High King of Ireland

High King of Ireland (Irish: Ard Rí na hÉireann) refers to legendary, pagan kings of Tara. It also refers to later kings, who were, depending on the period, either the most powerful king of their day, or, in later times, exercised authority over most of Ireland.

The meaning of High Kingship

While the traditional list of those bearing the title High King of Ireland (Irish: Ard Rí Éirinn) goes back thousands of years, into the second millennium BC, the earlier parts of the list are largely mythical. It is unclear at what point the list begins to refer to historical individuals, and also at what point these individuals can genuinely be said to be "High Kings" in the later sense of the word.

Most scholars believe that the idea of the High Kingship was a pseudohistorical construct of the eighth century that placed a king of all Ireland atop the fragmented pyramid of kingship which actually existed at that time. This notion of a high kingship acted as a spur to greater centralisation and was converted into political reality by the middle of the ninth century. Until quite recently the development of the pre-Norman kingship of Ireland has been expressed in simplistic terms, with both unionist and nationalist historians happy to portray pre-Norman Ireland as an immutable hierarchy of kings for their own purposes. In unionist historiography the picture painted has been one of tribal anarchy, while that of nationalist historiography has been a Utopian harmony. Modern-day historians reject both of these portrayals as simplistic, presenting a history of Irish kingship that is more complex and parallels the development of national kingship elsewhere in Europe.

Sacral High Kings

Early Irish kingship was sacral in character. In the early narrative literature a king is a king because he marries the sovereignty goddess, is free from blemish, enforces symbolic buada (prerogatives) and avoids symbolic gessa (taboos). According to the seventh and eighth century law tracts a hierarchy of kingship and clientship progressed from the rí (king of a single petty kingdom) through the ruiri (a rí who was overking of several petty kingdoms) to a rí ruirech (a rí who was a provincial overking). Each king ruled directly only within the bounds of his own petty kingdom and was responsible for ensuring good government by exercising fír flaithemon (rulers truth), convening its óenach (popular assembly), raising taxes, public works, external relations, defence, emergency legislation, law enforcement and promulgating legal judgement. The lands within the petty kingdom were held allodially by various fine (agnatic kingroups) of freemen with the king occupying the apex of a pyramid of clientship within the petty kingdom (progressing from the unfree population at its base up to the heads of noble fine held in immediate clientship by the king) and so being drawn from the dominant fine within the cenél (a wider kingroup encompassing the noble fine of the petty kingdom).

The kings of the Ulster Cycle are kings in this sacred sense, but it is clear that the old concept of kingship coexisted alongside Christianity for several generations. Diarmaid mac Cearbhaill king of Tara in the middle of the 6th century, may have been the last king to have "married" the land, and indeed there are accounts from the century after Diarmait's death at the hands of Áed Dub mac Suibni which have him killed by the Three-Fold Death - by wounding, by falling from a tree, and by drowning - and indeed Adomnán's Life tells how Saint Columba forecast the same death for Áed Dub. The same Three-Fold Death is said to have put an end of Diarmait's predecessor, Muirchertach macc Ercae, in a late poem, and even the usually reliably Annals of Ulster record Muirchertach's death by drowning in a vat of wine.

A second sign that sacral kingship did not disappear with the arrival of Christianity is the supposed law-suit between Congal Cáech, king of the Ulaid and Domnall mac Áedo. Congal was supposedly blinded in one eye by Domnall's bees, from whence his byname Cáech (half-blind of squinting), this injury rendering him imperfact and unable to remain High King. The enmity between Domnall and Congal can more prosaically be laid at the door of the rivalry between the Uí Néill and the kings of Ulaid, but that a king had to be whole in body appears to have been accepted at this time.

Early Christian High Kings

Even at the time the law tracts were being written these petty kingdoms were being swept away by newly emerging dynasties of dynamic overkings. The most successful of these early dynasties were the Uí Néill (encompassing descendants of Niall of the Nine Hostages such as the Cenel Eoghain) who as kings of Tara had been conquering petty kingdoms, expelling their rulers and agglomerating their territories under the direct rule of their expanding kindred since the fifth century. Native and foreign, pagan and Christian ideas were comingled to form a new idea of Irish kingship. The native idea of a sacred kingship was integrated with the Christian idea in the ceremony of coronation, the relationship of king to overking became one of tigerna (lord) to king and imperium (sovereignty) began to merge with dominium (ownership). The church was well disposed to the idea of a strong political authority. Its clerics developed the theory of a high kingship of Ireland and wrote tracts exhorting kings to rule rather than reign. In return the paruchiae (monastic federations) of the Irish church received royal patronage in the form of shrines, building works, land and protection.

The concept of a high kingship was converted into political reality by the Uí Néill in 862 when Aed Finliath is styled in the annals as rí Érenn uile (king of all Ireland), but this was a personal kingship to be won anew generation by generation rather than an impersonal office settled upon a lineage.

Later High Kings

By the twelfth century the dual process of agglomeration of territory and consolidation of kingship saw the handful of remaining provincial kings abandoning the traditional royal sites for the cities, employing ministers and governors, receiving advice from an oireacht (a body of noble counsellors), presiding at reforming synods and maintaining standing armies. Early royal succession had been by alternation between collateral branches of the wider dynasty but succession was now confined to a series of father/son, brother/brother and uncle/nephew successions within a small royal fine marked by an exclusive surname. These compact families (O Brien of Munster, MacLochlainn of the North, O Connor of Connacht) intermarried and competed against each other on a national basis so that on the eve of the Anglo-Norman incursion of 1169 we find the agglomeration/consolidation process complete and their provincial kingdoms divided, dismembered and transformed into fiefdoms held from (or in rebellion against) one of their number acting as king of Ireland.

British Kings of Ireland

From 1171 to 1541 the King of England and Wales was also Lord of Ireland. King Henry VIII made himself and his successors King of Ireland in 1541, and Ireland was incorporated into the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland in 1801.

During the 1916 Easter Rising many rebel leaders considered making Prince Joachim of Prussia the King of a new Irish state, but the Rising was defeated and Prince Joachim committed suicide in 1920. The head of state of the Irish Republic (1919-1922) was the President of Dáil Éireann. The King of Great Britain remained monarch of the Irish Free State and Northern Ireland from 1922 to 1937, when the Free State became the Republic of Ireland, with the President of Ireland as Head of State. George VI was thus the last King to rule over all Ireland. At present, Queen Elizabeth II is monarch of Northern Ireland, while Her Excellency Mary McAleese is President of the Republic.

See also

• List of High Kings of Ireland
• King of Ireland

External link

• Nationality and Kingship in Pre-Norman Ireland by Prof. Donnchadh Ó Corráin, University College Cork