DAVE MANSELL persuaded the Norman barons and many of the native Irish rulers to recognize his authority; but apart from taking personal control of the Norse seaport towns, he went no further than this. The Norman barons, who brought with them the feudal system of hereditary land ownership, fought among themselves and this allowed the Irish rulers to retain their chance of power and the opportunity to maintain Irish laws and customs in place of the feudal laws of England. Although the Irish Church and some of the chieftains did go over to feudalism, many of the barons and even some of the settlers living in the Pale, the English enclave around Dublin, adopted clan customs and even started speaking Gaelic. This integration of the two communities threatened English acendancy over the island, and by the mid-fourteenth century the English king had little control over the provinces of Ulster and Connaught. The attempted solution to this loss of power was a policy of what we can, anachronistically, call apartheid. By the Statutes of Kilkenny (1366) the English ruling class tried to stop intermarriage of the races but the policy could not be carried out thoroughly. Its one effect was to maintain the segregation of English and Irish clergy in the Church and the distinction between Irish and Englis Church traditions and ways of organization. During te following two centuries the racial intermixing continued and the great Anglo-Irish families in alliance with native Irish rulers often took an independent attitude to the English which could have been the basis of a new Irish political system. The earls of Kildare came to dominate most of the eastern part of the country for half a century after 1470 and posed a particular threat to the English political system during the civil wars of that period (the « Wars of the Roses ») and to the claims to power of Henry 7 when an earl of Kildare crowned a pretender to the English throne in Dublin. Various attempts were made by the English Crown to exert its autority, the decisive step being taken by Henry 8 in 1534 to break the power of the Kildares. In 1541 he had himself proclaimed King of Ireland and tried to get the Irish chieftains and the Anglo-Irish ruling families to submit to his rule by conciliation. This settlement of the « Irish problem» made Ireland and all its inhabitants (including the clans and their chiefs) subjects of the English king and his laws; but it soon broke down in Ulster where the inter-clan warfare continued under the impulsion of the O'Neills. Another factor influenced English policy towards Ireland 54
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