Later Medieval Ireland

The Archaeological Survey of Ireland sites and monuments database show that 93 crannóg and inis or island sites have so far been located and recorded within the boundary of Co. Leitrim. As the now infamous excavations at the crannog in Drumclay, Co. Fermanagh have demonstrated, these sites are of considerable importance to the wider archaeological record. Here is a short snapshot of these sites and the treasures that they hold.

Medieval moated sites in Gaelic Ireland are now recognized as high status lordly sites.  This articles considers moated sites in County Roscommon, Ireland, and argues that by using a statistical clustering model it is possible to identify some clear distinctions in morphological characteristics of these sites.

Irish tower-houses, which are typically dated between c.1400 and c.1600 , are amongst the most common of upstanding archaeological monuments in Ireland, yet many points of contention persist amongst scholars as to their origin, date and function.
One particular definition describes the tower-house as ‘a compact fortified house in which the hall is raised above the ground with one or more storeys above it’ . On a considerably smaller scale than the large curtain-walled castles of the thirteenth century, the tower-house was to provide the typical abode of the Gaelic and Anglo-Irish  gentry of the fifteenth and sixteenth century . In construction the tower-house, in its simplest guise, was rectangular in plan and was up to six storeys in height with various defensive features  including a vaulted roof over the ground floor, which was to theoretically guard against fire spreading to the upper reaches of castle. The ground floor was typically used for storing supplies and was often the first line of defence should the main door be breached, while the second storey provided the main hall, with the remaining storeys usually consisting of the private quarters. For further protection murder-holes were often present between the ground and first floors. The tower-house was sometimes protected by a walled-courtyard (Figs. 2 and 3), though this latter feature does not appear to have been universally constructed of stone and does not often survive into modern times. The study of bawn walls is very limited, as very little archaeological excavation has taken place outside of tower-houses. Significantly, the Civil Survey of the 1650’s mentions bawn walls at only 20% of the towers it lists .
Although often regarded, not as true castles but rather as mere fortified houses, the type also includes examples on a very large scale such as those great tower-houses found in Counties Limerick, Clare, Galway and Cork . However, as Colm Donnelly points out, the term ‘tower-house’ is itself of nineteenth century origin and that contemporary historical sources regard these structures simply as ‘castles’
Although the subjects of demographic ethnicity and typology by regional distribution are touched upon in places, they are not specifically treated in this study.

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.

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.

In the fifteenth-century Book of the White Earl (the older, intercalated section of Oxford, Bodleian Library MS Laud Misc. 610), the well-known fianaighecht text Acallam na Senórach is annotated in the hand of the text’s main scribe. He adds a sporadic series of marginal headings, summaries and brief notes on localities mentioned in the text. These constitute valuable evidence for the text’s reception in later medieval Ireland. This article explores the critical approaches to the Acallam implied by these annotations (which are given in Appendix), and discusses the various possible interests in the text that might have led to them being made.

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

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.

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 paper presents a list of freeholders of Kilfenora Diocese in County Clare from 1601. The fortuitous survival of this list shows a snap-shot of Gaelic social hierarchies and landholding in an area almost wholly unaffected by anglicizing changes. The value of the list is its survey of land denominations and proprietorship and its focus on the church lands of the Corcomroe division of the diocese. It is speculated here that the list was compiled by a cleric at the cathedral chapter of Kilfenora and that its purpose was to ascertain church lands and property in order to put the administration of the diocese—including its revenues from the diocesan temporalities—on a more sure footing.

This article looks at the writings of the County Clare Franciscan, Antonius Bruodin (c.1618-80), and his contention with fellow cleric, Thomas Carve (alias Carew). The writings of these two men, both clerics and living exiled on the continent in the second half of the 17th century, reveal much about Gaelic culture, native institutions and the Gaelic learned class. Bruodin was born into a learned family of the classical Gaelic tradition, the Clann Bhruaideadha (McBrodys), who had produced generations of official chroniclers and poets to the Ui Bhriain (O'Briens) of Thomond. His writings therefore contain first hand accounts of the methods of learning and the wealth and proprietorship enjoyed by the learned class in Gaelic lordships, prior to their reduction in status and loss of patronage from the early 17th century.

The character of the late medieval rural landscape of Ireland has been difficult to identify.A survey of the uplands in counties Antrim and Derry examined areas on the periphery of and beyond Anglo-Norman lordship. It recognised a number of areas where the earthworks of fields and associated buildings still survive.These are identified as the remains of a system of infield-outfield agriculture. Evidence for booley (transhumance) huts was surprisingly infrequent. It is suggested that either livestock were grazed closer to the lowland settlements or the upland communities took charge of the animals sent up in the summer months from the lowland sites.The pattern of townlands recorded in the seventeenth century suggests that the upland was systematically divided between communities in the valley, emphasising the role of the lands at higher elevations for grazing. Infield-outfield agriculture and oval buildings are likely to have been found not only in the uplands but also more widely over the north of Ireland in the late Middle Ages.

This paper argues that the medieval Irish hall house is at least a parent of the later, much more wide spread Irish tower house.  The paper uses landscape and statistical modeling to show that there are similar features between the two structures.

The foregoing petition and accompanying schedule which may be dated to circa 1663 is an interesting document from the viewpoint of the process of transplantation during the interregnum period of the Commonwealth Protectorate (1649-1660), and the subsequent restoration of confiscated lands under Charles II. While this process did not affect all Catholic proprietors who suffered confiscation and arbitrary loss of land due to their actual, or assumed, participation in the wars of the 1640s, the process of recovery of confiscated lands was put on official footing with the passing of the Act of Settlement in 1662. It was in pursuance of this Act that the foregoing petition was compiled in an effort to restore the chief lands of the O’Loghlen (Uí Lochlainn) family which centred on Gragans in the Burren.

This paper presents a papal bulla that was issued to Clare Abbey on 23 March 1555.
The Augustinian house of Clare Abbey in Co. Clare was founded in the late twelfth
century by the ruling branch of the Uí Bhriain dynasty. By the late medieval period the
abbacy had largely become an hereditary post of the Meic Craith lineage. Numerous
examples exist in the papal registers of the abbacy transferred hereditarily by Mac
Craith abbots, indicating that Clare Abbey had, like other Augustinian foundations in
Gaelic areas, become the domain of clerical kindreds and enmeshed in the secular
affairs of lineage and lordship. The papal bulla casts light on diocesan administration
in the mid sixteenth century prior to the Protestant religious settlement of Elizabeth I
and reveals details on ecclesiastical personnel during this tumultuous period.

The Meic Fhlannchadha were an important brehon family of the classical Gaelic tradition. As brehon lawyers, they held a privileged position in Gaelic society. Their learning and practice in matters of native law conferred respect and value to them as learned men and scholars. The Meic Fhlannchadha were distinguished in native law and judgements and they produced generations of “law ollamhs” who rendered professional services to Gaelic and Anglo-Irish lords from the fifteenth century. By the time of the collapse of the Gaelic system and its institutions of law in the seventeenth century, the Meic Fhlannchadha used their social position as a means of negotiating the transition toward Anglicization.

Clann Chraith (MGraths) of Munster were a pre-eminent literary family whose activities spanned eleventh to seventeenth century. As a hereditary learned family, their professional specialisation was in seanchas (historical lore) and filidheacht (poetry). From the late eleventh century their standing can be ascertained from the fact that they served as court poets to the royal Ui Bhriain dynasty. This paper investigates their bardic school which was established in the late medieval period at Burgess in south Tipperary. Their connections with north Waterford and the Sliabh gCua district is also investigated.

The employment of a multidisciplinary approach to the study of the later medieval Ó Cellaig lordship of Tír Maine and Uí Maine, broadly the areas of south Co. Roscommon and east Co. Galway, has yielded important new insights into the nature of Gaelic lordship in this part of Ireland. The application of a methodology based on toponymy, historical research, cartographic studies, and analysis of literary works in addition to archaeology, has greatly assisted in identifying the lordly centers of these eastern Connacht lords, as well as evaluating how these cenn áiteanna were ordered and operated through time. One case study area that exemplifies this approach is the district around Callow Lough and Kilconnell, Co. Galway.

The nineteenth-century context in which most of our surname history was created is analysed and discussed and it is suggested that future research should expand the data on surname origins within Ireland beyond the traditional focus on the pedigrees of land-owners.

Late-medieval church records concerning Inis Cathaigh (Scattery Island) mention clerical families who maintained a longstanding connection to the ecclesiastical site. One of these families was the Uí Ghiolla Sheanáin (anglice, Gilsenan) who served as hereditary clergy, frequently holding the priorship of the collegiate church of Inis Cathaigh. The following investigates the Uí Ghiolla Sheanáin, their lands at Kilteelin near Kilrush and its connection to the priorship of Inis Cathaigh alongside the activity of the Uí Ghiolla Sheanáin clerics both in Ireland and at Salamanca in Spain.

This is a time line of some of the events which relate to the medieval liberty of Carlow and the later county in the 15th and 16th centuries. Most of the items relate to civil matters as items relating to the church, namely the diocese of Leighlin, covers a wider area than the carlow liberty. It is hoped the time line will be of help to those studing individual events in Carlow or the history of the liberty.

Friday 19th November 2021 saw the launch of the Clans of Ireland - Standing Council of Irish Chiefs and Chieftains' anthology entitled, ''Gaelic Ireland (c.600-c.1700) Lordship, saints and learning'', (Wordwell Books, Dublin, 2021), editors Luke McInerney and Dr Katharine Simms.
This is a link to the proceedings of the evening, beginning with the welcome by the Clans of Ireland Cathaoirleach, Gearóid Ó Ceallaigh, and an introductory lecture on the study of Gaelic Ireland and a discussion with four of the book's contributors, hosted by Luke McInerney.
The recording can be viewed at this link:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RAQF8cD3ySQ&t=3s

Presented here are six deeds that cast light on landholding and legal matters in the earldom of Thomond during the first three decades of the seventeenth century. The documents were transcribed in a form as faithful to the original texts as possible. The deeds are archived in the Inchiquin Collection at the National Library of Ireland and in the Thomond papers at Petworth House in West Sussex. At one point, they all formed part of the collection of legal documents in the hands of the O’Briens of Thomond. People and places mentioned are located within the modern boundaries of Co. Clare. Individuals alluded to, almost without exception, were members of landholding lineages — great and small — that characterized Gaelic society. The early-seventeenth century was a period of great change in the Gaelic lordships as anglicization and colonization proceeded apace across Ireland. anglicization, along with expropriation of lands, irrevocably transformed Gaelic civilization. An important agent of change was English government and legal institutions which began to replace traditional allegiances and the systems of redistributive exchange that underpinned Gaelic society during this period.