In 1252 Geoffrey de Geneville married Matilda de Lacy, the elder coheiress of Meath and Weobley, thereby becoming lord of Trim in Ireland and Ludlow in the Welsh March. By birth, however, this second son of Simon, lord of Joinville, was the lord of Vaucouleurs in Champagne and was thus an ‘exotic’ figure to find involved in late thirteenth-century Ireland. While Geoffrey was not alone in being a landowner in Ireland with continental origins, since he was part of what Robert Bartlett calls the ‘aristocratic diaspora’ — the movement of western European aristocrats from their homelands into new areas where they settled in order to augment their fortunes — he was exceptional in that he was the most successful figure to emerge in Ireland as a result of Henry III’s tendency to invest foreigners from the court circle with lands in outlying areas. This pattern has been described as a policy by H. W. Ridgeway, who saw an intention to secure potentially troublesome border regions as one reason behind Henry’s distribution of peripheral patronage to ‘aliens’; and, indeed, Geoffrey numbered himself among the upright men of different nationalities placed in Ireland by the descendants of Henry II in order to bring the island to the obedience of the English king and to conserve the peace. The success that Geoffrey made of his grant of Trim related to the ‘secure nature’ of that particular lordship. However, that cannot be the whole story. There is no firm evidence that either William de Valence or Geoffrey de Lusignan, Henry III’s half-brothers, or the Savoyard knight Otto de Grandison, members of the Poitevin and Savoyard entourages of Henry III and the Lord Edward and the recipients of grants in the securely held areas of Wexford, Louth and Tipperary respectively, ever visited the lordship of Ireland in spite of their receipt of valuable lands there.
EFFECTIVENESS OF POLICY OF PROMOTION OF SOCIAL ORIENTATION OF AGRICULTURAL DEVELOPMENT
