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The British IslesA History of Four Nations

Second edition

hugh kearney

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Cambridge University Press978-1-107-62389-7 - The British Isles: A History of Four Nations: Second EditionHugh KearneyFrontmatterMore information

http://www.cambridge.org/9781107623897

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C© Cambridge University Press 1989, 2006

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First published 1989Reprinted 1993

Reprinted 1998, 2000, 2004

Printed in the United Kingdom by Clays, St Ives plc.

Cambridge University Press has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of URLsfor external or third-party internet websites referred to in this publication, and does notguarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate.

Second edition 2006

A catalogue record for this is available from the British Library

Canto edition 1995

Third printing 2008

ISBN 978-1-107-62389-7 Paperback

Canto Classics edition 2012

University Printing House, Cambridge CB2 8BS, United Kingdom

Cambridge University Press is part of the University of Cambridge.

It furthers the University’s mission by disseminating knowledge in the pursuit of education learning and research at the highest international levels of excellence.

3rd printing 2015






For my wife, Kate






In this Ocean there happen to be two very large islands which are calledBritannic, Albion and Ierna, bigger than any we have mentioned.

Aristotle, De Mundo c.iv






Contents

List of illustrations page viiiList of maps xiPreface to the first edition xiiiPreface to the second edition xvMap: the British Isles xviii

Introduction 1

1 The Celtic societies of the British Isles 13

2 The impact of Rome on the British Isles 27

3 The post-Roman centuries 41

4 The Vikings and the fall of the Old Order 60

5 The Norman and post-Norman ascendancy 92

6 The decline of the post-Norman empire 132

7 The making of an English empire 157

8 The remaking of an empire 189

9 The Britannic melting pot 219

10 The rise of ethnic politics 251

11 Between the wars 280

12 Withdrawal from empire 294

13 Post-imperial Britain: post-nationalist Ireland 304

Afterword 322Selected reading list 325Index 341

vii






Illustrations

1. Horse trapping in Yorkshire. ©C The Trustees of TheBritish Museum page 15

2. Horse trapping in Co. Galway. ©C National Museum ofIreland 16

3. Traprain Law hill-fort. ©C RCAHMS (John DewarCollection) 20

4. Hill-fort at Moel-y-Gaer. ©C Cambridge UniversityCollection of Air Photographs 25

5. Portchester Castle. ©C English Heritage Photo Library,Photographer: Jonathan Bailey 31

6. Hadrian’s Wall. ©C www.britainonview.com 337. Caerwent. ©C Cambridge University Collection of Air

Photographs 378. Emain Macha. ©C Crown Copyright/MOD. Reproduced

with the permission of the Controller of Her Majesty’sStationery Office 46

9. The Sutton Hoo ship burial. ©C The Trustees of TheBritish Museum 51

10. The Ardagh Chalice. ©C National Museum of Ireland 5311. Dumbarton fort. ©C Cambridge University Collection of

Air Photographs 5512. Commemoration stone from Lindisfarne. ©C English

Heritage Photo Library 6313. The Cross of Cong. ©C National Museum of Ireland 7014. Viking chessmen from the Isle of Lewis. ©C The Trustees

of The British Museum 7315. Odd’s Cross slab from the Isle of Man. ©C Manx National

Heritage 8316. The tomb of Edward the Confessor, Westminster Abbey.

©C Dean and Chapter of Westminster 9317. The Norman cathedral on the Rock of Cashel.

©C Cambridge University Collection of Air Photographs 96

viii






List of illustrations ix

18. The great motte of Urr. ©C Cambridge UniversityCollection of Air Photographs 112

19. Chepstow Castle. ©C Crown Copyright/MOD.Reproduced with the permission of the Controller of HerMajesty’s Stationery Office 125

20. St George’s Chapel, Windsor. ©C Reproduced bypermission of the Dean and Canons of Windsor 135

21. The battle of Bannockburn. ©C By permission of TheBritish Library / Add. 47682 143

22. The seals of Owain Glyndwr. ©C National Museums andGalleries of Wales 146

23. Portrait of Henry VIII. ©C National Portrait Gallery,London 160

24. Mary, Queen of Scots (1541–87), monument byCornelius and William Cure. ©C Dean and Chapter ofWestminster 174

25. The Bible in Welsh. Bishop William Morgan’s Welsh Biblefrom 1588. ©C By permission of the National Library ofWales 178

26. Slave ship. ©C National Museums Liverpool, MerseysideMaritime Museum 191

27. Statue of Robert Burns (1759–96). ©C www.britainonview.com 208

28. The United Irishmen 1798, portrait of leader Henry JoyMcCracken. ©C NMGNI 2005. Photograph reproducedwith the kind permission of the Trustees of the NationalMuseums and Galleries of Northern Ireland 213

29. The Palace of Westminster. ©C www.britain onview.com 22030. Statue of Caractacus. ©C Guildhall Art Gallery,

Corporation of London 22731. Statue of Oliver Cromwell (1599–1658). ©C www.britain

onview.com / Doug McKinlay 23332. Belfast postcard – ‘No Home Rule’. ©C NMGNI 2005.

Photograph reproduced with the kind permission of theTrustees of the National Museums and Galleries ofNorthern Ireland 255

33. Stormont and the Edward Carson statue.©C HarrisonsPhotos.com 261

34. Eamonn De Valera (1882–1975). ©C D. H. Davison / TheIrish Picture Library 282

35. Hunger March. ©C Reproduced by kind permission ofJ. Batstone. Source: South Wales Coalfield Collection,Swansea University 291






x List of illustrations

36. Bobby Sands mural. ©C Kelvin Boyes Photography 29837. The Black Watch. ©C www.britain onview.com 30238. Muslim community life in Britain. ©C Getty Images 30639. The new Parliament Building in Scotland. ©C Keith

Hunter / arcblue.com 31040. Millennium Building, Cardiff. ©C Billy Stock /

Photolibrary Wales 317






Maps

1. The principal routes by which knowledge of La Tene artstyles spread to Britain and Ireland. From Facing theOcean, by Barry Cunliffe, Oxford University Press, 2001.By permission of Oxford University Press. page 28

2. The tribes of North Britain (names from Ptolemy) in theearly Roman period. Map drawn by Hanni Bailey fromCeltic Britain by Charles Thomas, Thames & Hudson Ltd,London 34

3. Celts and Romans, early first to fifth centuries ad AfterChristopher Haigh, ed., The Cambridge HistoricalEncyclopedia of Great Britain and Ireland (Cambridge,1985), p. 11. 36

4. Celts and Saxons, early fifth to late eighth centuries. AfterChristopher Haigh, ed., The Cambridge HistoricalEncyclopedia of Great Britain and Ireland (Cambridge,1985), p. 55. 38

5. Tribal migrations leading to the dismemberment ofRoman Britain. Map drawn by John Woodcock from CelticBritain by Charles Thomas, Thames & Hudson Ltd,London 42

6. British river names. ‘The Celtic element: map of Britishriver names’ is reproduced with the kind permission of theestate of Kenneth Jackson and the publisher, Four CourtsPress, from Language and History in Early Britain (Dublin,2000) 44

7. The distribution of pagan Saxon cemeteries 478. The impact of the Vikings, late eighth to early eleventh

centuries 619. Scandinavian settlement in northern Britain. From Facing

the Ocean, by Barry Cunliffe, Oxford University Press,2001. By permission of Oxford University Press 86

xi






xii List of maps

10. The boundary agreed by Alfred and Guthrum, c. 880,between England and the Danelaw and the distribution ofScandinavian place-names. From Facing the Ocean, byBarry Cunliffe, Oxford University Press, 2001. Bypermission of Oxford University Press 88

11. The Viking settlement of Ireland. From Facing the Ocean,by Barry Cunliffe, Oxford University Press, 2001. Bypermission of Oxford University Press 90

12. The Norman Conquests, 1066–1169 9413. The distribution of motte and bailey castles in Britain 9914. The Angevin empire/the post-Norman empire. From

Facing the Ocean, by Barry Cunliffe, Oxford UniversityPress, 2001. By permission of Oxford University Press 128

15. The English empire, 1536–1690 15816. The railway age during the nineteenth century 222






Preface to the first edition

In the course of writing this book I came to owe a great deal to vari-ous friends and colleagues. In particular I wish to thank Rees Davies ofUniversity College, Aberystwyth, David Dumville of CambridgeUniversity and Harry Dickinson of the University of Edinburgh for thetime they gave to reading various portions of the typescript. I am espe-cially grateful to the Master and Fellows of Peterhouse, Cambridge, andto the Governing Body of the University of Wales, who awarded me vis-iting fellowships in 1985. My stay in Aberystwyth was made particu-larly enjoyable thanks to the hospitality of Rees Davies, Gareth Williams,John Davidson, Martin Fitzpatrick and their wives. I wish also to expressmy gratitude to the University of Pittsburgh for granting me leave ofabsence during the Fall Term, 1985. At various times, I benefited fromthe encouragement of Janelle Greenberg of the University of Pittsburgh,John Pocock of Johns Hopkins University, Joseph Lee of University Col-lege, Cork, James Shiel of the University of Sussex and Lord Dacre ofGlanton, erstwhile Master of Peterhouse. Brian Wormald, my friend andold supervisor at Peterhouse (1942–3), gave me many hours of his timeforty years later. James Shiel provided the epigraph. Like many others Ihave incurred a debt to Linda Randall, Hazel Dunn and Maureen Ashby.Mr William Davies of Cambridge University Press has displayed patienceand sympathy beyond the call of duty. My deepest debt, however, is toKate, my wife for over thirty years, who encouraged me to persevere inan enterprise which underwent several strange metamorphoses.

Bury St Edmunds hugh kearney

xiii






Preface to the second edition

On St George’s Day 1993 John Major, Prime Minister of the UnitedKingdom, addressed a group of the Conservative party as follows:

Fifty years from now Britain will still be the country of long shadows on county[cricket] grounds, warm beer, invincible green suburbs, dog lovers and poolsfillers and – as George Orwell said – ‘old maids bicycling to Holy Communionthrough the morning mist’ – and – if we get our way Shakespeare still read inschool. Britain will survive unamendable in all essentials. (quoted Richard Weight,Patriots: National Identity in Britain 1940–2000, London, 2002, p. 666)

This passage illustrates vividly the type of Anglo-centricity which I crit-icise in The British Isles. John Major refers to Britain, an island whichencompasses Wales and Scotland, but the ‘Britain’ which he evokes isvery much an idealised version of southern England. There is no hinthere of the industrialised cities of northern England, South Wales andsouth-west Scotland with their commitment to football grounds set ingrimly urban surroundings. Nor is there any hint of the way in whichnew ethnic groups are changing the ‘essentials’ of Britain, especially inthe capital, London. Missing also from Major’s nostalgic musing is anysense that the most determinedly British element of the United King-dom is to be found in Northern Ireland, where in some Unionist areaspavements are painted red, white and blue.

The Southern England of John Major’s vision undoubtedly exists. Itis, however, merely part of a wider United Kingdom of Great Britainand Northern Ireland, whose history until recently also included that of‘the British Isles’ as a whole. The various histories of Australia, Canadaand New Zealand all reflect the impact of a wider ‘British Isles’ historyin which English, Welsh, Irish and Scots ethnicities have interacted withone another. The history of the United States is also linked with thatof ‘the British Isles’ from which Scots, Irish and Ulster Scots as wellas Anglo-Saxons emigrated. Finally, immigration from the wider Britishempire of India, Pakistan, Africa and the Caribbean is now changing whatMajor calls the ‘essentials’ of Britain. ‘The old maids bicycling to Holy

xv






xvi Preface to the second edition

Communion through the morning mist’ are very much an embattledspecies. Indeed, in modern Britain, there are as many worshippers attend-ing the mosque as those the parish church.

What is becoming clearer is an awareness that the United Kingdomis not a nation state with a unique past (a ‘sonderweg’) but a multi-ethnic conglomerate whose shifting patterns of historical developmentresemble those of states such as Spain or the Habsburg Monarchy. TheEnglish scholar Gerald Brenan wrote a classic work entitled The SpanishLabyrinth (1940) which analysed the interaction of the various ‘nations’of what we call ‘Spain’. It is this, in my view, which should be our modelfor histories of the United Kingdom rather than a comforting but nowsimple-minded recourse to ‘the Englishman and his History’. To say this,of course, is to take part in a debate which has a long history. (It maybe followed in Hugh MacDougall’s brilliant short book Racial Myth inEnglish History: Trojans, Teutons and Anglo-Saxons (1982.)

The title of this book is ‘The British Isles’, not ‘Britain’, in order toemphasise the multi-ethnic character of our intertwined histories. Almostinevitably many within the Irish Republc find it objectionable, much asBasques or Catalans resent the use of the term ‘Spain’. As Seamus Heaneyput it when he objected to being included in an anthology of BritishPoetry:

Don’t be surprisedIf I demur, for, be advisedMy passport’s green.No glass of ours was ever raisedTo toast the Queen.

(Open Letter, Field dayPamphlet no.2 1983)

But what is the alternative to ‘The British Isles?’ Attempts to encouragethe use of such terms as ‘The Atlantic Archipelago’ and ‘The Isles’ havemet with criticism because of their vagueness. Perhaps one solution is touse ‘the British Isles’ in inverted commas (‘quotes’ in American usage).All this is not to say that a ‘British Isles’ approach is the only way of dealingwith their complex interrelated history. It is misleading, for example, toignore the different ways in which the four nations have been involvedin Europe. Irish missionaries in particular played a key role during theso-called Dark Ages. After the Norman Conquest, England and, later,Scotland were closely involved in France. During the Reformation andCounter-Reformation period, England, Ireland and Scotland were alllinked with Europe in various ways, although the experience of Irelandwas very different from that of the other two nations. At a later period,






Preface to the second edition xvii

the impact of the French Revolution was much greater in Ireland thanelsewhere in the archipelago. Thus a ‘British Isles’ approach should notbe taken as ruling out a European emphasis as the basis of alternativeinterpretations. At the time of writing, for example, it looks as if theRepublic of Ireland is moving towards a more European future than thatof a United Kingdom which is still coping with the challenges of its post-imperial past.

In preparing this new edition, I should like to record my thanks for theirhelp to John Morrison, Proinsias O Drisceoil, Rees Davies and GarethWilliams as well as to Michael Watson, Isabelle Dambricourt and CarrieCheek of Cambridge University Press, and to my keen-eyed copy-editor, Sue Dickinson. As before my wife, Kate, made an indispensablecontribution.

Bardwell, 2005 hugh kearney






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