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Edward Bruce Proclaimed Last High King of Ireland

Edward Bruce is proclaimed the last High King of Ireland on June 29, 1315. He is crowned in 1316. He reigns between 1315 and 1318. The English colonists in Ireland vehemently oppose him.

Bruce, the brother of the King of Scots, Robert the Bruce, leads a three-year military campaign, known as the Bruce campaign, against the Anglo-Norman lordship of Ireland. This invasion, which lasts from 1315 to 1318, ultimately gives rise to the two nations we recognize now as Ireland and Scotland.

In May 1315, a Scots army of up to six thousand soldiers lands on the Antrim coast. That June, near Carrickfergus, many Gaelic lords led by Donnell O’Neill of Ulster join Bruce. “All the Gaels of Ireland agreed to grant him lordship and they called him King of Ireland,” declares the Irish annals.

The invasion coincides with the Great European Famine (1315-1317), which brings hardship and disillusionment among Bruce’s followers. The annals ruefully comment, “falsehood and famine and homicide filled the country, and undoubtedly men ate each other in Ireland.”

In February 1317, Dublin, the capital of the English royal administration in Ireland, comes close to being captured by the Bruce brothers. The brothers encamp at Castleknock within sight of the city walls. The panicking Dubliners burn the suburbs of the city. In order to re-fortify the city walls, they dismantle the Dominican priory north of the River Liffey and tear down the bridge across the river. The Bruce brothers do not lay siege to the city and instead move south to Munster.

In 1318, the invasion is brought to an end when, after marching south from Ulster for one last push, Bruce risks an open battle with an English army north of Dundalk at Faughart and is killed. His corpse is dismembered, and portions of it hung over the gates of various Irish towns. His decapitated head is brought to King Edward II of England by the victor, John de Bermingham, a minor Anglo-Irish baron who is elevated to the status of “Earl of Louth” for bringing the Bruce campaign in Ireland to an end.

A conference at Trinity College Dublin, in 2015, entitled The Irish-Scottish World in the Middle Ages, explores this key moment in the history of Ireland and Scotland. “The Bruce Invasion was a watershed moment in that story,” says Seán Duffy, Professor of Medieval Irish History and one of the organizers of the conference.

“Although Edward Bruce was defeated and killed in 1318, the effect of the invasion was far-reaching. The tide of Anglo-Norman expansion in Ireland turned back and the late Middle Ages saw the flowering of a Gaelic literary and cultural revival. Scotland, meanwhile, was galvanized by its victory over the English at Bannockburn which secured its path to independent nationhood.”

“Few peoples have as much in common as the Irish and the Scots. The very name Scotland is an ever-present reminder of that connection, because, in the Latin of the early Middle Ages, a Scotus was an Irishman, and the homeland of the Scoti was Ireland. That the name came to be applied to the northern part of Britain is testament to the strength of Irish influence on what we now know today as Scotland.”

(From: “On This Day: Edward Bruce, the last High King of Ireland, dies in 1318” by IrishCentral Staff, http://www.irishcentral.com, October 2022 | Pictured: Grave of Edward de Bruce, High King of Ireland, in Faughart Cemetery, County Louth)


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Edward the Bruce Appointed High King of Ireland

grave-of-king-edward-de-bruceEdward Bruce of Scotland is crowned High King of Ireland at Dundalk on May 2, 1316. He is the younger brother of Robert the Bruce, King of Scotland. He is also sometimes known as Edward de Brus or Edward the Bruce.

Edward is the second of five sons of Robert de Brus, 6th Lord of Annandale and Marjorie, Countess of Carrick. His date of birth, believed to be around 1280, is unknown but King Robert is obviously the firstborn. He has eleven siblings, of whom nine survive childhood. One of his older sisters, Lady Christina Bruce, also plays an active role in the wars of independence against England.

By 1307 Edward fights alongside Robert throughout his struggle for the Scottish throne and accompanies him during his flight from Scotland and subsequent guerilla campaign against the English. The three younger Bruce brothers Nigel, Thomas, and Alexander are all captured and executed by the English during this period. Some time between 1309 and 1313, Edward is created Earl of Carrick, a title previously held by his maternal grandfather Niall of Carrick, his mother and his elder brother.

As the Scots become more dominant, Edward commands a number of successful sieges of English-held castles across the country. By November 1313 he commands the siege of the last remaining English outpost in Scotland, Stirling Castle. Without Robert’s knowledge, he makes a deal with the English Constable of the castle that should an English army not arrive to relieve it by June 24, 1314, the castle will surrender, so making an aggressive siege unnecessary. Robert is deeply unhappy, but has little choice but to confront the English army sent by Edward II to relieve Stirling in June 1314. The armies meet at the Battle of Bannockburn, and the result is a decisive victory for the Scots which leaves Robert in fairly unopposed control of Scotland.

Robert decides to open a second front against the English and dispatches an army of 6,000 men under the command of Edward to Ireland. The aim is to challenge English dominance of the British Isles by drawing together Scottish and Irish interests. Scottish and Irish forces are initially successful in defeating the English and on May 2, 1316 Edward is appointed High King of Ireland.

A famine in 1317 proves a setback to Edward and greatly reduces his popularity. This allowed time for an English army under John de Bermingham to be assembled. The English army meets the Scots-Irish army under King Edward Bruce at the Battle of Faughart on October 14, 1318. The Scots-Irish army is badly defeated by de Bermingham’s forces. Edward is killed, his body being quartered and sent to various towns in Ireland, and his head being delivered to King Edward II.

Edward Bruce is the last High King of Ireland.

(Pictured: Grave of King Edward De Bruce, located in Faughart Cemetery)


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Birth of John Lynch, Actor & Novelist

john-lynchJohn Lynch, actor and novelist, is born in Corrinshego, County Armagh, Northern Ireland on December 26, 1961. He wins the AFI (AACTA) Award for Best Actor in a Leading Role for the 1995 film Angel Baby. His other film appearances include Cal (1984), The Secret Garden (1993), In the Name of the Father (1993) and Sliding Doors (1998).

Lynch is the eldest of five children of an Irish father and an Italian mother from Trivento in the Province of Campobasso. His younger sister Susan and his nephew Thomas Finnegan are also actors. He attends St. Colman’s College, Newry and begins acting in Irish language-medium plays at school during the early years of the conflict in Northern Ireland.

Lynch has appeared in numerous films related to Northern Ireland’s problems such as Cal (1984) with Helen Mirren, In the Name of the Father (1993) with Daniel Day-Lewis, The Railway Station Man (1992) with Julie Christie and Donald Sutherland, Nothing Personal (1995) and Some Mother’s Son (1996), also with Mirren, as well as the Irish-themed film Evelyn (2002).

Lynch stars as a supporting actor in Derek Jarman‘s Edward II (1991), as Lord Craven in Agnieska Holland‘s film of The Secret Garden (1993), as Tadhg in The Secret of Roan Inish (1994), and as Gerry in Sliding Doors (1998).

Lynch plays the part of football legend George Best in the 2000 film Best. He plays the lead in the Australian feature Angel Baby, winning the Australian Film Institute award for best leading actor and the Australian Film Critics Association award for best actor of 1995. He is nominated for a Satellite Film Award for the film Moll Flanders in 1996. He works with acclaimed Belgian director Marion Hänsel on her adaptation of Booker-nominated author Damon Galgut‘s novel, The Quarry (1998), which wins Best Film at the Montreal World Film Festival. He wins Best Actor for the lead role in Best at the Fort Lauderdale Film Festival in 2000.

Lynch is nominated for a British Academy of Film and Television Arts (BAFTA) for Cal, as well as for an Irish Film and Television Award for his role in The Baby War. He stars in Five Day Shelter as Stephen, which wins a European Film Award and is in competition at the Rome Film Festival. He plays the lead in Craig Vivieros’ first feature film, the prison drama Ghosted. He plays the role of Wollfstan in Black Death, and appears in the 2012 film version of Michael Morpurgo‘s novel, Private Peaceful.

Lynch is also a novelist. His first novel, Torn Water, is published in November 2005 by the 4th Estate, a literary imprint of HarperCollins Publishers LLC, and his second, Falling Out of Heaven, is published on May 13, 2010 by the same publisher.


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John de Wogan Ceases to be Justiciar of Ireland

picton-castleSir John de Wogan, Cambro-Norman judge styled lord of Picton, ceases to be Justiciar of Ireland on August 6, 1312 although remaining nominally justiciar until April 1313. He serves as Justiciar of Ireland from 1295 to 1313.

There are several dubious theories about Wogan’s ancestry, and uncertainty exists about his wives, sons, and other relations. He comes from Picton Castle in Pembrokeshire and is a vassal of William de Valence, 1st Earl of Pembroke. He comes to have lands in Pembrokeshire, Somerset, Dorset, Devon, Wiltshire, and Oxfordshire. He represents de Valence at an Irish court case in 1275, and in 1280 he is steward of Wexford, Valence’s Irish liberty. He is an eyre in England from 1281 to 1284, and returns to Ireland in 1285. In 1290 he is a referee with Hugh de Cressingham in a dispute between Queen Eleanor and de Valence and his wife.

In December 1295 Wogan takes office as justiciar and organises a two-year truce between the feuding Burkes and Geraldines. In 1296 he organises a force with Richard Óg de Burgh, 2nd Earl of Ulster, Theobald Butler, and John FitzGerald, 1st Earl of Kildare, to assist Edward I in the First War of Scottish Independence. The king entertains them at Roxburgh Castle in May. After his return to Ireland, Wogan “kept everything so quiet that we hear of no trouble in a great while.” The Parliament of Ireland he summons in 1297 is for long compared to the English “Model Parliament” of 1295, though historical opinion now places less importance on it.

In February 1308, under orders from the new king Edward II, Wogan suppresses the Knights Templar in Ireland. In June 1308 his forces are defeated by the O’Tooles and O’Byrnes, who are harrying The Pale from the Wicklow Mountains. From September 1308 to May 1309 Piers Gaveston, 1st Earl of Cornwall is in Ireland as “king’s lieutenant,” a new position outranking the justiciar, and he has more success against the Gaels. Wogan leaves Ireland in August 1312 although remaining nominally justiciar until April 1313.

Either the same John Wogan or his son of the same name returns to Ireland in 1316 as advisor to Roger Mortimer, 1st Earl of March, who counters Edward Bruce‘s invasion of Ireland.

John de Wogan dies in 1321 and is buried in St. David’s Cathedral, initially in a chapel he had endowed, later in Edward Vaughan‘s chapel.