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Ruaidrí Ua Conchobair had been king of Connacht since 1156 and had claimed the high-kingship after the death of Muirchertach Mac Lochlainn in 1166. The invasions beginning in 1169, Henry II’s expedition of 1171–72 and the failure of the Treaty of Windsor of 1175 had progressively narrowed his influence. By 1183 he was an ageing ruler whose authority outside Connacht had become largely nominal and whose position within the province depended increasingly on the strength of his sons and allied dynasties.
The Treaty of Windsor of 1175 had attempted to define a working relationship between Henry II and Ruaidrí. Henry was acknowledged as overlord, while Ruaidrí was expected to maintain authority and collect tribute in territories outside the lands directly held by the newcomers. By 1179 this compromise was under severe strain. Hugh de Lacy, lord of Meath and one of Henry’s most formidable representatives, had pushed his influence westwards through military expeditions, alliances with Irish rulers and the construction of defended centres. His activities threatened the network of lordship through which Ruaidrí sought to preserve influence east of the Shannon.
The most consequential firmly dated development was the assassination of Donnchad Ua Máel Sechlainn, king of Meath. The Annals of Ulster and Annals of Tigernach describe his death as treacherous, naming Murchad Ua Finnalláin, ruler of Delbna Mór, and his son as the killers. The later Annals of the Four Masters adds that old grievances and Donnchad’s own actions lay behind the attack. This judgement reflects his deeply troubled recent career. In 1157 he had violated a guarantee upheld by leading churchmen and kings, after which an ecclesiastical assembly excommunicated him and removed him from power. Mac Lochlainn nevertheless restored him, making Donnchad dependent upon northern support.
The leading claimant to the kingship of Ireland remained the ageing Tairrdelbach Ua Conchobair, king of Connacht. His authority had extended at different times into Meath, Munster, Bréifne and Dublin, but it rested upon alliances, military expeditions and the submission of other kings rather than permanent government. By 1155 his position was being challenged vigorously by Muirchertach Mac Lochlainn, king of Cenél nEógain in the north. Mac Lochlainn had campaigned through Connacht and reached Dublin in 1154, demonstrating that neither distance nor provincial boundaries prevented a determined overking from intervening across Ireland.
Tairdelbach was now the strongest ruler in Ireland. The death of his northern rival Domnall Ua Lochlainn in 1121 had removed the principal obstacle to his wider ambitions, but his position was not that of a monarch governing a united kingdom. Irish political authority remained layered among provincial kings, regional dynasties and lesser rulers. An overking demonstrated supremacy by leading hostings, receiving hostages and tribute, appointing subordinate kings and punishing rebellion. Compliance could be temporary, and a defeated dynasty might recover as soon as the overking’s army departed.
The surviving Irish annals give 1110 an unusually clear, if selective, outline. They record an invasion of Connacht, two battles within that province, local killings and plundering, the deaths of political and ecclesiastical figures, and a significant visitation of Mide by Cellach, successor of Patrick at Armagh. These notices were written principally to preserve the affairs of kings, dynasties and churches. They tell us much less directly about ordinary households, agricultural work or peaceful exchange. Any account of the year must therefore separate firmly recorded events from the broader conditions within which they occurred.
Ireland had no uncontested island-wide monarch in 1046. Donnchad mac Briain, son of Brian Bóruma, remained king of Munster and had previously extracted submissions from much of southern Ireland, but his wider authority had weakened. Diarmait mac Maíl na mBó was consolidating power in Leinster, while the Northern Uí Néill, the kingdoms of Ulaid and Airgialla, and competing Connacht dynasties pursued their own interests. Overkingship depended on personal alliances, hostages, military success and the recognition of lesser rulers; it was never simply inherited as a modern territorial crown.
The change of ruler at Dublin marked the end of an era. The Annals of Tigernach state that Sitriuc son of Amlaíb went overseas from his kingship and that Echmarcach entered it. Sitriuc, better known as Sitriuc Silkbeard, had ruled Dublin through much of the turbulent period surrounding the Battle of Clontarf. He had survived repeated defeats, temporary expulsions and shifting relationships with the kings of Leinster, Tara and Munster. By the time of his departure he was elderly by the standards of medieval rulers and had occupied an important place in Irish Sea politics for several decades.
Ireland entered 1000 in the aftermath of a major military upheaval. The Annals of Ulster explicitly recognised the year as the thousandth since the Incarnation and the 568th since the traditional coming of St Patrick. The Annals of Inisfallen identified it as a leap year and placed the Kalends of January on a Monday. Such notices show scholarly interest in computus—the calculation of calendars, feast days and historical eras—but provide no evidence that Irish communities greeted the millennium with widespread fear or expectation of the world's end.
Derryvree was revealed in a road cutting near Maguiresbridge in 1969. Beneath the material that forms a drumlin lay freshwater silts and fine sands, rich enough in organic matter to preserve traces of plants and small animals. Above and below were tills: dense deposits made or reworked by glaciers. The sequence is therefore an unusually direct piece of evidence that, before a later advance of the Irish Ice Sheet, this part of Fermanagh contained open ground and freshwater rather than permanent ice.
This point falls within Marine Isotope Stage 3, during the wider Late Pleistocene cold stage conventionally called the Midlandian in Ireland and the Late Devensian in Britain. It preceded the fullest expansion of the last British–Irish Ice Sheet, but it belongs to the long climatic deterioration from which that ice sheet grew. Recent reconstructions show that the build-up, maximum extent and retreat of ice across Ireland and Britain were highly asynchronous: different sectors advanced and retreated at different times. The greatest ice volume in the most recent reconstruction occurred around 23,000 years ago, while some sectors had advanced earlier. That pattern is a warning against imagining a single, uniform moment when all of Ireland suddenly vanished beneath ice.
