Horse boys

As well as raising large numbers of Welsh infantry for the 1301 campaign, Edward I also exploited the resources of Ireland. The Plantagenets treated the lordship of Ireland as a combination of food factory and recruitment ground; they seldom bothered to visit, and no English king set foot in the country between the reigns of King John and Richard II.

The purveyance in Ireland was to consist of:

3200 quarters of wheat 300 quarters of oats
2000 quarters of malt 500 quarters of beans and peas
200 casks of new wine
10,000 hard fish and 5 lasts of herring

Half of the above was to be sent to Skinburness, the port near Carlisle, and half to a port on the isle of Arran. Since 1298 the isle had been held for Edward I by Sir Hugh Bisset of Antrim, an Irish pirate who earned his knighthood by keeping the Irish Sea clear of Scottish ships. The stores were distributed to the garrisons of Lochmaben, Dumfries and Ayre, as well as the army of the Prince of Wales at Carlisle.

The king also wanted Irish soldiers, and lots of them. He was especially fond of hobelars or ‘horse boys’, light horse ideally suited to the difficult terrain of Ireland and Scotland. Edward’s justiciar of Ireland, John Wogan, haggled over terms of service with the Irish nobility. They drove a hard bargain, and the eventual arrangement was complicated. In return for pardon of two-thirds of their debts at the Exchequer, the Irish nobles agreed to serve in Scotland for 100 days. The remaining one-third would be allowed as wages or as compensation for loss of horses in the campaign. If this did not suffice, Edward guaranteed to pay extra cash to make up the deficit.

The Earl of Ulster, Richard de Burgh, refused to come to terms. Edward had practically begged for his support, informing Burgh that he relied on him “more than any other man in the land for many reasons”. Burgh was fully aware of the king’s desperate need for Irish troops, and wanted to extract the best possible terms for himself.

Even without Burgh’s support, an Irish army of 120 men-at-arms, 178 hobelars and 1200 infantry sailed for Scotland on 9 July in a fleet of 74 ships. They landed at Arran, and went on to join Prince Edward and his Welsh army at Carlisle. All of the Irish served in exchange for remission of debt, and the surviving wage-roll shows how highly the king valued their services: the infantry were paid 6d (pence) a day, three times the normal wage of English or Welsh footsoldiers. One of their troop-leaders, Donald Ruath Macarthi, was also granted an extra pardon of £100 of his debts.

Meanwhile the Earl of Ulster tired of playing politics, and sent a smaller Irish force to Scotland to join the king. This consisted of 4 knights, 42 men-at-arms, 39 squires, 86 hobelars and 128 infantry. These men, led by Eustace de Poer and Thomas de Mandeville, were in pay from 1 July.

[Second pic above is a modern sculpture of an Irish galloglass at Roscommon]