Cultural Exchange and Identity in Late Medieval Ireland

"The English colony in Ireland was over two centuries old in 1399 and a complex web of social, economic and legal relationships had evolved between its two main population groups - the English of Ireland and the Irish. The English of Ireland were descendants of English and Welsh settlers, most of whom came to the colony in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, and the Irish were descended both from pre-conquest Irish inhabitants of the conquered lands and from later Irish migrants who came to the colony from unconquered areas of the island. These Irish people and colonial interactions with, and reactions to, them shaped society across the colony. This was true even in the 'four obedient shires' of Dublin, Meath, Louth and Kildare. The 'four shires' were perceived by contemporaries, and have been treated by historians, as the colony's most 'English' region. Most of the colony's legal and administrative institutions were based in the four shires and much of the anti-Irish rhetoric and regulation that survives in late medieval sources originated in them, among members of the region's settler community. Many of these settlers belonged to families that had been resident in the colony for hundreds of years but their links with England were durable and long-lasting and they avowed their loyalty to the crown and stressed their enduring Englishness. In light of this, statements like those made in 1515 by Sir William Darcy, a leading member of the settler community, are initially surprising" --