> -----Original Message----- > From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] > On Behalf Of Steve Haywood > Sent: 20 December 2008 17:28 > To: [email protected] > Subject: Re: [canals-list] Re: News from 19 century > > 2008/12/20 Bru Peckett <[email protected]> > > > > > In fact, Ireland as a nation state did not exist when the English (or > to be > > more precise the Normans) first conquered the country in the 1100's. > > > > I'll leave the concept of the nation state to others, but I'd take > issue > that the Angevins (which is the term you're looking for - not Normans!)
The Angevin kings are often included by historians in a Norman dynasty stretching from William the Conqueror through to Richard II (although other learned authors consider the Norman dynasty to have ended with Stephen or even his predecessor Henry I - the latter being the second of the only two Kings in a direct male line of descent from William I). However, they are also sometimes considered to be the first House in the Plantagenet dynasty (covering the houses of Angevin, Plantagenet, Lancaster and York)! To make it even more confusing, not all historians include the houses of Lancaster and York in the Plantagenet dynasty <sigh> > ever > 'conquered' Ireland. What they did was made a series of short term > accomodations with whatever locals would deal with them. Well, by 1172 Henry II, having landed a large body of "Norman", Welsh and Flemish soldiers between 1169 and 1171, received the submission of virtually all the Irish kings. If that's not a conquest I don't know what is! Mind you, it was a short lived and somewhat hollow victory since, having submitted to Henry as their overlord, most of the Irish kings carried on exactly as they always had! >John was a > much > better king that the pro-Rome chroniclers would have us believe. His > Irish > campaigns were pants though. True and true. He was a good administrator but a lousy soldier! As a king, he was a lot more interested in his Kingdom than his brother Richard had ever been. Bru
