Byrne's Dictionary of Irish Local History Read online

  mortuary. Death duty owed to the parish church comprising the second best beast (the best went to the manorial lord as a heriot if the deceased were a tenant), a chattel or a payment fixed according to parish custom. Testators often left specific bequests in their wills by way of mortuary. See canonical portion.

  Moryson, Fynes (1566–1630). Travel-writer, historian and secretary to Lord Deputy Mountjoy from 1600, Fynes Moryson is remembered for his almost universally disparaging views on Ireland and the Irish. In An Itinerary (1617), a four volume account of his travels in Europe, Moryson denigrates Irish diet, hygiene, dress, manners, customs and Catholicism, reserving his praise solely for ‘usquebagh’. His treatment of the Nine Years War remains valuable, however prejudiced it be, for he was an eyewitness to the later stages of the conflict, was present at Kinsale and the surrender of Hugh O’Neill and continued in Mountjoy’s service until the latter’s death in 1606. (Moryson, An itinerary.)

  motte and bailey. A truncated conical mound (motte) of earth, often moated, palisaded and surmounted by a wooden tower together with a lower adjoining palisaded mound or courtyard (bailey). These fortified earthworks, over 300 of which were constructed by the Anglo-Normans in the late twelfth century, were later replaced by stone castles. The greatest density of mottes is to be found in the eastern half of the country representing the extent of penetration of the invaders.

  mouldboard plough. A mouldboard plough consisted of a coulter, share and mouldboard. The coulter (a vertical blade fitted forward of the share) cut through roots, the share opened the ground and the mouldboard, a curved, sloping board or plate fitted above the share, lifted and turned the soil as it was opened to create the typical ridge and furrow pattern. (Mitchell, The Shell guide, pp. 143–4, 160.)

  mulcture, multure. A fee or payment in kind (usually a portion of flour) owed to the miller for milling cereals or to the manorial lord if he owned the mill. By the nineteenth century the fee had been commuted to a cash payment known as ‘mulcture money’.

  mullion. An upright bar or pier which divides a window into compartments.

  mumping. A begging practice engaged in by noble families of little means to provide a newly-matched daughter with a portion. It usually involved cattle or sheep. Peasants also resorted to mumping, though for items of less worth.

  Municipal Corporations Reform Act (1840). A municipal reform bill first introduced in 1835 and enacted five years later after an inquiry into the conduct of municipal corporations revealed considerable defects. In the 1830s there were 68 corporations and boroughs in Ireland, bodies that were only nominally open to Catholics for almost all had chosen not to enlarge the franchise when permitted to do so in 1793. Notoriously corrupt and a bastion of Protestantism, 58 were abolished in 1840 under the Municipal Corporations Reform Act (3 & 4 Vict., c. 108) and their functions passed to the county. The 10 remaining corporations (Belfast, Clonmel, Cork, Drogheda, Dublin, Kilkenny, Limerick, Derry, Sligo and Waterford) were replaced by elected governing bodies with severely limited functions on a municipal franchise restricted to £10 householders. Unlike English corporations, Irish municipal governments were not given control of the police nor the power to elect a sheriff. The power to appoint sheriffs and magistrates lay with the lord lieutenant although from 1876 corporations were permitted to nominate three candidates from whom the viceroy selected one. Catholics were now eligible in their own right for admittance to the corporations of cities and towns and they immediately took control of a number of large councils. Towns with populations of 3,000 people or more could apply for a charter but only Wexford did so. Other boroughs could adopt the measures of an 1828 act (9 Geo. IV, c. 82) which empowered them to elect a body of commissioners with municipal powers limited to such areas as paving and lighting. About 25 towns adopted this course of action and a further 20 (55 by 1878) brought into force the provisions of a revised act of 1854 (17 & 18 Vict., c. 103). See borough, guilds, quarterage. (First report of the commissioners appointed to enquire into the municipal corporations in Ireland, HC 1835 [323] XXVII; Webb, Municipal government.)

  muniments. Deeds of title and other such records.

  murage. The right granted by charter to citizens to levy customs on persons selling goods in their town to construct or repair defences.

  murrain. Any of various cattle diseases such as anthrax, tick fever, plague or pestilence.

  muster roll. A list of men and their arms who were available for the defence of an area during a military emergency.

  mutiny act. The first English mutiny act was passed in 1689 to suppress indiscipline among regiments that had been ordered into service abroad. Although limited to a year, the mutiny act proved so effective that it was renewed annually. The act reaffirmed the clause in the Declaration of Rights which outlawed the maintenance of a standing army in peacetime without the consent of parliament and asserted that monarch and parliament considered it necessary for the safety of the kingdom to maintain such a force and that good discipline should prevail. Prior to 1779 there was no mutiny act in Ireland. Breaches of discipline were dealt with before a court-martial and punishments dispensed according to the provisions of the English act or by crown prerogative. When the validity of English laws in Ireland was challenged it became apparent that no one could be convicted in Ireland for offences against the English mutiny act. Subsequently the heads of an annual mutiny bill passed the Irish house of commons but were returned from England with no limitation as to time. When the amended bill passed the house (19 & 20 Geo. III, c. 16, 1780), Ireland now operated under a permanent mutiny act which did not require the assent of parliament for the maintenance of a peacetime army, a situation which Edmund Burke condemned as unconstitutional and contrary to the Declaration of Rights. In 1782 (21 & 22 Geo. III, c. 43) the permanent act was repealed and a mutiny act along the lines of the English act was enacted annually until the Act of Union.

  N

  name books. The letters and notes on placenames and antiquities compiled by John O’Donovan during the course of the Ordnance Survey project to map the entire country from 1824 to 1846. The name books, together with other records of the Ordnance Survey, have been transferred to the National Archives.

  naomhóg. At about eight metres long and fitted with a mast and sail, the elegant Kerry naomhóg is the largest of the currachs. It has four seats and consists of a framework of wooden laths covered in tarred cloth.

  napping. The act of raising the short hairs or threads (the nap) on homespun frieze or flannel by combing the fabric section by section with a card. Later a few drops of honey were brushed over the fibres and the task repeated. The final stage in raising the nap involved curling the nap with a cork sheet.

  National Archives. Until the eighteenth century no serious effort was made to preserve important administrative records in Ireland. The main repository for records of the rolls was the Bermingham Tower in Dublin Castle but other records were considered to be the property of the relevant office-holder. The State Paper Office was established in 1702 to copy official documents from the collections of earlier chief governors but few pre-1690 records were available and the office contributed little towards improving the state of the records. Outbreaks of fire in the Custom House (1711) and the Bermingham Tower (1758) drew attention to the miserable state of the records but little was done to rectify the situation. John Lodge’s appointment as deputy keeper of rolls and records in the Bermingham Tower represented a turning point in the fortune of state records. His 26 volumes of transcripts from the rolls were later acquired by the Public Record Office to compensate for the destruction of the originals in the Four Courts fire in 1922. The appointment of the Irish Record Commission represented another step forward. The quality of its surveys, indexes, lists and calendars of the records was severely criticised and it was abolished in 1830 but like Lodge’s transcripts, the work of the commission attained an unforeseen value after 1922. In 1848 a second commission focused on ordering and publishing exchequer material, the most not
able legacy of which is James Ferguson’s multi-volume transcripts of exchequer records. From 1869 the Public Record Office, established by parliament in 1867 (30 & 31 Vict., c. 70) and housed in a dedicated building in the Four Courts complex, became the central repository for state and local government records. Records previously held in Dublin Castle (except for those retained in the State Paper Office), the Custom House and the courts were transferred there, the bulk of which were subsequently consumed in the 1922 conflagration. Since 1922 the record office has accumulated a large collection of family, estate, business, solicitors’ and other records through donations and purchase. It also acquired the chief secretary’s massive archive from the State Paper Office. In 1986 the Public Record Office was merged with the State Paper Office to form the National Archives and all government departments were required to lodge official records there on a 30-year rule. The Public Record Office of Northern Ireland was established in 1923 as a central repository for the six counties of Northern Ireland. It holds state, local government, education, ecclesiastical, family and estate records. The reports of the deputy-keeper of public records are the best guides to records held and accessions to the records offices. (Griffith, ‘A short guide to the Public Record Office of Ireland’, pp. 45–58; Wood, A guide to the public records; Idem, ‘The public records of Ireland’.)

  National Association of Ireland. Inspired by William J. O’Neill Daunt who sought to foster co-operation between Irish Catholics and English liberals and founded in Dublin in 1864 by Archbishop Paul Cullen (Dublin) and Archbishop Leahy (Cashel), the National Association was a Catholic middle-class pressure group which sought the disestablishment and disendowment of the Church of Ireland. Members wanted the fund created by disendowment to be used for secular purposes such as social welfare and education and not for the concurrent endowment of the Catholic church as this was liable to be attended by state involvement in the running of the church. Other aims included the re-distribution of land in Ireland and the provision of state aid to denominational schools. The association required parliamentary candidates to pledge not to support parties holding policies on church and land issues contrary to its own. It failed to attract many MPs and only four National Association members were returned to parliament in 1865. Later John Blake Dillon cobbled together a group of 20 or so Irish liberal MPs to provide a coherent bargaining front to deal with the liberal government, a tactic which foreshadowed the ‘balance of power’ tactic of the later Irish parliamentary party. The association survived into the 1870s largely as a talking shop. (Comerford, ‘Gladstone’s first Irish enterprise’, pp. 432–33; Corish, ‘Cardinal Cullen’, pp. 13–61.)

  National League. See Nationalist Party.

  National Library of Ireland. Established in 1877, the National Library inherited both the premises and the library of the Royal Dublin Society in Kildare Street, Dublin. Manuscript acquisition began largely with the appointment of R. I. Best as director in the 1920s. The archives of Ulster king of arms were transferred to the library when that office was renamed the Genealogical Office in 1943. Under the directorship of R. J. Hayes, the library developed a collection of family and estate papers including the Ormond MSS and the Boyle papers. A large map and photograph archive was assembled. Over the years the library has compiled a massive microfilm collection of Irish-related documents held in archives worldwide, notably from the state papers in the Public Record Office, London and the manuscript collection of the British Library. Hayes’ Manuscript sources for the history of Irish civilisation is the best guide to manuscript material in the National Library.

  Nationalist Party. Also known as the Irish Parliamentary Party or the National League, the Nationalist Party was a tightly-structured, highly-disciplined political party which developed from Isaac Butt’s federalist Home Government Association of the 1870s with the achievement of home rule its overriding goal. Membership increased dramatically following the electoral reforms of 1884–5. Under Parnell’s leadership the party achieved unprecedented electoral success in 1885 with the election of 86 Nationalist MPs, all pledged to sit, act and vote, as one. Parnell’s earlier obstructionist tactics were abandoned as the party played the ‘balance of power’ card to force the home rule issue centre stage in the 1880s and again between 1910– 14. Although riven by the crisis over the O’Shea divorce case the party survived and regrouped under John Redmond in 1900. Throughout much of its history the Nationalist Party focused on agrarian and Catholic issues and enjoyed the support of a majority of the Catholic clergy. The party’s collapse as a parliamentary force from 70 seats in 1910 to six in the 1918 election is usually attributed to the emergence in the wake of the 1916 Rising of the more aggressively nationalist Sinn Féin. Commentators have also cited factors such as the party’s adherence to an agrarian campaign in a society that was already undergoing structural diversification, its inability to engage with cultural nationalism, its failure to come to terms with Unionism and its active support for the First World War to account for its demise. It should be noted that electoral reforms in 1918 increased the number of voters to over two million (including women for the first time), almost two-thirds of whom had not voted in the 1910 election. (Connolly, The Oxford companion, pp. 381–2; Lyons, The Irish parliamentary party.)

  National Repeal Association. Founded in 1840 by Daniel O’Connell, the National Repeal Association attempted to repeat the mass agitation technique which delivered Catholic emancipation in order to achieve the repeal of the Act of Union. See Young Ireland.

  national school. See Education, National System of

  nave. The main body of the church. In medieval times the upkeep and maintenance of the nave was the responsibility of the parish, the chancel being the responsibility of the tithe-owner.

  neolithic. (Gr., neo, new + lithos, stone) Neolithic farmers reached Ireland about 5,500 years ago equipped with polished axe heads which enabled them to clear forest openings, cultivate cereals and raise domestic animals. Large tombs or megaliths such as the court tomb, the passage grave and the dolmen are relics of neolithic colonisation. See Larnian folk, Sandelians.

  Ne temere. In 1907 the Sacred Congregation of Propaganda Fide drafted the Ne temere decree which was promulgated by Pope Pius X to come into effect in April, 1908. Ne temere required that all inter-faith marriages be celebrated by a Catholic priest in order to be valid under Catholic canon law. The non-Catholic partner was required to sign a contract pledging not to interfere with the religion of the Catholic partner. Catholic partners would endeavour to bring their non-Catholic spouses to the true faith and all children of the marriage were to be baptised in the Catholic faith and educated in Catholic schools. Finally, either before or after the Catholic marriage ceremony, the couple were not to present themselves for marriage before a minister of any other religion. In Ireland these stipulations had already become practice following the Synod of Thurles in 1850.

  New English. See Old English.

  new interest. The ‘new interest’ comprised Catholics who had purchased lands from the 1660s, the titles to which were based on the Restoration land settlement. Unlike the majority of their co-religionists, they were lukewarm about attempts to repeal the settlement because they feared the loss of their newly acquired estates.

  New Light. A term which refers to the views of a liberal group of Presbyterian ministers in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries which opposed the requirement of the Synod of Ulster that all candidates for the ministry subscribe to the Westminster Confession, the Presbyterian confession of faith. The non-subscribing New Light group formed a majority within the synod and throughout the eighteenth century subscription was dispensed with, many subscribers leaving to find a home among the Seceders. In the nineteenth century the position was reversed. The New Light group, tainted by Arianism (the belief that Christ was neither fully human nor possessed of a divinity identical with God), was forced to secede from the Synod in 1830 to form the Remonstrant Synod. When subscription was re-imposed the Seceders merged
with the Synod of Ulster to form the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in Ireland.

  Newsplan. A census of Irish newspapers listing all newspapers held in the main libraries in Ireland and in the British Library, their publication dates, location and availability in microfim and hard copy. Newspapers are listed by title and the report contains a town and county index. (O’Toole, Newsplan.)

  Newtown Act (1747). The act (21 Geo. II, c. 10) which removed the necessity for burgesses and freemen to reside in their respective boroughs in order to vote in parliamentary elections. Newtown led to the creation of a large number of honorary and absentee freemen whose sole connection with the borough was to appear at election time and vote as required. In time absenteeism became the rule for freemen. Almost 140 of the 150 freemen of the borough of Dingle, Co. Kerry, did not even reside in the county and the freemen of Kinsale borough resided to a man in Ulster. See borough, franchise, freeman.

  nil debit. (L.) He owes nothing, the usual plea in an action of debt.

  nisi prius, hearing of. (L., unless before) Originally a writ commanding a sheriff to empanel a jury at the court of Westminster on a certain day unless the justices of assize previously came to his county and tried the case. Justices of assize had the power to conclude cases begun in the fixed courts and which had been brought to the point where the verdict of a local jury was necessary – that is, nisi prius – because the cases were adjourned to another meeting of the king’s bench or common pleas unless before that meeting the justices of assize should have visited that county. Nisi prius was introduced in Ireland in the sixteenth century.

  noble. A gold coin worth 6s. 8d. or half a mark, first introduced in 1351. See angel.

  nocent. Guilty.

  nomina parentum. In Catholic baptismal registers, the name of the parents.