First, the dates of the Anglo-Norman invasion of Ireland
Start date: May 1, 1169
End date: 1171
Now......
https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/beyond_the_pale
According to the Oxford English Dictionary, there is insufficient evidence that the term originally referred to the English Pale, the part of Ireland directly under the control of the English government in the Late Middle Ages; or to the Pale of Settlement which existed from 1791 to 1917 in the Russian Empire, where Jewish people were mostly relegated to living.
https://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/beyond-the-pale.html
The phrase itself originated later than that. The first printed reference comes from 1657 in John Harington's lyric poem The History of Polindor and Flostella. In that work, the character Ortheris withdraws with his beloved to a country lodge for 'quiet, calm and ease', but they later venture further:
"Both Dove-like roved forth beyond the pale to planted Myrtle-walk".
Such recklessness rarely meets with a good end in 17th century verse and before long the lovers are attacked by armed men with 'many a dire killing thrust'. The message is clear - 'if there is a pale, decent people stay inside it', which conveys exactly the figurative meaning of the phrase as it is used today.
As a correspondent has helpfully pointed out, although Harington's poem was published in 1657, he died in 1612. That date, and most probably some years earlier, has to be the 'not later than' date for the origin of 'beyond the pale'.
https://www.worldwidewords.org/qa/qa-pal2.htm
In particular, the term was used to describe various defended enclosures of territory inside other countries. For example, the English pale in France in the fourteenth century was the territory of Calais, the last English possession in that country. The best-known example is the Russian Pale, between 1791 and the Revolution of 1917, which were specified provinces and districts within which Russian Jews were required to live.
Another famous one is the Pale in Ireland, the part of the country which England directly controlled — it varied from time to time, but was an area of several counties centred on Dublin. The first mention of the Irish Pale is in a document of 1446–7. Though there was an attempt later in the century to enclose the Pale by a bank and ditch (which was never completed), there never was a literal fence around it. The expression has often been claimed to originate in one or other of these pales, most often the Irish one, but the earliest appearance of 1720 for beyond the pale is very late if it’s linked to the Irish one and much too early for the Russian one.
The earliest figurative sense that’s linked to the idiom was of a sphere of activity or interest, a branch of study or a body of knowledge, which comes from the same idea of an enclosed or contained area; we use field in much the same way. This turned up first in 1483 in one of the earliest printed books in English, The Golden Legende, a translation by William Caxton of a French work. This is a much later example:
By its conversion England was first brought, not only within the pale of the Christian Church, but within the pale of the general political society of Europe.
The History of the Norman Conquest, by Ernest A Freeman, 1867.
Our sense seems part to have grown out of this, since people who exist outside such a conceptual pale are not our kind and do not share our values, beliefs or customs.
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