Byrne's Dictionary of Irish Local History Read online

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  © Joseph Byrne, 2004

  Epub ISBN: 978 1 85635 800 2

  Mobi ISBN: 978 1 85635 799 9

  Cover: A copy of letters patent to Thomas Denn, 27 November 1682 (courtesy of Kieran Sheehan)

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  For Siobhán

  Acknowledgments

  A dictionary can never aspire to perfection. Like history itself, there can be no last word. To readers dismayed to discover that I have omitted that which they are most earnestly in search of, I offer a humble Mea culpa. No one will be more disappointed than I when next I stumble across a term that should have been included. At the same time, were publication to be withheld until universal satisfaction could be guaranteed the utility of the present text would be deferred forever. I owe an incalculable debt to Raymond Gillespie and James Kelly for their support, advice and direction while this work was in progress. It was in Dr Gillespie’s masterly MA classes in local history at NUI Maynooth that the idea for this dictionary was first conceived and Dr Kelly’s encyclopaedic knowledge of eighteenth-century Ireland has spared me not a few blushes. Thanks are also due to the countless historians whose work I mined for explanations and definitions. Finally, I would like to thank the unfailingly helpful staff of Dr Cregan Library, St Patrick’s College, Drumcondra, where a considerable proportion of this volume was prepared.

  Foreword

  Traces, tracks, relics, sources, evidence. These are stuff of history but they are not history. History begins when the human mind engages with the evidence and tries to make sense of its significance for earlier communities. That is no easy task. The evidence may resist interpretation because the context within which it was created has been obscured over time. It may be the product of institutions long fallen into desuetude. It may be infused with complex imagery or language from Ireland’s rich multiethnic, multilingual, multicultural and religiously plural past. However we encounter it, our first challenge is to ‘read’ it and given the incalculable loss of Irish historical records over the years we must learn to do it well. Unfortunately, there is no handy cipher to unlock the secrets of the past and most dictionaries are too generalised to answer the specific concerns of local historians. Excellent though it is, the Oxford English Dictionary falls short when dealing with the Irish context. S. J. Connolly’s The Oxford companion to Irish history should find a place on every local historian’s bookshelf but only partially serves as a companion to Irish local history. Some thoughtful Irish historians, recognising the needs of a broader (and growing) non-specialist audience, append glossaries to their work or incorporate explanations in parentheses. Many, however, do not. So what was an ‘angel’? Castle chamber? Raskins? A Cunningham acre? Letters patent? And where do you go to find out what a Brunswick club was? Or the meaning of legal terms associated with the courts and land conveyancing? This dictionary attempts to answer such questions for Irish local historians.

  Although intended primarily for local historians, readers should not be surprised to encounter entries here that, at first glance, might be considered more relevant to national history. It is axiomatic that all histories gain from a consideration of the big picture and local societies, however isolated, did not exist in a vacuum. Their personalities were forged out of the interplay between the local and the wider world to such an extent as to diminish local studies that ignore the regional or national dimensions. That interrelationship is acknowledged by the inclusion in this book of numerous entries relating to national and regional institutions such as parliament and the courts, to administrative structures, religion, education, historical records, land law, lay associations, political movements, architecture and archaeology.

  In chronological terms the subject-matter of this dictionary ranges from early times to the close of the nineteenth century. The story of local communities, of course, does not end with the nineteenth century. The abundance, variety and accessibility of sources for the twentieth century make that period an exciting new frontier for local historians. So abundant, in fact, that a dedicated volume of its own would be required to do it justice. Time constraints rendered that impractical and I have elected to focus on earlier, less familiar and less accessible periods.

  Structurally the Dictionary of Irish Local History is not dissimilar to a traditional dictionary but there are a number of significant differences. Many definitions have been enlarged to explain the history of an institution or process or to document change over time. All entries are fully cross-referenced – bold type indicating a separate entry – and, where appropriate, readers are directed to articles and books which contain an extended treatment of the relevant topic and to the holding archives, libraries or repositories of related primary historical sources. Abbreviated references below each entry can be located in full in the bibliography at the end of the book. All local historians, be they aspiring or experienced, will find something of interest in the research guide section and website directory which close this book.

  A Note on Weights and Measures

  Although metrological standardisation began in Ireland in the mid-nineteenth century, many traditional units (the Irish mile and acre) persisted in use into the twentieth century and that most antique of land divisions, the townland, is with us yet. Prior to standardisation, a complex range of weights and measures were employed which varied (sometimes radically so) from district to district. In parts of Co. Clare in the 1820s a bushel of potatoes contained six stones six pounds but elsewhere in the county it weighed sixteen, eighteen or twenty stones. To complicate matters, the Clare bushel also evidenced seasonal variability: the stone weighed sixteen pounds in summer but eighteen in winter to take account of encrusted clay. At a broader level metrological variability was influenced by commodity, by quality and even point of sale. At the bottom of the distribution network, for example, a wide range of agreed yet non-standard local measures such as pottles, creels and paniers were employed and small domestic containers were frequently pressed into service. An added local refinement was the sale of dry goods in heaped or level measure. Finally, time itself was a variable as some measures fell into disuse over time and others were introduced by colonists.

  Gaelic territorial divisions were arranged hierarchically to a regular plan, size being determined by variables such as soil quality, relief and the size of the lordship to which they were connected. Most were erased in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries as the social order which regulated them collapsed under the pressure of conquest and colonisation. Ballybetaghs, ballyboes, sessiaghs, gnieves, capell lands and horsemen’s beds lost their currency under the new order although many survive as placenames or lie obscured behind baronial, civil parish or townland boundaries. Paradoxically, as deeds and charters were rarely used by the natives, our knowledge of indigenous spatial divisions derives to a considerable degree from the bureaucracy of plantation itself. The names and dimensions of Gaelic spatial units are preserved in manuscript form, sometimes for the first time, in the maps, inquisitions, sur
veys, land grants and books of distribution which documented the settlement process. Historians and geographers have used these sources with some profit to enhance our understanding of the socio-economic and political structure of Gaelic Ireland but, overall, the spatial picture remains incomplete. Given these uncertainties, a detailed treatment of Irish measures is not possible within the parameters of the present work. A supplementary reading list is appended overleaf to facilitate further reading.

  Adams, I. H., Agrarian landscape terms: a glossary for historical geography (London, 1976).

  Andrews, J. H., Plantation acres: an historical study of the Irish land surveyor and his maps (Omagh, 1985).

  Bourke, P. M. Austin, ‘Notes on some agricultural units of measurement in use in pre-famine Ireland’ in IHS, xiv (1964–5), pp. 236–245.

  Connor, R. D., The weights and measures of England (London, 1987).

  Duffy, Patrick J., ‘Social and spatial order in the MacMahon lordship of Airghialla in the late sixteenth century’ in Duffy, Patrick J., Edwards, David and FitzPatrick, Elizabeth (eds), Gaelic Ireland c.1250–1650: land lordship and settlement (Dublin, 2001), pp. 115–137.

  Erck, John Caillard (ed.), A repertory of the enrolments of the patent rolls of Chancery in Ireland, James I, (2 vols, 2 parts, 1846–1852).

  Feenan, Dermot and Kennedy, Liam, ‘Weights and measures of the major food commodities in early-nineteenth century Ireland: a regional perspective’ in RIA Proc., C, cii, (2002), pp. 21–45.

  Freeman, Martin (ed.), The compossicion booke of Conought (Dublin, 1936).

  Hill, George, An historical account of the plantation of Ulster at the commencement of the seventeenth century (Belfast, 1877).

  Hogan, James, ‘The tricha-cét and related land measures’ in RIA Proc., C, xxxviii, no. 7 (1928–9), pp. 148–235.

  Inquisitionum in officio rotulorum cancellariae Hiberniae asservatorum repertorium (2 vols, Dublin, 1827–9). Chancery inquisitions for Leinster and Ulster.

  Larcom, Thomas, ‘On the territorial divisions of Ireland’ in HC 1847 (764) L. 1.

  McErlean, Thomas, ‘The Irish townland system of landscape organisation’ in T. Reeves-Smyth and F. Hammond (eds), Landscape archaeology of Ireland (Oxford, 1983), pp. 315–39.

  Morrin, James (ed.), The patent rolls of Henry VIII, Edward VI, Philip & Mary, Elizabeth I and Charles I (3 vols, 1861–1863).

  Report of the commissioners appointed to inquire into the state of the fairs and markets in Ireland, HC 1852–3 [1674] XLI; Mins of evidence, HC 1854–5 [1910] XIX.

  Second report of the commissioners appointed by His Majesty to consider the subject of weights and measures, HC 1820 (314) VII.

  Wakefield, Edward, An account of Ireland, statistical and political (2 vols, London, 1812).

  Abbreviations

  Anal. Hib. Analecta Hibernica

  app. appendix

  Archiv. Hib. Archivium Hibernicum

  AS. Anglo-Saxon

  c. circa (about)

  Collect. Hib. Collectanea Hibernica

  d. died

  DHR Dublin Historical Record

  Econ Hist. Economic History

  ed(s). editors(s)

  EHR English Historical Review

  ff. and the following pages

  Fr. French

  Gr. Greek

  HC House of Commons

  HMC Historical Manuscripts Commission

  HMSO Her Majesty’s Stationery Office

  IER Irish Ecclesiastical Record

  Ir. Econ. & Soc. Hist. Irish Economic and Social History

  IHS Irish Historical Studies

  IMC Irish Manuscripts Commission

  Ir. Irish

  Ir. Cath. Hist. Comm. Proc. Proceedings of the Irish Catholic Historical Committee

  Ir. Jurist

  Irish Jurist

  Ir. Sword

  Irish Sword

  Ir. Texts Soc. Irish Texts Society

  JCHAS Journal of the Cork Historical and Archaeological Society

  Jn. Ecc. Hist. Journal of Ecclesiastical History

  L. Latin

  Louth Arch. Soc. Jn. Journal of the Louth Archaeological and Historical Society

  Med. L. Medieval Latin

  NA National Archives

  NHI A New History of Ireland (9 vols, Oxford, 1976–)

  NLI National Library of Ireland

  OE Old English

  OFr Old French

  passim in various places

  PRI rep. DK Report of the deputy keeper of Public Records in Ireland

  PRONI Public Record Office of Northern Ireland

  repr. reprint

  R. Hist. Soc. Trans. Transactions of the Royal Historical Society

  RIA Royal Irish Academy

  RIA Proc. Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy

  RSAI Royal Society of Antiquaries of Ireland

  RSAI Jn.

  Journal of the Royal Society of Antiquaries of Ireland

  ser.

  series

  UJA

  Ulster Journal of Archaeology

  W.

  Welsh

  A

  abbroachment. The offence of forestalling or purchasing goods before they reach the market in order to retail them at a higher price. See forestall, regrate.

  abjuration, oath of. An oath of renunciation. Several acts were passed in the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries requiring the abjuration (renunciation) of the pope’s spiritual and temporal authority, Catholic doctrine and/or the claim of the Stuart pretender to the throne. The first (1657) required the oath-taker to deny the pope’s spiritual and temporal authority and repudiate Catholic doctrine. The second, a contravention of the treaty of Limerick (which asked only for an oath of allegiance to William III), was passed by the English parliament in 1691 (3 Will. & Mary, c. 2) and required members of parliament to renounce papal authority and the pope’s power to depose a monarch. This oath remained effective until the passage of the Catholic emancipation act in 1829. The third, passed in 1703 (1 Anne, c. 17), abjured the pretensions of the Stuarts to the throne and was imposed on Irish office-holders and professionals such as teachers, lawyers and, later, Anglican ministers. In 1709 (8 Anne, c. 3) registered Catholic priests were required to take the oath but this they largely refused to do. The oath prescribed for all office-holders by the Irish parliament following the Act of Supremacy (1537) was also effectively an oath of abjuration in that it required the oath-taker to acknowledge the monarch as the supreme head of the church in Ireland and England. (Fagan, Divided loyalties, pp. 22–48; Wall, The penal laws, pp. 17–19.)

  abjure the realm. To avoid a criminal prosecution in medieval times a criminal might take shelter in the sanctuary of a church and abjure the realm before a coroner. This meant that he must swear to leave the country by the nearest port and never return. During the reign of Henry VIII he was branded so that if he ever chose to return he would be instantly recognisable and hanged.

  absence. To safeguard the security of the Anglo-Norman colony in Ireland fines were levied on tenants holding by knight-service (chief tenants) who, without royal licence, absented themselves from their estates and went abroad. See Absentees, Statute of.

  absentee landlord. In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, a pejorative term to describe a landlord who resided in England and left the administration of his estate to agents or middlemen. Some landlords, of course, could not help but be absentees as they held land in different parts of the country or in both England and Ireland. (Malcomson, ‘Absenteeism’, pp. 15–35.)

  Absentees, Statute of. Passed at Westminster in 1380, this legislation followed a series of earlier ordinances directed against chief tenants who absented themselves from their estates and thereby neglected the defence of the Anglo-Norman colony. It enacted the king’s entitlement to two-thirds of the profits of the estates of long-term absentees and the imposition of fines for casual absences to offset the costs incurred by the state in meeting the defensive shortcomings created by the
ir absence. Between 1483 and 1536 a further five absentee acts were passed by Irish parliaments. (Cosgrove, ‘England’, pp. 526–7.)

  abuttal. A clause in a deed which identifies the location of a property being conveyed by naming the tenants of adjoining lands or physical features such as rivers or the king’s highway which bound it.

  accates. (Fr. achater, to pay) Provisions that were purchased as opposed to those that were produced in the home.

  account rolls. Manorial accounting records maintained on the charge (rents, fines, heriots, profits) and discharge (payment of labour, purchase of seed and equipment) system. Few account rolls survive for Ireland. One of the most interesting is the Account roll of the priory of the Holy Trinity, Dublin, 1337–1346, edited by James Mills and published by the Royal Society of Antiquaries of Ireland (1890–1). In 1996 it was re-issued with an introduction by James Lydon and Alan Fletcher.

  achievement. Anything which a man is entitled to represent of an armorial character including a shield, crest and motto, of which the shield is the most important.

  acre. The Irish acre was the spatial measure most widely employed in Ireland from the seventeenth century and certainly the predominant unit by the nineteenth. One Irish (or plantation) acre was equivalent to 1.62 statute (English) acres. The statute acre (in use in parts of Cork, Waterford and some north-eastern counties in the nineteenth century) contains 4,840 square yards compared with the Irish measure of 7,840 square yards. In parts of Ulster, the Cunningham or Scottish acre of 6,250 square yards to the acre was employed. The difference in area between the Irish, the Cunningham and the statute acre derives from the use of a linear perch of varying length, the Irish perch measuring seven yards, the Cunningham six-and-a-quarter and the statute five-and-a-half. Prior to the general acceptance of the Irish measure a range of other measures were used, often with significant regional variations, measures which related more to the productive capacity of the land than to a specific spatial concept. See balliboe, ballybetagh, capell lands, cartron, collop, cowlands, gnieve, great acre, horsemen’s beds, mile, ploughland, quarter, sessiagh, soum, tathe. (Andrews, Plantation acres, pp. 4–18; Bourke, ‘Notes on some agricultural’, pp. 236–245.)