Byrne's Dictionary of Irish Local History

by Joseph Byrne

  corporas cloth. The consecrated linen cloth on which the sacred vessels rested during mass.

  corporation. See borough, Municipal Corporations Reform Act (1840).

  corrody. An old age pension, usually purchasable from a monastery, consisting of lodging, food and incidentals. Corrodies were also granted as a reward for service.

  corruption of blood. When a person was attainted of treason or felony his blood was said to be corrupt and his lineal blood were unable to inherit. If he was a nobleman or gentry he and all his posterity were declared base.

  corsair. A privateer of the Barbary Coast (North Africa).

  corviser (also cordwainer). A shoemaker.

  coshering. (Ir., cóisir, feast) The right of a Gaelic lord to progress among his tenants with all his retinue and be entertained and fed. The term used to describe the food and drink consumed by the lord and his entourage is cuddy. The main period for coshering was from New Year’s Day to Shrovetide. See coyne and livery. (Simms, ‘Guesting’, pp. 79–86.)

  cottier. A cottager, the poorest inhabitant on a manor who lived in a small house with a garden. In later times the cottier was a labourer who was rewarded for his labour with a small potato plot and grazing for one or two cows. Cottiers were not protected by lease and therefore had no security. Recent studies have pointed to a number of distinct usages of the term in pre-famine Ireland. In Munster it meant a smallholder occupying up to ten acres without any labour services attached. In parts of Leinster, Ulster and most of Connacht it applied primarily to one who paid all or part of his rent by labour service. Finally from Dublin to Louth and inland as far as Armagh and Cavan it referred solely to the occupier of a cabin. In the aftermath of the famine it became synonymous with the term smallholder. (Beames, ‘Cottiers’, pp. 352–3.)

  coulter. A vertical metal blade mounted slightly forward of the share on the frame of a plough which cut through plant roots and eased the passage of the share. See ard plough, mouldboard. (Mitchell, The Shell guide, pp. 143–4.)

  Council, the Irish. See privy council.

  country. A district with a distinct identity or personality. The French term pays is synonymous with country. Byrne’s country, an area co-terminous with parts of modern Co. Wicklow, is styled after the eponymous clan which controlled that region down to the seventeenth century. Factors which contribute towards establishing the characteristic personality of a region include topographical, geographical and geological features (drumlin country, the Burren), specialised agricultural or industrial activity (Golden Vale, Lagan Valley) and culture and language (Fingal, Forth and Bargy). For local historians the ‘country’ as a unit of study offers an exciting conceptual framework and an alternative to administrative divisions such as the county, barony or parish, the traditional units of study in Ireland. It opens up the possibility of studying social and economic communities whose geographical distribution transcend administrative borders.

  country, to put oneself upon the. To present oneself for trial before a jury summoned from the area in which the alleged offence was committed.

  county. The administrative division known as the county or shire was superimposed on Ireland between the thirteenth and seventeenth centuries. Shiring, or the making of counties, was the process by which common law and central government control was gradually extended throughout Ireland. It involved the appointment of a sheriff (shire-reeve), a coroner, an escheator, a clerk of the market and justices of the peace. Two knights of the shire were sent from each county to parliament. Counties were formed by uniting a number of baronies or ‘countries’. The earliest shirings were Dublin (pre-1200), Waterford and Cork (1211), Kerry and Louth (1233), Tipperary and Limerick (1254), Roscommon (1292), Kildare and Meath (1297), Antrim and Down (c. 1300) and Carlow (1306). Kilkenny (c. 1200) and Wexford (1247) were palatinates. Shiring was renewed in the sixteenth century with Westmeath (1543), King’s and Queen’s counties (Laois and Offaly, 1557), Longford (1565), Clare, Galway, Mayo and Sligo (1568–78) Longford (1571) and the Ulster counties of Coleraine (later Derry), Tyrone, Fermanagh, Cavan (1579). Monaghan, Armagh and Donegal were shired from 1604. Wicklow, in 1606, was the last shire created. See country, justice of the peace. (Falkiner, Illustrations, pp. 103–142; Otway-Ruthven, ‘Anglo-Irish shire’, pp. 1–13.)

  county cess. A tax levied on occupiers of land within the jurisdiction of counties and baronies to fund presentments of the grand jury for the construction of roads, bridges and other public works. It was introduced in 1634 (10 Chas. I, c. 1) when royal justices and justices of the peace in the quarter-sessions were given the power with the assent of the grand jury to levy local charges for the construction and repair of bridges and roads.

  county borough. County boroughs were towns or cities with small surrounding areas whose privileges were defined by the medieval charters that brought them into existence. Each of the eight Irish county boroughs (Carrickfergus, Drogheda, Galway, Waterford, Cork, Kilkenny, Limerick and Dublin) sent two members to the Irish parliament on a franchise that included freemen, forty-shilling freeholders and members of the corporation. Relatively speaking, the county borough electorate was large, ranging from 500 to 4,000. Parliamentary elections encouraged the creation of fictitious freeholders and honorary freemen as landed and municipal interests fought to gain control over the parliamentary seats. The county boroughs boasted a number of local courts. Dublin had four – quarter-sessions, the lord mayor’s court, the mayor and sheriff’s court and a court of conscience. Quarter-sessions had cognisance of all crimes (bar treason) and the remainder dealt with minor offences and disputes, personal actions and small debts, respectively. Cork, Limerick, Derry, Kilkenny and Waterford possessed all but the lord mayor’s court. Carrickfergus, Galway and Waterford conducted quarter-sessions and a tholsel court for civil disputes. Waterford also operated a lord mayor’s court. See borough, franchise, freeman, Municipal Corporations Reform Act (1840), Newtown Act.

  county court. See assize courts, assistant-barrister.

  county governor. Although the office was largely honorific, the county governor was the senior legal and civil officer in the county and performed the same function in Ireland as the English lord lieutenant of county. He was commander of the militia and responsible for public order. Invariably he was a senior nobleman in the county and appointed for life. He was required to provide the names of suitable nominees for the commission of peace (the magistracy) and the post of deputy-governor, report on the conduct of magistrates and communicate information about local feelings and conditions to central government. The post of custos rotulorum (keeper of the county records) was usually held in conjunction with the governorship. In theory the county governor should have been an effective link between the localities and central government. In reality many governors were absentees or inactive. Moreover, unlike England where there was a single lord lieutenant per county, Irish counties had more than one governor and the multiplicity of competing voices at nomination time became a nuisance and diminished the importance of the office in the eyes of government ministers. In the 1830s the Whigs sought to shed the largely Tory county governors and replace them with lord lieutenants of their own choosing to end extremism and remove one of the obstacles to the appointment of Catholic or liberal magistrates. After 1831 county governors were styled lords lieutenant and their deputies, deputy-lieutenants. In their respective districts, deputies performed the same duties as regards maintaining public order and transmitting information to their superiors as the lords lieutenant performed for the county at large. (Crossman, Local government, pp. 15–23.)

  couple. 1: A pair of curved timber blades secured by a horizontal tie or collar-beam which provided the A-shape framework to support a roof 2: Of corn, the equivalent of two quarters or 16 bushels.

  coupled house. A house whose roof is independently or almost independently supported by trusses rising in couples from the floor or below the wall head. See cruck.

  couple-beggar (buckle-beggar). In the eighteen
th century, a defrocked, unemployed or suspended clergyman (or indeed a person who had never been in orders) who celebrated marriages without licence for a small fee. Some were former Catholic or Anglican ministers who had been deprived of their posts for indiscipline, others were apostate Catholic priests awaiting a living in the Church of Ireland. Couple-beggars were resorted to by eloping couples anxious to wed secretly in defiance of family wishes but also on account of the lower fee charged and because no advance notice was required.

  courant. In heraldry, a creature in the act of running.

  course (two-course, three-course system). In a two-course system of agricultural rotation half of the land was left fallow each year. Under a three-course system, which appears to have been the predominant mode in the area of Ireland under Anglo-Norman influence, three divisions roughly equal in size were maintained: winter corn, spring crop and fallow. Soil quality appears to have determined whether a two-course or three-course system was employed. Two-course was used where the soil yielded one crop every two years; three-course if it could sustain a crop on two successive years. A fall in population may have prompted a reversion to two-course farming for the manpower necessary to cultivate according to the more onerous three-course system simply wouldn’t have been available.

  course, writ of. The writ in standard form initiating a legal action, obtainable by the payment of a fee.

  court baron (curia magna). Granted by royal prerogative, the court baron was the manorial court which administered the set of regulations known as the custom of the manor. It recorded the surrender of and admission to land, enforced the payment of services due to the lord and dealt with debts, trespass and disputes between tenants. Sessions of the court baron were conducted perhaps every two or three weeks or as often as there was some business to be transacted.

  court cairn. One of the earliest Neolithic communal tombs to appear in Ireland, the court cairn comprises a long cairn of two or more chambers divided by jamb and sill. The chambers are entered by way of a (roughly) circular roofless court which forms a recess at the end of the cairn and probably served as a ritual area. The ceilings of the galleries are corbelled and the sidewalls are formed by large upright stones. Cremated as well as uncremated remains have been found in court cairns together with implements and vessels. Over 300 have been identified in Ireland, dispersed largely across the northern half of the country, Creevykeel in Co. Sligo being a notable example. See portal dolmen.

  court leet (curia parva). A manorial court which tried petty offences (assault and battery, blood drawing, theft and breaches of sanitary or other manorial regulations) that would otherwise have been dealt with in the royal courts. Through the assize of bread and ale it was also responsible for ensuring that bread and ale were produced to a reasonable standard and that short measures were not sold. Manor constables were elected at the court leet which was held twice a year at Easter and Michaelmas. The court leet was usually accompanied by the View of Frankpledge but, although included in royal grants, it is not clear to what extent this form of social control was employed in Ireland. All tenants owing suit to the court were obliged to pay ‘leet money’ or ‘leet silver’, usually amounting to a couple of shillings, to the lord. The court leet declined in the sixteenth century, yielding to the system of justices of the peace and the quarter-sessions.

  covenanter. See Reformed Presbyterian church.

  cowlands. In Byrne’s country (Wicklow), the equivalent of 30 great acres.

  Cowper Commission. A royal commission appointed to investigate landlord-tenant relationships, specifically the workings of the 1881 Land Law (Ireland) Act and the 1885 Purchase of Land (Ireland) Act. Reporting in February 1887, the commission attributed the collapse in crop and livestock prices during the previous two years to American competition, soil exhaustion and credit restrictions. Many tenants were now unable to pay even the judicial fair rents fixed by the 1881 act and those outside the terms of the act were worse off again. Evictions were increasing. The Plan of Campaign, a scheme devised by tenant leaders to compel landlords to lower rents, was hampering the work of the land courts. As the value of land had fallen to 18 years purchase of current rent, tenant leaders were advising tenants to hold off for better terms. Although the Purchase of Land Act of 1885 was working well, Ulster tenants were dismayed that those who had engaged in disturbances had achieved better terms from their landlords than those who had accepted the government scheme. In its recommendations the commission stressed the importance of maintaining law and order throughout the country. The interval for rent revision, they felt, should be shortened from 15 to five years and judicial rents be set according to the index of agricultural prices. The commissioners believed that land purchase schemes should be continued because landownership promoted good citizenship and loyalty. In areas where holdings were too small to provide a livelihood, purchase schemes should be discontinued and replaced by assisted immigration or emigration. The commission promoted the idea of central creameries as a means of boosting rural industry and increasing exports to Britain and recommended technical training for the youth of impoverished districts. (Cowper.)

  coyne and livery. (Ir., coin-mheadh, billeting, Fr. livrée, livery) A general term for the various Gaelic exactions of cutting and spending which involved the free quartering of the lord’s dependents on the country, including soldiers, horseboys and horses. Coyne and livery were also known as man’s meat and horse meat because it involved the provisioning of men and horses. It was adopted by Anglo-Norman marchers to quarter troops on local populations in defence of the Pale. Coyne and livery was not welcomed by the inhabitants on whom it was imposed. They were required to billet, feed and sometimes pay the wages of the troops. In 1488 coyne and livery was criminalised within the Pale although march lords were permitted to impose it on their own tenants to maintain a standing force. See buannacht, coshering, cutting and spending, cuddy.

  crannock. A measure of corn used in Ireland at least until the end of the fifteenth century. The precise amount appears to have ranged between one (8 bushels) and two quarters (16 bushels) depending on the cereal. A crannock of wheat consisted of 8 bushels and of oats, 16.

  crannóg. (Ir., a structure of wood) A circular lake-dwelling. Crannóga were constructed on natural islands in lakes or were man-made. They were located in lakes for strategic purposes and access to them was gained by boat or causeway. It is estimated that there are the remains of upwards of 1,200 crannóga in Ireland.

  crastin, crastino. In legal documents, refers to the day after any feast day.

  creagh. (Ir.) A prey or cattle raid.

  creaght. (Ir., caoraigheacht, a herd of animals) A group of nomadic herdsmen and their cattle and sometimes the transportable wicker-work huts the herdsmen lived in. Creaghting was the practice of driving cattle from place to place for pasture. See comyn, bó-aire. (Prendergast, ‘The Ulster creaght’, pp. 420–30.)

  Crede Mihi. The oldest record of the state of the parishes in the diocese of Dublin, Crede Mihi contains a list of the churches and associated chapels, the names of rectors, the value of rectories and the institution or ecclesiastic to which or to whom they were appropriated for the period 1179–1264. Although the original was created in the late thirteenth century, additional observations were appended by Archbishop John Alen in the sixteenth century. (Gilbert, Crede mihi.)

  creel. A wicker basket.

  creepie. A low three-legged stool.

  crenelles. The openings in a battlement, alternating with the solid merlons, from which defenders were able to launch missiles. Crenellated means embattled.

  Críth Gablach. An eight-century Gaelic tract on the legal status and social stratification of lay freemen. Freemen were divided into two orders, commoners and nobles (including kings) and each order was subdivided into many grades. The text discusses the nature of kingship and the relationship between kings and their subjects. See Brehon laws. (Binchy, Críth Gablach.)

  crocket. An architectural ornamentation, ofte
n of leaves or flowers, largely associated with the earliest Gothic style known as the pointed style.

  croft. A small, enclosed arable field or garden adjacent to a house.

  cromleach. See dolmen.

  crown rent. In feudal times, the rent payable to the crown upon the granting of land, commonly known as the chief rent.

  crown solicitor. Prior to the nineteenth century it was unusual for the crown to prosecute at the assizes except in extraordinary cases and there was a single state solicitor for the entire country. From 1801, however, crown solicitors were appointed to each circuit as assize prosecutors. By 1880 there were twenty crown solicitors and a crown and treasury solicitor. Meanwhile, from the 1830s the attorney-general had begun to appoint sessional crown solicitors to conduct state prosecutions at the quarter-sessions (prosecutions at petty sessions were usually undertaken by the police). The offices of crown solicitor and sessional solicitor were amalgamated in the 1880s. The crown and treasury solicitor acted for public departments and prosecuted only at the direction of the government. The post was re-styled chief crown solicitor in 1888 when the offices of crown and treasury solicitor and crown solicitor for the city and county of Dublin were united. When the holder of the office retired in 1905 the post was split between two officials, the chief crown solicitor and the treasury solicitor.

  crosslands. Church lands lying within a liberty but subject to the crown and not to the lord of the liberty.