Introduction

Abstract

Abstract In the mid-eleventh century, Britain and Ireland had in common a position on the edge of the Continent of Europe, and much of Britain belonged, as Ireland did, to the Viking world. The Irish Sea was the effective centre of a maritime province extending from Norway to Dublin and embracing the Northern Isles and north and west Scotland, as well as wide territories bordering on the sea itself. Proximity, together with the many practical contacts already in existence, may have seemed to open up the possibility of a political relationship between Britain and Ireland, or at least between some parts of each, of a kind that must always have eluded the wider territories of the maritime province. What form that relationship would take, and, indeed, whether it would come into existence at all, were entirely doubtful matters. In sailing time, Galloway was the nearest point in Britain to Ireland. Writing towards the end of the twelfth century, but when conditions were probably little changed, Gerald of Wales noted that the sea narrowed between Galloway and Ulster to half a short day’s sailing. For the actual conception of a political relationship we have to look further south, to England, where, from time to time, the kings of the late Anglo-Saxon period claimed a hegemony over other rulers in Britain, a claim extending even to rulers of the adjacent islands, including Ireland. In ecclesiastical affairs, the see of Canterbury claimed a comparable hegemony.