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Concept
Normans in Ireland
Summary
From the 12th century onwards, a group of Normans invaded and then settled in Gaelic Ireland. These settlers later became known as Norman Irish or Hiberno-Normans. They originated mainly among Cambro-Norman families in Wales, and to a lesser extent, Anglo-Normans from England. During the High Middle Ages and Late Middle Ages the Hiberno-Normans constituted a feudal aristocracy and merchant oligarchy, known 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 part of the Irish diaspora; they ceased, in most cases, to identify as Norman, Cambro-Norman or Anglo-Norman.
The dominance 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 Irishoften known as The Old Englishhad 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 most prominent Norman families were the FitzMaurices, FitzGeralds, Burkes (de Burghs), 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 part 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 makes 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 described as Old English, for that was not their political and cultural world.
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