Frontiers Under Pressure
The wider framework had been reshaped at the Council of Oxford in May 1177, when Henry II designated his young son John as lord of Ireland. John was still a child and did not visit Ireland until 1185, so authority in 1178 remained dispersed among royal officers and powerful magnates. Hugh de Lacy, lord of Meath and custodian of Dublin, was the leading representative of English royal power on the island. John de Courcy, meanwhile, pursued a remarkably independent conquest in the north.