By the seventh century the Irish had developed a national consciousness as a result of sharing a single language, culture, law and origin-legend from earliest known times. Ireland was conceived of as a single entity with a political dimension expressed in terms of a pseudohistorical high kingship of Ireland projected into the distant past and placed atop the fragmented pyramid of kingship actually existing at that time. By the eleventh century the myriad tribal kingships of the seventh century survived only as antiquarian titles. Their underlying substance had long been subsumed into territorial lordships held under a handful of regional kingships contested between dynastic segments no more extensive than the modern family. Irish kingship was rapidly converging upon the ideal of the high kingship and the express object of the three contending dynasts (O Brien of Munster, MacLochlainn of The North and O Connor of Connacht) was to extend their rule across the entire island and to confine succession to a national kingship within the limits of their own family. This heightened contention has led many of the historical sources to describe kings of this period as ríg Érenn co fressabra ('kings of Ireland with opposition') but it is important to recognise that these kings are being compared somewhat unfairly to the imagined high kings of an idealised past and that Ireland as a kingdom lacking a settled monarchy in which the individual was subject to intermediate private jurisdiction lay firmly within medieval European norms of statehood.
The annals disclose that the MacLochlainn dynasty was founded by Ardghal son of Lochlainn who was expelled from Tullaghoge in 1051 but recovered to become ruler of Aileach by the time of his death in 1064. His son Domhnall became ruler of Aileach in 1083 and king of Ireland with opposition in 1090. Domhnall took advantage of a decline in the fortunes of the Clann Domhnaill dynasty to move north and seize Inishowen, moving his base to the religious foundation of Derry around 1100. He engaged his national rivals, the O Brien dynasty of Munster, militarily using marriage alliances to his advantage while safeguarding his regional position by imposing his son Niall as ruler of Tír Conaill and by dividing Ulaid into separate lordships. As king he memorialised an alliance struck between church and state by commissioning a religious reliquary known as the Shrine of Saint Patrick's Bell (pictured above) and died in Derry in 1121 aged seventy three. Niall had been killed by regional rivals in 1119 leaving his brother Conor to succeed as ruler of Aileach. Except for a short period in 1128, when supplanted by his brother Maghnus, Conor remained so until his death at the hands of regional rivals in 1136. Muircheartach son of Niall succeeded Conor as ruler of Aileach and became king of Ireland with opposition in 1149. He engaged his national rivals, the O Connor dynasty of Connacht, militarily until they submitted to his authority. As king he issued charters to religious foundations, commissioned a propaganda tract The Circuit of Ireland by Muircheartach son of Niall and promoted the religious order of Saint Colmcille, remodelling the burgeoning secular settlement at Derry to allow the encloistering of the religious foundation lying at its heart and facilitate the construction of its first cathedral. Like his grandfather he sought to consolidate his regional position by dividing Ulaid into separate lordships but this was to prove his undoing. In 1166 he was killed by former allies after blinding the ruler of Ulaid in violation of an agreement guaranteeing his protection.
Muircheartach was succeeded as king of Ireland by Ruairí O Connor who moved to undermine MacLochlainn supremacy in the north by dividing Tír nEoghain in two and granting the southern portion to their rivals the O Neills. The rulership was subsequently disputed between MacLochlainn and O Neill as reflected in the retrospective fourteenth century topographical poem of Seán Mór Ó Dubhagáin:
Uí Néill ríoghdha an ratha truim
Agus Méig laomsgoir Lachluinn
Dual don mhaicne gan mhíne
Dá aicme na hairdríghe
'Kingly O Neill of great fortune
And the very proud MacLochlainns
A lineage without natural tameness
Two families of the rulership'
The effects were to be far reaching. With the MacLochlainns preoccupied in the north Diarmaid MacMurchada (who held Leinster from Muircheartach) protected his position by hiring Norman auxiliaries from England and Wales. This led to the direct intervention of Henry II king of England in 1171, the abdication of Ruairí O Connor in 1175 and to the long involvement of England in Irish affairs. The Aileach dynasties stood alone in showing no disposition to accept Henry II as their overlord. Four sons of Muircheartach (Conor, Niall, Maelsechnaill and Muircheartach) and a collateral named Domhnall ruled Tír nEoghain between 1167 and 1196. Maelsechnaill forced the Anglo-Normans to abandon their castles across a large area of Meath in 1176 but in 1177 Ulaid fell to the Anglo-Norman freebooter John de Courcy who created an earldom of Ulster in its place. The MacLochlainns initially attacked into the earldom and Domhnall inflicted a defeat upon its forces in 1188 but thereafter they allied themselves with de Courcy (to whom they were related through the Norse kings of Mann and the Isles) against their local rivals until de Courcy was expelled from the earldom by John king of England in 1205. In the next generation Conor son of Muircheartach seized the rulership of Tír nEoghain from O Neill in 1201 but was killed soon afterwards. After a long period of uninterrupted O Neill rule his brother Domhnall ruled intermittently from 1232 onwards (being removed in favour of O Neill by the Anglo-Normans in 1238) but his defeat by the combined forces of O Neill and his ally O Donnell of Tír Conaill at the battle of Cameirge in 1241 proved to be a watershed. With the MacLochlainn family virtually extinguished the O Neill and O Donnell families proceeded to rule in the north until the English conquest of the seventeenth century.
Further Reading