When King Richard II arrived in Ireland in 1394, he knew that he was the first English king to visit the island in almost two centuries. What he could not know when he departed in 1399 was that his would be the last royal visit for more than 200 years—almost a midpoint in four centuries crucial to the history of Ireland. These royal campaigns have been examined closely during the course of the past century, most notably by Edmund Curtis’s Richard II in Ireland, but Darren McGettigan’s Richard II and the Irish Kings offers a fresh interpretation from the Irish perspective.

Although Richard was theoretically the overlord of all Ireland, the island was divided culturally and politically. English control extended along the coast in an area known as the Pale. The boundaries fluctuated, but within the Pale were the major ports and cities of Dublin, Waterford, and Cork. The greater part of Ireland lay beyond the Pale and was inhabited by the “wild” Irish (as known to the English), whose princes conducted their own affairs. The English administration made increasingly futile efforts to prevent contacts across the border between the two areas for fear of the “Hibernification” of their people. Ever since the twelfth century, part of the English strategy was denial of legal rights to the native Irish, which culminated in the Statute of Kilkenny (1366). To be fair, these measures were put in place as the Irish princes made constant attacks on the Pale and, by the reign of Richard, were crippling it.

McGettigan begins his Richard II and the Irish Kings against a background of division and local violence. His thesis is straightforward: when Richard arrived in Ireland, the native Irish were driving events and doing better than the English. McGettigan is concerned more with the Irish view and does not dwell overmuch on the reason(s) for Richard’s appearance in Ireland. He does, however, make a clear distinction between Richard’s first campaign of 1394–95 and the second one in 1399. The first campaign is considered generally a success for Richard, who arrived with a large army, well supplied and well prepared, and led by competent commanders. The Irish lords were caught largely unprepared and were continually outmaneuvered by the English captains. After the fighting, however, both sides behaved rationally. Richard wanted public acknowledgment of his lordship by the Irish princes. They, in turn, wanted redress for their complaints. When Richard left Ireland in 1395, the Irish lords made public their submission to his rule, while Richard’s representatives addressed their claims. To take one example, the Leinster lord Art Mór MacMurchadha Caomhánach married the English heiress Elizabeth de Veel in 1390, but he could not take possession of her inheritance of the barony of Norragh (South Kildare) because an Irishman could not inherit English land according to the Statute of Kilkenny. Richard and Art, however, were both willing to compromise. Art submitted to Richard in November 1394 and he received a patent for Norragh two months later.

Four years later the situation was completely different. When Richard landed at Waterford in June 1399, he wanted revenge for what he believed to be the bad faith of the Irish princes and, in particular, for the death of his cousin Roger Mortimer. One of the main villains, in English eyes, was Art MacMuchadha, who had thrown off any restraints and was openly styling himself “the rightful king of Ireland.” After a few early successes, Richard discovered that the Irish had learned from their previous encounter and avoided direct confrontation with the much larger royal army. Richard had learned nothing and he committed blunder after blunder. To be fair to Richard, his campaign barely had begun when he learned in the middle of July that his cousin Henry Bolingbroke (the future King Henry IV) had returned from exile and raised the banner of rebellion. Richard sailed from Waterford around July 20 to disaster in Britain.

Darren McGettigan’s Richard II and the Irish Kings is a timely reevaluation of a well-known event. The narrative is clear and illustrated with genealogical charts, local maps, and some excellent images of contemporary documents and objects. This is a useful addition to the literature of late medieval Ireland.