English landholding in Ireland, c1200-c1360

Project start date: 2002-09

Project end date: 2005-12

The project can be located within several overlapping historiographical contexts, which have shown a capacity to enlarge our understanding. These include the interactions between 'core' and 'peripheral' areas of Europe; the complex relationships between the countries and regions of the British Isles; and the ubiquitous debates about colonization, cultural transfer, and the formation of identities, in which medievalists have increasingly been involved. Studies of elites and landholding are fundamental to an understanding of such issues. British scholars have produced significant analyses of 'colonial', 'cross-border', 'cross-Channel' and 'transregional' lordship. However, Ireland where the landholding ties developed from 1170 were never completely broken despite the contraction of English authority in the late middle ages, is comparatively unexplored. Investigation has concentrated on short periods, individual families, or particular localities. The research project aims to contribute a substantial body of detailed research on which sound generalizations might be based to this collection of case-studies and apercus. It aims to establish a complete a record as possible of property-holding in Ireland by those normally resident outside the country; to explore how and why patterns of property-holding changed across the period, 1200-1360; to assess the significance of the landholding nexus in the relationship between Britain and Ireland; and to create a database to hold and manage the information gathered.