PALE, THE (Medieval Ireland)

The idea of the Pale has become one of the defining features of late-medieval Ireland, symbolizing the political and cultural differences that divided the Gaelic Irish from the English settlers. The word derives from the Latin pallus, meaning a stake, and by extension a defensive wall built from stakes; the derivation is identical to that of the word "palisade." But in the Irish context the word came to refer, not to a defensive perimeter, but to the area enclosed by such a notional perimeter; the area in which English culture and English law was observed. The Pale (roughly comprising the four "loyal" counties of Louth, Meath, Dublin, and Kildare) corresponded to "the land of peace," as opposed to "the land of war" where Gaelic rule held sway.

Defense of these counties from the Gaelic Irish became an increasingly precarious matter throughout the fifteenth century, a fact reflected by the widespread construction of defended tower houses. However, the first mention of an enclosing perimeter around the four counties comes from a statute of Poynings in 1494, urging that defensive ditches be constructed around the Pale. Before his appointment to Ireland, Poynings had served as governor of Calais, where the territory around the port was referred to as "the English Pale of Calais;" the term probably came to Ireland with the new deputy lieutenant.

Stretches of earthworks matching the description in Poynings’ statute can still be seen, for example at Kilteel in County Kildare, but the construction of a continuous barrier encircling the four counties was never attempted. The Palesmen never had the resources to garrison or maintain such a fortification. Rather, given the prevailing Irish strategy of cattle raiding, such earthworks as were constructed served to impede the movement of herds through open land into Irish-held territories.


Far from comprising a continuous defensive rampart, the frontier between the Irish and the settlers was an ill-defined and fluid affair, which fluctuated over the years according to the fortunes of war. Although Louth was counted as one of the loyal counties of the Pale, by the late-fifteenth century the community was paying "black rents" (or protection money) to the Ui Neill (O’Neills) on an almost annual basis. Since the Pale was neither a solid defensive line nor a strictly-defined territory, perhaps the best definition of "the Pale" is as the name of a community of people; that is, those people of English descent, settled in the counties around Dublin, whose political loyalty remained strongly with the English crown.

Historians have often discussed the Pale and the Palesmen in this sense, frequently in relation to events almost a century before the first historical appearance of the term in 1495. This makes sense, since the defining characteristics of the Pale emerged long before the word itself became common currency. The 1366 Statutes of Kilkenny show that fears about the erosion of English culture and customs was widespread in the fourteenth century, and in the mid-fifteenth century commentators were already lamenting that English rule had been restricted to an area along the east coast scarcely thirty miles long and twenty miles deep. This siege mentality shaped the emerging consciousness of the Pale community, and expressed itself in their frequent appeals to the king to provide them with strong leadership and military aid to crush, or at least stem the advance of, the Gaelic Irish.

In reality, the English kings were too distant to provide the strong leadership required to bolster the Pale, and such English deputies as were sent from time to time often found themselves overwhelmed by the complexities of Irish factionalism. The great magnates, such as the earls of Desmond, Ormond, and Kildare, who should have been the natural leaders of the Pale gentry, were so tainted by Gaelic alliances and customs as to arouse the suspicion of the Palesmen; their attempts to impose coyne and livery within the Pale were a frequent cause of discontent. Only the Anglo-Irish magnates could ensure the protection of the Pale, while in return the support of the Palesmen was a prize the magnates could not afford to ignore. But for all that, relations between the two groups were often uncertain.

The renewed vigor of Tudor policies led to the breakdown of the medieval concept of the frontier in Ireland, although in the 1540s commentators were writing of "the English Pale in Scotland," and the phrase "beyond the Pale" remains part of the English language to this day.

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