ANGLO-NORMANS IN IRELAND.*
Tuts collection comprises considerably more than a hundred docu- ments (for they are partly numbered in sets), which have been drawn from a great variety of repositories, and in some points industri- ously collrted ; but no elaborate attempt has been made to connect their contents with general history ; and the volume decidedly wants a more regular and exact summary, besides corresponding marginal references, a glossary, and a more copious index. We be- lieve, moreover, that Mr. Gilbert has deviated from the custom of his colleagnes in not adding translations to his Norman-French papers. It is, no doubt, chiefly in casual references that the above deficiencies will be felt, while a steady reader may find that more matters have been explained in one corner or another than he thought at first inspection. But we must exemplify a passage that seems very imperfectly epitomized, from the Inquisitions of the Archbishops of Dublin, where we find that in 1268 the legate- Ottobono ordered sentence of excommunication to be pronounced,. under certain conditions, against the mayor and citizens of Dublin, for sundry specified encroachments and usurpations ; but let us see- how these appear, and should appear, in the editorial summary,. of the notice given by a prelate :—
" The revenue of the churches of Dublin, as we are informed by
the Archbishop is derived in great part from the offer- ings of the faithful, on Sundays and festivals, under the names of tithes and other contributions at marriages and christenings [it should be churchings—pueperarumpurificationibus]. The mayor and citizens of Dublin have decreed that offerings shall be made but four times in the year, and restrict the numbers ri.e., of the- comitiva or company attending] at weddings and christenings [churchings]. They order that but two candles shall be left in a cemetery [left to church] after each funeral. They declare that public penances are not to be under ecclesiastical jurisdiction, that matrimonial and testamentary causes [read no causes. concerning usury, or any other crime, except matrimonial and. testamentary causes] are to be tried in ecclesiastical courts—with many other enormities [viz., claiming respecting the property of iuterstates, with which they forbade the Church to meddle, for- bidding citizens to be cited outside the city for trial before an ecclesiastical court, 8.:c.]
But, quitting these animadversions for the present, let us briefly report the most historical of Mr. Gilbert's materials, which, as. remnants of medimval archives, are fairly said to throw a light on the progress of the middle and trading classes in English Ireland, such as is not supplied by those chroniclers whose chief concern
• Historic and Municipal Documents of Ireland, A.D. 1172-1320, from The Archives of the City of Dublin, dz. Edited by J. T. Gilbert, FDA.. Secretary of the Publia Record Office of Ireland. Rolls Publications. London, IVO.
was with the Church or the nobility. We commence with Henry II.'s charter making the men of Bristol landlords and masters of Dublin (already a Danish settlement and a noted centre of trade), which they were to hold with their customary immunities. Their privileges were confirmed and extended by John as Viceroy of Ireland (who comprised Bristol in his earldom of Gloucester), and John as King; till in 1215 he fixed an annual rent to be paid by them for the city, in lieu of previous irregular contributions. In 1204 he had ordered Dublin to be fortified (with some particulars for which a glossary might have been acceptable), and authorized annual fairs to be held for eight days at Donnybrook, Drogheda, Waterford, and Limerick. In 1814 he authorized a similar fair to be held at Dublin, and a new bridge to be erected there if deemed expedient. In 1216 his successor granted a great charter to Ireland, in which special clauses confirmed the ancient liberties of Dublin, made its weights and measures a standard for Ireland, and gave this city a position equivalent to that occupied by London in the counterpart of the charter for England. In 1225, a charter appears granting the citizens the right of electing their own mayors for a year or a longer term ; but we find subsequently that they had paid for this privilege by cancelling a debt of 1312 which was owed them by the Justiciary of Ireland.
Drogheda, which was fortified by the De Lacies, had by 1253 received constitutions similar to those of Dublin for the two de- partments into which it had expanded on opposite sides of the river. There are compacts registered between Dublin and Drogheda in 1252, and again, among these two places, Cork and Waterford, in 1285, which seem to have implied confederations for mutual .aid against the barons and prelates, and to have been comparable to the leagues of Danish towns in pre-Norman England. About the years 1260-1270, the already cited Inquisitions (which have become partly known from the historical Register of Alan, who was Archbishop of Dublin from 1528 to 1531) lead us to a long- sustained controversy between the municipal and ecclesiastical jurisdictions, in 1260-70, in which Popes Alexander 1Y. and Urban IV. take a vigorous part. One oft-recurring grievance against the civil magistrates is the apparently vague one that they prevented excommunicated persons from being shunned in con- formity with their sentences. We note elsewhere a complaint of Prince Edward that some of his men had been publicly beaten through the streets in execution of an ecclesiastical sentence, whereas the Churchmen would not permit the decrees of his Court to be carried out in their territory ; he therefore granted the mayor and bailiffs power "to stop this presumption." On this point we see that a compromise was effected, but we do not know what was done about the offerings referred to by Ottobono. At the beginning of the fourteenth century, we come to a series of not unamusing documents regarding a notable trader and con- tractor Geoffrey de Morton, though we should not exactly have said with the editor that what they exemplified was the "energy, activity, and independent movement " of Geoffrey's confraternity. He seems to us rather a suspiscious character, as, in the first place, be got into much trouble during his mayoralty for having protected forestallers, and being concerned in some faulty finance returns presented to the King. Then the citizens accused him of having after this period taken and carried away the seal of the corporation to use at his own pleasure. It comes out afterwards that it had been legally entrusted to him ; only they had not obtained its restitution with proper despatch ; for Geoffrey, when asked for it by another mayor, had promised to give it up, but conveniently forgotten to do so, and gone to Eng- land, leaving it in his wife's custody. To the latter the authori- ties then removed their application, and this for the special pur- pose of sending word to England that they had no connection with the suits that Geoffrey was there prosecuting. On which ground Matilda denied that she had the seal, and thus involved the cor- poration in "inestimable peril and no inconsiderable expense" (for the messenger whom they kept waiting raised his terms from twenty marks to fifty). It was ruled, however, that Geoffrey had not authorized his wife's proceedings ; neither do we read that she was further troubled about the matter,—perhaps she was con- sidered a dutiful woman for it. This affair did not hinder 'Geoffrey from obtaining from the Crown various purveying con- tracts for Edward's French and Irish expeditions, and a grant of tolls for six years—in an unusually long string of fifty- three articles, which comprises nails, horseshoes, and such mi- nima—under pretext of repairing a wall and tower, which were going to ruin, or, as he represented, ruined by a fire. He was aoon charged, however, with sparing his friends the tolls, neglect- mg the work required, and even with having obtained the grant
by false representations; on which grounds he was ordered to relinquish it. He also got into trouble by building against and over the city walls, and obstructing the way by which men occupied them for martial purposes. This man's career seems to be one of the episodes that Mr. Gilbert has illustrated with mast research and diligence.
The period under our examination terminates with the Scotch invasion of Ireland under Edward Bruce, or its-immediate conse- quences. We have many particulars respecting the commissariat of the campaign, but do not know whether they would suffice for general estimates of the cost of the defence to the Anglo-Irish. In 1316 we find that the King, in consideration of the losses in- curred by Dublin in the war, and especially of the destruction of part of the suburbs, has granted the citizens for four years a re- mission of sixty pounds a year out of their rent (of £200) to him. At about the same time Drogheda towards Uriel (the Lowth side) obtained similar remissions of 300 and 360 [? 300 again] marks, and permission to adjourn the presentation of their mayor. Still more ample indemnifications were granted Dublin in the years 1317-19; but the men of Drogheda, in 1318, found themselves without any means of making up their accounts with the King, and were obliged to compound with him by a fine paid into the Treasury.
We have some documents, unfortunately still imperfect, regard- ing the forcible seizure within sanctuary of Richard de Burgh, Earl of Ulster, and his imprisonment by the mayor and com- monalty of Dublin, a memorable incident, considering its effect in deterring Robert Bruce (this nobleman's son-in-law) from the prosecution of his designs upon the city. The King is informed in the same year, 1317, that contentions have arisen between the commonalty of Dublin and the nobles, and directs that the latter, to avoid grave perils, shall not be permitted to take up their abode there, and that the Parliament shall be called elsewhere. The latest documents of this class refer to a royal tenant of lands and fisheries at Bray (county Dublin), who complains in 1320 that for more than five years he has derived no revenue from them beyond the value of two salmon, in consequence of the devastations caused by the Scotch invasion and the risings of the Irish in Leinster.
We will not pretend to compare the laws and usages of the city of Dublin with others of the period ; but one of the provi- sions that has struck us as most singular in them is, that the son of a man by his third marriage should inherit exclusively of the children by the former marriages (if both fruitful), "par usages de is cyte." One would think these worthy people had mis- takenly regarded such a man as the stepfather of his own offspring, or they may have thought the number three the luckiest even in matrimony. A pleasanter rule to think of required that when the mayor and bailiffs were bidden to a feast they should take with them twenty-five young men of the city to follow them and learn courtesy. The statement of the "grievances of the Common Folk of Dublin" is less revolutionary than might have been guessed from the title, and is comprised mainly of demands for a more regular administration, military and financial, with a few for the " protection " of trade, industry, and the franchise of the city. The most democratic provisions are that citizens not taking part in the election of the mayor may be fined 100a. (say the price of a serviceable war-horse), and persons declining that office may have their houses brought down to the ground. The latter clause is altogether omitted in Mr. Gilbert's summary. Under the head of obstructions to royal purveyors, we find a singular complaint against an Archdeacon of Meath, who at the complaint of one of his tenants that some of his corn was seized in his barn in the king's name, had sent clerics to frighten away the threshers by ostensibly excommunicating them with the formidable ceremony of extinguished lights, &c., but repeating no "wickeder words" than a Latin rule from Donatus's grammar, commencing " adverbia localia." Two or more superiors of monasteries in similar case had had recourse, for want of wit, to more violent measures. We must remark in conclusion, that, considering the ordinary usage in Latin, the documents before us are very prodi- gally and uncouthly punctuated. Who would suppose at first sight that "pro prefatis domino, rege, et justiciario," stood for only two, and not three personages? Or who could help thinking that some very peculiar emphasis was required by the phrase, "in domini, regis, contemptum "? It is still less easy to construe "in eidem civitate, tam toto tempore celebris memorie, domini, Edwards, quondam regis Anglie, patris domini, regis, nunc, &c.," where the commas seem to have been discharged from a mitrailleur.
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