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The Anglo-Normans greatest mistake in Ireland?

Feburary 3, 2022

I wonder, if the Anglo Norman families threw their lot in with the Gaelic clans like the O’Neills, O’Donnells and O’Sullivans at the Battle of Kinsale 1601, would they have been better off, and for generations to come? Remember the Gaelic Irish & Spanish, in so many ways should have secured victory against the English crown in Kinsale but contrived a loss that would echo through the ages.

However, history is rarely so binary or simple. Many Irish were on Lord Mountjoy’s English side, most notably the Earl of Thomond while O’Neill had English men in his ranks, all be it to a much lesser degree

Who were the “Anglo-Normans”?

But who were the Anglo-Normans, or would it be more correct to call them Cambro-Normans, as they had come to Ireland with Strongbow’s Normans, from Wales in 1169. Over the next few centuries, as the saying goes these new foreigners would become “More Irish than the Irish themselves” meaning they took on the Gaelic culture, norms, language and dress not to mention marriage into Gaelic families. They however still saw themselves as ethnically different with strong links back to a powerful English Crown who in theory, they were nominally loyal to. The main Anglo-Norman families in Ireland at the time of the War of the Roses where the Fitzgeralds (most powerful) supporting the House of York and the Butlers supporting the other side; the House of Lancaster. The House of York lost the war which put the Fitzgeralds in a particularly awkward position and further distanced themselves from the now (Tudor) Crowd. However this Royal disapproval clearly didn’t distinguish them through many eyes, as Gaelic as the native Irish O’Donnells, McGuires and McCarthys clans.

The non-decision

Would the decision to not follow & support the Gaelic O’Neill and O’Donnell forces in the Battle of Kinsale haunt these Anglo-Norman families for generations? Had they picked the wrong side? As only 50 years later Oliver Cromwell with his English new Model Army wouldn’t distinguish between the “Gaelic Irish” and “Anglo-Irish”, the lines would be drawn in drawn in more political terms like Royalist/Parliamentarians and religious Catholic/Protestants ones. Oliver Cromwell forces indiscriminately massacred men, women and children in Drogheda, Anglo-Norman status wasn’t a consideration. Cromwell stated:

“I am persuaded that this is a righteous judgement of God on these barbarous wretches, who have imbrued their hands with so much innocent blood; and that it will tend to prevent the effusion of blood for the future, which are satisfactory grounds for such actions which cannot otherwise but work remorse and regret.”

Their fall from grace

Increasingly the distinction between Anglo-Norman and native Irish would be a muted one, from the English crown’s perspective. After the Cromwellian plantation these once politically powerful Anglo-Normans Lords would be viewed by the English authorities with growing suspicion and consequently lose the power, they once held. If they could, should they have joined O’Neill & O’Donnell at the Battle of Kinsale 1601?

Slán Go Fóill!

References:

Morrill, John (2007). “The Drogheda Massacre in Cromwellian Context”. In Edwards; Lenihan; Tait (eds.). The Age of Actrocity. Four Courts Press