UA CONCHOBHAIR-FAILGE (Medieval Ireland)

This Irish lordship comprised eastern Co. Offaly and northern Co. Laois. At the time of the Anglo-Norman invasion, the Ua Conchobhair-Failge quickly came to an agreement with the invaders. Little is known of this initial arrangement, but it probably reflected the pattern of loose overlordship which had governed relations between Irish kings and their subkings prior to the Anglo-Norman invasion. The Ua Conchobhair-Failge retained much of their lordship after the invasion because of the wooded and boggy character of the region, however the land lost to the Anglo-Irish consisted of the best agricultural land. The 1270s saw a general increase in hostility between the surviving Irish lordships in Leinster and the Anglo-Irish of that province, and the initial agreement between the Ua Conchobhair-Failge and the Anglo-Irish seems to have collapsed around that time. It has been suggested that this change in relations was due to Anglo-Irish efforts to transform their loose overlordship into more formal tenurial lordship during the thirteenth century, but further factors, such as the absence of the Archbishop of Dublin (a major landholder in Leinster) and the minority of the lord of Offaly (an important local magnate), probably explain the timing of this increased hostility.

By the end of the thirteenth century, the royal government in Ireland had given two local magnates—John fitz Thomas, lord of Offaly, and Piers Bermingham— responsibility for pacifying the region, but with little success. A key event during this period was Piers Ber-mingham’s murder of the ruler of the Ua Conchobhair-Failge and some of his men at a feast in 1305. These murders were the subject of considerable comment and condemnation in contemporary Irish sources, and special note was made of them in the Remonstrance of the Irish Princes (a condemnation of English rule in Ireland sent to Pope John XXII around 1317, during Edward Bruce’s invasion of Ireland). Bermingham’s aim may have been to render the Ua Conchobhair-Failge leaderless, making them easier to bring to peace, but the murders led to increased warfare in the region. Throughout the fourteenth century, the relationship between the Anglo-Irish and the Ua Conchobhair-Failge continued to be unstable. Sporadic warfare and endemic raiding continued throughout the century.


During the late fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries a succession of strong Ua Conchobhair-Failge leaders were able to gain the advantage against the Anglo-Irish of Meath and Kildare through a series of successful raids and campaigns, beginning a period of minor expansion. Their submission to Richard II in 1395 and the short peace that followed proved to be only a brief interruption of this growth. During the first half of the fifteenth century, the Ua Conchobhair-Failge made territorial gains in the region and exacted black rent (protection money) from the Anglo-Irish of western Meath (modern Co. Westmeath). However, by the 1470s the lordship of the Ua Conchobhair-Failge was in decline and came increasingly under the lordship and control of the earls of Kildare. The English plantation of Laois and Offaly in the mid-sixteenth century saw the final collapse of the Ua Conchobhair-Failge lordship.

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