Drogheda’s Uneasy Homage1395 CE

Dateline

In 1395, Ireland stood at the centre of an ambitious but fragile experiment in royal power. Richard II of England had arrived the previous autumn with an exceptionally large army, seeking to stabilise the lordship of Ireland and to curb Art Mac Murchadha Caomhánach, the formidable king of Leinster. During the opening months of this year, Richard turned military pressure into a sequence of submissions, pardons and agreements with Irish and Anglo-Irish leaders. Yet the year’s annals, particularly from Ulster and Connacht, show that this settlement did not make Ireland quiet. Local lordships continued to change hands through inheritance, captivity, raids and negotiated allegiance.

It is important not to mistake the royal progress for the conquest of the island. Richard’s court could command impressive ceremony and bargain with powerful rulers, but it could neither erase rival claims nor provide lasting security across Ireland. The events of 1395 reveal a political world in which kingship was personal, territory was defended by households and allies, and peace depended on continuing exchanges of protection, hostages, money and honour.

Art Mac Murchadha’s Settlement

The first firmly dated landmark came on 7 January. At a field between Tullow and Newcastle in Leinster, Art Mac Murchadha made an indenture with representatives of Richard II. Art had been the principal Gaelic power on the colony’s southern frontier. His authority reached across communities that later historians too readily divide into ‘Irish’ and ‘English’: he had followers among Gaelic kindreds and among families of Anglo-Norman descent, while his marriage to Elizabeth le Veel linked him to the disputed inheritance of Norragh in north Kildare.

The terms offered to Art were striking. He swore loyalty to Richard, was to restore places recently occupied in Leinster, and was expected to lead his fighting men out of Leinster for service against other royal enemies. In return, the king promised safe conduct, an annual payment of eighty marks and recognition of Elizabeth’s Norragh inheritance. The document therefore did not simply demand surrender. It attempted to turn a dangerous Leinster ruler and his military following into royal servants, while transforming contested landholding into a grant mediated by the crown.

Such an agreement exposed the limits as well as the reach of royal authority. Art’s position was too strong to be ignored, but the crown’s remedies depended on his co-operation. On 16 February, many Leinster nobles accepted the arrangement, a significant indication that Art’s leadership commanded broad regional support. Richard later brought him to Dublin and knighted him in March. Knighthood, however, did not dissolve Art’s kingship or the loyalties upon which it rested. It was a public attempt to incorporate him into a hierarchy of royal service.

Submission as Negotiation

Richard’s success was wider than Leinster. More than eighty Irish nobles are recorded as making submissions between January and April. These were not identical acts of capitulation by isolated chieftains. They were negotiations with major networks of lordship. Niall Óg Ó Néill of Tír Eógain, Brian Sreamhach Ó Briain of Thomond, William Burke of Clanricarde and Toirdhealbhach Ó Conchobair Donn of Roscommon belonged to a group of rulers whose combined influence extended over a very large part of the island.

At Drogheda on 20 January, Niall Mór Ó Néill submitted before Richard in the Dominican house and presented letters from his son Niall Óg. The letters complained of Roger Mortimer, earl of March and Ulster, whose inherited claims in Ulster and Connacht were a source of understandable alarm to neighbouring Irish dynasties. Niall Mór asked the king for protection, acknowledging Richard’s superiority while seeking a royal shield against Mortimer. This was diplomacy of a calculated kind, not a simple acceptance of English control.

Niall Óg nevertheless did homage at Dundalk on 16 March. Later that month he travelled to Dublin, where Richard knighted him. Richard’s government also gave legal protection and pardons to submitted rulers; Ó Conchobair Donn received the constableship of Roscommon Castle, a former centre of English authority long held by the O’Connors. Clerics loyal to the Roman papacy were used as intermediaries, and financial bonds were arranged before Francis de Capanago, the papal collector. Religion, law and royal ceremony were thus practical instruments in a political settlement.

Even at its height, the settlement had conspicuous absences. The leading O’Donnell of Tír Chonaill did not submit, nor did Burke of Mayo and Ó Conchobair Ruadh of Roscommon. Their position mattered because the north-west and western Connacht were not empty margins awaiting incorporation: they were regions with their own military coalitions, sea links and rival dynastic ambitions. Richard could secure acknowledgements without settling every contest over lordship.

Raids Beyond the Royal Court

The annals make clear how quickly the business of armed lordship resumed outside the great meetings. A force described as the king’s people raided into Uí Fhailghe, but Ó Conchobair’s men pursued it as far as the causeway of Cruachán, killed many of the raiders and took sixty horses. A second royal party, led by the Earl Marshal, raided Éile; Ó Cearbhaill and his followers attacked it, killed many Englishmen and seized horses.

These notices are short, but they illuminate everyday realities behind the diplomacy. Raiding was a means of punishing rivals, acquiring animals and asserting a right to dominate routes and borderlands. Horses were valuable military assets, while the loss of them impaired a household’s mobility and prestige. The episode also demonstrates that troops acting in the king’s name could be treated locally as raiders, not as impartial keepers of peace. Royal submission did not give those troops uncontested passage through Irish territories.

Richard’s own government faced a related difficulty in the south. Art’s January agreement may have represented a real accommodation under extraordinary pressure, but it was not a permanent rearrangement of Leinster. The Four Masters state bluntly that, though Mac Murchadha had entered the king’s household, he did not afterwards keep faith. That judgement was written much later and should not be treated as a verbatim report of events. It nevertheless captures the central problem: agreements required both sides to keep performing them, and the crown could not enforce every promise after its army had gone.

Fermanagh’s New Maguire

In Fermanagh, a succession gave 1395 its own sharply dated political drama. Philip Mag Uidhir, remembered in the Annals of Ulster as Philip of the battle-axe, died on 16 March after thirty-one years as king of Fir Manach. The annalist praised his hospitality, prowess and defence of his territory, adding that his reputation filled Ireland and Scotland. Such language was conventional in an obituary, but it identifies the qualities expected of a successful lord: generosity sufficient to sustain followers, courage in conflict and the capacity to protect a defined people and land.

Philip’s son Thomas, called An Giolla Dubh or the Black Gillie, took the kingship that year. The transition was not peaceful merely because it was swift. Domnall Ó Maoile Dúin of Lurg was captured by the sons of Art Mag Uidhir in the sanctuary of Termon St Dabeoc and later killed in captivity. Thomas and his brother Aodh also seized Conchobhar Ruadh Mag Uidhir, who escaped during the same year. On 14 August, John, son of Art Mag Uidhir, was killed at Finntracht Droma Bairr.

The geography is revealing. Termon St Dabeoc was a church sanctuary, and its appearance in a political killing shows that ecclesiastical places were woven into secular conflict rather than standing outside it. Fermanagh’s lakes, islands, termons and narrow routes could shelter lordly households, but they also made the control of people and movement intensely local. A succession at the top of the Maguire lordship therefore had consequences far beyond one family.

Ulster, Sligo and the Limits of Peace

Ulster’s wider balance also remained unsettled. Niall Óg’s agreement with Richard had provoked opposition among the Ó Néills. Late in the year, Domhnall Bog Ó Néill and his brothers attacked Niall Óg’s residence, captured his wife Úna and their son Brian Óg, and delivered them to the English. Hostages were not merely victims of warfare: they were political securities whose custody could compel negotiations. The attack showed that submission to Richard was divisive within a major Irish dynasty, and that a ruler’s household could become the immediate battlefield of disagreement.

In Connacht, Domnall, son of Muircheartach Ó Conchobair, lord of Sligo and western Connacht, died in Sligo Castle a week before Christmas. His death removed a regional figure at a moment when rival Connacht interests were being drawn into the consequences of Richard’s intervention. Sligo was more than a lordly residence. It remained a working borough and maritime outlet, so control of it carried commercial as well as military value. Its lord had reason to judge any revived royal presence in the west by its effect on the town’s trade, dues and strategic harbour.

A King’s Departure

Richard left Waterford for England on 15 May. The Four Masters place his departure in May, after many English and Irish chiefs had ‘gone into his house’, and record that Mortimer was left as his representative. The phrase evokes entry into the king’s household and protection, but it should not be confused with modern citizenship or a centrally administered state. Richard had established personal relationships, granted favours and received oaths. He had not created an unquestioned royal monopoly of force.

The year also records the deaths of churchmen: a young bishop Ó Mocháin died while travelling to Rome; the vicar of Scrín Adomnáin died; and an Ó Tuathail official, formerly vicar of Fore, was remembered as a distinguished host. Such entries offer a glimpse of clerical mobility, local parishes and the continuing social expectation that an ecclesiastic’s household should provide hospitality. Ardstraw and Clogher Mac Daimhin were burned with their valuables, a reminder that churches and their accumulated goods remained exposed when war crossed a district.

By the end of 1395, Richard II’s Irish expedition could be presented as a triumph of submission and ceremony. Yet the evidence from Uí Fhailghe, Éile, Fermanagh, Tír Eógain and Sligo tells a more cautious story. Ireland had not been pacified; rather, its rulers had tested what advantage might be gained from the king’s presence. The settlements of this year mattered because they reshaped expectations and alliances. Their instability mattered more, for it ensured that Ireland would again demand the attention of Richard II before the decade was over.