| 1 The Norsemen and Brian Boru | 2 The Normans and English Law | 3 Norman rights under the Brehon Laws |
While Brian Boru had some notable military victories over the Vikings and competing Irish claimants to High Kingship, his main triumph was one of diplomacy. He persuaded the Norsemen that they did not need to capture Irish women and take them off as slaves, since beautiful Irish girls would be delighted to go with them freely, provided the Brehon laws applied to the union. (The Brehon laws gave wives the right to leave their husbands if they wished). Moreover, he showed the Norse settlers that they could have a more prosperous and happy life-style by trading with the Irish rather than raiding. The result of this diplomacy was that the Norsemen, (who were already half-Irish, having by this time, for the most part, Irish mothers), now became integrated into Irish society, accepting Irish laws, language and culture, and forming alliances through marriage with Irish kings. The Norse settlements henceforth paid tribute, if nominal, to the appropriate regional kings.
Brian Boru's efforts to bring peace and stability failed by reason of the fact that he himself had taken the High Kingship against hereditary right. After his death, every ambitious king in the country contested the High Kingship, and the country returned to another hundred years of strife. Top of Page
Henry's influence was initially short-lived, as the Normans became absorbed into the Irish way of life. However, after 500 years of struggle and wars, the Brehon Laws were practically eliminated with the Flight of the Earls in 1607, and finally gave up the ghost at the Treaty of Limerick, 1693.
The law now treats all land titles as if they had originated under English law rather than ever having been subject to the Brehon laws. The land of Ireland is deemed to have come into the ownership of the British Crown either by right of conquest or by surrender and regrant, (to Henry II in the 12th century and again to Henry VIII in the 16th), or by forfeiture and confiscation after the various wars.
To these Normans he granted the cities of Waterford, Wexford and Dublin, (assuming that they could take control of these cities), and large tracts of waste or semi-waste lands. (The Normans thought they would be getting fertile land, but such was not Diarmuid's to grant under the Brehon laws. However, the Normans reclaimed for agricultural use much of the waste land they received, and other parts of this land, on the outskirts of the cities, became valuable suburban land with the passage of the centuries).
Strongbow never became king of Leinster; on Diarmuid's death, the McMurrough derfine chose Murtough MacMurrough, a nephew of Diarmuid, as king.