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The first Cistercian monastery was instituted at Mellifont, near Drogheda, County Louth in 1142, under the influence of St. Malachy. The Savigniac Order had its origins in 1105 when Vitalis of Mortain established a hermitage in the forest of Savigny. Later many Cistercian abbeys were established under Norman patronage, also endowed by Irish kings. According to Giraldus, Cistercians obtained the lands of Irish churches and sometimes obliterated all trace of former buildings.
It was the Synod of Kells in 1152 that determined the final structure of the Irish medieval Church within the Roman obedience. Preceding the Kells synod, King Turlough O' Connor of Connacht had put forward its metropolitan claim.
Between Kells and Cavan, Leitrim, and Fermanagh, the tract of the Loug Erne and the river Erne was designated as Briefne.A ridge of hills crosses the county nearly from north to south, dividing it into two unequal portions: on the summit, near Lavy chapel, is a spring, a stream descending from which takes an easterly course towards Lough Ramor and into the Boyne, which empties itself into the Irish sea in Drogheda harvout; another stream flows westward through Lough Erne into the Atlantic, on the coast of Donegal.
County Cavan is partly in the diocese of Meath, and partly in that of Ardagh, but chiefly in that of Kilmore, and wholly in the ecclesiastical province of Armagh. In 1591, Monaghan and South Dublin (Tallaght, Powerscourt, Naas, North Wicklow, Glendalough, Enniskerry) and Glens of the Downs remained native settlements.
St. Malachy of Kinelowen born, about 1094 at Armagh, served as bishop of Down and later of Connor. He was next induced by the papal legate Gilbert to accept the archbishopric of Armagh when there was a significant break in the line of hereditary coarbs (erenaghs) long dominant there. After retiring to a monastery, he peformed other services to the Church and visited Rome to seek archiepiscopal status for Armagh and Cashel. On his visit to Clairvaux, a friendship with St. Bernard led to the first irish Ciseterican house at Mellifornt where Donough O`Carroll, the King of Uriel, was the chief benefactor of the monastery. St. Malachy died at Clairvaux on his second visit.
In 1134 Saint Bernard of Clairvaux convinced William X to drop his support to Anacletus and join Innocent. When William X died (1137), his daughter Eleanor of Aquitaine, the greatest heiress of France, married her guardian, Louis VII of France and followed him on crusade, then had the marriage annulled under the pretext of kinship in 1152 to marry his greatest rival Henry II of England. The second of saints of the Romanizing era is St. Laurence O' Toole, born at Kildare, the son of a Leinster chief. The Primate Gelasius of Armagh selected him to be archbishop of Dublin in1162. He had the task of representing Irish interests in audiences with Henry II in 1173 and attended the Fourth Lateran Council held under Alexander III in 1179. He had to interview Henry in Normandy before being permitted to return home, though in the Fourth Lateran Council of 1215 the number of degrees within which marriage was prohibited was again reduced from seven to four. In cases where two individuals descended in an unequal number of generations from a common ancestor, the more distant descent governed the degree of consanguinity. After 4th Lateran there was some disagreement in the use of the "Roman" vs. the "Canon" or "Germanic" system of counting, as well as difference of opinion about how to count people descended in an unequal number of generations from a common ancestor. The documented cases of bishops blocking proposed consanguineous marriages include two examples of apparent intended marriages of illegitimate daughters of Henry I. Saint Anselm intervened in the Warenne marriage, and Ivo of Chartres in another. St. Laurence O' Toole set out for Dublin and died suddenly at Eu near Rouen. Lay religion tended to find expression in relic cults and pilgrimages to shrines. The cave St. Patrick's Purgatory in Lough Derg, Donegal became famous abroad and drew pilgrims and sincere penitents from continental lands, even after the papal suppression of the shrine in 1497.
In 1155, Henry II sent an embassy to the English pope, Hadrian IV to obtain sanction for expanding sway into Ireland. It was fourteen years later that an irresponsible chieftan gave the Normans an opportunity in Ireland. Dermot MacMurrough, descendant of kings of Leinster, when worsted by the king of Connacht, fled to Bristol and then crossed to France. From Wiltshire, John of Salisbury was one of those sent by Henry II to the petitioned destination of Hadrian IV. Hadrian's bull was recorded by Giraldus Cambrensis in his Conquest of Ireland, from when it was commenced to enlarge the bounds from the deplorable state of the people. Henry took no action while the Donation of Constantine, all outlying islands had been bestowed to the see of Peter from his mother Matilda's enterprise. When MacMurrough was in the east of England, he conferred with Henry and helped the Norman vassals to plan the invasion of Ireland. Richard of Pembroke (Strongbow de Clare) was the chief commander of the invasion. Wexford was captured in 1169 and he soon took Waterford and joined MacMurrough of Leinster in the capture of Dublin. Henry spent almost a yeare in Dublin while most seaport towns were often occupied by Danes. While there, he received the submission of many Irish princes and tried to lay the foundations of a feudal model. It was naturally the monasteries and churches with their treasures of wrought vestments and metalwork that chiefly invited the Viking rovers in a long era in which its churches were often victim. In the nineth century, the monastic communities such as St. Comgall's Bangor, St. Finnian's Moville, St. Brendan's Clonfert, St. Brigid's Kildare, and St.Ciaran's Clonmacnois were among the most venerable.
The Normans and their Flemish mercenaries invaded Pembroke in 1093. Carmarthen was captured in 1146-7 by a force of Normans and Flemings under the Fitzgeralds and William, son of Aed (Gwilym ap Aedan.) In 1233, William Marshall junior, earl of Pembroke seized Carmarthen and Cardigan which he surrendered to the king in 1226. By 1229 they were held by Hubert de Burgh, earl of Kent made justiciar of England by King John at Runnymede. The de Braiose lordship of Gower was subordinated to Cardigan and Carmarthen, together with the de Clare's lordship of Glamorgan. The Burgh, de Burgo or Burke family originated in Burgh, Norfolk. Hubert's brother William settled in Ireland and his descendants became earls of Ulster, marrying into the Scots royal family and becoming ancestors of the English one through the Mortimers and the Plantagenet dukes of York. Hubert de Burgh married as his third wife, Margaret of Scotland and had a daughter Megotta whom he married to his ward Richard de Clare. Megotta died in November 1237 and Richard de Clare married Maud, daughter of John de Lacy, earl of Lincoln in January 1238. Cardigan and Builth were retaken by the English in 1241 and retained as royal fortresses like Montgomery and Carmarthen. Cardigan and Carmarthen became centres of administration for Wales from 1241 and troops from adjoining counties were mustered there for wars. In 1299 John de Mohun of Dunster (La Manche of the English Channel), co-heir of the Marshall family, held lands in Kildare. The Mohuns gave their name to Hammoun in Dorset, Ottery Mohun and Tor Mohun in Devon and Grange Mohun in Kildare.
Countess Richilde of Hainault, widow of Baldwin the Good (d. 1070), Count of Flanders (who married William Fitzosbern, earl of Hereford, as her second husband), became involved in a conspiracy against the Karls who helped Robert I "The Frisian" (d. 1092) to seize Flanders. Both William fitzOsbern and Arnulf (his son by Richilde) died at the battle of Cassel. Flemish mercenaries, settled in Pembroke in 1155. Henry II also settled Pembroke and Cardigan (which he gave to the de Clares) with Flemings from the north of England who became sheep breeders. Members of the families of Hacket and Cromelyn may have been amongst King Stephen's Flemish mercenaries who settled in England. Some of King Stephen's Flemish mercenaries settled in Pembrokeshire where there was a colony of their fellow countrymen who were sheep farmers from East Anglia. The humbler Flemings were transported to remote farms, others became outlaws rounded up by the sheriff of Nottingham. The Sherwood Forest (which stretched from Rockingham in Northamptonshire to Barnsdale in Yorkshire) was their refuge - the Flemish knights of Lens were elite crossbowmen and archers. The Malet family originated in Graville at the mouth of the Seine. They were Flemings whose names appear in Flemish charters and one of them, William Malet I, fought at Hastings. The earldoms of Northampton (1088) and Huntingdon (1090) were originally held by Simon of Senlis and were given to David I, king of Scots on his marriage to Simon's widow Matilda of Lens. In 1185 Henry II gave the Honour of Huntingdon to William the Lion and his brother David (d. 1219) became earl. The earldom and Honour of Huntingdon passed to Alexander II of Scots (1214-49) and his brother David and after the latter's death to his son John the Scot (d. 1237), earl of Chester and Huntingdon.
Giraldus Cambrensis made a visit to Kildare in 1185 and described the Book of Kells. Of the few illuminated manuscripts that remain in present time, manuscript art reached a peak about the time of the Viking raids. Scribe are survived by works done under an abbot until Irish illumination was produced in continental scriptoria by Irishmen or their non-Irish pupils. About the year 1213 there arose a great discord between King John (1199-1216) and his barons, because Matilda, surnamed the Fair, daughter to the said Robert fitzWalter, whom the king unlawfully loved but could not obtain her, nor her father would consent thereunto, whereupon, and for other like causes, ensued war through the whole realm. The barons were received into London, where they greatly endamaged the king. Robert Fitzwalter died in 1234. According to legend, Matilda Fitzwalter was betrothed to "Robin Hood" or Robert of Loxley, earl of Huntingdon who was related through his mother to Gilbert de Ghent or Gant, lord of Lindsay and Kyme and cousin of Count Eustace of Boulogne. The Book of Kells was kept at Kells in Meath where he was told that it was written in the age of St. Brigid; no early writer of St. Brigid mentions it. It became a war casualty of the Cambro-Norman era of the Irish Midlands, perhaps the War of Kildare of 1234 AD. Gerald, a younger son of Maurice, who obtained lands in Offaly, was father of Maurice "Fitz Gerald," who held the great office of justiciar of Ireland from 1232 to 1245. In 1234 he fought and defeated his overlord, the earl marshal, Richard, earl of Pembroke, and he also fought for his king against the Irish, the Welsh, and in Gascony, dying in 1257. He held Maynooth Castle, the seat of his descendants. The extensive family possessions were now divided among Anselm's five sisters and their descendants, the earldom of Pembroke reverting to the Crown. Strongbow's daughter Isabel became countess of Pembroke and the title was borne by her husband, SIR William Marshal. The next holder of the lands of the earldom of Pembroke was William de Valence (d. 1296), a younger son of Hugh de Lusignan, count of La Marche, by his marriage with Isabella of Angouleme (d. 1246), widow of the English king John.
In the early thirteenth century the Cistercians who had earlier contributed much to Irish religious and cultural life fell into disorders. The visitation in 1228 by Stephen of Lexington, later abbot of Clairvaux halted the deterioration. Stephen insisted on the ability of postulants to read Latin and French and encouraged monks to seek higher learning at Oxford and Paris and set up a system of visitations which enlisted secular authorities in the suppression of disobedience and schism and teaching friars to expand in Ireland. Dominicans, Franciscans, Carmelites, and Augustinians, formed scores of houses through most of the island on primarily English initiative. The Franciscans were given the mission from Spain even during the days of St. Francis. They left no traces of establishing schools of learning in ireland during the Romanizing era. All four orders of friars became increasingly active in the fifteenth century to western section of the island yet vacant. The theme that predominates in the history of the medieval Irish church is that of Anglicization and therewith Romanization, since all was done with papal support. It was papal policy to support the authority of English kings in Ireland, on the basis of King John's submission to Innocent III in 1213 that both became a fief. During the eleventh and twelfth centuries, the migration of Irish monks to the Continent while transformation was taking place drew a flow of uncommitted pilgrims to Rome, neither travelers of former times or the Cistercian order abroad from Ireland. In the eighth century Irish and British mission to the Slavic kingdom of Moravia, Irish monks undertook a different mission to Kiev from monasteries at the time of conception or as emissary of the emperor Henry IV (1084-1106) with growing patronage and the general adoption of Benedictine rule.
The Vikings arrived from Norway by way of Shetland and Orkney, and they soon began to settle many coastal areas. Caithness, the coastal areas of Sutherland and Wester Ross, and the Hebrides all came under Norse control as can be seen from many surviving placenames. The Hebrides transferred from the Kingdom of Norway to the Kingdom of Scotland after the battle of Largs in 1266, but Orkney and Shetland did not become part of Scotland for another 200 years. Even today the Caithness dialect shows Scandinavian influences. Dingwall was the Thing-vollr, the local Norse parliament, as survives today in the Isle of Man's Tynwald.