In chapter 409 of his Gesta regum Anglorum, William of Malmesbury writes: ‘Muirchetach, king of the Irish, and his successors, whose names are not reported, were so devoted to our King Henry that they wrote nothing except what would please him and did nothing except what he told them to do.’ The passage seems easy to dismiss as hyperbole, much as Sir Frank Stenton dismissed similar references to William the Conqueror and Ireland in the Anglo- Saxon Chronicle, an effort by Malmesbury to indicate something of the scope and grandeur of Henry’s power or to show the awe in which Henry was held even by peoples he had not yet encountered. Henry I was not, after all, the Henry who invaded Ireland. In Warren Hollister’s recently published biography of the king, there is no mention of Ireland or things Irish. It is that other Henry whom historians are concerned with in Ireland. Richard fitz Gilbert of Clare’s conquest in Leinster, and Henry II’s subsequent arrival there, are seen as such turning points in the history of Ireland – the beginning of ‘medieval Ireland’ if one follows Cosgrove’s New History of Ireland – that until recently they have dominated the way scholars think about Irish history and about Irish relations with the English crown.

But in a volume in which we celebrate the publication of a book that argues, at least implicitly, that much of what historians credit Henry II with can be anticipated by – if it did not actually happen in – the reign of Henry I, it is perhaps appropriate to look at some of the ways in which Anglo-Irish relationsin the reign of the first Henry anticipated the actions of his more famous namesake. Further, as historians look for post-Hollister ways of understanding Henry I and his actions, we might be well-served to look beyond the person and the personal – beyond places Henry actually went, in this case – and try to understand power and influence in less immediate and, again, less personal terms. Henry I did not go to Ireland, he did not conquer all or even many of the lands along the Irish Sea, but through his actions and ambitions, the orientation of power in these lands had begun to change.