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Norman Irish or Hiberno-Normans (; ) is a modern term for the descendants of Normans settlers who arrived during the Anglo-Norman invasion of Ireland in the 12th century. Most came from Anglo-Normans and Cambro-Normans. They are distinguished from the native Gaelic Ireland, although some Normans eventually became Gaelicised. The Hiberno-Normans were a feudal aristocracy and merchant oligarchy which controlled the Lordship of Ireland. The Hiberno-Normans were associated with the Gregorian Reform of the Catholic Church in Ireland and contributed to the emergence of a Hiberno-English dialect.
Some of the most prominent Hiberno-Norman families were the Burkes (de Burghs), Butler dynasty, and FitzGeralds. One of the most common Irish surnames, Walsh, derives from Welsh Normans who arrived in Ireland as part of this group. Some Norman families were said to have become "more Irish than the Irish themselves" by merging culturally and intermarrying with the Gaels.
The dominance of the Catholic Hiberno-Normans waned during the 16th century English Reformation, when the Protestant "New English" elite settled in Ireland. The Hiberno-Normans came to be known as the Old English ( Seanghaill) at this time. Many Norman-Irish families spread throughout the world as part of the Irish diaspora. Following the Glorious Revolution, many Old English families promoted unity with the Gaels under the denominator of "Irish Catholic", while others were assimilated into a new Irish Protestant identity, which also included later settler groups such as the Ulster Scots and Huguenots.
In the 16th century, when the Tudor conquest brought a new wave of incomers to Ireland, the descendants of those who had arrived in the Middle Ages came to be known as the Old English, in contrast to the New English.
However, in the provinces, the Normans in Ireland ( meaning "foreigners") were at times indistinguishable from the surrounding Gaelic lords and chieftains. Dynasties such as the Fitzgeralds, Butlers, Burkes, and Wall clans adopted the native language, Brehon Laws, and other customs such as fostering and intermarriage with the Gaelic Irish and the patronage of Irish poetry and music. Such people became regarded as "more Irish than the Irish themselves" as a result of this process (see also History of Ireland (1169–1536)). The most accurate name for the Gaelicised Anglo-Irish throughout the late medieval period was Hiberno-Norman, a name which captures the distinctive blended culture which this community created and within which it operated until the Tudor conquest. In an effort to halt the ongoing Gaelicisation of the Anglo-Irish community, the Irish Parliament passed the Statutes of Kilkenny in 1367, which among other things banned the use of the Irish language, the wearing of Irish clothes, as well as prohibiting the Gaelic Irish from living within walled towns.
Beyond the Pale, the term 'English', if and when it was applied, referred to a thin layer of landowners and nobility, who ruled over Gaels 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. Consequently, the English identity expressed by representatives of the Pale when writing in English to the English Crown often contrasted radically with their cultural affinities and kinship ties to the Gaelic world around them, and this difference between their cultural reality and their expressed identity is a central reason for the Old English's later support of Roman Catholicism.See Vincent Carey, "Bi-lingualism and identity formation in sixteenth-century Ireland", in Hiram Morgan, ed., Political Ideology in Ireland, 1541–1641 (Dublin, 1999) for a study of this aspect of Old English culture and identity. There was no religious division in medieval Ireland, beyond the requirement that English-born prelates should run the Irish church. However, most of the pre-16th century inhabitants of Ireland continued their allegiance to Roman Catholicism, following the Henrician Reformation of the 1530s, even after the establishment of the Anglican Catholic Church of Ireland.
The first confrontation between the Old English and the English government in Ireland came with the cess crisis of 1556–1583. 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). The term "Old English" was coined at this time, as the Pale community emphasised their English identity and loyalty to the Stuart Crown and refusing to co-operate with the wishes of the Elizabeth's Parliament as represented in Ireland by the Lord Deputy of Ireland. Originally, the conflict was a civil issue, as the Palesmen objected to paying new taxes that had not first been approved by them in the Parliament of Ireland. The dispute, however, also soon took on a religious dimension, especially after 1570, when Elizabeth I of England was excommunicated by Pope Pius V's papal bull Regnans in Excelsis. 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. Before the rebellion was over, several hundred Old English Palesmen had been arrested and sentenced to death, either for outright rebellion, or because they were suspected rebels because of their religious views. Most were eventually pardoned after paying fines of up to 100 pounds, a very large sum for the time. However, twenty Landed gentry 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".Colm Lennon, Sixteenth Century Ireland: The Incomplete Conquest, pp. 204–205
This episode marked an important break between the Pale and the English regime in Ireland, and between the Old English and the New English.
However, it was the English Government's administration in Ireland along loyalist lines particularly following the failure of the Gunpowder Plot in 1605 that would lead to severing the main political ties between the Old English and England itself.
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. Then, in 1613, the constituencies of the Irish Parliament were changed so that the New English would have a slight majority in the Irish House of Commons. Thirdly, in the 1630s, many members of the Old English landowning class were forced to confirm the ancient title to their land-holdings often in the absence of title deeds, which resulted in some having to pay substantial fines to retain their property, while others ended up losing some or all of their land in this complex legal process (see Plantations of Ireland).
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.
Changing religion and conforming to the State Church was always an option for any of the King of Ireland's subjects, and an open avenue to inclusion in the officially recognised "body politic", and, indeed, many Old English such as Edmund Burke were newly-conforming Anglicans who retained a certain sympathy and understanding for the difficult position of Roman Catholics, as Burke did in his parliamentary career. Others in the gentry such as the Viscount 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. Some members of the Old English who had thus gained membership in the Protestant Ascendancy even became adherents of the cause of Irish independence. Whereas the Old English FitzGerald Dukes of Leinster held the premier title in the Irish House of Lords when it was abolished in 1800, a scion of that Ascendancy family, the Irish nationalist Lord Edward Fitzgerald, was a brother of the second duke.
For example, the prefix Fitz meaning "son of", in surnames like FitzGerald appears most frequently in Hiberno-Norman surnames (cf. French language " fils de" with the same meaning).Edward MacLysaght, Guide to Irish Surnames (1965) However, a few names with the prefix " Fitz-" sound Norman language but are actually of native Gaelic origin; Diarmait mac Máel na mBó of the Lyons Hill Uí Dúnchada sept[ https://www.nationalgallery.ie/what-we-do/collections-and-research/conservation/marriage-strongbow-and-aoife-history www.nationalgallery.ie} became known as FitzDermot, and FitzPatrick was the surname assumed by Brian Mac Giolla Phádraig under Henry VIII in 1537.
There are a number of texts in Hiberno-Norman French, most of them administrative (including commercial) or legal, although there are a few literary works as well. There is a large amount of parliamentary legislation, including the famous Statute of Kilkenny and municipal documents.
The major literary text is The Song of Dermot and the Earl, a chanson de geste of 3,458 lines of verse concerning Dermot McMurrough and Richard de Clare, 2nd Earl of Pembroke (known as "Strongbow"). Other texts include the Walling of New Ross composed about 1275, and early 14th century poems about the customs of Waterford.
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