Byrne's Dictionary of Irish Local History Read online

  clerestory. A series of windows inserted in the higher reaches of the nave, chancel or transept of a large church above the aisle arches and clear of the roofs of the aisles to light the central areas of the church.

  clerk. Short for clerk in holy orders, the term signifies a clergyman.

  clerk of the crown, clerk of the peace. The clerk of the crown was a legal officer responsible for the functioning of the assize courts in each county and for keeping the records. His equivalent in the quarter-sessions was the clerk of the peace who was additionally responsible for the assistant-barrister’s court (See assistant-barrister). From 1877 both offices were united as the clerk of the crown and peace and registrars were appointed to each county court for civil business. In 1926 the offices of clerk and registrar were merged and the new office was styled county registrar.

  clochán. (Ir., cloch, a stone) A corbelled, dry stone hut with rectangular interior, constructed without mortar and used as a residence (booley hut) or outhouse. Occasionally constructed over a well or sweat house. In post-medieval times clocháns were relegated to pigsties, henhouses or booleys. Some clocháns were also constructed of wood and wattles. See corbel.

  cloigtheach. (Ir., a bell house) A round tower.

  Clonmacnoise, Annals of. The annals of Ireland from the creation to 1408 ad, originally written in Irish and known to us through Tadhg O’Daly’s late seventeenth-century copies of Conell MaGeoghegan’s 1627 translation. The original author is unknown. Although prominence is given to historical details relating to families and districts about Clonmacnoise (with frequent mention of the monastic founder, St Kieran), the scholar Eugene O’Curry claimed there was nothing in the book to explain why it was called the Annals of Clonmacnoise and points to the fact that the Book of Clonmacnoise used in the preparation of the Annals of the Four Masters came down only to 1227 whereas this book contains records down to 1408. There are copies in Trinity College, Dublin, and the British Museum. (Murphy, ‘The annals’; O’Curry, Lectures, pp. 130–139.)

  close borough. A term used to describe the majority of Irish boroughs whose parliamentary representation was determined and controlled by a single patron.

  close, letters. Letters close were mandates, letters and writs of a private nature, folded or closed and sealed on the outside with the great seal and addressed in the name of the sovereign to individuals. By contrast, letters patent were open for all to read and take notice of. In England letters close were enrolled separately on the close rolls which were records of the court of chancery but in Ireland they were enrolled along with letters patent on the patent rolls.

  coarb. (Ir., comharba, successor, heir) In ecclesiastical usage the term refers to the successor or heir of the patron saint of a church, abbey or bishopric. Thus the archbishop of Armagh was known as the coarb of St Patrick. More commonly it was used to denote the chief tenant of termon land associated with a particular church. Termon land was land originally granted as an endowment by a local temporal lord in return for prayers and masses and as a contribution to the maintenance and upkeep of the church building. The church, in turn, granted the land to a sept or several septs to descend according to the practice of tanistry in return for rents and refection (hospitality to the bishop on his visitation). A coarb was the head of a greater family or sept or several septs often having under him several erenaghs or heads of smaller septs. Although all erenagh land was termon land, the opposite was not the case. Termon land held by a coarb was regarded as having the privilege of sanctuary and any violation of that sanctuary was considered dishonourable and an insult to the patron saint. It was also theoretically free of exactions by the temporal lords. In some areas of the country the terms coarb and erenagh appear to have been synonymous. (Barry, ‘The appointment’, pp. 361–5.)

  coadjutor. A deputy or assistant Catholic bishop with particular responsibility for temporal matters.

  cob wall. A wall constructed of clay and straw. Also known as a mud wall or daub.

  cocket. 1: The certificate sealed and delivered by customs officers to merchants certifying that goods had been duly entered and duty paid 2: Customs duty 3: The custom house 4: The custom of every last of hides.

  coibhche. (Ir.) A brideprice paid to the family of the bride, a practice which died out in the sixteenth century and was replaced by the payment of a dowry by the bride’s family to the husband.

  coercion acts. Although coercion acts were employed in earlier centuries, the term usually refers to the emergency powers employed by government in the nineteenth century to restrict agitation and maintain law and order. These included restrictions on movement and the possession of arms, the suspension of habeas corpus, the proclamation of disturbed districts, the imposition of curfews, the extraction of levies to compensate for outrages and the additional cost of policing and the suppression of assemblies and publications. Coercion acts were usually accompanied by procedural changes in the courts. The Suppression of Disturbances Act (1833) provided for trial by military courts and for three years from 1882 a panel of three judges sat to hear specific cases of disorder. Coercion acts, later known as ‘Prevention of Crime Acts’, operated concurrently with the ordinary law and remained in place into the early years of the twentieth century. (Leadham, Coercive.)

  coffin ship. Coffin ships were usually converted cargo vessels employed on the emigrant routes to north America during the Great Famine. Lax regulations coupled with poor shipboard conditions led to considerable mortality during the Atlantic crossing, notoriously so on ships leaving Cork and Liverpool for Canada. In 1847 over one-sixth of 100,000 Quebec-bound passengers died at sea or upon arrival. Shipboard mortality was largely a result of ‘ship fever’ which multiplied in the stinking holds among emigrants already weakened by the famine. Mortality declined when stricter regulations were introduced to govern the transatlantic trade.

  Cogadh Gaedhel re Gallaibh. Compiled in the twelfth century, Cogadh Gaedhel re Gallaibh is an account in narrative and verse form of the Norse invasion and the resistance to that invasion offered by the Uí Briain dynasty of Munster. Styled by one commentator as ‘the official biography of Brian Boruma’, Cogadh Gaedhel re Gallaibh is a clever piece of propaganda on behalf of the Uí Briain, concluding as it does with Boruma’s rout of the Norse at Clontarf in 1014. It was written for Boruma’s grandson, Muircheartach, and deals largely with events that occurred in the southern half of the country. (Todd, Cogadh Gaedhel.)

  cognate. A person who is related on the maternal side. See agnate.

  cognomen. In Catholic marriage registers, the surnames of the couple.

  collar beam. See cruck.

  collate. To institute a clergyman to a benefice.

  collation. A light meal taken on fast days.

  collative. An office which is conferred or bestowed.

  collodio-type. A photograph produced on glass by the collodium process.

  collop. (Ir., colpach) Land subject to grazing rights known as collop rights. A collop was the grazing unit for a mature animal. It was equivalent to one horse or two cows or one cow and two yearling calves, six sheep or 10 goats or 20 geese. The number of cattle included in a collop varied from place to place as the word signifies the number an Irish acre of average quality could support. See soum, stinting.

  colophon. An inscription placed at the end of a book or manuscript providing some details relevant to its production, usually the name of the writer or scribe, the location and the dates of beginning and completion.

  combination. A radical eighteenth- and nineteenth-century body of workers who combined to agitate on wages and conditions of employment.

  comitatus. In medieval Latin documents, refers to the sheriff.

  Commentarius Rinuccinianus. A pro-Old Irish (Gaelic) account of the mission of the papal nuncio, Archbishop Rinuccini, following his accreditation to the Catholic confederate government in Kilkenny in 1645. It was written by the Capuchins Daniel O’Connell and Barnabas O’Ferrall between 1661 and 1666 and was based on con
temporary documents including the nuncio’s and other letters, memoirs, reports and petitions. See Catholic Confederacy, cessation. (O’Connell and O’Ferrall, Commentarius.)

  Commercial Propositions. In 1785 at the instigation of William Pitt, Thomas Orde, the Irish chief secretary, attempted to bring forward measures to place Ireland and England on practically an equal footing with regard to trade. Trade between the two countries would be free of import duties and restrictions and Ireland would be free to engage in trade throughout the empire. In return Ireland was to contribute support for the navy. By the time the proposals were placed before parliament, however, they had been extended from 11 to 20 resolutions and were hamstrung by so many qualifications and restrictions that Orde withdrew them after a first reading in the Irish house of commons. The question of free trade resurfaced in later years as a lure to seduce members to vote for the Act of Union. (Kelly, Prelude, pp. 76–187.)

  commonfield. An agricultural field system consisting of fragmented or interspersed individual holdings (including intermixed demesne land) in large arable fields which operated throughout Leinster, Tipperary and Limerick prior to the widespread enclosures initiated between the thirteenth and sixteenth centuries. Some of the land, held of the manorial lord for rents and labour services, was left fallow every couple of years and tenants enjoyed the associated rights of common grazing after harvest and during fallow periods. The term is often used interchangeably with ‘openfield’. See course, rundale.

  commonplace book. A book in which memorabilia or striking passages are recorded.

  common pleas. Ordinary pleas between commoners.

  common pleas, court of. The court assigned to resolve civil disputes or common law actions between individuals as opposed to those which involved the crown. It emerged from the curia regis or king’s court which peregrinated with the king (in Ireland with the justiciar) through the country. In England the differentiation in function followed Magna Carta which required civil jurisdiction to be administered at a designated place. Shortly afterwards the court began to maintain separate rolls and by the end of the thirteenth century was assigned a chief justice. In Ireland in the thirteenth century when the itinerant justices sat in Dublin to hear common pleas the court was known as the bench or common bench. The title court of common pleas was adopted after the English model. Land disputes were the staple of common pleas and it was here that the fictitious cases of fine and recovery were enrolled. Under the Supreme Court of Judicature Act (1877) and later acts the courts system was rationalised. Initially common pleas, along with chancery, queen’s bench, exchequer and probate and matrimonial came under the umbrella of the high court but by the close of the century common pleas, exchequer, probate and matrimonial were amalgamated with queen’s bench, leaving a high court division of just chancery and queen’s bench.

  Common Prayer, Book of. The liturgical book used by members of the Anglican churches. Primarily the work of Thomas Cranmer, archbishop of Canterbury, The First Prayer Book of Edward VI was introduced in 1549. Pressure from reformers forced a radical revision of text and ceremonies in 1552. After a period of suppression during the reign of Queen Mary it was restored by Elizabeth under the 1560 Act of Uniformity which made its use mandatory by all clergymen. The first Irish-language version appeared in 1608. English puritans maintained a long struggle to have all traces of Romanist influence excised from the prayer book and succeeded in having some alterations made. The parliamentary victory in the English civil war resulted in the proscription of the Book of Common Prayer but at the Restoration it was once again reinstated and revised. This revision was adopted in Ireland with the passage of the 1666 Act of Uniformity. In Ireland additional revisions were made in 1878, 1926, 1933, and a new liturgy, the Alternative Prayer Book, was introduced in 1984. See revision.

  commons. The eating of dinners together by the members of the inns of court.

  commons, house of. See parliament.

  Commonwealth. The era of republican government which dated from the execution of Charles I in 1649 to the restoration of Charles II in 1660.

  commutation. The substitution of a fixed money payment for service or dues in kind.

  composition (1575–95). Inspired by the views of Edmund Tremayne, clerk of the privy council, composition was an attempt to extend civil order under the crown, remove the military power of provincial lords and make local garrisons self-supporting by abolishing coyne and livery (the means by which the lords maintained their armies) and cess (which paid for government forces within the Pale). In Connacht and Munster these exactions were commuted to rents payable to the provincial president who would forego the traditional impositions of purveyance, military service and billeting of troops on the country and maintain a standing army to keep the peace. The idea was to transform the local warlords into landlords and it was hoped, once they compounded, that they in turn would compound with lesser lords and a more civil society would emerge. In 1575 Sidney, the lord deputy, offered to abolish cess within the Pale in return for composition but the Palesmen were already in dispute about the extra-parliamentary nature of cess impositions and rejected it, agreeing only to a single payment of £2,000. Ten years later Perrot tried to enforce a permanent composition but, although two further payments were made in 1584 and 1586, resistance to the proposal led to its demise. In 1577 composition was imposed on Munster and Connacht but was overtaken in Munster by the outbreak of the Desmond rebellion and the subsequent plantation. In Connacht composition collapsed with the death in 1583 of the president, Sir Nicholas Malby, but a revised, more moderate version was successfully re-introduced by Perrot in 1585. By a series of indentures agreed between the lord deputy and the leading lords in Connacht, all government impositions were abolished in return for an annual rent of ten shillings per quarter (120 acres) of profitable inhabited land. The lords, in turn, agreed to forego traditional exactions on lesser lords and were compensated by annual rents. Succession was to be determined by primogeniture rather than tanistry. Under Sir Richard Bingham, the provincial president, composition yielded a profit yet Bingham governed the province harshly. The insistence on primogeniture caused little difficulty in Thomond or Clanrickard where it was already accepted but it led to revolts elsewhere which were brutally crushed. The Nine Years War interrupted the collection of the rents thereby disabling the presidency and reducing its effectiveness. See provincial council. (Cunningham, ‘The composition’, pp. 1–14; Ellis, Ireland, pp. 304– 309, 322–325; Freeman, The compossicion.)

  compurgation, trial by. In civil cases in medieval times, trial by oath rather than by an assessment of the evidence. The jury decided for or against the defendant according to the number of men (usually 12) who would swear an oath that the oath the defendant had taken was true or that he was innocent. The oath takers, effectively character witnesses, were known as compurgators. To modern eyes this mode of procedure appears ridiculous but that is to overlook the grave consequences associated with false oath-taking in earlier times and the difficulty of assembling so many willing perjurers.

  comyn. (Ir., comaoin, recompense) Through military activities a Gaelic lord might acquire a large herd of cattle which he hired out among members of the sept in return for rent and other exactions such as coshiering, coyne and livery, cessing of kerne and rising out. This process implies that a lord and vassal relationship was created. Comyn was analogous to the practice of commendation in Europe whereby a man placed himself under the protection of a powerful lord but without surrendering his status or estate and may point to the inchoate development of feudalism itself. Comyn was outlawed in 1610 to sunder the relationship between Irish lords and their vassals.

  conacre. Originally corn acre, conacre ground (ranging in size from one quarter of an acre to two acres) was prepared at the owner’s expense and let to labourers or small-holders at high rents on eleven month tenures. Land exhausted by over-cropping was let in conacre at lower rates on condition that the cottier manured it for a potato crop. This was do
ubly beneficial to the owner in that he received the conacre rent and was spared the expense of making the land fit to yield a corn crop in the next year. The price was subject to change in a competitive market and payment was in the form of cash or labour services.

  concealed lands. Lands deemed to be illegally withheld from the crown after the dissolution of the monasteries, after forfeiture by outlawry or after crown leases had lapsed. Concealed lands amounted to a revenue loss for the crown and from the 1580s the administration attempted to search out and resume them. This created widespread unease because it encouraged adventurers to make minute examinations of land titles or discover long-forgotten royal titles in the hope of acquiring cheap leases. Four commissions for defective titles were conducted in the seventeenth century to enable landholders to obtain clean titles. (O’Dowd, ‘Irish’, pp. 69–173.)

  Confederation of Kilkenny. See Catholic Confederacy.

  confession and avoidance. The plea of a defendant wherein he acknowledges the truth of the allegations against him but introduces new facts which would entitle him to succeed.

  confraternity. See guilds, religious.

  congé d’élire. (Fr., leave to elect) A royal warrant issued to the dean and chapter of a diocese obliging them to elect a person nominated by the crown to a vacant see. See Praemunire, Statute of.

  Congested Districts Board (1891–1923). The Congested Districts Board was established by the Purchase of Land (Ireland) Act in 1891 to relieve poverty in the west and south of Ireland where too many people were trying to eke out a subsistence on too little land. The board received initial funding of £1.5 million from the surplus left over after the disestablishment of the Church of Ireland. A congested district was defined as a district where the total rateable value divided by the number of inhabitants was less than 30 shillings. In 1891 this criterion applied to over 3.5 million acres with a population of over half a million people. By 1910 that acreage had doubled. The Congested Districts Board was tasked with the development of agriculture, industry and the provision of assistance towards those who wished to emigrate. It became heavily involved in the promotion of cottage industries, fishing, road- and bridge-building and the dissemination of agricultural techniques. A feature of the board’s work was the enlarging of small and uneconomic holdings. Birrell’s Irish Land Act (1909) provided the board with compulsory purchase powers which enabled it to acquire and sell land in congested districts under the land purchase scheme operated by the Irish Land Commission. This led to the acquisition of 600,000 acres and the sale of 50,000 holdings. In all over four million acres were purchased by the Congested Districts Board at a cost of £9 million. Its functions were passed on to the Land Commission in 1923. (Micks, An account.)