British and Irish History

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Anglo‐Scottish wars

The Oxford Companion to Irish History | 2007 | Copyright

Anglo‐Scottish wars. These wars, which were relatively intensive from 1296 to 1346 and continued episodically during the rest of the medieval period, had a deep impact on Ireland. The proximity of north‐east Ireland to south‐west Scotland and the Isles meant that Ulster was almost as much a frontier as the Anglo‐Scottish borders themselves. In the early stages of the war Edward I drew heavily on Ireland. Irish expeditionary forces sailed to Scotland in 1296, 1301, and 1303; supplies were shipped from the eastern and southern ports to Skinburness near Carlisle; and a large part of the Irish revenues was devoted to the war. As in England, government demands disturbed the economic and social stability of the areas affected. During the Bruce invasion (1315–18), which damaged every province and weakened the earldom of Ulster permanently, Ireland was a major sub‐theatre of the wider conflict.

although further Irish expeditions sailed to scotland in 1322, 1333, and 1335 (when war taxation was granted in a parliament at Kilkenny), the military and political context had begun to change. After the death of Robert Bruce in 1329, Scottish royal power declined in the west, where the MacDonald lordship of the Isles emerged. Especially after the murder of William de Burgh in 1333, English authority retreated from Ulster, where the vacuum was filled by the O'Neills and from c.1400 by a branch of the MacDonnells. The weakening of the Scottish monarchy, and the shift of the English military focus to France, also meant that hostilities became more spasmodic, and were mostly confined to the land frontier between the two Kingdoms. The north of Ireland was thus once more part of a largely autonomous Gaelic world around the North Channel, where the Scottish and English kings competed for diplomatic influence.

Bibliography

Frame, R. , English Lordship in Ireland 1318–1361 (1982)
Lydon, J. F. , ‘Edward I, Ireland and the War in Scotland, 1303–1304’, in id. (ed.), England and Ireland in the Later Middle Ages (1981)
Lydon, J. F. The Lordship of Ireland in the Middle Ages (1972)

Robin Frame

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"Anglo‐Scottish wars." The Oxford Companion to Irish History. 2007. Encyclopedia.com. 29 May. 2012 <http://www.encyclopedia.com>.

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