Ulster and the Isles in the fifteenth century

The lordship of the Clann Domhnaill of Antrim

Simon Kingston

‘Like the conventions of modern cartography and modern national boundaries, the focus of historians in various parts of the British Isles has contributed to divert our attention from the simple geographical proximity of northeastern Ireland and the Hebrides … Although subsistence economies marked the coastal regions of both, social phenomena were not identical and, on the military front, the Hebridean gallowglasses (gallógláaih) had no Irish equivalents. The great virtue of Kingston’s Ulster and the Isles is both to illustrate this ambiguous situation and show how one family, Clann Domhnaill of Antrim, could successfully navigate these both real and political waters, and maintain itself as an independent, if not expansionist, well-defended polity throughout the fifteenth century. This picture is sketched in a most valuable “Introduction – Air Muir’s Air Tir: The Elements of the North Irish Sea World”’, William Sayers, Cornell University, Arthuriana (April 2010)

'[This book] represents a considerable leap forward in our understanding of the world of medieval Ulster and western Scotland, reflecting the innovative research of a new generation of Irish historians. … A welcome contribution to the histories of both Ireland and Scotland', Emmett O’Byrne, Speculum.