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Nuachtán No.4 January/Eanáir 1999

Progress with extraction of England & Wales GRO Indexes

During the last year we have continued to extract death records from the indexes at the General Record Office Index of Births, Marriages and Deaths for England and Wales . The Registry has now moved to a new building at Middleton Place, London, which is a vast improvement on St Catherine's House, with its modern shelving and bright spacious layout. The competition to view the indexes has if anything become more intense, as more people than ever research their family trees.

We have advanced the records of deaths to 1994 and once we have updated them to 1997 we shall similarly update the records of Births.

The historical context in which the Ó Maelearcaidh clan developed in Ireland - Series Issue No. 4

We set out below part 4 of our short Irish history series. In order to place the Ó Maelearcaidh clan data into it's historical and sociological context we shall over several issues set out a history of Ireland, covering the period from approximately 1140 to the early 1800's. Within the context of a general history, we shall provide a more detailed account of events between 1500 and 1700, as this was the defining period during which the Gaelic order, the clan system and culture underpinning it were transformed into the proto system and culture of the modern day.

In Carrickfergus castle the English defenders could not hold out much longer and to play for time they asked to parley. Their real aim was truly gruesome. They suddenly captured 30 of the negotiators and demanded supplies from the Scots as ransom. When this failed to produce any food, the unfortunate captives we eaten by the defenders. It was in September 1316 that a fearful Carrickfergus garrison finally surrendered. Despite their barbarity during the siege, the garrison was largely spared. This may have been due in part to the intensity of the famine at large, in that the Scots themselves understood the depths of the defenders' misery.

Meanwhile Robert Bruce recognized that there was a tremendous opportunity to further roll back English power and prevent them using their lands in the Irish Pale to finance their wars against Scotland. So he crossed the Irish Sea with a force of 20,000 Scots Gaels to assist his brother. Together the Bruce's approached Dublin. Because of the famine his forces were increasingly Scots in complexion and increasingly isolated and understrengthed for the task in hand. The battle of Dublin was one of the great "what if's" of history. The Norman defenders faced the assault with such resistance, that the Bruces were forced to retreat. Retreat turned into disaster as they turned south, sending men out foraging as far as Limerick. In doing so his retreating army lost him support and devastated the countryside. The winter was even worse than the previous one and to survive the Scots were forced to eat not just their own horses, but according to the Laud annals, to dig up the dead from cemeteries. With just 300 of his men remaining alive, Robert Bruce saw little more to be achieved in Ireland and returned to Scotland in May 1317.

The Irish Princes perhaps in a copy of William Wallace's declaration of Montrose, appealed to the Pope John XXII in a document known as the Remonstrance of the Irish Princes in 1317. The document set out a list of the many grievances suffered by the Irish at the hands of the Normans, flowing from the papal grant of Ireland to Henry II by Pope Adrian IV. It also set down in writing the desire for Edward Bruce to be recognised by the Pope as the lawful king of Ireland and for sovereignty to be unanimously vested in him.

Despite the disastrous winter and true to his kingship, Edward Bruce fought on. Edward II sent a fresh new English army to Ireland, under the command of Roger de Mortimer. Famine now acted to save Edward Bruce as the English army was confined in Dublin to access English supplies. Edward II however tightened the ring around Edward Bruce by sending his navy north to cut off Bruce from his Scottish supplies and allies. Edward in a final throw of the dice struck south. His army was finally defeated by the Norman army of De Bermingham at Faughart in Co. Louth on 14 October 1318. Edward himself was killed fighting with his men. Seen as the cause of national misery, Edward had lost most of his Irish support by then. Even the Annals of Connacht, which one might thought to have been in his favour, wrote that he was " the common ruin of the Galls and Gaels of Ireland,...in this Bruce's time, for three and a half years, falsehood and famine and homicide filled the country, and undoubtedly men ate each other in Ireland" . As regards Edward's death and that of his Scots allies, the annals proclaim "never was a better deed done for the Irish than this, since the beginning of the world and the banishing of the Formorians from Ireland".

De Bermingham had Edward's head cut off and sent it preserved in a barrel of salt water to King Edward II in London. As a reward, Edward II appointed De Bermingham as Earl of Louth. This particularly Norman Irish habit of decapitating opponents derives from the rather macabre trade in heads which they practiced, and which sees some resonance in the latter habit of trading in scalps, which the English introduced to North America.

Gaelicisation of the Normans

The racial division within the Catholic church consolidated in the era from the 1340's onwards. Malachi of Ireland was a Franciscan, who about 1310 openly rebuked King Edward II in his sermons. He set out his opposition to the bias administration of Ireland in his Tractus de Veneno. Several centuries latter the Tractus was printed in Paris (1518). Despite being a denunciation of the English government of Ireland of his day, it was remarkably applicable to English rule two centuries latter. The Tractus also points to the spiritual and cultural relationship between the Gael and the Franciscan friars. The Franciscans were one religious body which remained true to the natives.

After the defeat of Edward Bruce the Red Earl raised a new native Irish army and regained his old Ulster Lordship. When he died in 1326, apart from west Ulster, which remained independent, the Red Earl owned a huge swathe of the northern half of Ireland. Yet this overstated the true strength of Norman control in Ireland. The Bruce war had further weakened the Norman demographic element in the Ulster Lordship. Furthermore the new Earl, William de Burgo, known as the Brown Earl, was not the military commander his father had been. His uncle, Walter de Burgo challenged his power and though William defeated Walter, further inter-nicene conflict spread amongst his Norman barons. The chaos led to the assassination of Walter by disaffected Normans in June 1333. The death of the Brown Earl left a power vacuum in which individual barons grabbed small pieces of the Lordship. The earldom was fatally weakened. The native Irish took advantage of the situation, reclaiming all the lands taken from them west of the river Bann. In Connacht, de Burgo rivals grabbed chunks of the old de Burgo empire and in defiance of the English Crown claimed total independence from Dublin. Effectively the Normans in Connacht had gone native, renaming themselves as the Gaelicised de Búrca.

The English king needed to act quickly or his possessions in Ireland and their valuable income might be lost. To compound his problems he was still at war with Scotland. Edward sought to solve the two problems by ordering an expedition north under John Darcy to first capture Carrickfergus, re-establishing the Lordship and then to join his campaign in Scotland. After fierce fighting, de Lacy recaptured Down and Antrim, but the inter Norman fighting had undermined the Lordship, so much so that it was totally dependent on continuing external English resources to keep it secure.

Indeed even in the Dublin Pale, the Normans were becoming dependent on England for security. The simple demographics of their situation was a creeping Gaelicisation of the outer reaches of the Pale. This in turn led to a steady reduction of English and Norman culture within the Pale, accelerated by inter-marriage with the Gael. The effect undermined many of the anti Gael ordinances. With the cultural war against the Gael failing, king Edward III adopted a new extreme policy. In 1342 he ordained that the English within the Pale, who did not also own land in England, were to be excluded from the Pale. The idea was to remove anyone from the Pale who might have become over exposed to the Irish, their language and ways and to completely replace and refresh the Norman settlement with new English speaking settlers. The policy was also designed to nip Gaelicised Norman Irish power in the bud, by stamping on the Norman Irish Fitzgeralds, who were beginning to pose a threat to English rule. The danger they presented was that they might act as a cultural bridge, uniting Gael and Norman Irish, offering Ireland a separate kingship.

A new order within and without the Pale was developing into a revised Gaelic system, in which even the bards had returned to sing the praises of both Gael and Norman Irish alike. Knowledge of genealogies was honoured again, which by contrast also helped the Norman Irish to trace their separateness within the process of intermarriage. The cultural mix also resulted in some blending of Brehon law elements into the Norman law, as well as the re-emergence of Irish Law known as the Féinachas. The Féinachas was "dlíthe nár choir dlíthe a thabhairt orthu, mar nach raibh ionthu ach nósanna gan bhailíocht." - Laws that it would be wrong to call laws as such, but guidelines not legally enforceable. If you like Féinachas was a moral code, based in honour and not on the Norman English courts.

Nevertheless the Gaelicised Normans did see themselves as separate from the native, their defining character being their loyalty to the English Crown. To reduce the power of the Gaelicised Norman Irish, the principle Fitzgerald was imprisoned by the new viceroy Sir Ralph Ufford in 1344. The strong hand was enforced and Edward III latter sent his son Lionel, Duke of Clarence to continue as viceroy. He also acted with harshness against any resistance to the policy of anglicizing Ireland. Lionel called the Parliament of Kilkenny in 1367, in which fierce anti Irish laws were confirmed. Irish ways, laws, dress, names and language were prohibited, as was any alliance between native and English on pain of treason. Any English person who used the Irish language was to be arrested and have his lands confiscated. The Irish Clergy, Irish cattle and economy, system of Bards and Bardic colleges were all to be discouraged ! The petty taxation called the coigne on which the Gaelic nobility subsisted was made a felony. (The coigne was not so much a monetary tax but often took the form of supplying fodder and stabling.)

Whilst the native Irish had become strong enough to mount resistance to these laws, they were not strong enough to completely drive out the English. An unforeseen side effect of the weakening of the Old Norman Irish by Edward III, was a further reduction of the Pale. New English landowning settlers were often absentee landowners, preferring to live on their richer English estates. This in turn led to a collapse of agricultural production in the Pale. It also brought about a system of sub-letting land which was also to have a pauperization effect on the Norman Irish in the Pale. It even forced the Normans to allow Gael into the Pale to supplement agricultural production, thereby defeating Edward's race policy. The freeholders and free tenant leaseholders remained English or Norman, but below them the short term leaseholders (Firmarii) though mainly Norman, were occasionally Gael. At the very bottom were the Biataigh, who were nearly all Gael. The firmarii and biataigh had to gave service to the Lord as part of their rent, however because of the competition for tenants the terms of service were not so onerous as the equivalent tenants suffered in England. Also because the wealth of the biataigh was in their stock of animals, they were not confined by their station, but could freely move to the tenancy of another Lord on more favourable terms. Hence the more successful biataigh were able to enjoy a standard of living, comparable to Firmarii. Nevertheless mismanagement of the Irish economy is seen in reports by visitors to Ireland who wrote of its noticeable poverty.

One notable administrative change by the king was to change the title of his representative in Ireland, from viceroy to that of Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, a role which persisted until Ireland gained Home Rule in 1922.

Following a series of plagues and famines throughout the 14th century, the urban Old English population in Ireland was further reduced. When taken with Edward's disastrous race policy, there developed a slow but steady resurgence in the fortunes of the independent Gael. Also following the Bruce war, Irish clans such as the Ó Domhnaills recruited ever larger numbers of Scots Gallóglaigh, to further stiffen the ranks of their native Irish troops or kerne. Unlike the Irish kerne who still largely fought in linen shirts, the Gallóglaigh, like the Normans wore strong body armour and their impact was to erode further the military advantage of the Normans. The change of fortunes can clearly be seen when in 1372, the Council in Dublin were obliged to pay 20 marks to Donnacha MacMurchú, to ensure that the Kings highway between Carlow and Kilkenny was safe to travel. Indeed apart from the a few large towns like Cork and Limerick, the Old English only effectively controlled an area of 30 miles by 20 miles around Dublin. This English enclave was called the "Land of peace" by the English government. King Richard II attempted to reverse the trends and reign in the Gael by demanding and securing allegiance from most Irish nobles. One notable exception was Turlough (an Fíona) Ó Domhnaill, king of Tírconnell, who refused to recognise Richard, indeed Turlough pushed the boundaries of his kingdom beyond it's Donegal base into north Connacht.

The English Crown continued to be concerned not just with retaining control of it's Irish possession, but with legalizing it's status in Ireland. Richard II realised that obtaining declarations of loyalty from the Irish nobles was insufficient to secure the Pale. To shore up the core possession he mustered the largest English army yet to land in Ireland. Landing in Waterford in October 1394, his army fought the Irish right through the winter, effectively bringing the whole of Leinster back under English control. But the control was tentative. Creton, a French noble in the retinue of Richard II noted of the the Irish,

" I never saw a race more fierce, they appeared to have no great fear of the English."

By a treaty in 1395 the native Irish nobility agreed to refrain from styling themselves Prince or King. Henceforth English sources made increasing use of terms such as clan chief, or captain instead of kings or Princes. Against the wishes of the Irish of Ulster, Richard attempted to bolster up the Lordship of Ulster by granting the Earldom to Roger de Mortimer. On Richard's leaving Ireland de Mortimer immediately attacked his Ó Néill neighbours, who hit back, instigating widespread war against the beleaguered Lordship. Thinking to escape the mayhem, de Mortimer was killed while he visited his estates in Leinster. Stunned by events, Richard launched a second Irish campaign in 1399. On this occasion he met more unified opposition, resulting in a series of disasters. Forced to flee Ireland with the remnant of his army, Richard ran into even worse problems in England. The failures in Ireland left him and his Yorkist allies weak and exposed, encouraging his Lancastrian enemies to strike at his moment of weakness. Richard was murdered, leading to a period of chaos, during which no clear Irish policy was pursued.

The Old English descendents of the Edward III settlement in the Pale were increasingly absorbed into Gaelic ways, as had the Normans before them. It is as well that the English were self destructing, because the Irish continued with their inter clan wars. Had a strong Irish king emerged to unite them in the 14th century, history would certainly have seen the eclipsing of English power in Ireland. In East Ulster the Lordship collapsed, as Irish Gael and their Scots allies took over most of the king's estates. The once proud lordship of Ulster was reduced to an area of County Down centered on the castle at Carrickfergus. A picture of the times can be seen from accounts written by overseas pilgrims to the Purgatory at Loch Derg on Ó Néill land. Ramon Viscount of Perellós, a courtier of King John of Aragon writing in Catalan 'Viatje al Purgatori de Sant Patrici', described Niall Mór Ó Néill of Tír Eóghan as the "greatest (Irish) king." The Viscount also said of the Irish :-

"They were very courageous. They are still at war with the English and have been for a long time. The king of England is unable to to put an end to it, for they have had many battles. Their way of fighting is like that of the Saracens who shout in the same manner."

In Fermanagh the Norman castles at Belleck and Lough Erne were torn down by the Maguires, who became bastions of Gaelic defiance. The stability of Maguire rule in Fermanagh was due to their acceptance of primo genitur, which avoided wasteful clan conflict to achieve clan leadership. Clan problems were effectively exported as younger sons fought to obtain their own lands outside the boundary of Fermanagh. As and when the Uí Néill were able to produce a powerful king, they assumed the role of Irish overkings of Ulster. Ach faraoir géar, these were the exceptions.

New laws to prevent mixing of the races were passed in the Pale, superficially designed to prevent absorption of English speakers into Gaelic culture, however they had a second function aimed at protecting Norman merchants in the Pale from native competition. To underline this end, an act was passed in 1431 specifically prohibiting Palesmen from attending fairs and markets of the Gael. The Irish nobles had begun to appreciate Norman style in certain areas, such as their modern castles and life-style. Inevitably through illicit contacts and observation, the Irish began to learn commercial lessons from their Norman neighbours. Despite Laws preventing commercial contact between the native Irish and the Palesmen, markets and fairs run by the Irish sprang up along the boundary of the Pale.

As part of the interaction outside the Pale, one sees the creation of new Irish Religious Foundations by Norman Irish benefactors. They brought a reforming zeal to the native church. Below the level of Bishops and hierachy, the poor native Franciscan friars remained relatively untainted by corruption and hence retained the loyalty and support of the Irish population. However the official Irish church had lapsed into rapacious conduct and celebacy was largely ignored. It is not surprising therefore that the Norman intervention was largely welcomed by the native population. For example the Irish Franciscan Rosserk (Ros Eirc) Friary near Ballina in Mayo was created by Joye (Joyce), a Norman Irish Lord in the 1440's. .

Because of the high profits to be made at the burgeoning Irish fairs, Norman merchants from Dublin were obliged to become involved and the economic stimulus of the fairs enabled a proportion of the resulting profits to be circulated outside the Pale. During the Irish Parliament of 1463/64, the Palesmen agreed to grant an official dispensation to the smaller pockets of the Pale around Cork, Waterford, Limerick and Youghal to trade with the Gael. The impact of these contacts on the Pale was two fold, the Pale became dependent on these contacts for it's economic well-being and secondly the anti Gaelic policy collapsed.

Books researched in the Society of Genealogists library, in London