19 - Scotland, Wales and Ireland in the Twelfth Century

Summary

for all three of the countries whose development is reviewed in this chapter, a leading theme was provided by the continuing after-effects of the Norman Conquest of England, which made themselves felt far into the twelfth century and beyond. The Norman conquerors and colonizers who flocked to England in the forty years separating the battles of Hastings and Tinchebray hardly raised their sights sufficiently to take in southern Scotland and showed almost no interest in Ireland. There was already in 1066 a lengthy history of close relations, friendly and unfriendly, between Wessex and Mercia on the one hand and the Welsh kingdoms or principalities on the other. Even if the Norman kings had been willing to stand aloof from the situation in Wales the aggressive and acquisitive conduct of some of their closest followers would have compelled them to intervene if only to prevent the creation of dangerously independent lordships on their western frontier. The expansion policy pursued successfully before 1100 in the north and mid-Wales, and only to a slightly lesser extent in the south, meant that not only the incoming conquerors but also the Welsh princes were brought ineluctably within the political segment of north-west Europe which it is convenient to think of as Anglo-Norman. Moreover, by seizing the English kingship Duke William automatically became heir to a tradition, reaching back at least to the tenth century, of English claims to exercise some kind of lordship over the kings of Scots. Ireland was a different matter, yet although the Conqueror in 1081 stopped short at St David’s and demanded no tribute from Irish kings or trading towns the fact that both Lanfranc and Anselm, as archbishops of Canterbury, laid claim to an ecclesiastical hegemony over the Irish bishops, together with the occasional freelance venture into Irish affairs by Norman settlers in Wales such as Arnulf of Montgomery, lord of Pembroke, kept Ireland in focus as it were, to remain until the 1170s the greatest single imponderable in English royal policy.