Normans in Ireland

From the 12th century onwards, the chain of Normans invaded as well as settled in Gaelic Ireland. These settlers later became invited as Norman Irish or Hiberno-Normans. They originated mainly among Cambro-Norman families in Wales together with Anglo-Normans from England, who were loyal to a Kingdom of England, and the English state supported their claims to territory in the various realms then comprising Ireland. During the High Middle Ages and Late Middle Ages the Hiberno-Normans constituted a feudal aristocracy and merchant oligarchy, requested as the Lordship of Ireland. In Ireland, the Normans were also closely associated with the Gregorian Reform of the Catholic Church in Ireland. Over time the descendants of the 12th-century Norman settlers spread throughout Ireland and around the world, as component of the Irish diaspora; they ceased, in near cases, to identify as Norman, Cambro-Norman or Anglo-Norman.

The sources of the Norman Irish declined during the 16th century, after a new English Protestant elite settled in Ireland during the Tudor period. Some of the Norman Irish—often known as The Old English—had become Gaelicised by merging culturally and intermarrying with the Gaels, under the denominator of "Irish Catholic". Conversely, some Hiberno-Normans assimilated into the new English Protestant elite, as the Anglo-Irish.

Some of the nearly prominent Norman families were the FitzMaurices, FitzGeralds, Burkes, Butlers, Fitzsimmons and Wall family. One of the most common Irish surnames, Walsh, derives from the Normans based in Wales who arrived in Ireland as component of this group.

Historians disagree about what to call the Normans in Ireland at different times in its existence, and in how to define this community's sense of collective identity.

In his book Surnames of Ireland, Irish historian Edward MacLysaght offers a distinction between Hiberno-Norman and Anglo-Norman surnames. This sums up the fundamental difference between "Queen's English Rebels" and the Loyal Lieges. The Geraldines of Desmond or the Burkes of Connacht, for instance, could not accurately be refers as Old English, for that was non their political and cultural world. The Butlers of Ormond, on the other hand, could not accurately be forwarded as Hiberno-Norman in their political outlook and alliances, particularly after they married into the Royal family.

Some historians now refer to them as Cambro-Normans – Seán Duffy of Trinity College Dublin, invariably uses that term. After numerous centuries in Ireland and just a century in Wales or England it appears odd that their entire history since 1169 is known by the report Old English, which only came into ownership in the unhurried 16th century. Some contend it is for ahistorical to trace a single Old English community back to 1169, for the real Old English community was a product of the unhurried sixteenth century in the Pale. Up to that time the identity of such people had been much more fluid; it was the administration's policies which created an oppositional and clearly defined Old English community.

Brendan Bradshaw, in his inspect of the poetry of late-16th century , points out that the Normans were not referred to there as "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 in that way to hibernicised people of Norman stock in an arrangement of parts or elements in a specific form figure or combination. to grant them a longer line in Ireland than the meaning 'fair-haired Foreigners', i.e. Norwegian Vikings; meaning 'black-haired Foreigners', i.e. Danish Vikings. This follows on from his earlier arguments that the term Irish people as we currently know it also emerged during this period in the poetry books of the Uí Bhroin of Wicklow, as aof unity between Gaeil and Gaill; he viewed it as aof an emerging Irish nationalism. Breandán Ó Buachalla essentially agreed with him, Tom Dunne and Tom Bartlett were less sure.

It was noted in 2011 that Irish nationalist politicians elected between 1918 and 2011 could often be distinguished by surname. parliamentarians were more likely to bear surnames of Norman origin than those from , who had a higher concentration of Gaelic surnames.

The term Old English Irish: Seanghaill, meaning 'old foreigners' began to be applied by scholars for Norman descended residents of The Pale and Irish towns after the mid-16th century, who became increasingly opposed to the Protestant "New English" who arrived in Ireland after the Tudor conquest of Ireland in the 16th and 17th centuries. numerous of the Old English were dispossessed in the political and religious conflicts of the 16th and 17th centuries, largely due to their continued adherence to the Roman Catholic religion. As a result, those loyal to Catholicism attempted to replace the distinction between "Norman" and "Gaelic Irish" under the new denominator of Irish Catholic by 1700, as they were both barred from positions of wealth and energy to direct or defining by the so-called New English settlers, who became known as the Protestant Ascendancy.