The 850th anniversary of the Norman Invasion of Ireland

by Ruadh Butler

On this day, May 1st, 850 years ago, just as evening began to fall, three ships made land at a small island on an insignificant estuary on Ireland’s southern coast.

To the casual observer, the three vessels would’ve looked little different to the longships used by the descendants of Danish and Norse Vikings who had settled in Ireland three centuries before. They probably looked much like the ships often used by merchants crossing the Irish Sea between the big towns of Wexford, Waterford and Dublin, Bristol, Chester and Gloucester.

The strange attire and the numerous languages spoken by those in the ships might’ve confused the locals, though there is no doubt that any native Gael who laid eyes on the small fleet would’ve been wary. They would’ve recognised a warband as soon as they saw it. Would they have known that this was an army of Cambro-Norman invaders at Bannow Bay that May evening? And could they ever have imagined that within a few months those 400 people aboard the ships would’ve helped conquer a fifth of their country?

So how the blazes did they manage it?

A few days after landing, the Norman commander, Robert FitzStephen, led his small army eastwards from Bannow and clashed in his first skirmish in Ireland at Duncormick. Who he fought, what tactics he employed, or how the battle came about, we simply don’t know, but we do know that FitzStephen’s small force swept aside his enemy.

FitzStephen had been promised lordship over the Viking town of Wexford by an exiled King of Leinster, Dermot MacMurrough (Diarmait Mac Murchada), in return for helping him win back his throne. And in early May 1169 he launched his attempt to claim it. Three attacks were launched with ladders on the walls and three assaults were repulsed by the besieged Ostmen (‘East Men’ – the descendants of the Norse and Danish Vikings) at the cost of eighteen men. Thankfully, a bevy of bishops were on hand and they convinced the Ostmen that only worse was to follow and encouraged them to surrender to King Dermot. From a miserable prisoner in Wales, FitzStephen had, almost overnight, become lord of over 200,000 acres and began parcelling it out to his followers.

Robert FitzStephen
The first invader of Ireland, Robert FitzStephen
from the 1185 book, Expugnatio Hibernica by Giraldis Cambrensis

In addition to around 500 Gaelic warriors armed with spears, axes and throwing darts, the core of FitzStephen’s army was made up of just 50 heavy cavalrymen who would be today recognised as knights. Drawn principally from FitzStephen’s extended family, they were armoured in mail and had the distinctive spangenhelm and kite-shield. Their main weapon was a lance while a sword was merely their primary sidearm. Another 150 of his army were ‘half-armoured’ horsemen. Presumably made up of esquires (apprentice knights) and pages, they were most usually employed on scouting missions. The remaining 200 warriors in the Norman army were archers and crossbowmen. Drawn from the Welsh, Cornish and Flemish peoples of western Britain, they would play a critical role in the success of the Norman enterprise in Ireland.

On Leinster’s western border was the Kingdom of Ossory and any man wishing to be recognised as King of Leinster had to secure the submission of their neighbour. Three weeks after the fall of Wexford, FitzStephen led his army (now bolstered by a thousand Norse infantry) and Dermot’s 500 warriors over the Blackstairs Mountains and into modern day Counties Carlow and Kilkenny. Marching through the Gap of Gowran, they were faced by King of Ossory’s 5,000-strong army behind trenches and a palisade. Numerous assaults finally saw FitzStephen carry the day with the Ossorians fleeing back towards the lowlands. Sweeping up booty as they went, Dermot and FitzStephen moved north, hoping to take the Pass of Slieve Margy (near modern Leighlinbridge) back towards friendly territory. However, the King of Ossory was not finished and used his superior knowledge of the terrain to track the retreating invaders with his remaining 2,000 warriors. Obviously aware of his history, one Flemish cavalry commander, Maurice de Prendergast, used the age-old tactic of the feigned retreat to draw out the enemy and then turned to cut them down in the open ground.

The Normans followed up this victory with Invasion of Kildare and Wicklow, conducting a campaign that would become known as the chevauchée in later centuries, before a second Raid on Ossory culminated in a three-day Battle at Freshford. Again, FitzStephen’s Normans proved the decisive troops on the field, successfully storming the Ossorian lines and using their archers with devastating results.

With winter almost upon them and with it the end of the fighting season, the High King of Ireland, Rory O’Connor, at last recognised the threat posed by Dermot and FitzStephen. Raising all the other great kings and their armies, Rory pushed south towards Dermot’s capital at Ferns (modern County Wexford). But he arrived to find Ferns deserted. FitzStephen was ready and had prepared for a Stand-off at Dubh-Tir.

When he heard of Rory’s advance, FitzStephen knew that he had no hope of overcoming the disparity in numbers in open warfare. Instead he had ordered his army into the wilderness in the foothills of the Blackstairs Mountains (presumably near Mount Leinster), a region then known as Dubh-Tir, the dark country. Forested and mountainous, filled with bogs and uncharted rivers, FitzStephen began felling trees to build fences in defensible positions, carving paths into the wood to force the enemy to meet him in places he was prepared to defend.

High King Rory had never seen anything like FitzStephen’s defences in Dubh-Tir and immediately decided upon another tactic, trying to convince both the Norman commander and Dermot to betray his ally.

In the end it was Rory who blinked first, opening peace negotiations with his enemies and coming to a settlement whereby Dermot would submit to the High King’s rule in return for recognition as King of Leinster. Finally, four years after being exiled from his throne, he was back in power of his tribal homeland.

Amongst Dermot’s promises was that he would remain within the bounds of his kingdom and not make war upon his neighbours. As sureties for this good behaviour, his son, Conor, grandson Donal, and his foster-brother’s son, were handed over to Rory. There was another secret clause to the peace treaty between the two kings: Dermot promised to bring no more foreigners to Ireland and, furthermore, to eject FitzStephen and his men once Leinster had been pacified.

Once agreed, Rory withdrew from Dubh-Tir with all his troops, allowing Dermot to return to Ferns to muse on his campaign of 1170. FitzStephen journeyed back to his newly won lands at Wexford where, just before the turn of New Year, he was joined by reinforcements under his elder brother, Maurice FitzGerald. Together, they built the first castle in Ireland, a small timber stockade on a high bluff above the River Slaney at modern Ferrycarrig, just two miles from Wexford’s walls. From there, they aimed to control the town and any shipping hoping to move inland. From there, they hoped that they would conquer a kingdom of their own.

Baginbun Point, where the second landing of Normans would
occur in 1170, lies on the other side of the estuary from Bannow

~~~~~~~

Ruadh Butler is the author of Swordland, Lord of the Sea Castle and The Earl Strongbow. The series tells the story of the 12th century invasion of Ireland by Norman knights from Wales. Catch up with Ruadh on his website, on Facebook, or find him on Twitter and Instagram.

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Swordland

Lord of the Sea Castle

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John Boyle O'Reilly - Irish Patriot, American Journalist, Poet

by Arthur Russell

“The world is large when its weary leagues two loving hearts divide. 

The world is small when your enemy is loose on the other side.”

These lines were quoted by United States President John F. Kennedy in his address to the Irish Parliament (Dáil Eireann), during his visit to Ireland in June 1963. The lines describe the heartache and trauma of Irish emigration which had become an enduring feature of life in Ireland arising from mid nineteenth century social upheavals caused by chronic famine coupled with serious agrarian disturbance.

The President was quoting from one of his favourite writers, John Boyle O’Reilly, who as editor of the paper “The Pilot” and a prolific writer and lecturer, was a dominant and well regarded commentator on the Boston scene during the last decades of the 19th century.

Who was John Boyle O’Reilly?
He was born in Ireland in June 1844, in Netterville House in Dowth, County Meath near the town of Drogheda; within sight of the 5000 year-old Megalithic tomb complex of Newgrange and its sister site of Knowth in the River Boyne valley. Both of his parents, William David O’Reilly and Eliza Boyle; were school teachers and ardent Irish Nationalists, features that contributed to O’Reilly’s love of reading about all things Irish as well as his gift for writing.

When he was 15, he went to live with his uncle and aunt in Preston in Lancashire where he worked as a young reporter with a local newspaper. While here he joined the 11th Lancashire Rifle Volunteers. He returned to Ireland in 1863, and enlisted in the 10th Hussars. As a fresh recruit, he became disillusioned by the Imperial authorities treatment of the native Irish population which caused him to encourage 80 fellow soldiers to join the newly formed Irish Republican Brotherhood, which became commonly known as “the Fenians”. In the aftermath of an abortive insurrection in 1866, O’Reilly, along with many other Fenian activists were arrested. He was sentenced to be executed, but due to his relative youth (aged 22 years) this was commuted to 20 years imprisonment with hard labour. A year and a half was served in English prisons from which he made several unsuccessful attempts to escape which earned him long periods of solitary confinement before he was transported to serve the remainder of his term in a penal colony in Australia. He had the distinction of being a member of the last group of transportees to be sent to Australia. This was on board the ship Hougoumont where he and a number of fellow Fenian prisoners produced a handwritten newspaper called The Wild Goose which included poems and stories drawn from the experiences of his fellow convicts on board. Seven editions of The Wild Goose were produced, one set of which survives in the State Library of New South Wales.

Convict life in Western Australia

On arrival in Australia he was assigned to a convict camp in the town of Bunbury in Western Australia in 1868. Within a year, and with the help and encouragement of the local Catholic priest, Father Patrick McCabe and some farmers from the nearby town of Dardanup, O’Reilly determined to escape from Australia. Following a prearranged plan, he and a fellow Fenian prisoner absconded from the convict camp and made their way to the Leshenault Peninsula where they had to wait for two weeks before being picked up by the American ship Gazelle which brought him from Australia. After a long voyage with several stops where he was in constant danger of being rearrested, he arrived in Boston in November 1869.

Arrival in Boston
Here, O’Reilly became involved with the burgeoning Irish American community, including its civil rights and sporting activities. Due to his considerable writing skills, he became part owner of the Pilot newspaper and began serious writing. His first book of poetry “Songs from the Southern Seas” was published in 1873. During the following decade, there were other poetry collections; Songs, Legends and Ballads (1878), The Statues in the Block (1881), In Bohemia (1886). In 1879 he published a novel Moondyne in 1879 based on his convict experiences in Australia, which was very popular among Irish Americans. His final collection of poems, Watchwords was published after his death in 1890.

O’Reilly’s life in Boston
O’Reilly’s first newspaper assignment was to cover the Fenian Convention in Boston in 1870, and the abortive Fenian led invasion of British ruled Canada, the most significant action of which was the Battle of Ridgeway in 1866 where the Irish Americans were repulsed by the Canadians. Overall, the military venture into Canada was a total disaster and was responsible for O’Reilly changing his views on Fenian militarism as a means for achieving political ends in either Canada or his native Ireland. Instead he saw the need to raise the status and self esteem of his fellow Irish immigrants to America as a better way to improve their lot in their adopted land, as well as progresslng the eventual achievement of independence back in his native Ireland through political rather than physical force methods.

He established his home in the Charlestown neighbourhood where he brought his bride, Mary Murphy in August 1872. Mary was also a journalist who worked for another Boston publication, The Young Crusader, under the name Agnes Smiley. The couple had 4 daughters, the second of which, Agnes O’Reilly, helped with her husband William Ernest Hocking, to establish the mixed gender Shady Hill School near Harvard Square in Cambridge, Massachusetts, which still operates. (The school actually began in 1915 with the support of a group of families, as a “back porch” school in the Hocking household until student numbers outgrew this location).

The Catalpa Rescue

In 1875, O’Reilly was approached by the leader of the major Irish nationalist organisation in the United States, John Devoy; to advise on the rescue of six Fenian leaders still imprisoned in Australia. This plan had significant support from the Irish American community and funds were forthcoming to purchase a whaling ship called the Catalpa and its crew for the venture. The result was the successful Catalpa Rescue which saw the six prisoners being picked up just outside Australian waters after dodging naval patrols that had been alerted about the escape. The fact that Catalpa was flying the flag of the United States in international waters prevented the Australian authorities from forcibly boarding the ship.

O’Reilly as editor of the Pilot, was first to break the news of the escape in June 1876, which caused much celebration in United States and Ireland; extreme anger in Britain and Australia.

The escape is celebrated by an impressive memorial in Rockingham, Western Australia which features 6 flying geese which draws on the tradition of Irish soldiers leaving Ireland to join Continental armies after the War of the 2 Kings which saw Protestant King William replace Catholic King James on the English throne. These and succeeding generations of departing Jacobite Irish soldiers came to be called the Wild Geese. This recalled the Wild Goose name also applied by O’Reilly and his Fenian prisoner comrades to their publication on board the Hougoumont transporting them to Australia.

The Social activist
Through the medium of The Pilot newspaper O’Reilly articulated his support for the establishment of the rights of the emancipated slaves emerging from the American Civil war. His immediate focus was a recent U.S. Supreme Court as well as the campaigning of one Henry Grady who advocated what he termed establishing “The New South” which would keep the black population in a second class role in the aftermath of the Supreme Court’s ruling which declared the 1875 Civil Rights Act unconstitutional.

‘Never did oratory cover up the weaker points of a repulsive cause so well’

The Pilot printed a series of articles disputing the claims advanced by Grady that highlighted the realities of southern life. The massacre by a white mob of 8 black men in South Carolina in December 1889 prompted the following editorial from O’Reilly. To some extent, it reflects his undimmed Irish Nationalism, along with inevitable opposition against the “Anglo Saxon”; at the same time encouraging opposition “by law first and by manly force in extremity.”

The black race in the South must face the inevitable, soon or late, and the inevitable is - DEFEND YOURSELF. If they shrink from this, they will be trampled on with yearly increasing cruelty until they have sunk back from the great height of American freedom to which the war-wave carried them. And in the end, even submission will not save them. On this continent there is going to be no more slavery. That is settled forever. Not even voluntary slavery will be tolerated. Therefore, unless the Southern blacks learn to defend their homes, women, and lives, by law first and by manly force in extremity, they will be exterminated like the Tasmanian and Australian blacks. No other race has ever obtained fair play from the Anglo-Saxon without fighting for it, or being ready to fight. The Southern blacks should make no mistake about the issue of the struggle they are in. They are fighting for the existence of their race; and they cannot fight the Anglo-Saxon by lying down under his feet.

This editorial roused considerable criticism across the country to which the Pilot faithfully published and responded. Replying to the St. Louis newspaper Church Progress that: ‘It is neither Catholic nor American to rouse the negroes of the South to open and futile rebellion’ O’Reilly wrote: ‘True, and the Pilot has not done so. We have appealed only to the great Catholic and American principle of resisting wrong and outrage, of protecting life and home and the honour of families by all lawful means, even the extremest, when nothing else remains to be tried.’

His anti-racist views as well as his support for minorities suffering from various forms of discrimination made him a much sought after speaker promoting better race and inter-ethnic relations across the country.

By contrast, O’Reilly’s views of Women’s suffrage remained consistently “conservative” based on sincerely held views that society and civilisation was ultimately under pinned by violence. He contended that Society was a blend of competing interests each of which was backed by men willing and able to fight for what they believed. In this scenario, O’Reilly saw women’s lack of physical strength in protecting their own interests as reason not to extend the franchise.

“A vote, like a law is no good unless there is an arm behind it; it cannot be enforced. This is a shameful truth, perhaps, but it is true”.

"We want no contest with women; they are higher, truer, nobler, smaller, meaner, more faithful, more frail, gentler, more envious, less philosophic, more merciful - oh, far more merciful and kind and lovable and good than men are. Those of them that are Catholics, are better Catholics than their husbands and sons; those who are Protestants are better Christians than theirs. Women have all the necessary qualities to make good men; but they must give their time and attention to it while the men are boys."He had well defined views on the role of newspapers and journalists in keeping society on the straight and narrow. Journalism should be much much more than “muckraking and manufactured outrage”, their role being to explain the world to readers honestly and clearly.

Surely this is a current theme in an age of so-called “fake news” (real and/or alleged)?

O’Reilly’s published writings

His published writings were well received to the extent that he was often commissioned to write commemorative pieces for special events. Some of his works are still highly regarded.

Possibly his best known poem is “The Cry of the Dreamer”, which shows his love for Ireland and his memories of boyhood days in the rural countryside near the River Boyne in Ireland which he would never see again; (“the dear old river, where I dreamed my youth away”). It also articulates his tedium with “heart weary building and spoiling, and spoiling and building again”; which was part and parcel of his new life in Boston; as well as his awareness of his adopted city’s (“crowded hives of men”) social inequalities. (“no pride but pity for the burdens the rich endure” as against “nothing sweet in the city but the patient lives of the poor”). The poor of the cities, the black population struggling to find their way to true freedom, the native Indian being driven from their ancestral lands as well as the many ethnic groups, including his own Irish immigrants trying to make their way in a new land all feature in O’Reilly’s writings.

I am tired of planning and toiling
In the crowded hives of men;
Heart-weary of building and spoiling,
And spoiling and building again.
And I long for the dear old river,
Where I dreamed my youth away;
For a dreamer lives forever,
And a toiler dies in a day.

I am sick of the showy seeming
Of a life that is half a lie;
Of the faces lined with scheming
In the throng that hurries by.
From the sleepless thoughts' endeavour,
I would go where the children play;
For a dreamer lives forever,
And a thinker dies in a day.

I can feel no pride, but pity
For the burdens the rich endure;
There is nothing sweet in the city
But the patient lives of the poor.
Oh, the little hands too skillful,
And the child-mind choked with weeds!
The daughter's heart grown willful,
And the father's heart that bleeds!

No, no! from the street's rude bustle,
From the trophies of mart and stage,
I would fly to the woods' low rustle
And the meadows' kindly page.
Let me dream as of old by the river,
And be loved for the dream alway;
For a dreamer lives forever,
And a toiler dies in a day.

Among his more popular lines are the piece “A White Rose”, often quoted at many wedding celebrations wherever English is spoken, demonstrate a romantic side of this talented writer.

A White Rose

The red rose whispers of passion,
And the white rose breathes of love;
O, the red rose is a falcon,
And the white rose is a dove.
But I send you a cream-white rosebud
With a flush on its petal tips;
For the love that is purest and sweetest
Has a kiss of desire on the lips

Death and aftermath

O’Reilly suffered from bouts of insomnia and on one of these took medicine containing chloral hydrate used by his wife to help him sleep. His wife Mary found him unconscious sitting at a table with one hand resting beside a book, and the other holding a cigar. All attempts to revive him failed and he died at 5 pm on August 10th 1890 in his 46th year. Public announcements attributed the death to heart failure, while the official record shows accidental poisoning.

His funeral was attended by thousands of mourners. Five of his Fenian comrades who had found a haven in United States were his coffin bearers to Calvary Cemetery in Roxbury. Later in the year his remains were exhumed and removed to Holyhood Cemetery in Brookline.

Immediately after his death, there was widespread outpouring of tributes to O’Reilly led by President Grover Cleveland who wrote "I have heard with sincere regret that John Boyle O'Reilly is dead. I regarded him as a strong and able man, entirely devoted to any cause he espoused, unselfish in his activity, true and warm in his friendship, and patriotic Massachusetts Senator George Frisby Hoar wrote to Mary O’Reilly "Accept my profound sympathy in your great loss and the great public loss. Your husband combined, as no other man, some of the noblest qualities of the Irishman and the American."

Six years later (June 1896), a multi-figure bronze sculpture made by Daniel Chester French of O'Reilly was unveiled on the Fenway, Boston, at which President Cleveland spoke.

Perhaps the strongest endorsement of O’Reilly and what he stood for was from his Pilot newspaper colleague James Jeffrey Roche who published his biography.

"O'Reilly defended the oppressed negroes, as he had defended the oppressed Indians, as sincerely and zealously as he had all his life defended the oppressed of his own race. It was morally impossible for him to do otherwise."

~~~~~~~~~~~~

Arthur Russell is the author of Morgallion, a novel set in medieval Ireland during the Invasion of Ireland in 1314 by the Scottish army led by Edward deBruce, the last crowned King of Ireland. It tells the story of Cormac MacLochlainn, a young man from the Gaelic crannóg community of Moynagh and how he and his family endured and survived that turbulent period of history. Morgallion was awarded the indieBRAG Medallion.

Baginbun: Ireland’s Hastings?

by Ruadh Butler

When most people speak of ‘The Norman Conquest’ they are of course referring to the events that followed one of history’s most famous battles – Hastings.

Even though it was not the only Norman Conquest it is difficult to get away from 1066. The year has quite understandably become one of the most renowned; the cast are famous, the stakes never higher. And the incentive for the leaders was nothing less than the control of the kingdom of England. The outcome remained on a knife edge right to the end of the day. The Hastings campaign is simply chocked full of melodrama and even amongst the many battle honours of the Normans it still stands proudest.

So it is perhaps understandable that attempts have been made to compare the conquest of Ireland to that of England a hundred years before – that one great battle added unconquered Ireland to the Norman realm.

According to the famous medieval couplet: “At the creek of Baginbun, Ireland was lost and won.”

A Baginbun - image of modern Baginbun Point in County Wexford. 
You can still see the Norman earthworks running east-west between 
the two beaches at the headland's narrowest point.

It seems like a rather grand statement for such a little-known battle yet the rhyme has echoed down through the ages. But where is Baginbun? Who won Ireland? And who lost? Was Baginbun, like the Battle of Hastings, indeed a momentous turning point in history as the verse stated?

Baginbun Point from above the eastern beach.
The Martello tower is a Napoleonic era fortification.

It was from the fighting frontier of Wales that the men who took part in the Norman invasion of Ireland hailed. While the independent Kingdoms of Gwent, Glamorgan, Brecknock and Deheubarth had fallen to Norman freebooters within thirty years of Hastings, they had been unable to extend their web of motte and bailey castles very far from the southern coast. Their hold over this territory was severely tested several times but in 1164 it was shaken to its very core through the efforts of Rhys ap Gruffydd. Many Normans lost their lands to the resurgent Welsh. This change in fortune created a generation of desperate men, shorn of their lands and trained from youth to kill. Some would’ve travelled to the Holy Land where the victories of Nur ad-Din threatened the Kingdom of Jerusalem, but others would not have had that opportunity. It is unsurprising that when an exiled king from Ireland arrived in Wales appealing for mercenaries to help him reclaim his throne that he found many willing to follow in return for plunder.

Maurice Fitzgerald

Promised an estate of 200,000 acres by King Dermot MacMurrough (Diarmait Mac Murchada in Irish) in return for their help, the first Normans to venture to Ireland were led by Robert FitzStephen and his half-brother Maurice FitzGerald. Both were sons of the famous Princess Nest of Deheubarth and they commanded a multi-national and mongrel army of Normans, Flemings, Welshmen and Bretons comprising of forty knights, eighty esquires and around four hundred infantry and archers. It was a small force which nonetheless quickly forced Dermot’s many enemies into submission and allowed him to rise again as King of Leinster.

Taken by Ruadh Butler standing between the two massive Norman earthworks at Baginbun. When crowned with a timber palisade they would've been incredibly intimidating.

But this lofty position was no longer enough for Dermot. His mercenaries’ success had ignited a fierce ambition in him and one that would not be sated merely by sovereignty over one of the five major kingdoms of Ireland. He now set his sights upon the High Kingship. And for that aim to be realised he required an ally far greater than either FitzStephen or FitzGerald.

He needed the help of Richard de Clare. A Welsh baron from a powerful East Anglican dynasty, he became better known to history as Strongbow. His price for providing warriors for Dermot’s wars was steep. Similar to William the Conqueror, Strongbow wished to win a kingdom, although in his case he agreed to do this through marriage to Dermot’s daughter rather than bumping off the incumbent. Determined to see his own ambitions realised, Dermot agreed to the Norman’s terms and journeyed back to Ireland to await his new ally’s arrival.

But Strongbow did nothing. For three long years. The contents of one of Dermot’s letters survive through the writings of Giraldus Cambrensis and his frustration is obvious:

“Neither winds from the east or from the west have brought us your much desired and long expected presence. Let your present activity make up for this delay and prove by your deeds that you have not forgotten your engagements.”

Signpost to Baginbun Point.

Dermot’s rebuke finally forced Strongbow into action and in the summer of 1170 he despatched one of his chief warriors, the comically named Raymond the Fat, to Ireland to force a beachhead in advance of his own invasion of Ireland.

Raymond was a younger son of the Lord of Carew Castle and a nephew of both Robert FitzStephen and Maurice FitzGerald. Having little hope of inheritance from his father’s estate he had become a knight under Strongbow in Chepstow. Like his master he was desperate to win renown and wealth in Ireland. He could not have foreseen that his task in 1170, with only a small army of 120 at his side, would give him the opportunity to show his talent for war.

Giraldus Cambrensis describes Raymond as: “…very stout and slightly above the middle height, his hair was yellow and curly, and he had large, grey, round eyes. His nose was rather prominent, his countenance high-coloured, cheerful and pleasant. Although he was somewhat corpulent he was so active and lively that the encumbrance was not a blemish or inconvenience.”

Unlike the dominating and impressive Duke William who led the Normans at Hastings, it would be the largely unremarkable frontiersman Raymond the Fat who would lead the Normans at Baginbun.

The date on which he landed in southern County Wexford was probably around the first week of May. Then called Dun Domhnall (‘Donal’s Fort’), it now bears the name of Baginbun Point. The name itself – Bheag an Bun in Irish – is probably taken from the river inlet a little way south of the village of Fethard-on-Sea on the Hook Peninsula for it means ‘mouth of the small river’. Beaching their ship on the beach to the eastern side of the promontory, the Norman-Welsh army under Raymond – as had William at Pevensey – immediately began constructing an earth and timber fortification to defend the small headland. Behind their wall Raymond’s men corralled as many cattle as they could steal from local families in an area of about two acres. It was these activities that got the attention of Waterford.

Waterford had been occupied by Norse and Danes on and off since 853. Throughout its turbulent three hundred year history the inhabitants of the town had married into local native families and had taken on many of their customs including Christianity and the Irish language. They called themselves Ostmen – the men from the east. Like the other cities such as Dublin and Limerick, Waterford had become an economic centre for trade and had quickly attracted the greedy eyes of local magnates. On a number of occasions the sovereignty of the city had been lost to the most powerful families in Munster. By 1170, Waterford seems to have been vassal to the O’Brien dynasty, but their troubles with both the McCarthy and O’Connor families probably allowed the Ostmen to re-establish their independence to some extent.

What is certain is that they identified Raymond de Carew’s presence at Baginbun as a threat and under Ragnall Mac Giolla Mhuire they assembled an army of some 3,000 warriors to destroy his fort. The Normans found themselves outnumbered by at least twenty to one.

“Their small band of soldiers was unable to resist the attack of the multitudes to which they were opposed. Retreating to their camp, they were so hotly pursued by the enemy that some of them entered pell-mell with the fugitives before the barricade could be closed,” Giraldus wrote of the battle by the creek.

“Raymond, perceiving the strait to which his party was reduced, and that the peril was imminent, faced about bravely and cut down with his sword on the very threshold the foremost of the enemy who were forcing an entrance.

“Thus nobly retracing his steps while he dealt a terrible blow and shouted his war cry, he encouraged his followers to stand on their defence and struck terror into his enemy’s ranks. The enemy took to flight and, dispersing themselves over the country, were pursued and slaughtered in such numbers that upwards of five hundred quickly fell by the sword.”

Metal plate noting the significance
of the site at Baginbun.

Giraldus had visited Ireland some fifteen years after the events at Baginbun and would have heard the story perhaps from some of those who had fought there. He did not mention part of the story which appeared in ‘The Song of Dermot and the Earl’, a later narrative from the early thirteenth century, which described how a herd of cattle was driven into the Waterford army by the Normans. Stunned by the impact of the stampeding mass of animals, it was this that allowed Raymond to set the enemy to flight.

At the creek of Baginbun, Ireland was lost and won.

While it was an incredible victory against all the odds I don’t believe that the Normans’ triumph at Baginbun was the significant moment that the couplet insists. Unlike Hastings (or even Bannockburn), the victory did not decide the future of a nation. Ireland could not be won be simply beating one city-state – there were over a hundred more petty-kingdoms in addition to Waterford and five provincial kings fighting to be recognised as High King.

When he finally did arrive in Ireland on August 23rd 1170, Strongbow – the man most closely identified with the conquest – did not even land at Baginbun. Instead he made straight for Waterford, alighting at Passage East on the far side of the River Barrow. From there he marched to the walls of the city and put it under siege. Raymond’s victory had weakened Waterford, but little else had been accomplished on a strategic level.

What the Battle of Baginbun did do was to give Raymond the Fat a victory. From that victory grew confidence in his skills and soon he would earn great renown amongst the desperate men who had crossed the sea to conduct the Norman invasion of Ireland. By 1174, Raymond had become an almost mythical warrior amongst the colonists thanks to his audacious victories in Strongbow’s name. There would come a time when armies would refuse to march unless it was under his command. He had gone from a minor knight under a disgraced frontier baron to a lord of war. Ireland was not lost or won at Baginbun, but the glory from its victory gave Raymond the Fat the opportunity to lead the campaign for the future of that nation.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Ruadh Butler is the author of Swordland and Lord of the Sea Castle which is published by Accent Press on June 1st. The series tells the story of the Norman knights from Wales and their part in the first Norman invasion of Ireland. Catch up with Ruadh at www.ruadhbutler.com or on Facebook at www.facebook.com/ruadhbutler.

Swordland
Lord of the Sea Castle

Commodore John Barry - Father of the United States Navy

by Arthur Russell

John Barry, who is regarded by many as the Father of the United States Navy, was born son of James and Ellen Barry, a Roman Catholic tenant farmer family at Ballysampson on Our Lady’s Island, in the parish of Tacumshane in County Wexford, Ireland. Here within sight of the Atlantic Ocean, which was destined to feature so largely in his future life, John’s parents James and Ellen and their young family eked a poverty-stricken living from a small farm rented from a local Anglo-Irish landlord. Inevitably — and as experienced by many families all over Ireland of the day — the farm's rent fell into arrears and the Barry family were evicted and forced to move to the nearby port town of Rosslare. Here, young John was employed by his uncle Nicholas Barry who owned a small fishing boat, and it was in Rosslare that John fell in love with the sea and its ways.

Ireland of the mid 18^th century smouldered with resentment against the ruling class and government, many of whom were descendants of the Cromwellian “settlement” of Ireland of the previous century. This and subsequent imposition of anti-Catholic Penal Laws of the early 18^th century, meant that families like the Barrys were seriously disadvantaged in terms of civil rights, land ownership, access to education and many professions. The town of Wexford itself had recent bitter memories of Oliver Cromwell’s visitation to the area in 1649, when some 3,000 unarmed men, women and children had been slaughtered by Roundhead soldiers in the aftermath of the capture of the town in what was an extension of the English Civil War to Ireland. Before the end of the 18^th century (during the United Irishmen’s rebellion of 1798), continuing resentment in the rural population would manifest itself in a bloody conflict which affected South-eastern Ireland more than any other part of Ireland, resulting in thousands of deaths among John Barry’s friends and neighbours in Wexford and its hinterland.

John Barry goes to sea

In 1761, aged 15, John left Ireland as a cabin-boy on a ship bound for Jamaica. One version of his life-story tells that his first landfall in North America was his arrival in Philadelphia as second mate on a trading ship sometime in 1762. Due to the city’s relatively liberal attitude towards Catholicism and the fact that it was the foremost maritime centre of the colony, John made Philadelphia his home. 

By 1766, 21 year old Barry, by now an impressive 6 feet 4 inches tall with a physique to match, was given his first command on the schooner Barbados sailing from his adopted city. In 1768 he married Mary Cleary. Sadly, seven years into the marriage, Mary died in 1774, aged 29. To add to John's grief, her death ocurred while he was at sea. In 1777 he married Sarah Keen Austin in Old Christchurch, by the founder and Rector of the American Episcopal Church, Reverend William White. Sarah (called Sally by her friends), subsequently converted to Catholicism and the Barrys were active members of various Philadelphia’s Catholic communities (St Joseph’s, St Mary’s and St Augustine’s), during their married lives. They had no children, but took over the rearing of two boys of John’s deceased sister Eleanor in Wexford. The boys, Michael and Patrick Hayes, were transported from Ireland by Captain John Rossiter, a neighbour of John’s from Rosslare, who subsequently resumed being neighbour to the Barrys on the same street in Philadelphia.

(The Rossiter family plot lies alongside that of the Barrys in Old St Mary’s churchyard in Philadelphia).

The America the Barrys now called home, was a thriving colony of the expanding British Empire which had by then effectively seen off the French challenge to British hegemony in North America.

Storm clouds gather – The American War of Independence

But all was not well with the relationship between the burgeoning colony and the mother country. The 1760’s saw the imposition of a series of taxes by the Imperial parliament in London, which raised the issue of the lack of representation and consultation with those being impacted by the implementation of such impositions. As tensions rose, the dispatch of Imperial troops across the Atlantic to the colonies increased rather than decreased opposition to what colonists were increasingly coming to regard as unrepresentative government. The most notable incident which occurred in March 1770, was the Boston Massacre which saw 5 civilians shot by British soldiers. The outcome of this resulted in most of the unpopular taxes being scrapped followed by a marked reduction in tensions.But a Rubicon between mother country parliament and those it was determined to govern, had been crossed.

The situation was soon brought to a head by the incident called the Boston Tea Party where a group of colonists dumped caskets of tea into the sea from ships in Boston Harbour. The commodity was the property of the East India Tea Company and subject to the residual Tea Tax which had not been abolished. The official reaction set in motion a series of events which culminated in the 13 North American colonies forming the First Continental Congress in 1774 to represent their growing list of grievances to the King and his Parliament in London. Instead of engaging with this body, the Imperial response was to send more troops across the Atlantic, thereby making war inevitable. The first shots of the American War were fired during 1775 and was followed on July 4^th 1776 by the Declaration of Independence which declared the North American colonies’ desire to go their own way.

The British response was to continue a military build-up.

John joins the fight for independence

John Barry was charged with preparing the First Continental Navy ships for the war to come, a task he did so well he was given a Captain’s commission in the newly formed Continental Navy by the Marine Committee. This was signed by President of Congress, John Hancock in March 1776. John’s first command was the brig Lexington. A month later he recorded the first capture of a British ship by a regularly commissioned American ship, after which he was awarded command of the 32 gun Effingham, then under construction in Philadelphia.

At this point he was approached by persons who supported the British, with an attractive offer of a ship’s command in His Majesty’s Navy, sweetened with a substantial financial bribe, to change his allegiance by defecting with the Effingham. It can be speculated that his hard memories of his deprived childhood in Ireland under British rule had a significant part to play in his indignant rejection of such a tempting offer. For better or worse, John Barry committed himself to the newly declared Republic and gruffly “spurned the eyedee of being a treater (= traitor)”.

On Christmas night (Dec 25^th – 26^th) 1776, at a time when the colonist cause and morale was at its lowest, Barry’s maritime expertise was utilised to ferry the revolutionary army across the Delaware river without alerting the British. This was the prequel to Washington’s morale boosting victory at the battles of Trenton and Princeton. 

In 1777 the British attacked Philadelphia, causing the Maritime Committee to order the scuttling of all its ships including the Effingham. Barry objected to this decision and asserted his readiness to defend the young fleet. In the event he was overruled but not without attracting the enmity of some of the Committee, particularly one Francis Hopkinson, who accused him of insubordination. Now without a ship, he had to rely on small craft to successfully disrupt the British supply lines, and did this with considerable success. In 1778, he led a group of seven barges and longboats in the capture of two British sloops and one schooner.

In August of that year he heard the sad news that his brother Patrick’s ship the Union, had disappeared after leaving the port of Bordeaux, France and was never seen again.

During a naval encounter off the coast of Newfoundland on May 28^th 1781, Barry’s ship, the Alliance, engaged and captured two British sloops, Atlanta and Trespassy. During the 4 hour encounter, Barry sustained shoulder injuries which necessitated him leaving deck to have his wounds dressed before he could accept the surrender of the surviving British Captain Edwards.

Barry has the distinction of capturing the largest amount of prize money from a single voyage. The last sea battle of the war was on March 10^th 1783, during Barry’s return from Havana as escort to the Spanish ship Duc de Lauzon which was carrying 72,000 Spanish silver dollars destined for the Continental Congress. Near Cape Canaveral Barry’s ship had to deal with the attack of the British frigate Sybil, which was lucky to escape having had its rigging, mast and hull badly damaged by Barry’s guns.

The war of independence over, Barry returned to maritime commerce in partnership with his young nephew, Patrick Hayes. Over a number of years he opened new trade routes between Philadelphia and China and the other parts of the Orient.

Final Years of service – establishing the US Navy

During the 1790’s, Secretary of War Henry Knox with the endorsement of the Senate, engaged Barry as Senior Captain of the Federal navy in establishing the American Navy as a permanent entity to defend the young republic from outside attack from pirates and others, most notably former allies France; though this war was never officially declared. (it is now referred to as a “Quasi War”!). Barry himself was in command of ships that captured several French merchantmen. His post was head squadron commander (Commodore) of the US Naval Station at Guadaloupe (1798-1801). His appointment was further reconfirmed by President Washington in a formal ceremony that took place on Washington's birthday in February 1797. The President stated he had special trust and confidence "in Commodore Barry's patriotism, valor, fidelity and abilities." He or the infant Republic never had reason to regret the selection of Barry as head of the Navy. He played a vital role in establishing the earliest traditions of the US Navy - devotion to duty, honoring the flag, protecting the rights of the sovereign nation which was only beginning to find its way in the world.

During this “senior” phase of his naval career, Barry crucially proposed the creation of a Department of the Navy having separate Cabinet status from the Secretary of War. This was put into effect with the formation of the United States Department of the Navy in 1798. He also proposed the establishment of government-operated navy yards to service the needs of the developing Naval service.

Many of the heroes of the War of 1812, the first war the Republic had to engage in; were trained under Barry during this period. This along with his illustrious active service record from the war, earned from contemporaries the title "Father of the Navy".

Note - This particular epithet first appeared in a posthumous biography in Nicholas Biddle’s literary journal, Portfolio in 1813. The title is shared (?) with another early naval hero, John Paul Jones, who saw action during the war of Independence and who died in 1794.

John Barry’s death ( Sept 12^th 1803)

John’s last day of active service is recorded as being March 6^th 1801. Throughout his life, he suffered from an underlying asthmatic condition which was the immediate cause of his death at the age of 58 years in September 1803. His death occured in his home at Strawberry Hill, located 3 miles north of Philadelphia. He was buried with full military honours, in the churchyard of Old St Mary’s.

Following is an extract from John Barry’s epitaph, written by Dr Benjamin Rush, a signatory of the American Declaration of Independence:

He was born in the County of Wexford in Ireland

But America was the object of his patriotism

And the theatre of his usefulness

In the Revolutionary War which established the

Independence of the United States he

Bore an early and active part as a captain in their

Navy and after became its Commander-in-Chief

He fought often and once bled in the cause of Freedom

President J F Kennedy lays a wreath at the statue of John Barry
on the occasion of his visit to Wexford, Ireland in June 1963.

Arthur Russell is the Author of ‘Morgallion’, a novel set in medieval Ireland during the Invasion of Ireland (1314), by the Scottish army under the leadership of Edward deBruce, who history considers to be the last crowned King of Ireland. It tells the story of Cormac MacLochlainn, a young man from the Gaelic crannóg community of Moynagh and how he and his family endured and survived that turbulent period of history.

‘Morgallion’ has been awarded the indieBRAG Medallion and is available in paperback and e-book form.

More information available on website - www.morgallion.com