After Máel Sechnaill
The Irish year 1022 is dominated by the death of Máel Sechnaill mac Domnaill, king of Mide and the leading claimant to the kingship of Ireland after the fall of Brian Bóruma at Clontarf. The annals give several other killings, church deaths and military actions, but his passing on 2 September at Cró Inis on Lough Ennell gave the year its largest political meaning. It closed the career of the most important southern Uí Néill ruler of his generation and exposed how fragile island-wide authority remained in early eleventh-century Ireland.