By John Marshall
Published in Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy: Archaeology, Culture, History, Literature, January 2026.
Link

Abstract

This article provides a diplomatic analysis of the eight surviving letters sent by Irish kings to the kings of England in the thirteenth century, while an edition and translation of these letters is given in the Appendix. Using this corpus, this article puts forward three arguments. First, the Irish kings were deeply familiar with the sophisticated European culture of letter writing, thus refuting past claims of these kings being warmongering barbarians on the periphery of Christendom. Second, the medium of letter-writing was central in the efforts of Irish kings to perpetuate their status and political position, framing themselves as participants in the political culture rather than opposed to it. Third, the Irish kings demonstrated their perspicacity through their letters by highlighting their knowledge of broader archipelagic events, thus promoting the idea of political harmony that was stressed in contemporary letter-writing manuals.