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- [00:02]
Matt Lewis
From long lost Viking ships and kings buried in unexpected places to tales of murder, power, faith, and the lives of ordinary people across medieval Europe and beyond. Join me, Matt Lewis, Dr. Elena Jarninger, and some of the world's leading historians as we bring history's most fascinating stories to life. Only on History Hit with your subscription. You'll unlock hundreds of hours of exclusive documentaries with with a brand new release every week exploring everything from the ancient world to World War II. Just visit historyhit.com subscribe.
- [00:45]
Dr. Sean O' Harwood
Acast Powers the World's Best Podcasts here's the show that we recommend hello hello,
- [00:53]
Podcast Advertiser/Host
it's Brooke Devard from Naked Beauty.
- [00:55]
Dr. Sean O' Harwood
Join me each week for unfiltered discussion
- [00:58]
Podcast Advertiser/Host
about beauty trends, self care, care journeys, wellness tips and the products we absolutely love and cannot get enough of. If you are a skincare obsessive and you spend 20 plus minutes on your
- [01:09]
Dr. Sean O' Harwood
skincare routine, this podcast is for you.
- [01:11]
Podcast Advertiser/Host
Or if you're a newbie at the beginning of your skincare journey, you'll love
- [01:14]
Dr. Sean O' Harwood
this podcast as well.
- [01:15]
Podcast Advertiser/Host
Because we go so much deeper than beauty.
- [01:17]
Dr. Sean O' Harwood
I talk to incredible and inspiring people from across industries about their relationship with beauty.
- [01:23]
Podcast Advertiser/Host
You'll also hear from skincare experts.
- [01:25]
Dr. Sean O' Harwood
We break down lots of myths in the beauty industry.
- [01:27]
Podcast Advertiser/Host
If this sounds like your thing, search for naked Beauty on your podcast app and listen along. I hope you'll join us. That refresh you've been putting off until the right deal came along. It's here. Wayfair's Black Friday in July sale is happening now, so you can finally get the style you've been waiting for for less. Get up to 80% off area rugs and up to 60% off outdoor and bedroom furniture. Shop Wayfair's huge selection of styles and find the piece to fit your style, budget and space. Plus free shipping. Black Friday in July ends July 27th. Shop today@wayfair.com Wayfair Every style, every home. You're more than just one thing. Your vehicle should be two. More connectivity when you're the boss. Hey Google, when's my next meeting? And more space when you're the mom. Everyone in the all new Mazda CX5 more to move every side of you. Google is a trademark of Google llc. Sequences shortened and simulated.
- [02:22]
Matt Lewis
Hello, I'm Matt Lewis. Welcome to Gone Medieval From History Hit, the podcast that delves into the greatest millennium in human history. We've got the most intriguing mysteries, the gobsmacking details and latest groundbreaking research. From the Vikings to the printing press, from kings to Popes to the Crusades we cross centuries and continents to delve into rebellions, plots and murders, to find the stories, big and small, that tell us how we got here. Find out who we really were with Gone medieval. At some point during the 6th century, a lonely figure steps out into the dawn light. He climbs up the windswept slopes of the Hill of Tara. When he reaches the top, he pauses to look out. From this lush green vantage point, he can see Ireland for miles in every direction. It's a powerful view and an inspiring one. For an ambitious man, the top of the hill is not the end of his journey. The hill is really a ridge over a mile long upon which the raised earthworks of ancient forts undulate. At the center of these stands the thing he seeks. Clambering over and down these ridges, almost breathless with the effort and the anticipation of reaching his goal, he finally sees it. A solitary stone standing proudly upright. Some say it was placed there by the gods. Some call it the Stone of Destiny. The man knows that when he climbs onto the stone, it will react. He's not sure what to expect. But if the stories are true, the stone will emit an unnatural shriek and the waves of the oceans around Ireland will answer it with a roar. At least he hopes to hear these sounds, because if he does, then it will mean he is the chosen High King of Ireland. Many men claimed to be, or were claimed after the fact, to have been the High King of Ireland. But there were frequent, almost constant wars between the Irish kingdoms. Later, they fought the Norse, holed up in the towns founded by Vikings, like Dublin and Wexford. In the 12th century, the Norman barons of England and Wales invaded and turned Ireland into a lordship in the Angevin Empire. All of this begs the question, was there ever truly a single ruler of Ireland? Was the High Kingship ever a reality or merely an ambition? Today's guest is the perfect person to answer these questions. Dr. Sean O' Harwood is a research fellow at the Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies and the author of the Medieval Irish Kings and the English Invasion. Welcome to God Medieval Shaun. It's fantastic to have you with us.
- [05:32]
Dr. Sean O' Harwood
Thanks so much for having me on.
- [05:34]
Matt Lewis
I'm really looking forward to this. We can dig into what we know about the high Kings of Ireland. And I guess the point to start at is when. When do we start getting a High King of Ireland? Who is the first one? And when are they on the throne?
- [05:49]
Dr. Sean O' Harwood
Well, that's a. That's a great question to start with and a tricky one to answer, actually, because the Irish throughout the Middle Ages evolved the notion of the king of Ireland or High King of Ireland, we might return to that term in a second that stretch back time immemorial. And according to different sources, they might be give different exact dates. But roughly speaking, the scheme stretched back to 2000 BC. And so we would not regard any of the kings listed for the B.C. era, for example, as historical kings or indeed well into the AD era either. We would start to look at kings of Tara as opposed to kings of Ireland as historical kings, perhaps around the 5th to 6th centuries AD. Now, exactly what their power was is another question as well. But the reason for this is that we really only get historical documents from Ireland from the 5th century onwards. So our earliest historical documents actually come from Patrick himself, which is quite appropriate. Two documents written by Patrick and then we have something of a gap, gap in the record until the 7th century. So it's really with the 7th century that we start seeing kings that we would regard as historical as to whether they were kings of Ireland. That is a question of whether and to what extent you believe in what the. A nail dynasty said about themselves. So we can discuss that further, of course.
- [07:23]
Matt Lewis
Yeah. Fantastic. So there might well be an element of these kings later on, kind of mythologizing their ancestry and trying to root the role of the High King or the King of Ireland in kind of deep history that we should probably take with a pinch of salt. Is that fair?
- [07:40]
Dr. Sean O' Harwood
Oh, yes, absolutely. The point, I suppose, for these medieval kings was to say that they had an ancestry, a prestige that stretched back. In some respects they did, because the kingship of Tara certainly appears to have been something that existed before Christianity came to Ireland in the prehistoric era. But it is virtually certain that it meant something completely different to what it meant in the historic era, in the early Christian era, however you would. You would like to phrase it. So it's a question of a reinterpretation of the institutions associated with Tara as meaning ipso facto king of Ireland.
- [08:18]
Matt Lewis
Yeah, I mean, later medieval kings of England were great at producing these genealogies that included King Arthur in their ancestry and that stretched all the way back to Adam and Eve at the Garden of Eden. So there's maybe an element of that kind of similar rooting themselves in a deeper history than they're entitled to.
- [08:36]
Dr. Sean O' Harwood
It's absolutely the same. And from the various early, very earliest documents that we have, what the Irish are concerned with is showing their place in wider Christian and world history. So where do the Irish belong? If the Irish are not mentioned in the Bible, it becomes A job for somebody to find out where the Irish fit in. And so they fit themselves into the genealogical scheme with Japheth, son of Noah. And this is the person to whom they trace their descent. And they evolved a legend of Ireland, a pseudo history of Ireland, which involved a series of invasions by different peoples, the Fir Bulg, the Tuatha de Danann and so on, and different people who give their names to different important places in Ireland or explained different traditions from around Ireland. And so, little by little evolved this scheme, fit this scheme into sort of a chronological framework, and, as you say, lent prestige to the historical kings by so doing.
- [09:37]
Matt Lewis
And you mentioned a couple of times there that the King of Tara is maybe something sort of interesting from this period, too. And there is the Hill of Tara, where there's the Irish kind of Stone of destiny. Can you tell us a little bit about the significance of both the Hill of Tara and the Stone of Destiny, the kind of speaking stone that's there?
- [09:57]
Dr. Sean O' Harwood
Sure, yeah. So I mentioned the King of Tara. Tara is an actual place. It is in County Meath, which is just north of Dublin, for anyone who may not be familiar. And it is this place, Tara, which has these prestigious associations. Now, there are physical monuments at Tara which go back to the Neolithic period, and also finds from the Bronze Age period as well. Whether it was in continuous use is open to question, but it remained important and remained well known to the Irish throughout a long period. The idea has been, I think, among people who deal with prehistory that the. That there was a kind of sacral kingship associated with Tara in the. In the period before the coming of Christianity to Ireland, and so that it had some sort of cultic or religious significance, and that this was what was later levied by the inail dynasty into a kind of a new Christian kingship of Ireland. So the associations of the actual place in terms of. There are a number of different monuments added. Some are older, some are younger. One of them, as you say, is the Leophol, the Stone of Destiny. Of course, the one that is there today does not have the only claim to be the historic medieval Leo Faux. But at any rate, the idea was that when the true king of Tara would touch the stone, the stone would shout aloud, would cry out, would indicate that the true king was present. This is linked to a medieval Irish conception of the ruler's truth, fear Flathavon, so that the proper king, the true king, would be known by his actions, so he would never give, for example, a false judgment. And a king who was found to have given a false judgment, must be a usurper. And he would lose his position. In early Irish literature, this is a recurring theme. So. Yeah, so remained conceptually important to people across the island because of its history and because of perhaps its pre Christian significance, even as its role changed and it became something entirely different.
- [12:07]
Matt Lewis
Yeah. I was fortunate enough to go a couple of years ago to do some filming over in Ireland. We did some documentaries about Irish castles. We went to the Hill of Tara to talk about Ireland kind of before the Normans had arrived. It's an absolutely spectacular place, isn't it? We stand on the top of there. You feel like you can see the whole of Ireland from up there. And for what it's worth, I did touch the leerfaler that didn't shout out loud. So sadly, apparently I'm not the true king of Ireland.
- [12:35]
Dr. Sean O' Harwood
Bad luck. Maybe next time. Yeah, it's remarkable. I suppose that area, the Boyne Valley, the River Boyne, the valley that surrounds it, was probably among the earliest to be settled and it has some incredibly rich farmland. And many of our important Stone Age monuments in Ireland are found in that area, including not only say, the Mount of the Hostages at Tara, but also people may be familiar with Newgrange or Nauth, which are large Neolithic passage tombs as well, which are also found in that area. So to some extent its glory is in its past at all times. But as you said, there is a remarkable vista at Tara. Even though you don't feel like you have climbed a huge amount to get up to it, the surrounding landscape is quite flat. And also in. In some of the stories that are told about Tara, one, for instance, about how it gets its name, is that the earliest Milesian king is a man called Arimon, and his wife is in a story of the Dinhenkis is supposed to have come from Thebes and she is homesick for Thebes and she's going to return to Thebes and Erimon, to get her to stay, promises her the loveliest hill in Ire for herself. And so she chooses Tara and Tara takes its name. It's etymologized as TheBinWall in this theory. It was partly on account of its vista that it gained its fame, I suppose, as well.
- [14:05]
Matt Lewis
Yeah, fascinating. And are there any other kind of ceremonial duties or anything like that that are associated alongside coronation at Tara and the speaking stone, the Stone of destiny? Are there any other responsibilities that we have a sense of for the hiking of Ireland that they should performing well
- [14:23]
Dr. Sean O' Harwood
again, for the moment, just confining Myself to the King of Tar, as opposed to the High King of Ireland, of what the link between them might be. It is very much understood as a role where the fertility of the earth and the prosperousness of the people, the prosperity of the people will result from the proper king from being installed. And as I say, the king is associated with justice as well, so the administration of justice. So, yes, there are certain institutions that are associated with it. One, for instance, is the Fesh Tevra, the feast of which probably took place once in a king's reign, at the outset of his reign, and is a sort of a symbolic marriage between the king and the land, so that the land will be prosperous. And then there is the Enoch Tltan or Fair of Toltu, which more recently has been argued to be a more local affair than was previously thought. It was previously in the era of sort of nationalist historians, the early 20th century, thought to be a national affair, but more recently it's been argued to be more local. But at any rate, it was held by the King of Tara in the environs of Tara, Telltale and County Mead, and would have comprised people traveling from distances to be there for various assemblies. So there were, yes, different institutions associated with the kingship of Tara, different roles. But sometimes the exact detail of what happened, especially in the early medieval period, is a little bit elusive.
- [15:53]
Matt Lewis
Yeah. And given how rooted lots of those ceremonies and tar as a place is in kind of pre Christian history of Ireland, do we see the church having any kind of influence on the role, the position, the ways in which kings are being crowned? Are they willing to play alongside this kind of more pagan, pre Christian sort of ideology, or are they looking to wipe some of that away when Christianity arrives?
- [16:25]
Dr. Sean O' Harwood
It's a little bit of both. They're recognizing it. So Even from the 7th century, one of the biographers of Patrick is a man called Murchu, and he describes the king reign, Tara, a man called Diarmund Mach Kerwell, as Totius Scotia regnatorum, so ruler of all the Scots, meaning in this case the Irish, as your listeners will know perhaps from a recent previous episode, they're recognizing Tara. They're putting it forward as something important. He also describes it as the capital of the barbarians. And another passage, I think, recognizing in this case it's pagan associations. And then you can take somebody like Thovnon of Iona, who's the biographer of Columcille, who likewise is sort of advancing the importance of Tara. It would have suited the Church, I think, to have a single king of all Ireland, it would be the logical corollary to, you know, to the Church's system, you know, with the primate. And so, yeah, we see the Church giving a sort of tacit acknowledgment to Tarot, at the same time wanting to change its role and advance it. And I mean, even in say the early patrician documents, there's. They have to acknowledge that Lugra MacNeill, who is the king of Ireland when, or king of Tara, when Patrick comes to Ireland, they acknowledge that he didn't convert to Christianity. So on some level this is an acknowledgement of early difficulties, perhaps in the spread of Christianity or the conversion of Tara. Certainly Diarmuid Mackerville appears to be the last king of Tara who celebrated the Fesh Tevrel. And the conclusion historians have drawn from this is that it was set aside at that time as a sort of relic of the pagan past. But that would be in the mid 6th century, so perhaps not until the mid 6th century did Tara and the kings of Tara set aside some of the pagan associations of their role.
- [18:29]
Matt Lewis
Yeah, I'd like to talk a little bit more about the structure more widely across Ireland because it's interesting, isn't it, that the Christian church tends during this period to be looking for a really top down conversion. They're looking for the top man to convert on the basis that he will then do the rest of the work. And it sounds like that might have been a bit tricky for them in Ireland in that there isn't necessarily one top man. And the idea that we have of a high king of Ireland implies that there are other kings, that there are kind of sub rulers all around Ireland. So what was the, the political structure of Ireland like? How many kingdoms were there in Ireland?
- [19:04]
Dr. Sean O' Harwood
Yeah, that's another, that's another great question. Right, the first.
- [19:08]
Matt Lewis
I'm only here to ask you the difficult questions.
- [19:10]
Dr. Sean O' Harwood
I know, yeah, I see that. So the first thing to understand really is this was, was really best described by a, an Anglo Norman poem, okay, called the well recently renamed the deeds of the Normans in Ireland. In the past it was known as the Song of Durham the Earl, where it said that in Ireland kings were as numerous as earls were elsewhere. I mean, but this is exactly the point. The people who elsewhere would have been earls or dukes or barons, all retained the royal title in Ireland. That does not mean that they were all understood to be of equal stature status.
- [19:46]
Podcast Advertiser/Host
Right.
- [19:47]
Dr. Sean O' Harwood
So Irish kingship was hierarchical. A king and an over king and a provincial king and potentially a king of Ireland over All of them, at least according to the theory. And so for the Irish, it was simple. They understood who the important kings were. But for an outsider looking in, it was very difficult to know. And actually, a very similar thing happened with bishops, so that the Irish were ordaining more bishops, seemingly than they were supposed to, but they knew which were the bishops that were of equal rank with the bishops elsewhere and which were the ones who weren't. It made Ireland very confusing to outsiders, and it was part of the reason why the Gregorian reform movement in the 11th and 12th centuries tried to reorganize the diocese, leaving aside the church. In terms of the kings, the interesting thing, I would say, is that the kings who are higher up did not try and restrict the use of the royal titan. They were happy for their underlings to use the royal title as well. On the idea of this use of the word high king, meaning the man at the top, this is a nearly modern conceit. It is popularized by a man called Geoffrey Keating, who writes a history of ireland in the 16th century. High King Ardrey in Irish is a term that's used in the Middle Ages, but it's used generally as an honorific for kings at lots of different levels. The term that's used, used in Ireland for the man at the top most consistently is simply RE Aaron, king of Ireland. But again, it's a case that the Irish knew what that meant and perhaps others didn't.
- [21:19]
Matt Lewis
Yeah, yeah. It's such an interesting conflict, isn't it, that clearly people are arriving there thinking, right, we're going to do what we've done in every other country. We're going to find the king, we're going to Christianize him, and it'll filter all its way through. They get to Ireland and they find a completely different political structure that they're really struggling to get their heads around, kind of, you know, being a bit glib, but, you know, everyone's a king. You go down the street and you find another king, and it must be confusing and difficult for them. And I suppose then the idea of a high king begins to appeal to people from beyond Ireland because they want to know who is in charge of this whole place.
- [21:52]
Dr. Sean O' Harwood
Yeah, that's definitely. That's definitely part of it. I think Patrick himself refers to difficulties he's had with sons of kings. He doesn't refer to himself to a king of Ireland. I think the idea of a king of Ireland is not, I would say, current at his time in the 6th century, there is no top man, as you say. For him to go to and Christianize. And then again, as you say, the later versions of his life by Murcho and Tirchon are placing emphasis on the idea of a conversion of Lugara MacNeil which simply wasn't the case. So yes, under the influence of Christianity, both inside and outside Ireland, the notion of a king of Ireland was popularized and advanced. Ireland is quite a modest sized island anyway, and it's not that unlikely that an idea would strike one of the more powerful kings that, you know, he could rule over the whole island if, you know, if things fell into his hands. Historians of the early medieval period, like say Danakul Quran have argued that in the sort of 7th to 9th centuries there maybe were 10 over kingdoms of real significance on the island which are contesting power with one another. By the period that I primarily deal with, the central Middle ages and the, you know, especially the 12th century, there are only three kingdoms of any real significance and they contest the position of king of Ireland with one another. So what it means for them is that whichever of the three of them is able to enforce the submission of the other two, he regards himself as the king of Ireland. He styles himself as the king of Ireland. Sometimes even without having established that completely, he regards himself as the king of Ireland, as styled King of Ireland, and in some cases is addressed as King of Ireland by people outside of Ireland, including Pope Gregory VII for example, and the two of the archbishops of Armagh and Salman Lanfranc. And we know that Henry I received communication from a person he called King of Ireland, also probably third. So yeah, it gains acceptance. It's something that people want to understand. It's simpler to understand that there is a guy at the top. But also it's a natural development given the success of the church ultimately. Obviously you're making the point that the church faced difficulties in the early going, but because of this political setup, but ultimately the success, the church does play into this development of a notion of a king of all Ireland.
- [24:31]
Matt Lewis
Yeah. Which I guess isn't dissimilar to what we're seeing in other emerging kind of nations around Europe either. You know, France is only just beginning to emerge from this collection of small kingdoms and dukedoms and things like that. And the king of France is trying to centralize some power in England. You've got the heptarchy is becoming one kingdom and then the king of England is trying to impose himself on the rest of the of Britain as a kind of overlord of Scotland and everything else. It's something similar going on in Ireland?
- [25:00]
Dr. Sean O' Harwood
Yeah, I think so. The effect of polity, or what I would call the effect of polity generally, is the provincial king, meaning that there are always provincial kings contesting with one another. Sometimes there is a king of Ireland who is a clearly dominant figure among them, but he's always primarily king of his province first. So the king of Ireland does not become detached from a province. It does not become a hereditary kingship. And it's one thing that, you know, Gerald wills, Geraldus comprensis, remarks on in relation to the kings of Ireland. He says that they did not become kings, you know, by any hereditary right or by any right of coronation, but rather by force of arms. So each became king in his own way and lasted as long as he was able to enforce that right. Also mentioned in early Irish law that the king of Ireland, you know, his Jew is measured by his fist. So in other words, as much as he's able to take. So this was regarded as a proper way to operate. The Irish undoubtedly were aware that it worked differently elsewhere, that hereditary kingships were emerging. But I suppose it's important to note as well that Irish kingship generally was elective, so that even the provincial kings, for example, were elected to their position by eligible kindreds. And so it perhaps it was felt to be analogous that the king of Ireland should be elected to his position by reason of his power and acknowledgement of his. His peers effectively, and the other powerful provinces.
- [26:28]
Matt Lewis
Does that elective element of kingship imply that kings could also be kind of deposed by their own subjects? Is that possible?
- [26:35]
Dr. Sean O' Harwood
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And they were. And they were. Sometimes they suffered temporary depositions where they would go into sort of voluntary exile for a period, and then we would find them a year or two later returning and reprising their kingship. Other times they would be permanently ousted, either killed or in some instances, castrated and blinded by their kinsfolk. This is. I think it's relatively well known that this was a practice in medieval Ireland also, and some other countries like Wales. But it was generally one that was for. In house business, as in your own family, were the ones likely to carry this out. It was not for. Not. Not something that was generally done to enemies in other kingdoms or other provinces. This was something to disqualify somebody who was eligible for the. The job in your own kingdom. And so, yes, it kind of plays
- [27:27]
Matt Lewis
into that idea in the medieval mind that kings have to be physically perfect. So if you're blinded or castrated or whatever else you're. You're now physically imperfect and not eligible for kingship.
- [27:37]
Dr. Sean O' Harwood
Yeah, absolutely. So there's this interesting story about one of the kings of Tara, a man called Kongol Kayak. Interestingly, one of the kings who supposedly didn't belong to the Ynal dynasty. But in any case, Kongel Cairk was king of Tara. And the story goes that he was stung in the eye by a bee and lost the sight in one eye. And because he was physically blemished, he could not be king. And so he had to step down from his role as King of Tara. Now, we know of other kings, like, say, Tigger on arc, who was king of Breffni at the time of the English invasion, who is described by Giraldus as monoculous or one eyed. So in practice, this probably was less important. But as part of the theory of Kings, certainly you should be unblemished. And of course, the idea of castration, of course, is that there should be no dynasty to follow after them, to avenge them, or to, you know, to look back to them as the progenitor of their dynasty. Howdy, howdy ho, and welcome to Fantasy Fan Fellas. I'm Hayden, producer of the Fantasy Fangirls podcast and your resident lover of all things Sanderson.
- [28:56]
Matt Lewis
And I'm Stephen, your bookish Internet goofball, but you can call me the Smash Daddy.
- [29:00]
Dr. Sean O' Harwood
And we are currently deep diving Brandon Sanderson's fantasy epic Mistborn. But here's the catch. Steven here has not read Mistborn before.
- [29:08]
Matt Lewis
That's right.
- [29:09]
Podcast Advertiser/Host
Hey. Hey.
- [29:09]
Matt Lewis
So each week, you'll get my unfiltered raw reactions to every single chapter.
- [29:13]
Dr. Sean O' Harwood
And along the way, we'll do character deep dives, magic explainers, and ste. Steven will even try to guess what's next. Spoiler alert. He'll be wrong.
- [29:20]
Matt Lewis
News flash, I'm never wrong. Episodes come out every Wednesday, and you can find Fantasy Fan fellows wherever you
- [29:26]
Podcast Advertiser/Host
get your podcasts that refresh you've been putting off until the right deal came along. It's here. Wayfair's Black Friday in July sale is happening now, so you can finally get the style you've been waiting for for less. Get up to 80% off area rugs and up to 60% off outdoor and bedroom furniture. Shop Wayfair's huge selection of styles and find the piece to fit your style, budget and space, plus free shipping. Black Friday in July ends July 27th. Shop today@wayfair.com Wayfair Every style, every home.
- [29:58]
Matt Lewis
If you love a good story, why aren't you listening to Dan Snow's?
- [30:02]
Dr. Sean O' Harwood
History Hit podcast.
- [30:03]
Matt Lewis
It's a show where we tell you every amazing, crazy and important thing that's ever happened in human history. From the perilous voyages of the first Polynesians, the discoveries of Captain Cook, the deadly Viking raids on Britain and Ireland, the rise and fall of the great English kings and queens. We'll tell you how Waterloo was won, the Alamo was lost, and all the history in between. So make sure you check it out. Dan Snow's History hit for the best true stories ever told, wherever you get your podcasts. Yeah, and the o' Neill name is one that's cropped up a few times there. And lots of the names of the kingdoms and the dynasties are kind of family names. So how important was the family to the political structure of Ireland?
- [31:03]
Dr. Sean O' Harwood
Oh, it's absolutely integral. So the way it worked is that at these different levels of kingship, before you could exceed even to the most minor level of king, you had to first be head of your kindred. Khin fynn is the name, the head of a kindred. So among the heads of the various kindreds, they would elect a king of a Tuath, and among the Tuathed that were grouped together, they would perhaps elect an overking to act, collect for them in a collective, and then a provincial king and so on. So one had to be head of kindred as a basic, you know, building block of the political hierarchy. This is why you can't get queens in medieval Ireland, queens regnant, that is because women did not have legal capacity either to act for themselves or for anyone else. And so they could not be elected head of the kindred, and therefore they could not ever rule in their own right. So the various dynasties. Well, identity is marked by a patronymic in medieval Ireland. So it's either mach or O, basically, so son or grandson of. And then in addition to these patronymics, the various broader groups would look to an ancestor. Somewhat further back in the genealogical corpus is a common ancestor of the wider groups. The further back you go, the wider the group. And so the kingdoms themselves took their names, in many instances, from an ancestor way back in the Prehi era. Connacht, for example, taking its name from Khan Kaid Kaha, Khan of the Hundred Battles and the e nail, tracing themselves to Neil Nagiloch Nile of the Nine Hostages, whom I've mentioned, I think, already, as the father of Loghra MacNeil, who was the king of Tara when Patrick came, according to the story. So kindred is absolutely fundamental to the Irish political system. At the same Time. This is something different from a tribe. And this is one of the great controversies of early Irish history, that some people insist on using the word tribe. Even though the aristocracy understood themselves to be linked and to have ties of kinship, they were not the only ones who lived in these communities. These communities were, you know, populated by lots of strangers, lots of other people who were not related, and they were kingdoms. And. And the fact that kingdoms were led by royal dynasties is not, you know, something that we should be surprised by. That's the case everywhere.
- [33:31]
Matt Lewis
Yeah. Yeah. So once a king has been elected and put in post, we quite often hear stories of them going on kind of cattle raiding as almost like the first thing that they do at the beginning of their kingship. Why is that kind of an important function? What is that doing?
- [33:47]
Dr. Sean O' Harwood
Yeah, so the Krech, Riga.
- [33:48]
Matt Lewis
Yeah.
- [33:49]
Dr. Sean O' Harwood
So they established themselves by making an attack early on in the reign. Now, in relation cattle raiding, I suppose, probably important point to make is that the economy of medieval Ireland is based on cattle, but not only the economy, the whole system of clientship. So in, you know, what we would describe as traditionally described as feudal Europe, the idea is that you would give a parcel of land to a vassal, and he would farm it for you, and you would receive a rent and food render. But in Ireland, and it wasn't a parcel of land you received, but capital in the form of cattle. And so you farmed the cattle, and the lord took his food rents and his rent for that. And so the whole system is based around cattle. And so your wealth as a lord is tied up in livestock. And so if you're not feeling so flush, the opportunity to add to your bank balance is potentially to lead an attack on your neighbors. And it also also creates a number of other dynamics, which is that diseases of livestock, for example, are particularly damaging in Ireland as a consequence of the way that this system operated.
- [35:04]
Matt Lewis
Yeah. And presumably that also is a way for new kings, in particular, to position themselves as more powerful than their rivals. We've talked about the idea that right at the very top, what we might think of as the high king is actually just the most prominent or the most powerful king amongst the significant rulers of Ireland. Is there a bit of that going on as well at the lower levels that these people are kind of jockeying for position to try and understand who is regionally the most important.
- [35:31]
Dr. Sean O' Harwood
The borders tend to be pretty stable between the kingdoms, but you do get some amount of warfare between the under kingdoms as well as between the over kingdoms. It can sometimes be difficult to Tell from the sources to what extent this is endorsed by higher ups and to what extent this is independent action. The sources we have for these conflicts and for, you know, the bulk of what I'm talking about today are the Irish Annals, which are incredibly rich source. But one of the things that's important to understand about them is that they are brief descriptions, headlines of events that happened, you know, so and so led an attack on such another person or such another community. That's it. And we often have to draw the link between different events ourselves. So it can be difficult to say what one group was trying to achieve when they attacked another, whether it was genuinely small scale raiding or whether it was linked to a broader conflict between provinces. Probably it was the former in some instances and former in some instances and the latter in others. But it's difficult again for us to be sure of this. Remove.
- [36:40]
Matt Lewis
Yeah, we've talked about the effect that the arrival of the church had on Ireland and kind of Irish politics. What effect should we see the. The arrival of. Of Norsemen coming to Ireland? You know, they will have a significant impact during this period. What effect do they have on Irish politics? Do they cause everybody to come together in opposition to the Norse, or is it more complicated than that?
- [37:04]
Dr. Sean O' Harwood
It's certainly more complicated than that. The settlement pattern of the Norse in Ireland is strange. They don't settle in the, the countryside, shall we say. They don't establish a wide hinterland for themselves. They settle in small coastal urban communities. And the cities of Ireland today are nearly all the results of Norse settlements. So Dublin, Wexford, Waterford, possibly Cork, Limerick, these are all. These are all the result of Viking settlement. Now, the positioning of some of these towns is interesting. They tended to be on the borders of Irish provincial kingdoms. So Dublin is just to the south of the Kingdom of Mead, which is the kingdom in which Tara was situated, the most important kingdom of the time. And there was also another Viking settlement on the northern border of that kingdom at a place called Lyndughl. It just so happens that that town was destroyed by Irish attacks. So it's quite possible the Vikings, the Norse, that they were considering making a play for the kingdom of Ireland and were perhaps hoping to take Tara and do it in that way. If so, they were ultimately unsuccessful in doing that. But also at the same time, the Irish were unsuccessful in their attempts to oust the Norse. And so around the turn of the 10th century, in 902, there's a major effort is made by the email to expel the Dubliners. And they expel the leadership temporarily until 9:17 when they make a return. And while they're in charge of Dublin, the kings of Meath know, levy attacks on it on, you know, so they're, they're trying to get rich basically. And there's no doubt that the trade networks that the Norse had established brought significant wealth into Ireland as well as taking significant wealth out of it in terms of the raids on churches and also the slave trade that they involved themselves in. So with time you see see a sort of enmeshment of the Norse in Irish politics in the sense that they start appearing on both sides of a given conflict and Irish start appearing on both sides of their conflicts. So you get various Norse parties fighting with each other. So by no means is it as simple as saying that it's one ethnicity against another. Now one important saga, tale or history if you will is called Koga Gael, the War of the Irish with the Foreigner. It's about the career of, of Brian Baru King, which maybe some listeners might be familiar with. And it tries to present the, the story as exactly the opposite. The it, it tries to tell the tale of the heroic Christian Irish king Brian who stood up against the pagan barbarian Viking Norse who were attempting to take Ireland and who drove them out of Ireland. And that was no doubt popular throughout the 11th century. In the version that we have it is probably early 12th century in date.
- [40:13]
Matt Lewis
Yeah, yeah. I'm going to come on to Brian Burrow in a second. But by the, the kind of the 10th century we see the high kingship such as it was being dominated by the annals and what does that tell us about succession? Because we've talked about the idea that it's, it's not really hereditary but we do see the anneals beginning to dominate the kingship by this point. Is it becoming hereditary?
- [40:33]
Dr. Sean O' Harwood
Sort of theoretically. The eligibility it seems from the fact I've mentioned Kungal K one or two others who don't seem to have been from the Enel and in the early historic or maybe even the prehistoric period had been installed as kings of Tar. But with the dawn of the historical period the email start dominating this office. And what the email do is they, they alternate their major dynasties in the position of King of Tara. So the two most important, I mean I don't want to overburden everyone with names of Gaelic dynasties because there are, they are plentiful. But the most important dynasty in the northern I nail is called the Kennel Known and they give their name to County Tyrone today. Right. And the most important dynasty in the Southern Y nail is the Llan Kholman, and these two dynasties, for the most part, alternate the kingship of Tara between them. So it's not quite hereditary, but both of these dynasties do acknowledge a common ancestry and they just swap over and back. And not to complicate it too much, but there are other slightly more regional Enel dynasties who get their turn occasionally as well. And so it's branches of the email that are alternating it amongst themselves rather than it being open to any broader network of dynasties. And so the Nail are very much advancing the idea from the 7th century on that to be King of Tara is to be ipso facto king of Ireland.
- [42:04]
Matt Lewis
Yeah, yeah. I mean, that kind of makes it sound quite amicable, doesn't it, that everyone's just passing this kingship around between themselves? I'd imagine it's not quite friendly, maybe.
- [42:13]
Dr. Sean O' Harwood
No, probably not. Probably in practice, there are people who didn't like to wait their turn or to queue, and there are interruptions to the scheme as well. But there is a notion of what they call shalladacht in Irish, or turn taking. And it is advanced as a proposition by other dynasties at different times who clearly are looking to the Tarot model as something to be copied. So, for instance, in munster in the 12th century, there's a conflict between the McCarthy dynasty and the O', Briens, the Brynes descending from the Breen descending from Brian Baru, McCarthy descending from the Onachta tradition, who are prestigious in the early medieval period. And one particular document puts forward this idea that, oh, so these two dynasties have always shared the kingship of Munster. So, in other words, this should be the system going forward. Of course, this wasn't the case, but it was a proposition for the future that there should be turn taking. So, yeah, no doubt there were some people who didn't to wait their turn. And there are documented cases where one dynasty tried to defy the other during their turn. But you can see that the scheme broadly operated for a few hundred years,
- [43:36]
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Dr. Sean O' Harwood
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Matt Lewis
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- [44:52]
Matt Lewis
Yeah, it's fascinating. There's a kind of cultural preference for taking turn. It's really interesting way of doing it. And I'm going to come back to Brian Baru now because obviously, if people have heard of a High King of Ireland, they've probably heard of Brian Barry. And there are in the annals, he's described as the Augustus over all northwest West Europe. And is that kind of us getting our first indication that within Ireland they're now identifying this kind of top rank of kingship more clearly?
- [45:19]
Dr. Sean O' Harwood
Possibly. I think in various obituaries in the annals, there is an attempt always to give the most exalted view possible of a given king and to do full justice to his achievements. So perhaps what this represents, this grandiose title that he receives, what I would suggest that it represents is feeling that simply calling him King of Ireland would not do justice to what he had achieved. So he had achieved something more than what many of the kings of Ireland who had preceded him had achieved. And certainly, you know, he was indefatigable. He campaigned year after year. There are other titles that are used for him as well. He's described as Imperator Scotorum in the Book of Armagh, which is interesting. There have been various arguments made on the basis of this title, one of which, for instance, that Imperator, in the sense of he had overlordship of the Norse as well as the Gaelic Irish. Another that perhaps he was intending on extending his control beyond the Irish Sea and into the Gaelic peoples of Scotland as well, and the Isles. So he might have meant different things by this. Certainly he was acknowledged as having done something completely different. He broke the nail hegemony and he created a totally different dynamic that prevailed after. So he was very important.
- [46:36]
Matt Lewis
Yeah, you talked about the idea that he's been positioned as someone who was a Christian king who was driving out the pagan Norse. How successful is he in that? You know what happens to brain in the end?
- [46:47]
Dr. Sean O' Harwood
In the late 10th and early 11th century, the Norse suffered a number of major defeats, of which the Battle of Clontarf, which is Brian's finest hour, is only won. I Mean they also lost a notable battle to the king of Meadschachnal Machdonnel, who was Brian's great rival of the time. I suppose if for anyone who's not familiar with the traditional story, the story of Brian triumph really comes at the battle of Clintar, a battle that's fought on Easter Sunday 10 14, where he faces the the Norse down. And after a battle of a full day, they are defeated and flee into the sea. And it's a Pyrrhic victory. However, as. As both Brian himself and his son, an heir presumptive, are killed in the course of the day and Brian is is buried at Armagh. Interestingly, he had chosen to back the church of Armagh, its claim for primacy over the Irish Church. He didn't. For example, he could have advanced Cashel, which was in his own territory, as a rival. He didn't choose to do that. He chose to back Armand. He's buried there. That's an aside. His achievement in defeating the Norse, I think might have been symptomatic of a Norse decline, which was already happening anyway. But thereafter, the Norse in Ireland are not an independent political force. And what happens after Brian's time is that the provincial kings in several of the kingdoms move into the Norse towns and use them as capitals. And so Brian's own patrimony is Dalgosh, which is effectively the same as County Clare today. The kings of that area, Brian's descendants, they move into Limerick. And likewise the McCarthy Kings move into Cork. And Dublin becomes a prize then, which is disputed by the three over kingdoms, the three hegemons of the 12th century that I mentioned earlier on. And because of that, there's some sense, a growing sense that it might be seen as a de facto capital of some sort. So whichever is the most powerful king, he's the one who controls Dublin, perhaps.
- [48:56]
Matt Lewis
So almost the Irish don't really live in towns and cities until the arrival of the Norse. But once they get hold of those, that one city in Dublin comes to represent almost the power of the High Kings. If you can take Dublin, then you're obviously the most powerful king in Ireland at the time and you become the High King. Yeah.
- [49:15]
Dr. Sean O' Harwood
And it's interesting as well as the changing times for Tara, because Dublin is on Tara's doorstep. And so if Dublin has now been regarded as important its own almost sure the tower doesn't have the same role that it used to. I mean, that's absolutely true. The kings of me had declined by this point. They were very minor players. They weren't contesting the hegemony of all Ireland anymore with the major players. However, one of the hegemons, Connacht, repeatedly made emphasis to me's traditional associations with the kingship of Ireland. And held in Tolton, for example, so reinstituted that after had had been been in abeyance for many years. And a number of poems from Connacht in this era are placing emphasis on Tara and its importance. It's traditional associations with the kingship of Ireland. So there's an acknowledgement of that at the same time that simply would not be happening if the kings of Meath were players in the 12th century. So it's reflective of their decline in some respects as well. And the other side of the kings centralizing in these towns is that when the English or Anglo Normans arrived in Ireland, they had very clear targets. And you see in the early course of the invasion that the very first places that were taken were Wexford, Waterford and Dublin. So they become the footholds for the English in Ireland as a result.
- [50:36]
Matt Lewis
So that move almost begins to work against the Irish when the Anglo Normans arrive. And I guess we should get to this point because the second half of the 12th century, Henry II in England, in no small part, I guess because of what's happened with Thomas Becket, he's keen to go and show the Pope that he can bring bring Roman Christianity to Ireland to bring it into line with the Roman church. But there is also the political conquest and the land taking of the Normans coming over to Ireland. What does this mean for all of the kings of Ireland, but particularly the High King? Are we seeing the decline and the end of the office of High King?
- [51:14]
Dr. Sean O' Harwood
The kings of Ireland had been pursuing the reform agenda for around a century already in the Anglo Norman come. And so it really is leaned into by Turtle Vreen, his son merchant. And they, as I mentioned a little bit earlier on, are responsible for the synods at which the diocese are reformed. Get the first native papal legates in Ireland in their time as well. What causes a bit of disruption is that Munster is the leading kingdom in Ireland. And they are there after Mercurt Gilbrine falls in. They are superseded by the kingdom of Connacht. And the kings of Connacht in the 12th century are not as enthused by the reform agenda as some of the other kings. And consequently reform stalls a little in their era. And so for instance, the Augustinians and the Cistercians make very little headway in Connacht during their period. So the new orders that were introduced into Ireland also the kings of Connacht wanted an archdiocese, diocese, archdiocese of their own, which they had not been awarded when the kings of Munster were in charge, naturally. And so this was vexing for the church to some extent, that they had just come up with a new system for Ireland and now they were going to have to tear it up and start again. And then additionally, one of the things that the reformers wanted to sort out was Irish marriage practices. And if there were any kings who were egregious in their marriage practices of the time, it was the kings of Connacht, because thurl vocelchoncover had six wives and at least six wives, I should say six we know of, and at least 22 sons by them. And likewise his son Rory, who was the king of Ireland when the English invasion took place, he also had at least six wives and numerous sons and daughters by them as well. And so when the invasion takes place place, the Irish church backs the invasion under the papal legate of the time, Gillicrist Okunarcha. And there's a sense, I think, that had a different province been the leading province of the time, had it been a province like Munster or even like the Northern Ale who had established their pro reform credentials, it might have worked out differently, especially with Henry II being an excommunicate at the time. But the Irish Church did choose to back back the invasion. And so Pope Alexander was presented with a fait accompli. And so he, he acknowledged it in the same language, no doubt that it was presented to him. So yeah, the course of events in terms of the different provinces taking control and also their approach to the reform agenda definitely plays a key role in terms of how the English invasion played out in its early stages.
- [54:02]
Matt Lewis
Yeah, yeah. And is there someone that we can consider to be the last high king of our.
- [54:08]
Dr. Sean O' Harwood
I suppose you would say, yeah, you would say Rudio Concover. He's the last Irish king of Ireland. It's worth noting as well that in the 14th century, Edward Bruce brother Robert comes to Ireland and is inaugurated king of Ireland among his allies in the north of Ireland shortly after he rise in 1315. And so you could potentially make a case for him as well. But the kingship of Ireland, the kingdom of Ireland, is understood to be vested in the English crown, really after the events of the late 12th century. And Rury effectively goes back to being, I mean, with the treaty of Windsor in 1175, he's acknowledged by Henry as being still the supreme Irish king, having a sort of theoretical overlordship over the Irish kingdoms that had not at that point been conquered by the English. But that's a system. That's a. That's a system that breaks down shortly after and. And Rory is deposed by his son in 1183. So going back to a point we made previously about elective kingship and deposed by one's family, Rory is deposed in 1183, and he makes a number of attempted comebacks, but ends up quite a tragic figure by the end of his life. He's going from place to place looking for support and not receiving any. And eventually the people in Connacht send for him to come back and placate him with a small parcel of land. So he's not even considered a threat for the provincial kingship at that time.
- [55:37]
Matt Lewis
I mean, this has been absolutely fascinating, Sean. It feels like we're only scratching the surface of this really, really complex picture that was as difficult to the people arriving in Ireland either to Christianize it or to try to conquer it as it might feel for us trying to explore it today. I wonder if we could end by thinking about what do you think the term high King of Ireland actually meant to the Gaelic people of the medieval era? Did it mean anything? Is it something that we should consider being almost imposed from the outside side? Or was it something that they would have recognized themselves as well?
- [56:11]
Dr. Sean O' Harwood
I mean, as I say, I mean the term they use themselves as king of Ireland, and it certainly it's recognized. It's not something that's imposed from outside. It's something that they have established themselves in terms of what it actually means to them or what it actually meant to them, as opposed to what it means to us. There might be. There might be some gaps in terms of how it was defined. Exactly, exactly. Because we find different definitions prevailing at different times. So we've mentioned a good few times the Ynail made the argument that to hold the kingship of Tara is to be king of Ireland. But then other definitions were advanced at different times. So, for instance, Mercury Gabrin advanced the idea that to hold the towns was to be the king of Ireland. Another definition from the north of Ireland was to be able to take one's army through the other provinces of Ireland and return to safely constituted being king of Ireland. And so, depending on what your man was able to achieve, was he able to plausibly argue that he did not give submission to any other king in Ireland, and he was arguably the chief man in Ireland? Well, then arguably, he could claim the title of king of Ireland. But even we would have to acknowledge that even today, there's a semantic range in terms of what Ireland means. Because it can, it can either mean the island or it can mean the state which exists on the island alongside another state. And so some semantic range in the Middle Ages is not that surprising, really.
- [57:35]
Matt Lewis
Yeah. The medieval mind seems so much better than we are at having kind of fuzzy boundaries at the edges of its understandings of things and just allowing that to be, you know, you can almost find the, the, the way to make things work in not trying to define some of those boundaries too clearly. Medieval people, I think, were much better at that than we are today.
- [57:55]
Dr. Sean O' Harwood
Yeah, I think, certainly think certainly better than the academics that study them are always trying to find things as precisely as possible, where sometimes there was a deliberate vagueness in what they were trying to achieve by use of a certain term.
- [58:07]
Matt Lewis
Yeah, yeah. This has been absolutely fascinating chat. Thank you very much, Sean, for sharing all of your depth of knowledge with us about the Irish kingship. It's been absolutely fascinating to dig into it. Thank you.
- [58:17]
Dr. Sean O' Harwood
Not at all. Thanks so much for having me on.
- [58:20]
Matt Lewis
You can listen to a series we did a little while ago on the Thomas Becket crisis that contributed to leading Henry II to Ireland. We've also got an episode on the history of medieval Scotland to complement this one. The documentaries we made on Irish castles are also now On History Hits YouTube channel, so you can see the splendor of the Hill of Tara for free if you'd like. There were new installments of Gone Medieval every Tuesday and Friday, so you so please come back to join Elena and I for more from the greatest millennium in human history. Don't forget to also subscribe or follow us on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts and tell all of your friends and family that you've gone medieval. You can also sign up to History Hit for hundreds of hours of original documentaries with a new release every week@historyhit.com subscribe anyway, I better let you go. I've been Matt Lewis and we've just gone medieval with History Hit.
- [59:39]
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- [60:10]
Dr. Sean O' Harwood
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