Where the Middle Ages Begin
John Barbour’s Bruce, composed in the mid 1370s, is the first long poem in the Scots vernacular. It contains twenty books, the first thirteen of which trace the Wars of Liberty from their origins until triumph at the Battle of Bannockburn. At this point the Irish ‘matter’ enters the poem.
This thesis explores these ambitions and relationships. It looks at the complex, sometimes violent, relationships between the earls of Desmond and local gentry, neighbouring magnates, absentee landholders, the royal government and the English crown as well as with the Irish.
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