Great Britain -- History -- John, 1199-1216; Great Britain -- Kings and rulers -- Biography; John, King of England, 1167-1216
The internal condition of the so-called “English” dominion in Ireland,
meanwhile, was not altogether satisfactory to the king. It was of
course necessary that he should have a viceroy there to represent him
and to hold the feudataries in check; but for that very reason the
viceroy was always, simply as viceroy, an object of jealousy to the
other barons; and the viceroy who had been appointed in 1177, Hugh
de Lacy, presently incurred the distrust of the king himself. Hugh’s
rivals accused him of currying favour with the Irish in the hope of
making himself an independent sovereign; and on his marriage with a
daughter of the king of Connaught, a marriage contracted “according
to the manner of that country” and without King Henry’s leave, Henry
in May 1181 removed him from his office and summoned him to England,
sending the constable of Chester and Richard de Pec to Ireland as joint
governors in his stead. Hugh’s disgrace, however, lasted only six
months; he returned to Dublin as governor at the end of the year.[73]
Meanwhile Henry was providing himself with a new instrument for working
out his purposes in Ireland. The saintly and patriotic archbishop of
Dublin, S. Laurence O’Toole, had died in November 1180;[74] Henry kept
the see vacant ten months, and then, in September 1181, gave it to an
English clerk and confidant of his own, John Cumin. The new archbishop
was consecrated by the Pope on March 21, 1182;[75] but more than two
years elapsed before he set foot in his diocese. At last, in August
1184, he was sent over by Henry to prepare the way for the coming of
John.[76] It was doubtless for the same purpose that Hugh de Lacy
was again superseded as governor; at the beginning of September he
was replaced by Philip of Worcester, whose first work was to recover
for the Crown certain lands which Hugh had alienated, and whose next
undertaking was a plundering raid upon the clergy and churches of
Armagh, achieved with great success in March 1185.[77]
[Sidenote: 1185]
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