High Medieval Ireland

The aim of this joint paper is to analyse the often conflicting archaeological, historical and literary evidence relating to the moated site at Cloonfree in Co. Roscommon in order to create a picture of how the site appeared during the time it was in use during the early 14th century. Questions both for future work at the site and for later medieval Ireland in general will also be formulated in the text.

The motte at Callan, Co. Kilkenny comprises the substantial earthwork remains of an earth and timber castle located in a 4.84 hectare pasture field. It survives as a large sub rectangular earthen platform sited on a natural gravel ridge, overlooking the Kings River and adjacent to the medieval borough and town of Callan.  The castle was located at the centre of the manor of Callan, founded by William Marshall in the early 13th century.  An Inquisition Post Mortem dated 1307 records the presence of a wide range of buildings at Callan within the castle complex. This article describes the results of a survey of Callan motte, grant aided by the National Committee for Archaeology, Royal Irish Academy, which included a complete geophysical and topographical survey of the monument and part of the surrounding field. The survey provided important insights into the construction of the earth and timber castle as well as the probable remains of buildings on the mound’s summit and bailey. This article also looks at the significance of Callan motte as the caput of a major Anglo-Norman manor and its relationship with the adjacent medieval town of Callan.

The overt mercantilism of The Libelle of Englyshe Polycye has overshadowed important questions surrounding the poem’s purpose and literary form. As the work attempts to justify economic protectionism, its preoccupation with legal and bureaucratic practices breaks new ground for the hybrid genre of bill-poems. This article associates The Libelle of Englyshe Polycye with civilian bills, or libelli, and re-evaluates the immediate historical context surrounding the poem’s composition. The wealth and accuracy of economic, political, and legal information that is contained in the poem points to the poet’s intimate familiarity with the highest functions of the King’s writing offices at Westminster. I argue that The Libelle of Englyshe Polycye must have been composed from within the closest circle of Henry VI’s senior administrators. The poem, I shall contend, formed part of the Privy Seal’s strategy to identify the adolescent monarch, who had only just begun to exercise the royal privilege of granting petitions, with a defence of Calais and an ideological pursuit of peace. Central to this process were William Lyndwood, Keeper of the Privy Seal, and Walter Hungerford, the poem’s sponsor. In additionto historical and circumstantial evidence, Lyndwood’s association with The Libelle of Englyshe Polycye is supported by the centrality the poem assigns to seals and documentary validity, its legal mode as a libellus, and its programmatic emphasis on peace and unity, which Lyndwood had championed in a parliamentary sermon of 1431.

The main focus of this paper is upon the supplies of foodstuffs - especially grain - fuel, and other agrarian produce which the Irish port town of Drogheda drew from its hinterland, both for its own needs and for export;
the impact which the town's demands had upon the countryside; and the particular problems which the nature of Drogheda's hinterland posed for its townspeople during the later middle ages.

Kilbarron Church is a small ruinous edifice in the townland of Kilbarron approximately four kilometres north west of Ballyshannon, County Donegal. It has been  variously dated from the 14th to the 16th century and it thought to have been built by the O'Clearys who were historians to the O'Donnells.  The church may have been built as a re-dedication to St Barron  as it is situated on the site where an earlier 6th century church may have stood.  It is also situated within an area that would have been a politically contested landscape as far back as the Neolithic, considering its strategic position as a fording point and a boundary between the west and north west of Ireland.

The strategic location of the historic town of Mullingar, Co. Westmeath, is reviewed and its situation in the narrow corridor between Loughs Owel and Ennell highlighted. Three historic crossing points on the River Brosna -- at Jail Hill, Pearse St. and Ballyglass -- are examined. The topography of the medieval town is reconstructed and a horizon of pre-Norman settlement identified. The importance of river fords in the evolution of medieval settlement is stressed.

The attached PDF provides a pre-print of the introductory section of the paper. Given the the format of the 'History and Society' series, Figures 4 and 7 are also included as they contain a lot of detail that benefits from a larger format.

Lum- / Lumber : cut forest trees, saw timber
"timber sawn into rough planks for use," heavy, useless objects" of uncertain origin. It is said to be from lumber on the notion of "awkward to move," and perhaps to have been influenced by or associated with Lombard, the Italian immigrant class famous as pawnbrokers in old England. Lumbar and Lumbard were old alternative forms of Lombard in English.

Giga : from Greek gigas "giant"

The Island of Gigalum is situated off the south eastern tip of the Isle of Gigha to the west of the Kintyre Peninsula in the County of Argyll.  The surrounding seascape is dramatic and spectacular and the views to Gigha, Cara, Kintyre  and Jura, as well as the Northern Irish coast are impressive.

In der Mitte des 12. Jahrhunderts entsteht mit der Visio Tnugdali ein Text, der zum mittelalterlichen „Bestseller“ avancieren sollte. Doch ist es nicht allein die schiere Anzahl der Handschriften (mehr als 150 Manuskripte, zahlreiche volkssprachliche Übersetzungen), die eine Beschäftigung mit dieser Jenseitsreise lohnenswert macht. Die Reise des irischen Ritters Tnugdal durch die Jenseitsräume, die der Bruder (frater) Marcus, der wahrscheinlich aus Regensburg stammt und über den sonst nur sehr wenig bekannt ist, erzählt, ist ein eindrucksvolles Zeugnis kollektiver Vorstellungen über die letzten Dinge, die jeden Menschen im Jenseits erwarten. Der Weg durch Feuer und Schwefel hin zu den himmlischen Orten ist dabei Ausdruck der menschlichen Neugier, das Arkane selbst zu erhellen und zeigt in der theologischen Fundierung des Textes gleichwohl, wie eine solch gewagte Wissensvermittlung – da sie sich letztlich an den Grenzen der Häresie bewegt – gelingen kann. Mit der vorliegenden Ausgabe liegt dieser intensive Ausdruck mittelalterlicher Glaubensvorstellungen erstmals in einer vollständigen, ausführlich kommentierten deutschen Übersetzung vor, die auf einer Neuedition des lateinischen Textes beruht.

This paper presents legal documents concerning William O’Neylon, including a certificate seeking leave to travel to Spain and a last testament. This is the only survival of such a certificate for county Clare from the Interregnum. It merits attention because of the extraneous circumstance of its issuance. The certificate was issued in 1652 at a volatile period when the county had just succumbed to the Cromwellian forces, and the general population was exhausted after a decade of war and privation. It also occurred at the onset of he Cromwellian regime’s infamous policy of transplanting Catholic gentry suspected of Confederate activity to poorer lands in Clare and Connacht. The survival of this certificate adds to our understanding of the activity of an aristocratic Gaelic family in Clare. It also castes light on one of county Clare’s most (in)famous women of the seventeenth century, thrice married Máire Ruadh, ancestor of the Dromoland O’Briens.

The Irish kingdom of Mide was granted by King Henry II to Hugh de Lacy in 1172. After Hugh’s death in 1186, what had come to be known as the lordship of Meath passed, after a period of wardship, to Hugh’s son, Walter. Until now, the transfer of the lordship to Walter was generally thought to have occurred in 1194; but this article examines a charter, the existence of which challenges that theory. The charter, which dates to before 1191, is an explicit example of Walter exercising lordship in Meath at least three years earlier than historians had, up to now, thought he had done. The resultant revised chronology depicts John, lord of Ireland (and future king of England), depriving Walter de Lacy of Meath in 1192; only to have this action overturned by King Richard the Lionheart upon the latter’s return from crusade in 1194. This article therefore establishes and re-dates a key development in the history of the English community in Ireland, which has consequences for how we understand Irish politics in the early years of King Richard’s reign.

This paper examines a range of sources to consider the place held by the former lake of Lough Croan, Co. Roscommon, in the later medieval Ó Cellaig (O'Kelly) lordship of Uí Maine. The paper argues for the lake as a location of high importance in the medieval past. The research suggests that it served as a caput or cenn áit of the Uí Chellaig within the medieval trícha cét of Tír Maine, which for much of the later medieval period was the patrimony of these eastern Connacht lords.

The paper describes a newly recognized sheela-na-gig in the porch of Cross Church, Co. Mayo. The figure is in a secondary location and may have originated at nearby Cong abbey. A possible connection with St. Cecilia's well in Cong is discussed. This is only the second sheela-na-gig to have been identified in Co. Mayo.                                                  Link  https://flipflashpages.uniflip.com/3/104540/371183/pub/html5.html#page/58

An examination of the account of the Lambert Simnel conspiracy written in Ireland by Walter Hussey, a retainer of the St Lawrence family and an official in the Irish exchequer during the first half of the sixteenth century.
Since this article was published, I've discovered that the two unnamed members of Kildare's retinue, knighted by Henry VII at the Twelfth Night celebrations in 1494, were Nicholas St Lawrence, Lord Howth and Christopher Fleming, Lord Slane. See TNA SP 46/123.

Deeds, contracts and other legal instruments compiled in Irish survive
from the late medieval period for Thomond. Their survival owes as much
to the happy fact that a disproportionate number of Irish language deeds
survive in the Thomond collection, as to the fortuitous intervention of antiquaries such as Tadhg Ó Rodaighe (d.1706) and James Hardiman (d.1855). A significant portion of the surviving Gaelic legal instruments refer to people and places of east County Clare. Many refer to dealings of the O’Brien earls of Thomond and their predecessors, and owe their survival to the well-preserved legal records of the main branches of that family. A significant number involve matters dealing with the Meic Conmara (McNamara) whose lordship of Clann Chuiléin was the geographical locus of many of the deeds. The deeds contain information about people, events and places and they deal with matters about land acquisition, contracts and other agreements. The deeds which have survived tend to be summaries of legal cases and judgements rather than an exposé of legal reasoning or the articulation of a certain legal position. As legal documents they retain a utilitarian quality which makes them informative pieces of evidence for the practical application of Gaelic, or brehon law, in the late medieval period.

This chapter investigates the form and consequences of the English invasion of Ireland, c.1166-c.1254, situated within the wider framework of European political configurations and frontier societies. A rapid narrative of the cut and thrust of medieval conquest is interwoven with the analysis of major themes relating to lordship and colonisation.

This paper examines the documentary and physical evidence for the origins and early development of the medieval borough of Kilmallock, exploring how it fits within the context of borough planning introduced by the Anglo-Normans in thirteenth-century Ireland. It also takes a look at Kilmallock Dominican priory, looking at its position with regards to the urban space, and placing it in the context of mendicant settlements in Ireland. The architecture and the structural development of the priory are reassessed, as is what it can tell us about piety and patronage in a medieval urban community and its hinterland, but also about Irish mendicant architecture in general, and how the identity of the Dominicans as mendicant friars and their reliance on the generosity of benefactors impacted the structural developments of their churches.

Dundonnell Castle will be explored through a multi-disciplinary approach. This study aims to provide a greater understanding of a simultaneously neglected but oft mentioned potentially multi-period site that has been given many roles in previous scholarly work. This is without ever having been studied properly and fully in its own right. This thesis combines an archaeological analysis of the earthworks and masonry building at Dundonnell with a large corpus of historical material that pertains to the immediate and surrounding area over an extended period of time. More specifically, the thesis will attempt to recreate the importance of the three possible phases at the site, via the use of historical, cartographical, and archaeological evidence to demonstrate the site’s dates of importance, function and role in the wider areas, and to try and pinpoint the site on the historical plane. The study of the castle type, known as the stronghouse, will also be examined in relation to Dundonnell, in an attempt to further the knowledge of this understudied monument type.

The galloglass of medieval Ireland was the premier military kindred that supplied élite fighting men for Gaelic and Anglo-Norman lordships from the thirteenth to seventeenth centuries. Like other sections of Gaelic society the galloglass were organised into hereditary professional kindreds whose branches were settled in various lordships in Ireland. Galloglass kindreds that became attached to different aristocratic patrons competed with each other and an esprit de corps formed around how they acquitted themselves on the field. Their profession of arms meant that their role was not limited to training and fighting on behalf of their patrons; they also served as bodyguards to lords and constituted an essential element in supplying the vanguard of Gaelic military forces.

Clann Chruitín were among the most notable learned kindreds in Co. Clare in the late medieval period. They featured among the aos dána, the Gaelic learned class who specialised in, as the annals assert, ‘senchas agus le seinm’. Holding hereditary lands in west Co. Clare on the margins of the Atlantic coast, they attained the status of ollamhnacht in history (seanchas) and music (seinm) from the fourteenth century. Remarkably, learned members of Clann Chuitín continued to be associated with literary activity of he native tradition until the mid-nineteenth century when Séamas Mac Cruitín, self-described as ‘the last relic of the hereditary bards of Thomond’, died.

The foregoing register was compiled in 1640 for the use of Barnaby
O’Brien, the sixth earl of Thomond. It presents, in considerable detail,
papers and legal documents relating to the Thomond estates in counties
Tipperary, Limerick and Clare. As is apparent from the front page of the
register, the constituent papers that formed the Thomond estate records
were deemed ‘evidences and writings’. These papers were, at least for a
period, held in the study of Bunratty castle. Abstracts of these ‘evidences’ were made and entered into the register transcribed here, and which is now kept at Petworth House in West Sussex, England. The register, along with the other Thomond papers, are publicly accessible, upon request, from the West Sussex Records Office in Chichester. The reason that this extraordinary archive of Irish material was deposited in England can be traced to the O’Brien earls of Thomond who relocated to England during the turbulent 1640s.

"This project examines Scandinavian and Anglo-Norman colonialism in two Irish case study regions, the south-east and the mid-west, by placing them on a continuum of social development. It analyses their spatial organisation and their impact on the landscape in terms of a model of colonialism based on three sub-phases: expansion, consolidation and domination. Campaign fortresses and other bridgeheads in the landscape such as the longphort and the ringwork largely belong to this phase. Mottes and Scandinavian urban settlement belong largely to the consolidation phase. The
Anglo-Norman domination phase was characterised by a hierarchical configuration of monuments, including those forms already mentioned, along with masonry castles, nucleated and dispersed rural settlement and continental religious houses. They
differed in a number of respects. Scandinavian colonialism was much more geographically limited, largely confined to a series of estuarine settlements which became towns over time, with possible accompanying hinterland settlement. It cannot be said to have had a domination sub-phase, rather it experienced a phase of incorporation, where the settlements came under the control of elements of the Gaelic elite. It has therefore been categorised here as non-imperial opportunistic colonialism.
In contrast to the elite replacement colonialism found in Anglo-Norman Ulster and Norman England, Anglo-Norman colonialism in the case-studies was totalising, characterised by plantation colonialism, which involved the inward movement of several orders of society, and the incorporation or displacement of native groups. It involved the total reorganisation of the landscape, with the introduction of several new monument forms in a hierarchical spatial organisation. However, this was largely unsuccessful in the mid-west, and can only be said to have been successful in
the south-east, and even then only until the fourteenth century, at which time the colony receded substantially. Both groups continued to be regarded as foreign elements long after the apogee of each of colonial period. While colonial acculturation was limited, over time their culture came to differ both that of their home regions and Gaelic society, which saw them become a “third nation” living in a “third space” (cf. Bhabha 1994). This was due to a combination of creolisation and hybridisation. There seems to have been extensive Gaelic acculturation in the areas of greatest contact, such as the towns in each period.

Copyright, Russell Ó Ríagáin, 2010."