Ireland does get a bit of one chapter but it focuses on the dreadful state of the place in the 14th century -
...(thanks to) the perpetual, ruinous civil war which ravaged the country in the 14th century as in almost every other century. The Black Death was no less painful to the Irish because they were accustomed to live in a state of even bloodier disorder than their neighbours across the Irish Sea but it should not be forgotten that a high proportion of their misfortunes would have arisen even though there had been no plague to help them forward.
Now I've just dug out an essay from Dr. J.F. Lydon, Lecky professor of history at TCD (published in The Course of Irish History Ed. TW Moody and FX Martin) and he doesn't mention any of this. I know who I believe.
Lydon explains how in the late 13th and 14th centuries the Gaelic chieftans had gradually been gaining back the land stolen from them by the Norman invaders but that this was a period of prosperity - e.g.: "prosperity meant leisure and the desire for an education" leading to schools and the founding of a university in Dublin 1320 (admittedly the plague and troubles late in the century were its undoing). The arrival of gallowglass mercenaries from Scotland had evened up the score and the gaelic chieftans could now match the Normans in battle and were gradually driving them back to the coast and to their castles.
According to Lydon the plague caused panic more among the Norman settlers, many of whom went home or fled to towns (all of which were under the control of the Normans). The 14thC was a period of Gaelic Revival and renewal not one of bloody wars and destitution.
There was "recurrent war... but it must be seen in its proper perspective. For most people in the colony, or for that matter in the Gaelic areas, the war was usually far away and never touched them."
The main war in the 14thC was the one caused by the arrival of Richard II in 1394 which only temporarily stemmed the gaelic revival.
feckin perfidious albion and her vassels telling lies about us again.
