from II - WRITING IN THE BRITISH ISLES
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 March 2008
Richard II left Ireland in May 1395 in the mistaken belief that his busy year-long visit had established peace with the Irish leaders. The peace was not to be permanent and he had to return in June 1399 after his designated heir Roger Mortimer had been killed in a battle in County Carlow. This trip lasted only until August because he had to go back to deal (unsuccessfully as it turned out) with the insurrection at home. England’s unhappy political involvement with Ireland had commenced centuries before when Henry II went to Ireland in response to a call for help from the King of Leinster, Diarmait Mac Murchadha, and also to carry out a sort of moral mission which had been authorized in the bull Laudabiliter by the only Englishman ever to be pope, Adrian IV (Nicholas Breakspear, pope from 1154 to 1159). A version of the bull, which had encouraged Henry to incorporate Ireland into the realm of England on the pretext of remedying the iniquity into which Irish morals had allegedly sunk, is provided by Giraldus Cambrensis (?1146–?1220), whose aspersions against the Gaelic Irish will continually resurface throughout the period covered by this chapter and beyond in, for instance, Edmund Spenser’s A View of the Present State of Ireland (1596).
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