’s Scotland, New York
1983.
Donovan, R. K., No Popery and Radicalism: Opposition to Roman Catholic Relief in
Scotland 1778–1782, New York 1987.
Dwyer, J., Mason, T. A. and Murdoch, A., New Perspectives in the Politics and
Culture of Early Modern Scotland, Edinburgh 1981.
Graham, H. G., The Social Life of Scotland in the Eighteenth Century, 2, vols.,
London 1899.
Hont, I. and Ignatieff, M., Wealth and Virtue: The Shaping of the Political Economy
in the Scottish Enlightenment, Cambridge 1983.
Makey, W., The Church of the Covenant 1637–1651: Revolution and Social Change
in Scotland, Edinburgh 1979.
Mason, R. A., Scotland and England 1286–1815, Edinburgh 1987.
Mason, R., ed., Scots and Britons: Scottish Political Thought after the Union of 1603,
Cambridge 1994.
Morrill, J., ed., The Scottish Covenant in its British Context 1638–51, Edinburgh
1990.
Philipson, N. T. and Mitchison, R., eds., Scotland in the Age of Improvement,
Edinburgh 1970.
Smout, T. C., A History of the Scottish People 1560–1830, Edinburgh 1969.
Stevenson, D., Alisdair MacColla and the Highland Problem in the Seventeenth Cen-
tury, Edinburgh 1980.
Scottish Covenanters and Irish Confederates: Scottish-Irish Relations in the Mid-
Seventeenth Century, Belfast 1981.
Trevor-Roper, H. R., George Buchanan and the Ancient Scottish Constitution, Lon-
don 1966.
Whyte, I., Agriculture and Society in Seventeenth Century Scotland, Edinburgh
1979.
Williamson, A. H., Scottish National Consciousness in the Age of James VI: The
Apocalypse, the Union and the Shaping of Scotland’s Public Culture, Edinburgh
1979.
Wormald, J., Court, Kirk and Community: Scotland 1470–1625, London 1981.
Youngson, A. J., After the Forty-Five, Edinburgh 1973.
wa l e s
Jenkins, G. H., Literature, Religion and Society in Wales, 1660–1730, Cardiff
1978.
Jones, G. J., The Gentry and the Elizabethan State, Swansea 1977.
Lloyd, H. A., The Gentry of South-West Wales, 1540–1640, Cardiff 1968.
Morgan, P., The Eighteenth Century Renaissance, Llandybie, Dyfed, 1981.
Roberts, P. R., ‘The Union with England and the Identity of “Anglican” Wales’,
Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 5th series, 22 (1972), 49–70.
t h e at l a n t i c e m pi r e
Bailyn, B., The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution, Cambridge, Mass.,
1967.
The Origins of American Politics, New York 1968.
Clark, J. C. D., The Language of Liberty 1660–1832: Political Discourse and Social
Dynamics in the Anglo-American World, Cambridge 1994.
Greene, J. P., The Reinterpretation of the American Revolution, New York 1968.
Greene, J. P. and Pole, J. R., Colonial British America: Essays in the New History of
the Early Modern Era, Baltimore 1984.
Henretta, James A., The Evolution of American Society, London 1973.
Marshall, P. and Williams, G., The British Atlantic Empire before the American
Revolution, London 1980.
Pocock, J. G. A., ed., Three British Revolutions 1641, 1688, 1776, Princeton 1980.
Rich, P. B., Race and Empire in British Politics, Cambridge 1986; rev. edn 1990.
Westerkamp, M. J., Triumph of the Laity: Scots-Irish Piety and the Great Awakening,
1625–1760, New York 1988.
T H E I N D U S T R I A L R E VO L U T I O N A N D I T S I M PAC T
england
Blake, R., Disraeli, London 1966.
Briggs, A., Victorian People, London 1954.
The Age of Improvement 1783–1867, London 1959.
ed., Chartist Studies, London 1959.
Cahill, G. A., ‘Irish Catholicism and English Toryism’, Review of Politics, 19
(1957), 62–76.
Chambers, J. D. and Mingay, G. E., The Agricultural Revolution 1750–1880, Lon-
don 1966.
Crouzet, F., The Victorian Economy, trans. A. S. Forster, London 1982.
Ensor, R. C. K., England 1870–1914, Oxford 1936.
Finn, Margot C., After Chartism: Class and Nation in English Radical Politics, 1848–
1874, Cambridge 1993.
Johnson, M. D., The Dissolution of Dissent 1850–1918, New York 1987.
Jones, Maldwyn A., ‘The Background to Emigration from Great Britain in the
Nineteenth Century’, in Perspectives in American History, vol. vii, D. Fleming
and B. Bailyn, eds., Cambridge, Mass. 1973.
Joyce, P., Work, Society and Politics: Culture of the Factory in Later Victorian England,
Hassocks 1980.
Joyce, P., Visions of the People: Industrial England and the Question of Class, 1848–
1914, Cambridge 1991.
Lubenow, W. C., Parliamentary Politics and the Home Rule Crisis: The British House
of Commons in 1886, Oxford 1988.
MacDonagh, O., States of Mind: A Study of Anglo-Irish Conflict 1780–1980,
London 1983.
McKenzie, R. and Silver, A., Angels in Marble: Working Class Conservatives in
Urban England, Chicago and London 1968.
Mathias, P., The First Industrial Nation: An Economic History of Britain, London
1969.
Neal, F., Sectarian Violence: The Liverpool Experience 1819–1914, Manchester
1988.
Norman, E. R., ed., Anti-Catholicism in Victorian England, London 1968.
Phillips, P. T., The Sectarian Spirit: Sectarianism, Society and Politics in Victorian
Cotton Towns, Toronto 1982.
Smith, D., North and South: Britain’s Economic, Social and Political Divide, London
1989.
Thomas, B., Migration and Economic Growth: A Study of Great Britain and the
Atlantic Economy, Cambridge 1954.
Thomas, B., ed., The Welsh Economy: Studies in Expansion, Cardiff 1962.
Thompson, F. M. L., English Landed Society in the Nineteenth Century, London
1963.
Webb, R. K., Modern England, 2nd edn, New York 1980.
ireland
Beckett, J. C. and Glasscock, R. E., eds., Belfast: The Origin and Growth of an
Industrial City, London 1967.
Boyce, D. George, Nationalism in Ireland, 2nd edn, London 1991.
Callanan, F., The Parnell Split 1890–91, Cork 1992.
Clark, S. and Donnelly, J. S., eds., Irish Peasants: Violence and Unrest, 1780–1914,
Madison, Wis., 1983.
Connell, K. H., Irish Peasant Society, Oxford 1968.
Connolly, S. J., Priests and People in Pre-Famine Ireland 1780–1845, Dublin 1982.
Cruise O Brien, C., Parnell and His Party, Oxford 1957.
Cullen, L. M., The Emergence of Modern Ireland 1600–1900, New York 1981.
Gallagher, T., Glasgow; The Uneasy Peace: Religious Tension in Modern Scotland,
1819–1914, Manchester 1987.
Garvin, T., Nationalist Revolutionaries in Ireland, Oxford 1987.
Hoppen, K. T., Elections, Politics and Society in Ireland 1832–1885, Oxford 1984.
Jordan, D. E., Jr, Land and Popular Politics in Ireland: County Mayo from the Plan-
tation to the Land War, Cambridge 1994.
Kennedy, R. E. Jr, The Irish: Emigration, Marriage and Fertility, University of
California Press 1973.
Kennedy, L., Ell, P. S., Crawford, E. M., and Clarkson, L.A., Mapping the Great
Irish Famine, Dublin 1999.
Larkin, E., ‘The Devotional Revolution in Ireland, 1850–75’, American Historical
Review, 27 (1972), 625–52.
Lee, J., The Modernisation of Irish Society 1848–1918, Dublin 1973.
McDowell, R. B., Public Opinion and Government Policy in Ireland, 1801–1846,
London 1952.
O Tuathaigh, G., Ireland before the Famine 1798–1848, Dublin 1972.
s cot l a n d
Bumsted, J. M., The People’s Clearance: Highland Emigration to British North Amer-
ica, Edinburgh 1982.
Campbell, R. H., Scotland since 1707: The Rise of an Industrial Society, New York
1965.
Davie, G. E., The Democratic Intellect: Scotland and her Universities in the Nineteenth
Century, Edinburgh 1962.
Devine, T., The Great Highland Famine: Hunger, Emigration and the Scottish High-
lands in the Nineteenth Century, Edinburgh 1988.
Donnachie, I. and Whateley, C., The Manufacture of Scottish History, Edinburgh
1992.
Drummond, A. L. and Bulloch, J., The Church in Victorian Scotland 1843–74,
Edinburgh 1975.
Ferguson, W., Scotland: 1689 to the Present, Edinburgh 1968.
Flinn, M., ed., Scottish Population History, Cambridge 1977.
Gray, M., ‘Scottish Emigration: The Social Impact of Agrarian Change in the
Rural Lowlands, 1775–1875’, in Perspectives in American History, vol. vii,
D. Fleming and B. Bailyn, eds., Cambridge, Mass. 1973.
Handley, J. E., The Irish in Scotland 1798–1845, Cork 1945.

Meikle, H. W., Scotland and the French Revolution, New York 1969.
Saunders, L. J., Scottish Democracy 1815–40: The Social and Intellectual Back-
ground, Edinburgh 1950.
Smout, T. C., A History of the Scottish People 1830–1950, London 1986.
wa l e s
Conway, A., ‘Welsh Emigration to the United States’, in Perspectives in American
History, vol. vii, D. Fleming and B. Bailyn, eds., Cambridge, Mass. 1973.
Davies, E. T., Religion and Society in the Nineteenth Century, Llandybie, Dyfed,
1981.
Dodd, A. H., The Industrial Revolution in North Wales, Cardiff 1971 (repr.)
Howell, D. W., Land and People in Nineteenth Century Wales, London 1977.
John, A. H., The Industrial Revolution of South Wales, Cardiff 1950.
Jones, D., Before Rebecca: Popular Protest in Wales 1793–1835, London 1973.
Jones, I. G., Explorations and Explanations, Gomer 1981.
Jones, I. G., Mid-Victorian Wales: The Observer and the Observed, Cardiff 1992.
Lambert, W. R., Drink and Sobriety in Victorian Wales c.1820–1895, Oxford 1983.
Morgan, K. O., Re-birth of a Nation: Wales 1880–1980, Oxford 1981. ed., Wales
in British Politics 1868–1922, Cardiff 1963, rev. edn 1970.
Morgan, Prys, ‘From Long Knives to Blue Books’ in R.R. Davies et al., Welsh
Society and Nationhood: Historical Essays Presented to Glanmoor Williams,
Cardiff 1984.
Smith, D., ed., A People and a Proletariat: Essays in the History of Wales 1780–1980,
London 1980.
Thomas, B., ed., The Welsh Economy: Studies in Expansion, Cardiff 1962.
Williams, D., The Rebecca Riots, Cardiff 1955.
Williams, G., Valleys of Song: Music and Society in Wales 1840–1914, Cardiff 1998.
W I T H D R AWA L F R O M E M P I R E
england
Marwick, A., Britain in the Century of Total War: War, Peace, and Social Change
1900–1967, Boston 1968.
Neal, F., Sectarian Violence: The Liverpool Experience 1819–1914, Manchester
1988.
Rose, E. J. B., Colour and Citizenship: A Report on British Race Relations, Oxford
1969.
Taylor, A. J. P., English History 1914–1945, Oxford 1965.
Townsend, P., Poverty in the United Kingdom: A Survey of Household Resources and
Standards of Living, London 1978.
ireland
Brown, T., Ireland: A Social and Cultural History 1922–79, London 1981.
Brown, T. N., Irish-American Nationalism, New York 1966.
Farrell, M., Northern Ireland the Orange State, London 1979.

Finnegan, R. B., Ireland: The Challenge of Conflict and Change, Boulder, Colo.
1983.
Hutton, S. and Stewart, P., eds., Ireland’s Histories: Aspects of State, Society and
Ideology, London 1991.
Kenny, M., Goodbye to Catholic Ireland, London 1997.
Lyons, F. S. L., Ireland since The Famine, London 1971.
Culture and Anarchy, Oxford 1979.
Meenan, J., The Irish Economy since 1922, Liverpool 1970.
Miller, D. W., The Queen’s Rebels: Ulster Loyalism in Historical Perspective, New
York 1978.
Murphy, J. A., Ireland in the Twentieth Century, Dublin 1975.
O Malley, P., The Uncivil Wars: Ireland Today, Boston 1983.
Rose, R., Governing without Consensus, London 1971.
s cot l a n d
Campbell, R. H., The Rise and Fall of Scottish Industry 1707–1939, Edinburgh
1980.
Devine, T. M., ed., Scotland’s Shame? Bigotry and Sectarianism in Modern Scotland,
Edinburgh 2000.
Gallagher, Tom, Glasgow: The Uneasy Peace: Religious Tension in Modern Scotland,
Manchester 1988.
Edinburgh Divided: John Cormack and No Popery in the 1930s, Edinburgh
1988.
Gunnin, G. C., John Wheatley, Catholic Socialism and Irish Labour in the West of
Scotland 1906–1924, New York 1987.
Harvie, C., No Gods and Precious Few Heroes: Scotland 1914–80, Toronto 1981.
Henderson, R. A., The Location of Immigrant Industry within a UK Assisted Area:
The Scottish Experience, Oxford 1980.
Lenman, B., An Economic History of Modern Scotland 1660–1976, Hamden, Conn.
1977.
Lewis, T. M. and McNicoll, I. H., North Sea Oil and Scotland’s Economic Prospects,
London 1978.
McCrone, D., Understanding Scotland: The Sociology of a Stateless Nation, London
1992.
wa l e s
Cooke, P., Department Development in the United Kingdom Regions with Particular
Reference to Wales, Oxford 1980.
Dunkerly, D. and Thompson, A., Wales Today, Cardiff 1999.
Jones, G. Elwyn, The People of Wales, Llandysul, Cardigan 1999.
Smith, D., Wales! Wales? London 1984.
Smith, David B. and Williams, Gareth W., Fields of Praise, Cardiff 1980.
Williams, G., Social and Cultural Change in Contemporary Wales, London 1978.
SELECTED LOCAL STUDIES

Much of the best recent historical work has been produced by historians with a
local perspective.
england
Ashby, M. K., Joseph Ashby of Tysoe 1859–1919, Cambridge 1961.
Blythe, R., Akenfield: Portrait of an English Village, London 1969.
Hoskins, W. G., The Midland Peasant: Economic and Social History of a Leicestershire
Village, London 1957.
Lubenow, W. C., Parliamentary Politics and the Home Rule Crisis: The British House
of Commons in 1886, Oxford 1988.
Roberts, R., The Classic Slum: Salford Life in the first Quarter of the Century, Manch-
ester 1971.
Spufford, M., Contrasting Communities: English Villagers in the Sixteenth and Sev-
enteenth Centuries, Cambridge 1974.
Waller, P. J., Democracy and Sectarianism: A Political and Social History of Liverpool
1868–1939, Liverpool 1981.
ireland
Akenson, D. H., Between Two Revolutions Islandmagee: County Antrim 1798–1920,
Hamden, Conn. 1979.
Arensberg, C. M. and Kimball, S. T., Family and Community in Ireland, Cam-
bridge, Mass. 1940.
Dunne, T., Rebellions: Memoir, Memory and 1798, Dublin 2004.
Fox, R., The Tory Islanders: A People of the Celtic Fringe, Cambridge 1978.
Harris, R., Prejudice and Tolerance in Ulster: A Study of Neighbours and ‘Strangers’
in a Border Community, Manchester 1972.
Hart, P., The IRA and its Enemies: Violence and Community in Cork 1916–1923,
Oxford 1998.
Nolan, W., Fassadinin: Land, Settlement and Society in South-East Ireland, 1600–
1850, Dublin 1979.
Whyte, J., Interpreting Northern Ireland, Oxford 1990.
s cot l a n d
Buchan, D., The Ballad and the Folk, London 1972.
Cregeen, E. R., ‘The Changing Role of the House of Argyll in the Scottish
Highlands’, in History and Social Anthropology, ed. I. M. Lewis, London
1968.
Gaskell, P., Morvern Transformed: A Highland Parish in the Nineteenth Century,
Cambridge 1968.
Walker, G. and Gallagher, T., Sermons and Battle Hymns: Protestant Popular Culture
in Modern Scotland, Edinburgh 1990.
wa l e s
Rees, A. D., Life in a Welsh Countryside, Cardiff 1950.
I M P E R I A L H I S TO RY
au s t r a l i a
Blainey, G., The Tyranny of Distance, Melbourne 1975.
Clark, C. M. H., A History of Australia, vols. i–iv, Melbourne 1962–81.
Day, David, The Great Betrayal: Britain, Australia and the Onset of the Pacific War,
1939–42, London 1988.
Inglis, K. S., The Australian Colonists: An Exploration of their Social History, Mel-
bourne 1974.
Ward, R., The History of Australia: The Twentieth Century, New York 1977.
new zealand
Oliver, W. H., with Williams, B. R., The Oxford History of New Zealand, Oxford
1981.
c a n a da
Brebner, J. B., Canada: A Modern History, new edn, rev. and ed. by D. C. Masters,
Ann Arbor 1970.
Galbraith, J. K., The Scotch, London 1964.
Innis, H. A., The Fur Trade in Canada, rev. edn, Yale 1962.
Senior, H., Orangeism: The Canadian Phase, Toronto 1972.
u n i t e d s tat e s
Thernstrom, S., ed., Harvard Encyclopedia of American Ethnic Groups, Cambridge,
Mass. 1980.
Index
Aberdeen 242, 247, 273, 297 Ambrosius Aurelianus 50

Aberdeenshire 211 America 3, 8, 11
Aberdeen University 179, 209 American Civil War 231
Abingdon 68 American colonies 188, 214
Abrahams, William (Mabon) 271 strength of dissent in 192
Abse, Danny 10 American Great Awakening (1858) 264
Action Française 291 American Revolution 196, 204
Acts of Union (1536, 1543) 134, 142, Amery, Leopold 282
158, 171, 172 Aneirin 84
Act of Union (1707) 189, 190, 209, 210, Angevins 118, 129, 130
215 Anglesey, Isle of 14, 95, 108, 193
Act of Union (1801) 207, 214, 216, 221, Anglians 81
225, 234, 235, 236 Anglicanism 165
Act of Union (1999), Anglo-Scottish 304 Anglo-Danish kings 107
Adams, Gerry 314, 315, 318 Anglo-Irish Agreement (1995) 315
Adare 148 Anglo-Irish Treaty (1801) 313
Adomnán 43 Anglo-Irish Treaty (1922) 269, 283, 287,
Aelfgar, earl of Mercia 95 294
Aethelberht (c. 552–616) 56 Anglo-Saxon Chronicle 68
Aethelfrith 45 Anglo-Saxons 5–6, 13, 17, 22, 41, 62, 82,
Aethelred II (‘the Unready’) (c. 968–1016) 84, 98, 101, 120
68–69 Angus Og 147
Aethelstan 65 Annals of the Four Masters 151
Aethelwold 67–68 Annandale 113
Africa 5, 8, 11 Anne, Queen (1665–1714) 192
African culture 10 Anti-Corn Law League 230
Agincourt, battle of (1415) 134, 162 Antrim, Co. 183
Aherne, Bertie 315 Antrim, Randall MacDonnell, earl of
Ainsdale 65 (1609–83) 168, 176, 177
Alasdair Coll Ciotach (Colkitto) (the Aquitaine 97
left-handed) (d. 1647) 177 Archenfield 107
Alcuin of York 59, 62 Ardagh Chalice 45
Aldfrith 45 Ardfert (Co. Kerry) 132, 147
Aldhelm 47 Ardmore 123
Alexander II, king of Scotland Ards peninsula 73
(1198–1249) 115 Argyll 35, 39, 84, 113, 116, 145
Alexander III, king of Scotland (1249–86) Argyll, duke of (1682–1761) 175–6, 179,
115 186, 211
Alexander II, Pope (d. 1073) 97 Argyll, 8th earl of (1598–1661) 274–5
Alexander III, Pope (d. 1181) 118 Armagh, Co. 205, 206
Alfred (the Great) (843–99) 65, 66, 69, 81 archdiocese of 95, 297
Alps 16 monastery of 54, 77
341
342 Index
Armes Prydein Vawr (Prophecy of Great Becket, Thomas, archbishop (1118–70)

Britain) 82, 84 101
Armorica 18, 43 Bective 122
Arnold, Matthew 230 Bedarida, François 3
Arthur (son of Henry Tudor) 170 Bede (c. 673–735) 43–50, 54, 56, 57
Arthur, King 32, 39, 50, 52, 56–57, 124, Belfast 204, 205
126, 130, 137, 185, 187 rise of 221, 235
Arthur’s Seat 3 Belfast Celtic FC 289
Arundel, earl of 139 Belgae 14, 19
Ashton 228 Belgium 2
Asian culture 10 Benburb, battle of (1646) 168
Askeaton 149 Bentham, Jeremy 217
Askeaton castle 148 Bentinck, Lord George (1802–48) 243
Asquith, Herbert Henry, earl of Oxford Beowulf 45
and Asquith (1851–1928) 253, Berlin, Isaiah 320
258–73, 279, 287 Bernard of Neufmarche 109
Athlone (Uı́ Mhaine) 79, 123 Bernicia 62, 85, 87, 113
Atrebates, Calleva 21 Berry, Brian 320
Atrebates, Southern 19, 21 Bevan, Aneurin (1897–1960) 288, 289,
Augustine of Canterbury (d. 604) 45 295
Augustinians 105, 122 Bevin, Ernest (1881–1951) 288
Australia 8, 255, 275–6, 298, 307 Bigbury (Kent) 21
emigration to 301 Bigod, Roger 102, 120, 127, 147
Fenianism in 276 Binchy, Professor Daniel 22, 23–24, 40,
nationalism in 3 58, 59, 62, 89, 118
Avon 17 Birmingham 219, 226, 228, 256, 257,
Aylesford-Swayling 19 298, 300, 303, 305
Ayscu, Edward 187 Birrell, Augustine (1850–1933) 253
Blackburn 228
Baines, Edward (1774–1848) 226 immigrant population 315
Baldwin, Stanley (1867–1947) 283, Black Death 100, 133, 136, 138, 141
284–6 Blackstone, William 225
Ballinasloe 204 Blackwater, valley of 152
Balliol, Edward 132–3 Blair, Tony 315
Balliol, John (c. 1250–1313) 115–16 Blatchford, Robert (1851–1943) 271
Ballygawley (Co. Tyrone) 290 Bloch, Marc 6, 62, 71, 120
Balmoral 89 Bloody Sunday 281, 304, 312
Banbury, battle of (1469) 170 Blue Books affair 251
Bangor (Gywnedd) 84, 109 Boa Island (Co. Fermanagh) 124, 125
Bangor (Ireland), monastery at 73 Boéce, Hector 58, 186, 187
Bannockburn, battle of (1314) 116, 142, Boethius 66
155 Bolingbroke, Henry (son of John of Gaunt)
Bannow Bay 117 139, 141; see also Henry IV
Baptists 183 Bolingbroke, Henry St John, Viscount
Barbados 299 (1678–1751) 231
Barbarian invasions 4 Boniface 59
Barrow 120, 122, 152, 229, 286 Bonnie Prince Charlie (Charles Stuart)
Barry 240, 241 176, 203, 210
Bath 10, 17, 30, 48, 65, 66, 68 bookland 49
Battersea Shield 17, 29 Book of Daniel 165
Battle Abbey 109 Book of Durrow 45
Beaumont, Henry de 101 Book of Invasions (Lebor Gabala) 58, 124,
Beauvais 115 126
Beaverbrook, William Maxwell Aitken, Book of Kells 46
Lord (1879–1964) 275 Book of Martyrs 162
Index 343
Borris (Co. Carlow) 120 Brubaker, Roger 324

Boru, Brian (c. 926–1014) 74, 75, 78, 148 Bruce, David 133
Boston 102 Bruce, Edward (c. 1276–1318) 147–8
Boston (US) 4 Bruce family 96, 115–16
Boswell, James 212 Bruce, Robert of Annandale (1274–1329)
Bosworth Field, battle of (1485) 134, 157, 115–16, 132–3, 142, 145, 147, 155
170 Brunanburh, battle of (937) 82
Boudicca 39 Brutus 186
Boyce, D. George 218 Brut y Tywysogion (Chronicle of the Princes)
Boycott, Captain Charles (1832–97) 268 87
Boyne, battle of (1690) 169, 183, 188, Bryn Celli Du 14
189, 190, 205, 210, 264, 276, 298 Buchanan, George 58, 155, 186, 187
Boyne valley 14, 120, 122 Buchans 113, 116
Bradford 299, 300–1, 303 Buckingham, Edward Stafford, duke of
immigrant population 315 (1478–1521) 166, 171
Braint 14 Bunratty castle 149
Brandon, Charles, duke of Suffolk Burghal Hidage 67
(d. 1545) 163 Burke, Edmund (1727–97) 214, 225, 231,
Breadalbane, S.S. 244 239
Breaker Morant 11 Burke, Fr Tom, O.P. 264
Brechin 145 Burke, Thomas, Under-Secretary
Brecon 109, 171 (1829–82) 265
Lords of 140 Burkes of Clanricarde 180
Bregenz 14 Burma 294
Brehon Laws 22, 23, 54, 127, 181 Bury, John Bagnell (1861–1902) 324
Breifne 71, 76, 117 Bury St Edmunds 105
Brembre, Nicholas (d. 1388) 139 Bute 115
Brent 14, 299 Butler, R. A. 307
Brentford 14 Butlers of Ormond 148, 150, 180
Breton 43 Butskellism 307, 308
Brewer, John 215 Butterfield, Herbert 1, 322, 323, 324
Brienne 14 Byford, John of 149
Brienne, Lewis de 101
Brigantes 15, 17, 30 Cade, Jack 154
Brigantia 1 Caerleon 24, 30, 40
Briggs 228 Caernarfon 271
Bright, John (1811–89) 230–1, 237, 256, castle 111
257, 267 Caerwent 51
Brighton 10 Caesar, Julius 19, 23, 26
Brigid 14–15 Cahir 120, 121, 150
Brindley, James (1716–72) 230 Caistor 41, 137
Bristol 63, 92, 105, 107, 137, 139, 142, Caithness 85, 88, 114
159, 188, 192, 195, 202, 229, 286, Caithréim Chellacháin Chaisil (The Wars of
300, 303 Cellachan of Cashel) 79
Bristol Channel 35, 51–52 Calais 139
British National Party (BNP) 320, 321 Caledonii 41
British Rail 308 Calendar of Justiciary Rolls 126
Britons 6, 47, 48–57, 81 Callaghan, James 308
Brittany 17, 43, 49, 81–82 Calvin, John (1509–64) 163
Brixworth 56 Cambridge 10, 41, 159
Broghill, Roger Boyle, Lord (1621–79) Cambridge, earl of 140
169 Cambridgeshire 228
Bronze Age 14, 18, 22 Cambridge, University of 162, 174, 203,
Browne, Robert (c. 1550–1663) 193 226, 323
Brown, Gordon 320 Anglo-centricity in 301–2
344 Index
Cameronians 209 cultures 5–6, 29, 32

Camerons 176 impact of Romans on 32
Camisards 176 Iron Age 13, 14–16
Campbell-Bannerman, Sir Henry King Arthur and 50, 52
(1846–1908) 284 Normans and 95
Campbell, James 57, 89–91, 130 P-Celtic 17, 41, 43, 49, 81, 82, 84
Campbells 87, 145, 175–6, 190 Q-Celtic 17, 41, 84–85
Camulodunum (Colchester) 19, 21 views of the past 35, 39
Canada 8, 11, 225, 255, 305 Vikings and 71
emigration to 264 Cenel Gabhrain 54, 85
Fenian ‘invasion’ of 265 Cenel Loairn 54
Irish nationalism in 7 Cernunnos 17
nationalism 11 Ceylon 294
Canary Wharf 305 Chaldeans 45
Canmore dynasty 113, 116 Chalmers, Dr Thomas (1780–1847) 248
Canmore, Malcolm (Malcolm III) 95, Chamberlain, Sir Austen (1863–1937) 281
100, 113 Chamberlain, Joseph (1836–1914) 256,
Canny, Professor Nicholas 184, 323 257
Canonlaw 103 Chamberlain, Neville (1869–1940) 283
Canterbury 21, 74 Chandos, Sir John 137
Cantiaci 21 Channel Islands 299, 303
Cape Breton Island 244 Charles I (1600–49) 167–9, 177, 188,
Cardiff 109, 221, 240, 270, 289 190, 214
Cardiff Arms Park 273 Charles II (1630–85) 179
Carlisle 106 Charles III of Spain 210
Carlow 120–1, 127, 147 Charles IV of France (1294–1328) 133
Carmarthen 140, 171, 241, 269–70, 295 Charles, Thomas of Bala (1755–1814) 239
Carolingian empire 62, 69 Charleville 134
Carrick 120 Chartist movement 226, 232, 241,
Carson, Edward (1854–1935) 268, 276 249–50, 251
Carstares, William 208 Chatham 195
Carthusians 103 Chepstow castle 108
Cashel 77 Cheshire 82, 195
archbishop of 126 Chester 40, 95, 103, 104, 107, 108
Rock of 76, 122 Chicago 314
Castle Island 149 Chichester 103
Catholic ‘Defenders’ Chichester-Clark, James Dawson, Baron
Catholic Emancipation 216, 224, 234, Moyola (1923–) 235
236–7, 239 China 300, 303
Catholicism, strength of Irish 235–7 Chipping Camden 104
Catholic Social and Democratic Party 312 Chirk 109
Catrine 246 Churchill, Lord Randolph (1849–95) 267,
Catterick 49 300, 303
Catuvellauni 19, 21 Churchill, Sir Winston (1874–1965) 259,
Cavan, Co. 71, 76, 206 294, 297
plantation of 181 Church of England 177, 226, 232, 285
Cavendish, Lord Frederick (1836–82) 265 reformation of 177
Cavendish, Spencer Compton, marquis of Church of Ireland 232
Hartington (1833–1908) 254, 256, Church of Scotland 247–8, 291–2
257 Churchyard, Thomas 184
Cecil, William, Lord Burghley (1520–98) Ciarraige 23, 79
163, 186 Cirencester 48
Céili Dé, of Tallaght and Finglas 73 Cistercians 98, 103, 109, 121, 122
Cellach 77 Clann Cholmaı́n 71
Celts/Celtic Chapter 1 passim; Clann Sinaich 77
Index 345
Clare, house of 147, 170 rhetoric of 285–6

Clarendon, Edward Hyde, earl of in Scotland 245, 265, 295
(1609–74) 194 Constantine I (the Great), Emperor
Clarion 271 (d. 337) 165, 186, 187
Clark, Dr Jonathan 190 Constantinople 111
Clarke, Peter 256, 257 Cook, Arthur James (1883–1931) 288
class politics 277–8 Cooke, Dr Henry (1788–1868) 238
Claudius, Emperor 19, 26, 29 Coppinger, William, bishop of Cloyne and
Claverhouse, John Graham, Viscount Ross (d. 1830) 236
Dundee (c. 1649–89) 189, 190, 214, Coritani 19
248 Cork 60, 69–75, 117, 147, 180, 190, 204,
Clifford family 136 235
Clonard 54, 77, 120, 123 Corkery, Daniel 279
Clonfert 76–77 Cormac’s Chapel 76, 122
Clonmacnoise 54, 77, 79, 122, 123 Corn Laws 231, 232
Clonmel 120 Cornishmen’s Revolt (1549) 164–5
Clontarf, battle of 74, 75 Cornouii 43
cloth industry 159, 163 Cornwall 19, 43, 49, 51, 82, 107, 134, 199
Clun 111 Corporation Act (1662) 189, 198, 239
Cluniac order 111 repeal of 226
Clwyd, vale of 108, 110 Cotswolds 19, 136
Clyde 41, 84, 211, 246 Council of the North 134
Clydeside 10, 295, 299, 301 Counter-Reformation 129, 165, 173, 200,
rise of 221 300, 303
Cnut, King (c. 994–1035) 65, 68–69, 92 Courcy, John de 117
coal mining, decline of 305 Covenanters 176, 179, 190, 208, 248, 252
coarbs 52 Coventry 104, 138, 287
Cobden, Richard (1804–65) 228, 231 Cowan, Professor Edward 155
Cockburn, Henry (1779–1854) 246 Craig, Sir Thomas 187
Cogadh Gaedhel re Gallaibh (The Struggle of Crécy, battle of (1346) 134
the Gael against the Foreigner) 74, 79 Cree 109
Cogan, de (Goggins) 117 Crew castle 137
coins 21 Crimean War 252
Anglo-Saxon 62 Crobhderg, Cathal 117
Cuerdale hoard 63–64 Crofters Act (1886) 244
Coke, Sir Edward 187 Cromarty 248
Colchester 19, 30, 40 Cromwell, Oliver (1599–1658) 157, 169,
Coldingham 145 177, 182, 183, 184
Cold War 309 Cromwell, Thomas (c. 1485–1540) 134,
Collins, Michael 281 159, 161, 164, 171
Collinson, Professor Patrick 165, 169 Cromwellian ascendancy 162, 169
Colmán, Bishop (Columbanus) (543–615) Crown 7, 136, 145
35, 45, 52 Crusades 102, 137
Colmcille (Columba) (c. 521–97) 43 Cuchulain 58
Columbanus (Bishop Colmán) (543–615) Cuerdale coin hoard 63–64
35, 45, 52 Cullen, Paul, archbishop (1803–78) 238,
Comyn family 115–16, 145 263, 265
Comyn, John (d. 1306) 116 Culloden, battle of (1746) 189, 203, 210,
Connacht 71, 76, 78, 117, 151, 180–1, 212
182, 205, 217 Cumberland 17, 136
Connolly, S. J. 218 Cumbria 3, 43, 60, 62, 95
Conrad, Joseph (1857–1924) 29 Cunedda 50
Conservative party 224, 234, 257, 260, Cunliffe, Barry 18–19
274, 278, 287–8, 289, 307, 310 Cunningham, Bernadette 185
and Ireland 281–3, 284 Cunobelinus (Cymbeline) 21, 24
346 Index
Curzon, George Nathaniel, Marquis Dillons 181

(1859–1925) 283, 284 Dingwall 85
Cusack, Cyril 296 Disraeli, Benjamin, earl of Beaconsfield
Cwm 173 (1804–81) 231–2, 277, 284
Cymbeline 134 dissent, religious 192–9
Cymmrodorion, society of 201 Ditchling Beacon 17
Cymru Fydd (Young Wales) 271 Dobunnii 19, 21
Domesday Book 64, 84, 89, 130
Dál Cais 75 Donegal 123
Dalriada 41, 45, 50, 54, 84, 85 Donohoe, Michael 265
Danelaw 64–68, 88, 94, 98 Dorchester-on-Thames 41
Danes 60–91, 92–95, 106, 127 Dorset 17, 19, 21, 66, 67
Dangerfield, George 278 Douglas, James, earl of Morton 177
D’Arc, Jeanne (1412–31) 134 Douglas, William, earl of (Black Douglas)
Darwen 315 (1425–52) 144
Daventry Academy 194 Douglases, Black and Red of Galloway and
David I of Scotland (c. 1080–1153) 91, Angus 144–5, 147
95, 97, 113, 115, 117 Douglases of Buccleuch 245
Davies, R. R. 156 Down 183
Davies, Sir John (1569–1626) 167, 184 Downshire, marquess of 204
Davies, Sir Rees 129, 323–4 Drawda Hall, Oxford 123
Davies, Wendy 32 Drew, Reverend Thomas 264
Davison, Jane 186 Drogheda 120, 123
Davitt, Michael (1846–1906) 265, 266 Druids 35, 52, 79, 299, 301
Declaration of Arbroath 155, 156 Drumclog, battle of (1684) 248
Declaration of Indulgence 169 Drummond, Thomas (1797–1840) 249
Dee estuary 48, 66, 81, 108 Drystan 50
Defoe, Daniel (1660–1731) 194 dubhgaill 60, 73
Degaston, battle of 45 Dublin 11, 60, 61, 63, 69, 72, 74, 77, 85,
Deheubarth 107–8, 111 95, 107, 117, 121, 122, 123, 132,
Deira 62 147, 148, 180, 190, 204, 221, 235,
Deisi 33 280–1, 297
Democratic Unionist Party 315, 318, 321 castle chamber in 161
Denbigh 110, 121, 171 economic stagnation of 235
Denbighshire 242 Dudley Edwards, Ruth 279
Denmark 6, 62, 92 Duff, Captain Robert, R.N. 176
Deptford 195 Duhallow 151
derbfine 22 Duignans (Ua Duibhgennain) 123
Derbforgaill 77 Dumbarton 43, 85, 246
Derby 60, 300, 303 Dumnonia 43, 47, 51
Derby, Edward Geoffrey Smith Stanley, Dumville, Professor David 56
14th earl of (1799–1869) 228, 232 Dun Ailinne 22
Derbyshire 67 Dunbar 177
Derry 183 Dunbrody (Co. Wexford) 121
Desmond, House of 74, 117, 134, 145, Duncan 72
148, 151, 179–80, 181 Duncan II (c. 1060–94) 114
Desmond, Maurice FitzThomas, earl of Dundee 247, 273
(d. 1356) 134, 148–50 Dundee FC 223
De Valera, Eamonn (1882–1975) 5, 9, Dundee United 223
281, 283, 289, 291, 297, 313 Dunedin, Catholic bishop of 276
Devenish Island 124 Dungarvan 149
Devine, Professor T. 310 Dunkeld 87
Devon 48, 66, 108, 142 Dunluce 150
Devonshire, duke of 235 Dún na Scaith 78
Diamond landlords 206 Dunne, Tom 218
Index 347
Dunquin 132, 147 Elizabeth I, Queen (1533–1603) 72, 87,

Dunstan (c. 925–88) 67–68 134, 157, 161, 162, 164, 165, 166,
Durham 94 167, 181, 186
cathedral 98 Elliott family 245
‘a melting pot’ 223, 229 Ellis, David 188, 215
Durotriges 19 Ellis, Professor Steven 156, 185
Durovernum Cantiacorum (Canterbury) Ellis, Thomas Edward (Tom) (1859–99)
21 269, 271
Durrow 95 Ely
Book of 45 abbey of 92
Dyfed 43, 51, 81, 82, 84 cathedral 98
Dyffryn Clwyd, lord of 141 Emain Macha 22
emigrants, Irish 7–8, 11
Eachard, Lawrence (c. 1670–1730) Emly 77, 122
194 England
Eadred (946–55) 65 establishment in 230–2
Eadwig (955–9) 65 immigration into 7–8, 10–11, 299–301
Ealing 316 industrialisation in 225, 228–9
East Africa 299, 301 ‘Irish’ issues in 225
East Anglia 45, 49, 57, 62, 65, 66, 87, parliament 139, 150
105, 136 religious dissent in 192–9, 225–30
Easter Rising see Rising of Easter (1916) English Historical Review 6
Ecgfrith, King (d. 685) 56 Englishman and His History, The 322, 324
Edenderry 120 English nationalism 319, 320–1
Edgar (959–75) 65–66, 67–69 ‘English Revolution’ 166, 168, 169
Edinburgh 113, 133, 145, 211, 215, 216, Enlightenment 202
273 Scottish 210, 243
Merchant Company schools in 246 Eoghanachta 41, 53, 54, 75, 76
relative decline of 246 episcopalianism 179, 184, 189, 190, 203
Edinburgh Academy 246 in Scotland 207–10, 235, 237–8
Edinburgh, Duke of erenaghs (airchinnigh) 124
attempted assassination of 276 Espec, Walter 102
Edinburgh Review 243 Espuic, Gilla 77
Edlingham castle (1350) 136 Essex 49, 66, 196
Edmund (939–46) 65 ETA (Basque nationalist party) 320
Education Act (1918) 292 Etel castle 136
Education Act (1944) 297 ethnic changes 305–7
Edward the Confessor (c. 1003–66) 69, ethnicity 252
92, 98 decline of ethnic issues in politics 277
Edward the Elder (899–924) 65 inter-ethnic hostility 223–4
Edward I (1239–1307) 101, 108, 109, European Economic Community 8, 10,
110–11, 115–16, 127, 130, 132, 140, 290, 294, 297, 307, 321
152, 155 Britain’s contribution to 308–9
Edward II (1284–1327) 101, 132, 134 Eurosceptics 309
Edward III (1312–77) 132–7, 148 Everton F.C. 223
Edward IV (1441–83) 134, 145 Evesham 103
Edward VI (1537–53) 164, 323 Ewing, Mrs Winifred 295
Edward VIII (1894–1972) 89 Ewyas Lacey, lord of 140
Edwards, Jonathan (1703–58) 198, Exeter 30, 92
200
Edwards, Philip 184 Falkirk 114
eisteddfoddau 201 Falklands’ War (1982) 307, 308, 309
Elbe 120 Fassadinin 152
Elgin 114, 273 Fastolf, Sir John 137
Eliseg’s Pillar 51 Faughart, battle of 148
348 Index
Faulkner, Brian (1921–77) 235 French Revolution 206

Fenianism 253, 265–6, 276 Welsh reaction to 239
Fergus I, king of Dalriada 54, 58, 91 Frost, John (d. 1877) 241
Ferguson, William 130, 155 Froude, James Anthony (1818–94) 3, 323
Ferns 76 Fursu 45
Ferrers, Lord 171 Fusey 57
Ferrybridge 29 Fyrd 66
feuing 147
Fielden, John (1784–1849) 228 Gabran 54
Fields, Gracie (1898–1979) 286 Gaelic Athletic Association 268
Fife 96 Gaelic League 268
Finan, Bishop 45 Gaels 45
Finglas 73 Gaitskell, Hugh 307
fioc bunaid (vendetta) 72 galanas (vendetta) 72, 109, 110
fionngaill 60 Galbraith, John Kenneth (b. 1908) 275
First World War 8, 269, 277, 279, 280 Gall-Gaedhil 85
industry during 286–7 Gallipoli 11
Firth of Forth 18, 43, 49, 84, 95, 133 Galloway 87, 97, 113, 114, 116
Fishguard 239 gallowglasses 150, 151, 179
FitzGerald, Garrett 314 Galway 123, 180, 183
FitzGerald, Maurice 148 Galway, Co. 17, 78, 151, 180, 183
FitzGeralds of Munster 111, 124, 125, Gartsherrie, Bairds factory at 246
127, 148, 153, 159, 171 Garvin, Tom 279
Fitzgerald, Thomas, earl of Kildare (‘silken Gascony 115, 132, 133
Thomas’) (1513–37) 134, 153, 159, General Strike (1926) 283, 285, 288–9
171 Geoffrey of Monmouth (c. 1100–54) 39,
FitzGilbert, Richard 117 50, 57, 130
FitzGulber, Sir Thomas 149 George I (1660–1727) 195, 210
FitzNeal, Richard 100 George II (1683–1760) 195
FitzOsbern, Richard 95 George III (1738–1820) 196, 203, 207
FitzRalph, Richard 123 Gerald of Windsor 111
FitzThomas, Maurice 127, 148–50 Geraldine territory 150
Flanders 98, 138, 140 Geraldine, Thomas of Shanid 148
Flemings 129 Germany 57, 165, 168, 299, 301, 324
Flemish migrants 108, 138 Gibson, William 264
Flight of the Earls 167, 181–82 Gifford 211
Flint 109, 110, 121, 172 Gilbert, Sir Humphrey 184
Flodden, battle of (1513) 134, 142, 162 Gildas (c. 516–c. 570) 43
Fluellen 154 Gladstone, William Ewart (1809–98) 232,
Fore 120, 122 249, 252, 253–60, 267–8, 271
Formby 73 Glamorgan 82, 84, 109, 240, 241, 269–70
Forster, Edward Morgan (1879–1970) 73 lord of 140
Forth valley 145 vale of 173
Fosse Way 30 Glasgow 11, 145, 211, 243, 244, 273, 274
Foster, John (1740–1828) 206 ethnicity in 292, 298
Fox, Sir Cyril 18 rise of 221, 246–7
Foxe, John (1516–87) 162, 169 Glasgow Celtic FC 223, 316
Frame, Professor Roger 129 Glasgow Herald 274
France 7, 124, 132, 133, 139, 153, 159, Glasgow Rangers FC 223, 316
162, 167, 168, 175, 324 Glastonbury 52, 103
Francis II, dauphin of France (1544–60) Gleeston castle (1330) 136
Franciscans 104 Glencoe, massacre of (1692) 159, 190
Franklin, Benjamin 241 Glendalough 73, 77, 123
Franks 120 Glendower, Owen see Glyndwr, Owain
Fraser family 96 Glorious Revolution of 1688 3, 169, 188,
Freeman, Edward A. 323 189, 207–9, 214, 323
Index 349
Gloucester 48, 286 Harrington, James (1611–77) 198

Gloucester, earls of 104, 139, 140 Hariss, Gerald 154
Gloucestershire 17, 67, 196 Harris, Howell (1714–73) 200
Glyndwr, Owain (c. 1359–c. 1416) 132, Harris, Rosemary 290
141, 154, 170 Harrow 316
Glywysing 82, 84 Hartington, marquess of 254, 256, 257
Gododdin, The 49, 50, 84 Hastings, battle of (1066) 88, 92
Golden Vale 205 Hattersley, Roy 308
Goldsmith, Oliver 214 Haverfordwest 161, 172
Gomer (son of Noah) 58 Hay-on-Wye 172
Gonneville, Hugh de 104 Heaney, Seamus 296
Gordon, earls of Huntley 176 Hearts FC 223
Gosford, earl of 206 Heath, Edward 300, 303, 312
Grand Canal 204 Hebrides 10, 60, 86
Grand Hotel (Brighton), bombing of 312 Hechter, Michael 4
Grand Remonstrance 167 Heenan, John Carmel, archbishop of
Grattan’s parliament 204 Liverpool (1905–75)
Gravesend 195 stoned in Liverpool 293
‘Great Awakening’ 198, 199, 200 Henderson, Arthur (1863–1935) 288
Second 264 Henderson, James 267
Greek philosophy 35 Henrician Reformation 172
Greenberg, Janelle 187 Henrisoun, James 186
Greenock 244, 246, 275 Henry I (1068–1135) 95
Greenwich 195 Henry II (1133–89) 117, 118, 129,
Greenwood, Walter (1903–74) 286 130
Gregory the Great (c. 540–604) 65, 66 Henry III (1207–72) 97, 101, 116
Greys of Ruthin 110, 172 Henry IV (1367–1413) 134, 140, 145; see
Griffiths, James (1890–1975) 295 also Henry of Lancaster; Bolingbroke,
Gruffydd ap Cynan (c. 1055–1137) 95 Henry
Gruffydd ap Llywelyn (d. 1063) 95 Henry IV 153
Gwent 51, 82, 84 Henry V (1387–1422) 139, 153
Gwrtheyrn 51 Henry V 154, 162
Gwynedd 50, 84, 95, 97, 107–8, 110, 111, Henry VI 153–4
140, 172 Henry VII (1457–1509) 134, 171
Gwyneddigion Society 239 Henry VIII (1491–1547) 118, 157, 159,
Gwynn, Professor Aubrey 118 164, 165, 171, 185
‘Gwyr y Gogledd’ (‘Men of the North’) Henry of Blois 103
49, 82 Henry of Lancaster (1367–1413) 134,
139; see also Henry IV; Bolingbroke,
Habsburg empire 153, 300, 303 Henry
Hackney 300 Henry Tudor 157, 170; see also Henry VII
Hadrian’s Wall 28, 30, 32, 40 Herbert family 171, 172
Haig family 96 Hereford 95, 108, 171
Haldane, Richard Burdon, Viscount Hereford, earl of 140
(1856–1928) 259, 260 Hereford, Humphrey Bohun, earl of
Halévy, Elie 3 (1276–1322) 141
Halidon Hill 133 Herefordshire 3, 82, 95, 106–7, 115, 166,
Hambledon (Bucks) 32 172, 173, 199–202
Hamilton 246, 288, 295 Hereward the Wake (11th century) 92
Hampden, John (1594–1643) 167, 214 Hertfordshire 196
Hamwih 49, 62 Hexham, Richard 91
Hardie, James Keir (1856–1915) 271, Hibernian FC 223
272 Highland Clearances 243, 264
Haringey 300 Highland Land League 244
Harlech 110, 132 Highlands, western 10
Harold of Wessex (1020–66) 95 Hinduism 305
350 Index
History of the Britons 84 Inns of Court 159

Hobhouse, Leonard Trelawney Inverness castle 113
(1864–1929) 259 Iona 43, 45, 47, 54, 74, 85
Hobson, John Atkinson (1858–1940) 259 IRA (Irish Republican Army) 290, 298,
Hod Hill, Dorset 21 312, 313
Holinshed’s Chronicles 153, 154 IRB see Irish Republican Brotherhood
Holt 110 Ireland
Holt, James 131 Act of Union (1800) 207, 214, 216,
Holy Edward, The 7 221, 225, 234, 235, 236
Holyhead 251 crisis of 1919–22 5–6, 281–3
Holy Land 137 cultural divisions in 203, 206–7
Holyrood, monastery at 115 Department of Finance in 9
Holyroodhouse 292 Devotional Revolution 263
Holywell 17 Direct Rule, imposition of 304
Homans, George 100 economic change in 203–6
Home Rule economic depression in 289
Irish 224, 252–60, 268–9, 274–5, 281 emigration from 297
Scottish 274–5, 291–2, 295, 311 ‘Golden Age’ of 52
Welsh 241, 291 Good Friday Agreement 304, 315
Homildon Hill, battle of (1402) 142 Government of Ireland Act (1920) 269
Hong Kong 300, 303 Great Famine (1845–49) 222–3, 234,
Honour of Huntingdon 97 238, 251, 262–3, 314
House of Commons 139, 163, 167, 204, Land Act of 1870 253, 267
207, 231, 234, 236 Land Act of 1881 244, 253, 256, 257,
House of Lords 139, 163, 207 271
Howard, Michael 300, 307 New Ireland Forum 314–15
Huddersfield 300, 303 ‘Old English’ culture
Hugh of Avalon 103 partition of 297
Hull 94 prosperity of the Republic of 318
Humber 43, 65, 84, 87, 163, 164 ‘Protestant’ ascendancy in 190–1
Hume, David (1711–76) 194, 198, 209 revolution (1916–22) 8–9, 283
Hume, John 312 and Romanisation 33–35, 40
Hundred Years War 134, 136, 137, 139, rural conflict 205, 260–73
142, 152 Treaty of 1921 281
Huntley family 145 Irish-American nationalism 253
Hywel Dda, the Good (d. 950) 82, 84 Irish–American relations 312, 313–14
Irish Catholic Confederates 168
Ice Age 13 Irish Church 51, 52
Iceni 19, 21, 39–40 Irish Free State 8, 280
ILP see Independent Labour Party attitudes to modernity 289–90
immigration 11–12, 221, 299–301, 305–7, depression in 289
308–9, 315–16, 319–20 Irish immigration 32
from Europe 8, 11 Irish National Land League 266
from Ireland 7 Irish National Volunteers 204, 269
Inchiquin 149 Irish Question 214, 297
Independent Labour Party 271 Irish Republican Army see IRA
India 8, 11, 275, 294, 299, 303 Irish Republican Brotherhood 269
Industrial Revolution 4, 7–8, 11, 219, 225, Irish Sea 14, 18–19, 51, 52, 60–61, 97,
273 100, 109, 111–13
industry Irish Universities Bill
decline of 304–5, 309 Iron Age 13, 14–16, 21
government subsidisation of 307, 308 Isabella, Queen 134
Ine, King (d.c. 726) 66 Islam 12, 305
Inner Hebrides 113 Island Magee 263
Innocent III, Pope (1160–1216) 123 Isle of Lewis 85, 113
Index 351
Isle of Man 17, 43, 54, 60, 69, 90, 95, Kett, Robert (d. 1549) 164
101, 113, 115, 153, 280, 299, 303 Kettle, Tom 280
Isle of May 114 Khan, Amir 316
Islington 300 Kidd, Colin 218
Italy 138, 140, 153 Kilburn 300
Kildare 147, 148
Jackson map (Professor K. J. Jackson) 32 house of 180
Jacobites 207 lordship of 151
rebellion of the 176 Kilkenny 120, 121, 147, 150, 180
Jacobitism 179, 187, 190, 212–14 Confederation of 182
Irish 203 Killaloe 76, 78
James I of England (1566–1625) 188, 215; Killeshin 77
see also James VI of Scotland Killiecrankie, battle of (1689) 179, 189
James II of England (James VII of Kilmallock castle 148
Scotland) (1633–1701) 153, 169, Kilmarnock 246, 247
179, 189, 190, 192 Kilmore 76
James III of Scotland (1451–88) 147, 210 Kincora 78
James IV of Scotland (1473–1513) 150–1 King Lear 154
James VI of Scotland (1566–1625) 151, ‘Kingdom of Scots’ 3, 10
159, 166, 167, 177, 187 Kings Lynn 104
James VIII (Old Pretender) 189 Kinnock, Neil 308
James, Henry (1843–1916) 198 Kinsale, battle of (1601) 157, 181
James, Mervyn 165 Kintyre 175
Japan 299, 301 Kirkcudbright 17
Jarrow 286 Kirk Session of Edinburgh 175
hunger marches 286 Kirk Session of Morton 209
Jedburgh 115 Knighton 95
Jefferson, Thomas 199 Knights Hospitallers of St John 95, 121
Jerpoint abbey (Co. Kilkenny) 121, 122 Knock (Co. Mayo), apparition at 263
Jerusalem 45 Knowles, Professor David 100
Jesuits 173 Knox, John (c. 1505–72) 134, 159, 175
John of Fordun 155 Kufic dirhams 63
John of Gaunt, duke of Lancaster
(1340–99) 137, 139, 140, 154 Labour party 271, 273, 285, 288, 289,
John XXIII, Pope 313 292, 308, 310
John, King (1167–1216) 116 rise of
John Paul II, Pope (1709–84) 58 in Scotland 295–6
Johnson, Dr Samuel (1709–84) 203 in Wales 295
Jones, Edgar 272 Lacey, Hugh de 119, 122
Jones, Griffiths, of Llandowror Lagan valley 221
(1683–1761) 200 La Grande Chartreuse 103
Joyce, James (1882–1941) 296 Laigin 53
Lambay Island 40
Keady 205 Lambeth 300
Keating, Geoffrey 185, 187 Lancashire 73, 85, 87, 195, 219, 229
Kellas, J. G. 296 cotton industry in 286
Kells 77 Irish vote in
Kells (Co. Antrim) 264 Lancaster, house of 170
Kells (Co. Kilkenny) 121 Land Act (1870) 253, 267
Keneally, Thomas 29 Land Act (1881) 244, 253, 256, 257, 268,
Kenilworth castle 137 271
Kennedy, John F. 314 Lanfranc (c.1005–89) 97
Kent 17, 49, 66 Lansdowne, marquess of 235, 254
Kenya 275 Laoghaire, King 58
Kerry, Co. 132 Larkin, Professor Emmet 263
352 Index
La Tène 16, 17, 29 Lloyd George, David, Earl (1863–1945)

Latin 16, 17, 24, 34–35, 39, 40, 41, 56 258, 259, 269, 271, 272–3, 279, 283,
Laud, archbishop William (1573–1645) 284, 287, 290, 318
165, 167, 177, 190, 231 Llywelyn of Gwynedd 110, 112, 116, 140
Law, Andrew Bonar (1858–1923) 260, Loarn 54
268, 275, 284 Local Government Act (1898) 235
Lawson, Jack, MP 223 Lollards 104
Lecky, William Edward Hartpole London 9, 10, 40, 49, 63, 107, 138–9,
(1838–1903) 3, 324 152, 159, 162–3, 173, 179
Lee, Professor Joseph 238 economic and industrial decline of
Lee, valley of the 152 219–21
Leeds 219 election of Mayor 304
Leicester 41, 60, 104, 105, 226, 305 and the General Strike 288
Leicester, earls of 102, 104 growth and prosperity of 152, 162–3,
Leicester, Robert Dudley, earl of (c. 192, 194–5, 305
1532–88) 163 immigration into 219, 298, 299–300,
Leicestershire 64 303
Leinster 18, 24, 50, 71, 74, 75, 117, 147, London-based Welsh 201
182, 204, 217 media in 299, 301
Leitrim 71, 123 Londonderry 167; see also Derry
Leitrim, Lord 268 Lords of the Congregation 186
Leix 147 Lothians 3–4, 95, 116, 245
Le Mans 109 Lough Crew 14
Lemans, Sean 297, 313 Louth, Co. 206
Le Patourel, John 4, 103 Lucan 190
Le Roy Ladurie, Professor Emmanuel 124 Luther, Martin (1483–1546) 163
Leven, Vale of 288 Lutherans 161, 197
Lewes 103 Luton 286
battle of 116 Lydney (Glos) 32
Liberalism Lyme Bay 27
in Scotland 245–6, 247, 273–5 Lynch, John (fl. 1650) 183
in Ulster 267 Lynn 102, 104
Welsh 241–2
Liberal party 202, 228, 230, 249, 252, Mabinogi 39
257, 260, 271, 278, 287, 288, 293 MacAlpin, Kenneth (d. 658) 85, 87
Liberation Society 232, 237 Macaulay, Mrs Catherine 194, 198
Liffey valley 75 Macaulay, Thomas Babington (1800–59)
Limerick 60, 73, 74, 78, 147, 148, 204 2, 243
surrender of (1691) 117, 189 MacBeth (c. 1005–57) 72
Lincoln 27, 30, 60, 63, 66, 95, 105 MacBeth 154
Lincolnshire 19, 64, 164, 165 MacBride, Ian 218
Lindisfarne 45, 60, 74 MacBrodys 79
Lindisfarne Gospels 45 MacCarran Act (1952) 299, 301
Lindsey 49, 62 MacCarthy, Cormac 76
Linfield FC 223 MacCarthy family 71, 74, 79, 117, 151–2
Lismore 122 MacCarvell, Archbishop 126
Liverpool 188, 192, 195, 219, 221, 226, MacCumhail, Fionn 39, 124, 126, 212
229, 298 MacDonald clan 86–87, 113, 115, 144,
ethno-religious politics in 278, 293 147, 150, 151, 156, 175–6, 177, 190,
Liverpool FC 223 207–11
Llandaff 109 MacDonald, James Ramsay (1866–1937)
Llantwit Major 81 284, 285, 289
Llewelyn, Richard 317 and Scottish nationalism 292
Lleyn 50 MacDonald, John, earl of Ross (d.c. 1498)
Lleyn peninsula 18, 24 145, 147
Index 353
MacDonnells of Antrim 144, 175, 179, ‘Manchester Martyrs’ 219, 224, 253, 265
180 Manchester School of Fair Trade 228
MacDonnell, Sorley Boy 87 Manchester, William Montagu, duke of
MacDougall clan 86–87, 113, 115, 145, (1768–1843) 263
150 Mannix, Daniel, archbishop of Melbourne
MacDowell clan 150 (1864–1963) 276
McFarlane, K. B. 130 Mansels 172
MacFirbisigh family 151 Marcán 78
MacGabhráin, Aedhán 45 March, earl of 137
MacGiolla Padraig 151 Margam, lands of 172
MacHale, Archbishop John (1791–1881) Marlowe, Christopher (1564–93) 134
264 Marshall, William, earl of Pembroke
Machiavelli, Nicolò 198 (d. 129) 102
MacKenna, T.P. 296 Martin, Professor F. X. 118
MacKenzie family 145, 176 Martineau, Harriet (1802–76) 224
MacLean family 177 Mary I, Queen of England (1516–58) 164
MacLellan (victim of Black Douglas) 144 Mary, Queen of Scots 162, 167, 176–7,
MacLeod family 176 186
MacLeod, Iain (1913–70) 294 Mason, Roger 155, 185, 187
MacMail na mBo, Diarmaid 75 Massey 277
Macmillan, Maurice Harold, earl of Matilda, Queen (1102–67) 104
Stockton (1894–1986) 294 Maume, Patrick 279
MacMorris 154 Maxton, James (1885–1946) 285
MacMurrough, Aoife 118 Maynooth 150
MacMurrough, Art (d.1283) 127, 149 St Patrick’s College 236
MacMurrough, Diarmaid (c. 1110–71) Maynooth Grant 224, 232, 273
75, 76, 77, 81, 97, 117–18 Mayo 123, 180
MacMurrough family 71, 121, 122, 123, Mazzini 265
126, 127, 151 Meath, Co. 78, 98, 119, 120, 123
MacNamara 149 Medici, Marie de 162
MacNeill, Eoin (1867–1945) 118, 269 Mediterranean 13, 18
Macpherson, James (1736–96) 58, Medusa, mask 17
212–14, 218, 244 Melbourne, Orangeism in 276
MacSheehy family 150, 179 Mellifont 122
MacSweeney family 150, 151, 179 Melville, Andrew 187
MacWilliam family 114, 151 Menai Straits 110, 251
Mael Sechlainn I (d. 862) 71 Mercia 6, 49, 60, 62, 65, 66, 67, 82, 106,
Magna Carta 101, 102, 130, 131, 185 107
Magnus Barefoot 95 Merfyn Frydi 84
Maguire family 124 Merioneth 172
Maic Conmidhe 123 Merryman, Marcus 186
Maiden Castle 17, 19 Merseyside 219
Maid of Norway 115 Merthyr 240
Maitland, Frederick William (1850–1906) rising of 1831 249
48, 64, 105, 324 Merton 115
Major, John 308, 309, 311 Methodism 173, 194, 230
Malachy (c. 1094–1148) 77 Calvinistic 199, 200–2
Malchus of Lismore 77 Wesleyan 232
Malcolm II (c. 950–1034) 72 Miall, Edward (1809–81) 232
Malcolm III (Canmore) (c. 1031–93) 95, Middle English period 106
100, 113 Middlesbrough 229
Mallow 152 Midhe 71, 117, 118, 119
Manchester 219, 257 midlands 219
Chartist procession in 250 Mı́l 58, 75
Manchester Guardian 259 Sons of 185, 187
354 Index
Milford Haven 170 Naas 75

Mill, John Stuart 308 Naiton, King 54, 56
Milton, John (1608–74) 198, 230 Namier, Sir Lewis 2, 214
Mitchel, John (1815–75) 262 National Free Church Conference (1922)
Moderate Party 209, 210–11 287
Monaghan, Co. 180 National League and Covenant (1638)
Monck, George, duke of Albermarle 168, 177
(1608–70) 169 National Union of Mineworkers 307
Monmouth 109, 171, 241 Navan 120
Monmouthshire 166, 199, 269–70 Navigation Acts 195
Monro, Robert (d.c. 1680) 177 Neath, monastery of 109
Montague, Charles Edward (1867–1928) Neave, Airey
259 asassination of 312
Montagu, Edwin (1879–1924) 253 Neilson hot blast process 246
Montfort, Simon de, earl of Leicester Neolithic Revolution 13
(c. 1208–65) 101, 112, 116 Netherlands, the 124, 163, 165, 166
Montgomery 140, 171, 172 Nevilles 136, 140
Montrose, James Graham, earl of Neville’s Cross, battle of (1346) 142
(1612–50) 168, 177, 207 Newark 226
Monymusk reliquary 55 Newcastle 94, 104, 219, 228
Moone 52 Newcastle, Thomas Pelham-Holles, duke
Moran, D. P. 279 of (1693–1768) 196
Moray 96, 113, 114 New England 157, 192, 197
Moray Firth 85 New Labour 318, 321
Morgan 10, 323 New Lanark 246
Morgan, Hiram 185 Newman, John Henry (1801–90),
Morganwg 84, 107 establishes Catholic University 237
Morley, Vincent 218 New Model Army 169
Morris, John 56 Newport (Mon.) 240, 241, 289
Mortimer 147 Chartist rising in 249
estate 141 New Ross 120
house of 170 New South Wales 276
Mortimer, Roger (c. 1287–1330) 134 Newtown Hamilton 205
Mortimers of Wigmore and Chirk 136, Newtown Mount Kennedy 206
140–1 New York 192, 197
Morton, James Douglas, earl of (1516–81) terrorist attack on 316
177 New Zealand 8, 11, 225, 255, 307
Morton, Kirk Session of 209 sectarian division in 276–7
Motherwell 288 Niall of the Nine Hostages 119, 175
Mounth 41 ‘Night of the Long Knives’ 251
Moville monastery 73 Nine Years War 180, 181
Moy estuary 150 Ninian 54
Muirchu 54 Nith 113
multiculturalism 320 nonconformity 226, 253, 285, 287–8
Munster 71, 74, 76, 122, 148, 161, 166, ‘No Popery’ 168, 196
180, 182, 204 Nore valley 120, 127
Murdoch, Rupert 308 Norfolk 17, 19, 64, 120
Murphy, William 224 rebellion in 164–5
Murray, Daniel, archbishop of Dublin Norfolk, Duke of 165
238 Norman Conquest 4, 62, 64, 87, 88,
Muscraige 23, 152 92–131, 300, 303
Muskerry 23 Normans 71, 75, 80
Muslim Association 12 North America 7, 157
Muslims 10; see also Islam North, Frederick, Lord (1732–92) 198,
‘Mutiny on the Curragh’ 260 204
Index 355
Northampton, Treaty of 133, 142 O Farrell, Patrick 276

North Carolina 197 O Ferrall, Richard (fl. 1650) 183
Northern Ireland 9 O Flaherty, Roderick (1629–1718) 151
cultural divisions in 297–8 O Flahertys 76, 78
effect of partition in 289–90, 311–15, Offa’s Dyke 48, 49, 50, 57, 95
318; see also Ulster O Halloran, Clare 84, 218
North Sea 60, 97, 112–13 Ohlmeyer, Jane H. 185
oil 10 O Hurley, Bishop, of Emly 181
province 27, 69, 74 O Hurleys 181
Northumberland 136, 229 O Kellys 78, 123
Northumberland, duke of 229 Oldham 228
Northumbria 6, 45–50, 56, 60, 62–65, 85, O Mores 151
92, 106, 113 O Neill family 123, 150, 167, 180, 181,
Norway 6, 62, 69, 88, 112, 115, 127 186
Norwich 63, 66, 111, 137, 139, 159, O Neill, Hugh, 1st earl of Tyrone (‘The
163 Great O Neill’) (c. 1540–1616) 157,
bishop of 104 181, 185, 264
Nottingham 60, 104 O Neill, Owen Roe (c. 1590–1649) 168,
Nottingham, earl of 139 177, 179, 264
Nottinghamshire 219 O Neill, Sir Phelim 167
Nova Scotia 244 O Neill, Shane 179
Nuns’ Church (Clonmacnoise) 7 O Neill, Terence 297
O Neill, ‘Tip’ 314, 315
‘Oakboys’, the 205 Ontario 275
O Annracháin, Tadgh 185 Orange Lodges 247, 266–7
O Brenans 127, 152 Orangemen 221
O Breslins 124 Orange Order 206, 264, 274, 275, 293
O Brien, Brian 149 Orderic Vitalis 101
O Brien family 71, 74, 75, 76, 78–79, 80, Order of the Garter 137
84, 89, 95, 123, 127, 148, 149, 180, Order of the Temple 98
181 O Reilly, Anthony 314
O Buachalla, Professor Brendan 203, 218 Orkney 10, 41, 60, 69, 85, 88, 113, 117,
O Casey, Sean (1880–1964) 296 175, 300, 303
Occasional Conformity Act (1711) 192 Ormiston 212, 268, 276
O Ciardha, Eammon 218 Ormond, James Butler, earl of (1610–88)
O Cleirigh, Luigh 151 168, 179–80
O Cleirigh family 151 Ormond, lordship of 74, 148, 151, 180
O Clerys (Ua Cleirigh) 123 O Rourke family 71, 76, 78, 81
O Connell, Daniel (1775–1847) 217, 235, Orpen, Goddard 119
236–7, 250, 254, 264, 265 Orwell, George (Eric Blair) (d. 1950) 286
O Connor family 71, 76–79, 117, 123, Ossian (Oisin) 58, 212
139, 150 Ossory 117
O Connor, Fergus 250 bishop of 122
O Connor, Ruaidhri 77 Oswald, King 45, 67–68
O Connor, T. P. 293 Otago 276–7
O Connor, Turlough 77, 78 O Toole, Laurence, archbishop of Dublin
O Corráin, Professor Donnadcha 75, 76
79 Ouse, river 17
O Croı́nı́n, Professor 89–90 Outer Hebrides 69, 85
O Donnell family 123, 145, 150–1, 167, Owens College, Manchester 237
180, 181, 186, 190 Oxford 159, 286
O Donnell, Hugh Roe 151, 179 Oxford Illustrated History of Britain 9
O Donnell, Manus 150 Oxford Movement 201
O Dowds 151 Oxford, University of 162, 174, 203, 225,
O Dwyers 181 226, 323
356 Index
Paine, Thomas (1737–1809) 206 Postan, Professor M. M. 102, 105

Paisley 246, 247 Powell, Enoch 300–3, 320
Paisley, Ian 315, 318 Powys 50, 51, 82, 95, 107, 111, 172
Pakistan 8, 11, 294, 299, 303 Poynings’ Law 182
Palestine 294 Presbyterians 177, 179, 189, 190
Paley, William 225 Irish 184
Palmerston, Henry John Temple, Viscount Scottish 169, 176, 182, 183, 207–11
(1784–1865) 250, 252, 253, 254 Ulster 202–3, 205, 235, 237–8
Parekh, Professor 320 Preston 177, 256, 257
Parnell, Charles Stewart (1846–91) 254, Prestwick 114
256, 257, 266–7, 271 Price family 172
Paseta, Senia 279 Price, Richard (1723–91) 195, 202, 239
passage-graves 14 Pride’s Purge 169
Patronage Act (1712) 209 Priestley, John Boynton (1894–1984) 286
‘pattern’, the 263 Priestley, Joseph (1733–1804) 194, 199
Paxton Boys 197 Prince Edward Island 244
Paz, D. G. 323 Protestant ascendancy 234
Pearse, Patrick 279, 280 ‘Protestant Crusade’, the 263–4
Peasants’ Revolt (1381) 138 Protestant Electoral Union 224
Pecham, John, archbishop of Canterbury Protestantism 323
(c. 1225–92) 111 Protestant Political Associations 276, 277
Peel, Robert 248 Prussia 118
‘Peep O Day Boys’ 205 Pulzer, Peter 293
Pelham, Henry (1696–1754) 195 Puritanism 175, 192, 230
Pembroke castle 172 Puritans 164, 165–6, 167, 177, 230
Pembroke, earls of 172 Pym, John 167
Pembroke, Richard FitzGilbert, earl of 117
Pembrokeshire 161, 172 Quakers 183
Pennines 30 Quebec 11, 275
Pennsylvania 192, 197 Quebec Act (1774) 196
Percys 136 Queen’s University, Belfast 290
Perrot, Sir John (1527–92) 161
Peterborough, abbey of 67, 103 racial segregation 316
Peterloo 217 racism 316, 320
Petty, Sir William (1623–87) 254 Radnor 171, 270
Philadelphia 197 Raglan castle 137, 172
Philiphaugh, battle of (1645) 168 Raith Bresail 77
Phoenix Park murders (1882) 265, 268 Ramsay, Allen (1686–1758) 209
Picts 41, 43, 54–56, 81, 84–85, 87, 155 Ramsey, monastery of 67
Pilgrimage of Grace (1536) 134, 164–5, Ranke, Leopold von 1
180 Reagan, Ronald 315
Pilkington, James 228 Rebecca Riots 240, 249, 251
Pinkie, battle of (1547) 142 Redbridge 316
Pippard 119 Redmond, John (1856–1918) 268–9, 278,
Pitt, William, the Younger (1759–1806) 281
198, 207, 214 Reform Act (1832) 226, 232,
Pius IX (1792–1878) 265 245
Plaid Cymru (Welsh Nationalist Party) Reform Act (1867) 242
291, 318, 320 Reform Acts, of 1884–5 243, 254, 256,
‘Plan of Campaign’ 268 257
Pocock, Professor John 4–5 Reformation 4, 7, 163, 164–5, 183, 185,
Poitiers, battle of (1356) 134 198, 202, 300, 303
Pollock, Sir Frederick 48, 229 Edwardian 175
Poll Tax 310 English 169, 181
Popular Party 211 Henrician 186
Index 357
Lutheran-style 161 ‘Rough Wooing’ campaign (1544–50) 186

Scottish 175, 176, 212, 214 Royal Canal 204
Regnans in Excelsis 161 Rushdie, Salman 12, 300, 303
Regni 26 Russell, Conrad 188
Regularis Concordia Anglicae Nationis 68 Russia 64
Renaissance 27 Russian Revolution 272, 283
Renfrew 114 Rutherford, Mark (sc. W. H. White) 226–8
Restoration 166, 169, 176, 183, 190, 207 Ruthin 110
Rhodesia 275 Rye House plot 208
Rhodri Mawr the Great (d. 877) 82, 84
Rhondda valley 241, 270, 318 St Andrew 87, 97
Rhuddlan 110, 121 St Andrews 87, 179
Rhyl 271 University of 209, 242
Rhys ap Griffith (c. 1132–97) 171 St Anne 123
Rhys ap Tewdwr, king of Deheubarth St Asaph 109
(d. 1093) 108 see of 170
Rhys ap Thomas 171 St Audouen’s 123
Ribbonism 251, 262 St Bernard 118
Richard ap Howell of Mostyn 171 St Brigid 15
Richard of Granville 109 St Cuthbert (d. 687) 6, 45
Richard II (1367–1400) 134, 139–40, St David 123
145, 148, 150 St Davids 84, 109
Richard II 153 see of 170
Richard III (1452–85) 134, 170 St David’s Day 319
Richard of York 180 St Declan 45
Richardson, H. G. 118 St Fechin 120
‘Rightboys’ movement, the 205 St Finnian 120
Rinuccini, Archbishop (papal nuncio) St Fursu 45
(1592–1653) 168, 182, 188 St George 7
Rising of Easter (1916) 269, 272, 278, St George’s Day 319
280–1 ‘St George’s Fields’ Massacre’ 196
Rising of the Northern Earls (1569) 165, St Giles, Kirk of 177
180 St Helens 256, 257
Robertson, William 209, 218 St Illtyd 81
Rochdale 230 St John, order of 98
Rochfort, Simon de 119–20 St John’s College, Oxford 163
Roden, Robert Jocelyn, earl of St Louis 101
(1788–1870) 263 St Mary 123
Rodger, N. A. M. 157, 215 St Michael 123
Roman Britain St Ninian’s Isle, silver hoard at 55–56
Romanesque 76–77 St Patrick 6, 32, 35, 40, 52, 54, 58, 122
Romans 4, 13, 14, 18, 19, 21, 25–26, 41, St Patrick’s Day 276, 319
52, 56, 106 St Paul 123
Roman villas 31–32 St Peter 97, 123
Romantic movement 212 St Samson 81
Rome 16, 21, 24, 27, 34, 37, 51, 56, 57 St Thomas 97, 123
Church of 165 St Wilfred 103
Roscommon 78, 123, 180 St Winifred’s Well 17
Rosebery, Archibald Philip Primrose, earl Salford 104, 105
of (1847–1929) 245, 273 Salisbury, Lord 256, 257, 283
Ross 114 Sandringham 89
plain of 85 Sands, Bobby 312
Ross, Dr Anne 16, 24 Sankey Commission 272
Rossa, O Donovan 265 Saratoga 197
Rothesay 115 Sarsfield, Patrick (d. 1693) 190
358 Index
Saumur 109 Senchas Mar 124, 126

Saunders, Lewis 10, 291 Severn 19, 47, 52, 170
Savigny, Order of 43 estuary 48
Saxo-Norman pottery 64 Sea 81, 82
Saxons 48, 50, 52, 65–67, 92, 95, 103, 107 valley 108
Sayles, Professor G. O. 148–9 Second Great Awakening (1859) 264
Scargill, Arthur 307 Septennial Act (1716) 214
Schism Act (1714) 192 Seven Years War 197, 240
Schryzer, Philip 156 Shakespeare, William (1564–1616) 13,
Scone 116 21, 72, 134, 153–4, 162, 165, 230
Scota, Princess 185 Shannon, river 78, 117–18, 129, 183
‘Scotch Cattle’ society 241 Sharp, James, archbishop of St Andrews
Scotland (1613–79) 179
Act of Union (1707) 189, 190, 209, Sheehan, Canon, My New Curate 268
210, 215 Sheffield 219, 226
‘Agricultural Revolution’ in 242, 245 Shelley, Percy Bysshe 217
Catholics in 207 Sheridan, Richard Brinsley (1751–1816)
class politics 277 214
Covenanters in 176, 179, 190, 208, Shetlands 10, 41, 60, 69, 85, 113, 117,
248, 252 175, 299–300, 303
cultural divisions in 207–11, 254–73 Shinwell, Emmanuel (1884–1986) 289
‘Disruption’ of 1843 221, 247–8, Ship Money 169
251–2 Shrewsbury 108
east–west divide (Lowlands) 242–3, earldom of 95
273 Shropshire 3, 82, 104, 106, 166, 171, 172,
education in 245–6 173, 199
episcopalianism in 207–10, 235, 237–8 Sidgwick, Henry (1838–1900) 256, 257
General Assembly 209 Sidney, Algernon (1622–83) 198, 214
Highlands decline 243–5 Sidney, Sir Henry (1529–86) 161, 180
home rule 274–5, 291–2, 295, 311 Sikhs 12
immigrants in 221 Silchester 21
industrialisation of 246–7 ‘silken Thomas’ see Fitzgerald, Thomas,
nationalism in 310, 320–1; see also earl of Kildare
Scottish National Party Simms, Katherine 156
Norman influence 95–96, 113–15 Simnel, Lambert 153, 296
Norman influence, decline of 132, Sinn Fein 272, 278, 279, 281, 298, 301,
142–7 315, 318, 321
parliament 304 US influence 314
presbyterianism in 207–11 Skryne 119
racial prejudice in 316 Skye 113
Reform Act of 1832 245 Slaney 121
Thatcherite policies in 309 slave trade 188, 192, 195, 229
Scots 9 Sligo, Co. 180
Scott, Charles Prestwich (1846–1932) Slough 286
259 Smiles, Samuel (1812–1904) 230, 258
Scott, Sir Walter (1771–1832) 210, 218, Smith, Adam 243
244 Smith, Anthony 323
Scottish National Party (SNP) 292, 296, Smith, Dai 279
309, 311, 321 Smith, Frederick Edwin, earl of
Scullabogue 206 Birkenhead (1872–193 0) 281
Scythia 155 Smith, John 308
Seeley, Sir John 256, 257, 323 Smithfield, fires of 164
Segontium 111 Smollett, Tobias (1721–71) 194
Seller, Patrick 243 Smyth, Jim 218
Selsey 103 Snow, Jon 312
Index 359
Snowden, Mrs 271–2 Stuarts 179, 187, 189, 203

Snowden, Philip, Viscount (1864–1937) Stubbs, William (1825–1901) 1, 100, 101,
288 130
Society for the Propagation of Christian Suez Canal 255, 294
Knowledge (SPCK) 200 Suffolk 229
Solemn League and Covenant 177 Suir valley 120
Solway Firth 84, 113 Sunday Closing Act (1881) 269, 295
Somerled, lord of the Isles, earl of Antrim surdit de serjeant 114
(d. 1164) 86–87, 113, 150 Sussex 17, 19, 49, 66
Somerset 48, 52, 66, 67, 109 Sutherland 85
Somerset, General 186 ‘rotten borough’ of 245
Somersets 172, 173 Sutherland, duke of 245
Somhairle see Somerled Sutton Hoo 45, 56, 57
Sons of Mı́l 185, 187 Swansea 240, 241, 272, 289
Sorley see Somerled Swift, Jonathan (1667–1745) 203, 209
South Africa 225, 275 Swiss Confederation
South-East (of England), prosperity of 305 Switzerland 153
South Korea 299, 301 Swords 121
Southampton 49 Syndicalism, in Wales 272
Spain 18, 134, 155, 161, 165, 166, 320 Synge, John Millington 296
Spenser, Edmund (c. 1552–99) 167
Stalybridge 224, 228 Tacitus 39–40, 57
Stamford 60, 105 Táin Bó Cuailgne (The Cattle Raid of
Stamp Act (1765) 197 Cooley) 23
Standard, the battle of the 102 Talbot, Richard, earl of Tyrconnell
Stanley, Edward George 228, 232 (1630–91) 145, 190
Star Chamber 161, 163 Taliesin 84
Statute of Additions 139 Tallaght 121
Statute of Kilkenny 150, 170 Tamar, river 41
Statute of Labourers 139 tanistry 71–72
Statute of Rhuddlan 94 Tara 22, 58, 119, 187
Statute of Westminster (1931) Tarbet 147
‘Steelboys’, the 205 Tasmania 276
Stephen, King (c. 1097–1154) 104 Tattersall castle 137
Stephen of Fulbourn, bishop of Waterford Tavistock 105
122, 127 Tawney, Richard Henry (1880–1962) 259,
Stephen of Lexington 122 285–6, 318, 324
Stephenson, George (1781–1848) 230 Taylor, Professor A. J. P. 2, 294
Stewart family 96, 115 Tay river valley 145
Stirling castle 113 Tebbitt, Norman 308
Stockport 104, 105, 224 Tees 92
anti-Catholic riots in 260 Teeside 219
Stoke-on-Trent 229 Telford, Thomas (1757–1834) 251
Stonehenge 13–14 Temperance Act (1991) 290
Stormont 297 Templars 121, 122
Strafford see Wentworth, Thomas Temple, Sir John (1609–77) 167, 184,
Strangford, Lough 73 253
Stratford 104 ‘Tenth-Century Reformation’ 67–68, 76,
Strathclyde 3, 43, 49, 50, 62, 82, 85, 87, 109
95, 106, 116 Terryglass 122
Strongbow 118 Test Act (1673) 189, 239
Stuart, Charles (Bonnie Prince Charlie) repeal of 198, 205, 226
(1720–88) 176, 203, 210 Teutonic knights 118
Stuart, John, 3rd earl of Bute (1713–92) Tewkesbury 103
196 Texas 101
360 Index
Thames 19, 65, 92 troscad 18, 24

estuary 35 Troy 186
valley 21 Troy, John Thomas, Archbishop
Thatcherite nationalism 308–9, 319 (1739–1823) 236
Thatcher, Margaret 307–11 Tuam 76–79, 122
Thetford 63 tuatha 22, 75
Thingwall 64, 85 Tudors 134, 153, 154, 157
Thirty Years War (1618–48) 168 Turoe Stone 17
Thomas, Keith 2 Tweed 41, 59, 62, 90
Thomas of Shanid 148 Tyburn 159
Thomastown 121 Tyneside 219
Thomond 71, 85 Tyrawley 151
Thompson, Edward 216 Tyrrell 119
Thompson, E. P. 216
Threave castle 144 Ua Briain, Muirchertach 77, 124, 126
Three Colls 175 Ua Conchobair of Connacht 124, 126
Thurneysen, Rudolf 80 Ua Mael Shechnaill of Meath 124,
Thurstan, Archbishop of York (d.1140) 126
103 Ua Néill of Ulster 124, 126
Tintagel 4 Ua Ruairc Tighernán 77
Tintern 172 Ua Tuathail Lorcán (Laurence O Toole)
Tipperary 98, 265 76
Tiptoft, John, earl of Worcester (1427–70) Uı́ Briain 75
134 Uı́ Cheinnselaigh 75, 76
Tir Connell 151 Uı́ Dunlainge 75
Tı́rechán 54 Uı́ Mhaine 78
tithes 226, 240 Uı́ Néill 53, 54, 71, 75, 76, 77, 150
Tithe War 219, 240, 272 Ulaid 53
Tocqueville, Alexis de 198, 237 Ulster 4, 35, 39, 117, 147, 150, 180,
Todmorden 228 181–3, 203–4, 217, 221–2
Tone, Wolfe (1763–98) 206, 298 emigration from 247
Tonypandy 272 plantation of 157, 166–7, 175, 212,
torcs 17 298
Tories 228; see also Conservative Party Ulster Unionism 256, 257, 260, 267
Torrs Pony-cap 17 links with Scotland 274, 296
Tostig 92 Ulster Volunteers 268
Tottenham 316 Ultramontanes 238
Tower Hamlets 305 unemployment 286, 287, 299, 301
Tralee 148 Unionist Party . 259, 260, 274, 275, 278,
Traprain Law 4, 37, 49 290
Treadwell, Victor 184 Union of the Crowns 177, 215
Treason of the Long Knives 57 unitarianism 238
Treaty of Northampton 133, 142 United Free Churches 292
Trent 19, 90 United Irishmen 206, 217
Trevelyan, Sir Charles Edward (1807–86) United Kingdom 9, 10
219 United Kingdom Independence Party
Trevelyan, George Macaulay 322 (UKIP) 321
Trevor-Roper, Professor Hugh 4 United States 3, 8, 11
Triads, Welsh 50 emigration to 223, 275
Tribal Hidage 66, 67 relations with 313–14
Trim 120, 121, 123 universities, new 301
Trinity College, Cambridge 163 University College, London 226, 228
Trinity College, Dublin 297 Urdu 13
Trinovantes 19, 21, 40 Urr, motte of 113
Tristan 50 Usk valley 108
Index 361
Valence, de 147 Washington George 198

Vaughans 172 Waterford 60, 72–74, 88, 115, 117, 120,
Venta 21 148
Verulamium (St Albans) 21, 40 Watling Street 89
Vesci, de 147 Watt, Professor John A. 118
Victoria, Queen 89 Weber, Eugene 215, 216
Vikings 4, 41, 56, 60–91 Wedgwood, Josiah (1730–95) 230
Vincent, Professor John 256, 260 Welfare State 307
Virginia 157 Wellington 277
Votadini 34, 37, 41, 49 Welsh Assembly 304
Welsh Language Act (1993) 318
‘wake’, the 263 Welsh Nationalist Party (Plaid Cymru)
Wales 291
Acts of Union (1536, 1543) 142, 158, Welshpool 170
171, 172 Wentworth, Thomas, earl of Strafford
Assembly in 304 (1593–1641) 167, 177, 184, 231
Celtic culture in 49–50, 81–84 Wesleyans 230
class politics in 272–3, 277 Wesley, John (1703–91) 194, 200, 288
cultural change in 221 Wessex 6, 49, 64–69, 92, 95, 100, 105,
Disestablishment Act (1919) 272 106, 107, 187
disestablishment in 290 West Africa 275
drinking clubs in 269–70 Western Isles of Scotland 41, 61, 88
eighteenth-century culture 199–202 West Indies 8, 157, 192, 299, 301
Established Church in 238, 241–2 Westmeath, Richard Nugent, earl of
Home Rule in 241, 291 (1583–1642) 181
hostility to tithes in 239–40 Westminster 115, 166
immigration into 221 Westminster Abbey 92, 98, 281
industrialisation of 221, 240–2, 269–70 Westmorland 136
influence of Free Churches 316–18 Wexford 69, 74, 95, 117, 120, 127, 147,
Liberalism in 241–2 206
Methodism in 200–1 Wheathampstead (Herts.) 21
nationalism in 291, 294–5, 320–1 Wheatley, John (1869–1930) 285
nineteenth-century culture 241 Whelan, Kevin 218
nonconformity in 242 Whigs 212
and the Norman Conquest 107–12 Whig supremacy 195–6
Norman influence, decline of 140–2 Whitby, Synod of 46
Romantic movement in 201 ‘Whiteboys’ movement 205
Sabbatarianism in 201, 242 Whitefield, George (1714–70) 199, 200
Sunday Closing Act (1881) 269, 295 Whitehall 159, 172
Temperance Act (1881) 290 Whittington 109
temperance movement 242, 269–70, Wicklow 69, 73, 206
295 ‘Wild Geese’, Irish 190
Vikings in 81–84 Wilkes, John (1727–97) 196
Wallace, William (c. 1272–1305) 116 William ap Griffith of Penrhyn 171
Walpole, Sir Robert 195 William (the Conqueror) (1027–87)
Walsh 120 92–95, 101, 108, 129, 130
Warbeck, Perkin 153 William III (1650–1702) 183, 189, 190,
Ward family (Maic an Bhaird) 123 208
Wards and Liveries, court of 163, 181 William IV of Scotland (the Lion)
Warenne, de, William (1231–1304) 100, (c. 1143–1214) 95, 113
103 William of Malmesbury 57
Warrington Academy 194 William of Windsor 134
Wars of the Roses 140, 153, 162–3, Williams, David 239
170 Williams, Edward (‘Iolo Morganwg’) 201,
Warwick, earl of 139 202, 239
362 Index
Wilson, Field Marshal Sir Henry Wulfstan 68

(1864–1922) 282 Wycombe 315
Wilson, James Harold, Lord (b. 1916) Wye 170
289, 308 valley 108
Wiltshire, John 140 Wyndham’s Land Act (1903) 269
Winchester 21, 41, 67, 73, 105 Wynn family 172–3
Winchester cathedral 68 Wynn, Sir Watkin 242
Windsor 137
Winter of Discontent 307 ‘Year of Grace’ (1859) 242, 264
Wirral 60, 107 Yeats, William Butler (1865–1939) 281,
Wishart family 96 296
Wogan, John (d. 1321) 132, 147 York 30, 32, 41, 60, 62, 66, 85, 92, 94,
Wolfson College, Oxford 8 164
Wolsey, Cardinal Thomas (c. 1475–1530) Yorkshire 29, 30, 32, 66, 95, 164, 219,
166, 171 229
Wolverhampton 300, 303 recruitment of immigrants to 299, 301
Wood, Kingsley (1881–1943) 288 West Riding of 136, 219, 226
Woodrow, Robert (1679–1734) 209 Yorkshire Cricket Club, and racial
Worcester 68, 177 prejudice 320–1
bishops of 104 Yorktown 197
earls of 172, 173 Youghal 149
Wormald, Jenny 188 Young Irelanders 250, 254, 265
Wormald, Patrick 69, 89–90
Wrexham 141, 240 Zwingli, Ulrich (1484–1531) 163

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The British Isles

A History of Four Nations

Cambridge University Press

This publication is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception

First published 1989

A catalogue record for this is available from the British Library

ISBN 978-1-107-62389-7 Paperback

List of illustrations page viii

1. Horse trapping in Yorkshire.

18. The great motte of Urr. C Cambridge University

36. Bobby Sands mural. C Kelvin Boyes Photography 298

1. The principal routes by which knowledge of La Tène art

10. The boundary agreed by Alfred and Guthrum, c. 880,

On St George’s Day 1993 John Major, Prime Minister of the United

Communion through the morning mist’ are very much an embattled

These examples indicate that a single nation-based approach is insuffi-

crucial period of modern history, the Glorious Revolution of 1688. James

and Cornwall were once linked by a common Celtic culture stretching

in his powerful article ‘The Limits and Divisions of British History: In

closely resembled one another. There is nothing to be gained by using

France as a consequence, though it was not until the mid-fourteenth cen-

cities of the British Isles became multi-ethnic societies in which varied

as if British historians had come to believe that it was possible to write

In 1989, I argued that at least eight cultures co-existed in the British

John of Gaunt in Shakespeare’s Richard II speaks of

These powerful lines may be seen as representing the unspoken assump-

c. 2500 bc but extending over a prolonged period of several hundred

Figure 1. Horse trapping in Yorkshire

Figure 2. Horse trapping in Co. Galway

needs to be supplemented by Cunliffe’s Atlantic model in which Corn-

The localised character of these societies suggests that a sense of

Figure 4. Hill-fort at Moel-y-Gaer

Warfare, the consequence of invasion as well as of competition for land,

The tribal societies of southern Britain, already in direct contact with

The Routes by which the Concepts

Map 1. ‘The Routes by which the concepts of La Tène Art Reached

Roman veterans near Hadrian’s Wall resulted in a much greater commu-

there involved an inordinate amount of expenditure. Unrest among the

Figure 5. Portchester Castle (Hampshire)

bureaucracy, however, indicates that such a surplus existed, for other-

villas, or most of them, were units of agricultural production, akin to the

Figure 6. Hadrian’s Wall

of Romanisation, the survival of Christian communities in the Highland

Map 3. Celts and Romans, early first to fifth centuries ad.

centralised administration, capable of responding to military and naval

private property. In the fourth century, the Christian Church, based

Map 4. Celts and Saxons, early fifth to late eighth centuries.

Land over 600ft

Map 5. Tribal migrations leading to the dismemberment of Roman

British river names

Map 6. British river names, the Celtic element.

Christian. Bede solved his problem by attributing the English victory to

Figure 8. Emain Macha

were influenced by Germanic wood-carving techniques. The Book of

Map 7. The distribution of pagan Saxon cemeteries.

close relationship which developed between Ireland, ‘British’ Dalriada

Within the British community, forty days of penance were required

became more powerful in this type of society than in the lineage-based

sixth century. Poems written in Powys in the mid-ninth century looked

Figure 9. The Sutton Hoo ship burial

kingdom of Powys in mid-Wales and of Gwent and Dyfed in the south

Figure 10. The Ardagh Chalice

areas, found episcopal organisation more appropriate as an instrument

opened up by expansion into north Britain (what later became known as