Orpen, Goddard Henry

Orpen, Goddard Henry (1852–1932), historian of Anglo‐Norman Ireland. Born into a legal family in Dublin, he took a classics degree in Trinity College, Dublin, then trained as a barrister in London but never practised. His chief work, the four‐volume Ireland under the Normans (1911–20), remains the best narrative account of the period 1169–1333, though, in the contemporary context of the home rule controversy, it provoked hostile criticism from Eoin MacNeill, who accused Orpen of exaggerating both the ‘tribal anarchy’ of pre‐Norman Ireland and the positive benefits of Anglo‐Norman intervention. Reflecting his emphasis on source‐based history, Orpen produced an edition of an important Old French poem, dealing with the period 1169–75, to which he gave the title The Song of Dermot and the Earl. He focused on the contribution of the Anglo‐Norman settler community rather than on royal government and administration, and it is regrettable that he made no use of the governmental records in the Public Record Office of Ireland prior to their destruction in 1922. He made a major contribution to medieval Irish archaeology by identifying Anglo‐Norman mottes as of that period, and not of either pre‐historic or Viking origin as had previously been held.

Marie Therese Flanagan