Goddard H. Orpen

Life
1852-1932 [Goddard Henry Orpen]; b. Dublin, son of a barrister, and grew up in family home at 58, St. Stephen’s Green; his mother Ellen was dg. of Rev. John Richards of Grange Hse. [later Monksgrange], Co. Wexford; ed. Tipperary Grammar School; grad. TCD (BA 1st Class), 1873; joined English bar; resided in London with his wife Adela [née Richards], a cousin once-removed; trans. and ed. Songs of Dermot and the Earl (1892) from Norman French; learnt Irish while in London and issued a translation of Socialisme contemporaine by Émile de Laveleye (Socialism of Today, 1886) - with a additional chapter on Socialism in England;

moved to Monksgrange, Co. Wexford on Adela receiving ownership from her father, 1900; Orpen thereafter devoted his time to historical and archaelogical research and issued Ireland Under the Normans 1169-1216, 4 vols. (1911-20) - a work which met with sharp criticism from Eoin MacNeill and others, defending Gaelic society against his view that the invasion brought economic benefits to Ireland; a lecture given to the New Ross Lit. Soc. was afterwards published as New Ross in the Thirteenth Century (1911); he wrote Orpen Family (1930), a family history for private circulation;

elected member of RIA [MRIA], 1911; awarded D.Litt. (TCD), 1921; elected President of RSIA, 1930; d. 15 May 1932, at Monksgrange, and bur. in St. Anne’s churchyard, Killann; there is a portrait by Séan OSullivan in Monksgrange; his wife Adela wrote the novels Perfection City (1897) and Corageen in ’98 (1898) amd other works [see infra].

[ top ]

Bibliographical details
Ireland under the Normans (Oxford: Clarendon Press 1911-1920) - Vols. 1 & 2: “Ireland under the Normans, 1169-1216”, publ. 1911; Vols. 3 & 4: - “Ireland under the Normans, 1216-1333”: publ. 1920]. Vol. 3 has 324pp.

[ top ]

Commentary
D. George Boyce, Nationalism in Ireland (London: Routledge 1982; 1991 Edn.), discussing the theory of Gaelic high-kingship developed by Eoin MacNeill: This contrasted sharply with the view of G. O. Orpen, who set down his own version of an anarchic Ireland in a  “tribal state”, possessing an ard ri with no political powerbut only nominal authority. Ireland, unlike most European countries, was free from external threat, and had every opportunity to construct some kind of political unity; but, Orpen argued, this very absence of threat from Roman or Barbarian invasion meant that Ireland could remain in happy oblivion, free from any danger that might have “roused the Gael from his slumbers”.’ (p.26; see Orpen, Ireland under the Normans, Vol. 1, pp.20-28.) Boyce goes on to remark that ‘Ireland may not have been so far outside the mainstream of European life as Orpen and later authorities asserted’ and that ‘“the patchwork quilt” of Irish political institutions, the dynastic sub-kingdoms, the fluid network of local supremacies were altering by the twelfth century.’ (Idem.)

See further on MacNeill’s critique, in Dictionary of Irish Biography: ‘Both before and after his death Orpen’s work has been the subject of hostile criticism from those with more nationalist inclinations, starting with Eoin MacNeill (qv) in a series of lectures delivered in 1917. Despite his own eminence as a scholar of medieval Ireland, MacNeill resorted to unfair polemic in his attack on Orpen, caricaturing Orpen’s account of pre-Norman Irish society and disregarding the more subtle nuances in his views of the English–Irish relationship. In this he has been followed by generations of other scholars and readers, overlooking the depth of Orpen’s research, the perceptiveness of his interpretations, and the extent of his fieldwork on the archaeological evidence from the medieval period. Orpen took the study of Anglo-Norman Ireland out of the realm of vague antiquarianism and professionalised it. His standards were not those of “the gentleman-amateur” as might be expected from his background, but of the twentieth-century “scientific” historian, and he is therefore now widely regarded as the founder of the professional study of Anglo-Norman Ireland (Duffy). Perhaps the most striking evidence of the continued validity and relevance of Orpen’s work is that his four-volume Ireland under the Normans has been twice republished in more recent years, in 1968 by Oxford University Press and in 2002 in a one-volume version by Four Courts Press.’ (Philip Bull, “Goddard Henry Orpen”, in Dict. Ir. Biog., RIA 32009 - online; accessed 18.06.2024.) Note: Bull adds that Orpen listed himself as agnostic in the 1911 Census.

[ top ]

References
Belfast Public Library holds Ireland Under the Normans 1169-1216, 4 vols. (1911); Corageen in 98 (1898); ed. Songs of Dermot and the Earl (1892).

[ top ]