Beginning in the mid-1200s, there began an amazing "Gaelic Resurgence" and a "Norman Retreat" that reversed and overwhelmed Norman advances in three separate areas:
(1) military dominance
(2) culture
(3) government

Thus by the mid-1400s:
(1) the Gaelic lords had taken back over half of their lost territory, so that Norman-held land (including the "Pale"), once 75% of the island, was reduced to about 35%.
(2) the Normans had adopted the Gaelic language, dress and culture, becoming so assimilated that they were described as "more Irish than the Irish".
(3) the descendants of the original Normans, now more appropriately called Norman-Irish, were vigorously resisting two of feudalism's principal tenets, its emphasis on a strong monarch and its system of land ownership.

For all three components of the Gaelic Resurgence, there was a single root cause: The Normans never settled in Ireland in sufficient numbers to fully implement and protect their military conquest. In 1349 the already inadequate ratio of Normans to Gaels was further reduced by the Black Death (bubonic plague), which devastated the relatively crowded villages, where the Normans and Anglos lived, but hit less hard in pastoral areas, where the Gaelic-Irish lived.

The military component of the Gaelic Resurgence should not have been surprising. During their advance, the Norman armies always had been vastly outnumbered, but they nevertheless prevailed because they had better equipment and superior military skills. Over time, however, the Gaelic lords upgraded their equipment and military skills, at which time Gaelic numerical superiority asserted itself. More importantly, the Gaelic lords also "imported" professional soldiers from Scotland, those magnificent fighting troops of Norse-Gaelic stock known as the "gallowglasses", who proved to be better fighting men than the over-extended Normans. Callann (1261) and Ath an Kip (1270) were the decisive battles.

At Callann (1261), the MacCarthys were the heroes for the Gaelic-Irish. Already confined to the south-west corner of Ireland, the MacCarthys decided to stand firm against further Norman expansion. They confronted Fitz Thomas, the Norman, at Callann, in the mountainous country near Kenmare, and defeated him decisively. Thereafter the Norman-Irish found themselves unable to expand southward from the upper half of Kerry, while the MacCarthys and O'Sullivans reigned supreme in the south-west corner of Ireland.

At Ath an Kip (1270), an equally important battle in the north, Aedh O'Connor and his "gallowglass" mercenaries carried the day for the Gaelic-Irish. The Normans -- represented by the royal justiciar and the powerful Walter de Burgo – decided to expand even further into Ulster, and mounted a huge army which (according to the Irish annals) included "all the foreigners of Erin with them". But O'Connor was ready for them. From Scotland, he had brought in "gallowglasses" to supplement his own army. The two armies met at the ford of Ath an Kip, where the Norman-Irish were routed, leaving arms and suits of mail scattered on the field of battle; in the words of the annalist, 'no greater defeat had been given to the English in Ireland up to that time'.

Callann and Ath an Kip turned the tide. Prior to those battles, the Normans held about 75% of the island, including the "Pale". Afterward, the Normans gradually were forced to surrender back more than half of their gains *. By the mid-1400s, the Gaelic lords had taken back all but about 35% of the island.

The military resurgence paved the way for similar Gaelic Resurgence in culture and also in government. The cultural and governmental resurgence was surprising, because each contrasted so dramatically with the Norman experience in England. In England, after the Battle of Hastings (1066), the French speaking military aristocracy installed by the Normans literally destroyed Anglo-Saxon culture and forcibly imposed the Norman-feudal way of life, including the feudal form of government. In Ireland, however, Gaelic culture prevailed.

Within a few generations, descendants of the original Normans gradually distanced themselves from the Norman-Anglo way of life and adopted the Gaelic language, dress and culture, becoming so thoroughly assimilated into Gaelic society that they were commonly described as "more Irish than the Irish". The Crown was cognizant of this dramatic assimilation process, and in an  attempt  to  arrest  it, caused  enactment of the Statutes of Kilkenny (1366), which prohibited Norman-Irish from speaking Gaelic, dressing like the Gaelic Irish, riding a horse bareback (like the Gaelic Irish), marrying Gaelic Irish, and/or engaging in a wide range of other activities identified as Irish. However, the Statutes were largely ignored.

The cultural component of the Gaelic resurgence was so complete that when Henry VIII was declared King of Ireland in 1541 -- 270 years after Ath an Chip -- the proclamation was read in Gaelic, because only one of the Norman-Irish lords spoke the King's English.

The cultural component of the Gaelic Resurgence is readily explainable by the fact that from the outset, the Norman lords married into Gaelic families. Strongbow himself set the trend by marrying Aoife, MacMurrough’s daughter. De Lacy married Rose, daughter of Rory O'Connor, de Courcy married Affreca, daughter of the king of Man, and so on. The children of these marriages were half Norman, half Gaelic, and presumably bilingual. Within several generations, the cultures had merged, and since the surrounding culture was predominantly Gaelic, descendants became more Gaelic than Norman.

The Gaelic Resurgence in culture was aided by the fact that although the Normans were pragmatic tyrants on matters of administration and government, they had no deep seated cultural roots of their own, having migrated from Scandinavia to Normandy, then to Wales and finally to Ireland, all in a period of only 150 years.

The feudal form of government and land holding, which the Normans originally installed in Ireland, was also undermined by the Gaelic Resurgence, although the decline of feudalism in this period was hardly unique to Ireland.

Feudal government was a highly efficient form of centralized government under which a strong monarch used his control over land to exercise tight discipline over his subjects through a highly structured "top down" pyramid. The feudal land system placed the king at the pinnacle of a pyramid, and peasants at the base, with land as the key to power, status and affluence. Peasants (at the base of the pyramid) worked the land and paid some species of tribute (e.g., military service and/or share of crops) to their landlords, Norman lords, who in turn owed allegiance and service either to overlords or directly to the king, who was treated as the master landlord of all land within the empire. The feudal land system was specifically designed to foster a strong centralized government under a strong monarch. Indeed, tight control by the monarch was a defining trait of feudalism. Feudalism was developed in Normandy, and was brought to England and Ireland by the Normans.

In Ireland, by early in the 14th Century, the Norman-Irish lords -- descendants of the original Normans who installed feudalism -- were actively resisting two of feudalism's principal tenets, the strong monarchy and the system of land ownership that fostered such power in the Crown. It is fair to say that feudalism never truly took root in Ireland, except perhaps in parts of the "Pale".

The resistance of the Norman-Irish lords to strong centralized government actually began fifty years before other components of the Gaelic Resurgence, during the reign of John I (1199-1216). It was part of a much larger revolt of English (and Irish) barons against John's effort to increase the power of the Crown at the expense of the English (and Irish) barons. The unfortunate John, weakened by his earlier loss of Normandy, lost the power struggle and was instead forced to sign the Magna Carta (1215), incorporating the barons' demands for increased power. The Magna Carta was extended to Norman-Irish lords in 1217.

Thereafter, the barons reorganized themselves from an mere advisory body into the Parliament, and over the next 425 years seldom missed an opportunity to grab power away from the Crown, eventually leading to the demise of classic feudalism.

The feudal land system also was a constant source of conflict. The Norman-Irish  lords  were  still  resisting  it  late  in  the  reign  of Queen Elizabeth I (r. 1558-1603), who finally succeeded in coercing reluctant Norman-Irish lords into converting their lands into feudal manors through a "surrender and re-grant" program under which the lords would convey ("surrender") their land to the Crown, on condition that the Crown would re-grant them the same land under liberal terms and conditions consistent with feudal land practices. the mid-1300s, three extraordinary Norman-Irish earldoms emerged: Desmond and Kildare (each headed by a branch of the Fitzgeralds) and Ormond (headed by the Butlers). These and other Norman-Irish lords were even more secure than English barons in challenging the Crown, because English monarchs never were able to devote to Ireland the resources and attention required to maintain control. Instead, during virtually the entire period 1294 to 1485, the Crown was distracted from Irish affairs by the Hundred Years' War (1338-1453) ** and the War of Roses (1455-85). This was one of the principal reasons the feudal form of government failed in Ireland, while succeeding at least temporarily in England.

In 1394-95, King Richard II, who turned out to be the last of the Angevin kings, visited Ireland and described its population as comprising: (1) the "wild Irish", (2) the "English rebels" (3) and the "loyal English". Richard was able to hammer out a power sharing agreement with the Norman-Irish lords, but it triggered a series of skirmishes, and in one of them, Richard's presumptive heir, Mortimer, was killed. Richard returned to Ireland seeking vengeance, but while he was away from England, his throne was usurped by Henry Bollingbroke (Henry IV), who eventually executed Richard.

Bollingbroke's usurpation, which led to the War of Roses between the English Houses of York and Lancaster, impacted Ireland dramatically. Essentially, the resulting turmoil rendered the Crown virtually powerless in Ireland. Thus between 1399 and 1534, governance of Ireland fell largely into the hands of Norman-Irish lords who were considered relatively loyal to the Crown. Initially it was the Fitzgeralds of Desmond, but after 1468, governance fell to the Fitzgeralds of Kildare, whose tenure was called the "Kildare Supremacy". For almost 40 years, the eighth Earl of Kildare (the "Great Earl") functioned as the uncrowned King of Ireland. He was succeeded by his son, Garrett Og.

Elsewhere in Europe, meanwhile, gunpowder had been introduced into warfare in the mid-1300s, and the printing press became a commercial success in 1450. Most importantly, demands clearly were growing for reform of the Catholic Church, which had become the object of criticism by virtue of the Inquisitions, the sale of indulgences, and the Pope's powerful influence in affairs of state. (However, it was not until 1517 that Martin Luther, the founder of the Protestant Reformation, formally broke with the Catholic Church.


PART 5 FOOTNOTES:

* The resurgence naturally experienced periods of fallback, along with the periods of progress. In 1315, apparently at the invitation of some Gaelic lords, Robert Bruce, King of Scots who had ousted the English from Scotland, dispatched his brother Edward and 6,000 troops to Ireland, where Edward's forces proved unstoppable for over three years, after which he was crowned "King of Erin" (1316). But in 1318, at Faughart, Edward was slain in his only losing battle, following which his troops scattered and returned to Scotland. Edward's campaign seemed momentous at the time, but turned out to be a mere footnote in Irish history.

** The Hundred Years' War is the name traditionally given to the Anglo-French conflicts that occurred between 1337 and 1453, but a more accurate set of dates would be the 150-year period from 1294 to 1444.