Norman Irish

[1][dubious – discuss] Up to that time the identity of such people had been much more fluid; it was the Loyalist administration's policies which created an oppositional and clearly defined Old English community.

Brendan Bradshaw, in his study of the poetry of late-16th century Tír Chónaill, points out that the Normans were not referred to there as Seanghaill ("Old Foreigners") but rather as Fionnghaill and Dubhghaill.

He argued in a lecture to the Mícheál Ó Cléirigh Institute in University College Dublin that the poets referred to hibernicised people of Norman stock as Dubhghaill in order to grant them a longer vintage in Ireland than the Fionnghaill (meaning 'fair-haired foreigners', i.e. Norwegian Vikings as opposed to Dubhghaill meaning 'black-haired foreigners', i.e. Danish Vikings).

The community of Norman descent prior to then used numerous epithets to describe themselves (such as "Englishmen born in Ireland" or "English-Irish"), but it was only as a result of the political cess crisis of the 1580s that a group identified as the Old English actually came to be distinguished from the rest of the Anglo-Irish who surrendered to Anglican Catholicism.

However, in the provinces, the Normans in Ireland (Irish: Gaill meaning "foreigners") were at times indistinguishable from the surrounding Gaelic lords and chieftains.

[6] Beyond the Pale, the term 'English', if and when it was applied, referred to a thin layer of landowners and nobility, who ruled over Gaelic Irish freeholders and tenants.

The division between the Pale and the rest of Ireland was therefore in reality not rigid or impermeable, but rather one of gradual cultural and economic differences across wide areas.

To the New English, many of the Old Anglo-Irish were "degenerate", having "gone native" and adopted Irish customs as well as choosing to adhere to Roman Catholicism after the Crown's official split with Rome.

During that period, the Pale community resisted paying for the English army sent to Ireland to put down a string of revolts which culminated in the Desmond Rebellions (1569–1573 and 1579–1583).

In response, Elizabeth banned the Jesuits from her realms as they were seen as being among the Papacy's most radical agents of the Counter-Reformation which, among other aims, sought to topple her from her thrones.

Rebels such as James Fitzmaurice Fitzgerald portrayed their rebellion as a "Holy War", and indeed received money and troops from the papal coffers.

In the Second Desmond Rebellion (1579–1583), a prominent Pale lord, James Eustace, Viscount of Baltinglass, joined the rebels from religious motivation.

However, twenty landed gentlemen from some of the Pale's leading Old English families were executed; some of them "died in the manner of [Roman] Catholic martyrs, proclaiming they were suffering for their religious beliefs".

First, in 1609, Roman Catholics were banned from holding public office in Ireland forcing many Old English like the Dillons to outwardly adopt Anglican Catholicism.

The political response of the Old Anglo-Irish community was forced to go over the heads of the New English in Dublin and appeal directly to their sovereign in his role as King of Ireland which further disgruntled them.

First from James I, and then from his son and successor, Charles I, they sought a package of reforms known as The Graces, which included provisions for religious toleration and civil equality for Roman Catholics in return for their payment of increased taxes.

The main long-term reason was, however, a desire to reverse the anti-Roman Catholic policies that had been pursued by the English authorities over the previous 40 years in carrying out their administration of Ireland.

Others in the gentry such as the Viscounts Dillon and the Lords Dunsany belonged to Old English families who had originally undergone a religious conversion from Rome to Canterbury to save their lands and titles.

[10] However, a few names with the prefix "Fitz-" sound Norman but are actually of native Gaelic origin; Fitzpatrick was the surname Brian Mac Giolla Phádraig had to take as part of his submission to Henry VIII in 1537,[11] and FitzDermot was Mac Gilla Mo-Cholmóc of the Uí Dúnchada sept of the Uí Dúnlainge based at Lyons Hill, County Dublin).