A Community in Competition: The Barons of Leinster in Thirteenth-Century Ireland

Over the last number of decades, the relationship between king and magnate in medieval Ireland has been prominent in scholarship, but less attention has been given to the tenantry below. Drawing on a range of sources from chancery material to chronicle evidence, this article analyses one such tenantry community, the ‘barons of Leinster’. During the first half of the thirteenth century, the Marshal lords of Leinster clashed with royal authorities in Ireland on three occasions, and in these circumstances, the tenants of Leinster had to choose between their king and their lord. For the lords of Leinster, the support of their tenantry was not to be presumed, and hence they had to relentlessly compete for the allegiance of their tenantry with the other lords in Ireland and the king of England. This essay argues that status and marital ties influenced tenantry allegiance in Ireland, in particular that assimilation into a new lord's household was more important for the lesser tenantry who held land in both Ireland and Wales than for the great landed barons who also benefited from royal patronage. Hence, this study contributes to the rich ongoing discussion on the importance and role of tenantry communities in the Plantagenet dominions.