Byrne's Dictionary of Irish Local History

by Joseph Byrne

  endowment. A gift of money or property to an institution or person. Institutional endowments may comprise the provision of an income or a contribution towards construction, equipping or furnishing costs. The equivalent in human terms was the dowry a woman brought to her marriage.

  enfeoff. To invest with a fee or fief, to grant.

  enfeoffment. 1: A deed giving a person the fee of an estate 2: An estate obtained in this way.

  English bill. See civil bill.

  engross. To enclose land with hedges and ditches.

  engrosser. A court official who levied arrears of debts owing to the crown.

  entail. The succession to an entailed estate is limited to a specific line of heirs so that it cannot be sold or passed to anyone else. The holder’s interest is that of a tenant for life (see life estate). Entails could be barred or destroyed and land freed for sale by a fictitious lawsuit in the court of common pleas known as a recovery. After 1834 a new process known as a disentailing deed removed the need for such fictitious and expensive actions by enabling an entail to be barred by a simple deed of conveyance. See De Donis Conditionalibus.

  Enterprise of Ulster (1571–5). A bloody and destabilising private attempt by Sir Thomas Smith and Walter Devereux (earl of Essex) to colonise east Ulster. Smith and his son (also Thomas) were granted north Down and Ards but failed to make any progress when their diminutive force met with stiff resistance from Sir Brian MacPhelin O’Neill. Penned in at Carrickfergus, the troops went berserk. Essex had been granted Antrim and arrived in Carrickfergus in 1573 with over 1,000 men. He pursued a fruitless war against Sorley Boy MacDonnell, ordered the butchering of the O’Neills of Clandeboye in 1574 and the massacre of the MacDonnells of Rathlin Island. The younger Smith was killed in 1573 and Essex died in Ireland in 1576. Both incursions proved costly failures.

  entry, writ of. A writ employed in an action to recover property where a defendant had entered with apparent justification but (a) through a tenant of the plaintiff who had not been entitled to sell or (b) by way of a lease that had since expired.

  entry fine. A fine paid by an incoming tenant to be admitted to a tenancy. It may have involved a fixed or arbitrary payment depending on the custom of the manor. Until the seventeenth century the heir of a deceased tenant-in-chief was required to pay relief (a fee or entry fine) set at one year’s profits of the land to the crown to obtain possession of his estate which was effected through the legal procedure known as suing out livery. See livery, to sue out.

  eorum residentia. In Catholic marriage registers, the place of residence of the couple.

  Episcopalian. A member of the Anglican church (Church of Ireland).

  Erastianism. A doctrine named after the Zwinglian Thomas Erastus which declares the state to be supreme in both civil and ecclesiastical affairs. Erastus, himself, did not espouse this doctrine. He believed it lawful for the state to punish religious as well as civil offences wherever the citizenry adhered to a single faith. However, he opposed excommunication and denial of the sacraments on the basis that they were not scriptural. The term achieved popularity in England in the 1640s among Presbyterians who used it to attack proponents of state supremacy. The eighteenth-century Church of Ireland has been described as a thoroughly erastian body in that career advancement and church policies were in every way determined by the government. (Akenson, The Church of Ireland, p. 4.)

  erenagh. The hereditary tenant of termon (church) lands. He was a lay lord whose family held this office and church property from generation to generation in return for rent and refection. See coarb. (Jefferies, ‘Erenaghs’.)

  error, writ of. The modern right to appeal was unknown in earlier times. A sentence could only be challenged if the defendant could establish that there was an error on the record of the case either in the pleadings, the issue or the verdict. The writ of error was the means by which such challenges were mounted, compelling a lower court to produce the records for inspection.

  escheat. 1: A feudal incident entailing the lapse of a property to the lord in default of an heir (propter defectum sanguinis) or upon the conviction of a tenant for a felony (propter delictum tenentis) 2: To confiscate.

  escheator. A local official, often the county sheriff, who conducted an inquisition on behalf of the surveyor-general to determine the rights to property. The escheator was also responsible for levying alienation fines and for detecting breaches of alienation procedures. Provincial escheators were appointed in 1605. See alienation, right to.

  escheator of Ireland. Important crown official who held all lands temporarily in the king’s hands through forfeiture, wardship or episcopal vacancy. He took possession of the land on behalf of the king and conducted an inquisition post-mortem to establish its value and to identify and discover the age of the heir. The escheator gave seisin to the heir if of age or auctioned the wardship if the heir was in minority. He apportioned the widow’s dower and divided the estate if it passed to co-heiresses.

  escheatorship of Munster. Until 1793 it was not possible for members of the Irish parliament to resign their seats. There was no Irish equivalent of the Chiltern Hundreds, a temporary office granted to British MPs who wished to resign their seats. Irish MPs might stay away from the house but only death, expulsion, the taking of holy orders or elevation to the peerage or judiciary could terminate their membership. In 1793 the Place Act (33 Geo. III, c. 41) required members of parliament to vacate their seats upon accepting government office and the escheatorships of Munster, Connacht, Ulster and Leinster – sinecures worth 30 shillings annually – provided the nominal office to enable them to do so.

  escutcheon. In heraldry, a shield with a coat of arms.

  esker. (Ir. eiscir) A narrow, winding ridge of sand and gravel, often up to several miles long, thought to be channel deposits left behind as a glacier retreated. In boggy areas, such as the Irish midlands, eskers provided dry, natural causeways for movement.

  esnecy. The prerogative of the eldest co-parcener (co-heir) to have first choice after an inheritance was divided.

  essoin. 1: To excuse one’s attendance at court 2: A payment made by a tenant who owed suit to the manor court for absenting himself from the court.

  Established church. The Church of Ireland, Anglican or Episcopalian church which was the state church in Ireland from 1537 until it was disestablished by the Irish Church Act in 1869.

  estate. In modern usage is usually taken to refer to the ownership of an area of land or the whole of the property (both real and personal) owned by a deceased person. Under feudal law, however, and technically under modern land law, estate answered the question; ‘For how long is the land held?’ A life estate exists for as long as the tenant lives, an estate in tail for as long as the tenant in tail or any of his descendants lives, an estate in fee simple for as long as the tenant or any of his heirs (whether descendants or not) lives. Under the doctrine of estates a person owned an estate in land and not the land itself for all land was held directly or indirectly of the crown. See allodial tenure.

  Estates Commissioners. Operating under the supervision of the Irish Land Commission, the Estates Commissioners were established by the Wyndham Act (1903) to purchase whole estates (rather than individual holdings) and to sell them to the tenants. In conjunction with the Congested Districts Board, the Estates Commissioners became active in relieving rural congestion by improving, enlarging and rearranging newly-purchased estates before vesting them in tenant-purchasers. Under the 1907 Evicted Tenants (Ireland) Act they were also permitted to purchase compulsorily the land of evicted tenants and to reinstate them, the first occasion on which such powers were granted in the area of land purchase.

  estop, estoppel. In a legal suit, to bar or preclude an allegation or denial of a fact because of one’s own previous actions or words to the contrary.

  estovers. (L., estoverium) Necessities permitted by law, whether they be an allowance, maintenance or nourishment. Alimony for a separated wife or maintenance for an imprisoned cr
iminal are two examples. Houboote – the right of a tenant to take wood from the manorial woods for the repair of his house – was known as the common of estover.

  estreat rolls. 1: Manorial rolls which contained a record of amercements (fines) together with details of heriots and entry fines to be paid on the death of a tenant. The fines themselves were known as estreats 2: Exchequer estreat rolls were compiled from the exchequer estreats (sums owed to the crown following legal actions) returned by the royal courts each term. The estreats were used to prepare and issue summonses to sheriffs instructing them to collect the money due. Only one Irish exchequer estreat roll has survived, that for Co. Meath for the years 1463–7. See exchequer, court of. (National Archives, NAI EX 1/3).

  et seq. (L., et sequens, and following) A footnote convention citing a particular page and the following pages.

  evangelical revival. A lay Protestant religious revival of uncertain origin which affected Britain and Ireland in 1859. Its greatest successes were achieved among Protestants (especially Presbyterians) in the north of Ireland probably because a strong revivalist tradition existed in that region. Catholics remained largely unaffected. Some commentators regard the revival as a reaction to increasing industrialisation; others claim it to be a copycat response to reports of revivalism in the United States. At its most extreme the revival of 1859 was characterised by fits, swoons, visions, hysteria and prophecies but its normal manifestation was an intensified religious practice. The Established church welcomed an increase in devotion but remained wary of the attendant excesses. (Emerson, The Church of Ireland.)

  exchequer, court of. The office of government, first noted in Ireland in 1200, which dealt with the receipt and payment of money and the auditing of accounts and whose records were enrolled on the pipe and memoranda rolls. The senior official in the exchequer was the treasurer. Other important officials included the under-treasurer, the chancellor (who kept the exchequer seal) and the barons. Over time two distinct departments emerged within the exchequer. On the receipt and payment side (the lower or inferior exchequer), moneys were received or disbursed on behalf of the crown by two chamberlains and a clerk. On the account side (the upper or superior exchequer), the barons of the exchequer audited the accounts of sheriffs and other officials. The barons also exercised an important judicial function in hearing pleas concerning the financial affairs of the crown or exchequer. In time this jurisdiction was enlarged at the expense of the court of common pleas by the use of a legal fiction known as quo minus. Commoners could seek to recover debts in exchequer by claiming that they were less able (quo minus) to discharge their debts to the crown by the default of the defendant. Serious financial irregularities in the Irish exchequer led to the practice of the Irish treasurer presenting his accounts at Westminster for auditing purposes. Hence, although the original records of the court perished in 1922, records of the Westminster audits survive among the English exchequer records. By the eighteenth century the two most important officials in the exchequer were the deputy vice-treasurer (who performed the functions of the vice-treasurer, receiver-general and paymaster-general) and the teller of the exchequer (who received the revenue, issued receipts and made payments from the treasury). Both wielded considerable influence through the private use of state funds in their keeping. James Ferguson’s extensive transcripts from the records of the exchequer court are held by the National Archives. (Connolly, Medieval record sources, pp. 18–23; Lydon, ‘A survey’, pp. 49–134; Phair, ‘Sir William Betham’, pp. 1–99; NLI, MSS 760–1.)

  exigent, writ of. A writ issued out of the court of common pleas to the sheriff commanding him to summons a defendant to appear in court on pain of outlawry.

  exigentor. The official in the court of common pleas who wrote out the writs of exigent.

  Explanation, Act of (1665). The act (17 & 18 Chas. II, c. 2) which attempted to remedy the muddle that was the earlier Act of Settlement (1662). The principal deficiency in the Act of Settlement was that there was not enough land available to satisfy the claims of Cromwellian settlers, royal grantees, former royalist soldiers and those Catholics who were to be restored as innocents. The new act proposed to create a compensatory land bank by reducing the holdings of Cromwellian grantees by one-third. A court of claims, procedurally similar to that established under the Act of Settlement, opened in 1666. Since the estate being conveyed was a re-grant, claimants who succeeded in recovering forfeited land were required to pay an annual quit-rent to the crown

  Expugnatio Hibernica (The Conquest of Ireland). A treatise on the Norman invasion of Ireland by Giraldus Cambrensis (Gerald Barry). Giraldus was born in Pembroke and was educated to the church at St Peter’s Abbey, Gloucester, and at Paris University. His knowledge of Ireland derives from two lengthy journeys through the east and south of the country c. 1183 and again in 1185–6 when he accompanied Prince John. In Expugnatio Hibernica (1189) Giraldus attempts to justify the invasion of Ireland, criticises the barbarity, idleness and treachery of the natives and extols the discipline and civility of the newcomers, elevating for bravery beyond all others his kin, the FitzGeralds. Criticising the failure to press home the initial military advantage gained over the Irish, he outlines the means by which the conquest might be completed. Biased towards his race and family, the work is lacking in balance and needs to be read alongside other sources such as The song of Dermot and the Earl, contemporary annals and the Book of Howth. See Topographia Hiberniae. (Martin, ‘Gerald of Wales’, pp. 279–292; Giraldus Cambrensis, Expugnatio.)

  extent. A manorial survey which outlined and valued the composition of the manor including rents and services due. The aggregated valuation was equivalent to the sum of money that would be received for the manor were it to be let for a year. (Mills, ‘Notices’, pp. 37–4; White, Extents.)

  extent land. Land newly brought into cultivation. See assart.

  eyre, justices in. In Ireland in the thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries, the circuit of justices of the Dublin Bench itinerating throughout the country to hear all pleas and to inquire into matters of concern to the crown. Justices of the eyre were therefore also inspectors of local administration. The eyre helped unify the administration of law in Ireland for the justices heard pleas before the fixed courts as well as in the localities. It was an omnicompetent court unlike the commissions of oyer et terminer which were issued to deal with specific individual crimes or an epidemic of a similar type of crime. Although in England there were a number of eyres, there was but one in Ireland – the General Eyre. The eyre fell into disuse because of the irregularity and slowness of the circuit. The speed and efficiency of the regular fixed courts in Dublin proved more attractive to litigants seeking redress. Its duties were also eroded by the emerging justices of gaol delivery and justices of assizes. The last eyre was held in 1322 in Co. Meath.

  F

  face. The front of a parchment roll as opposed to the dorse (the back).

  faculty. In church usage, the power to perform priestly duties or occupy some clerical position, both of which are licensed by a superior ecclesiastic. In the Anglican church the granting and deprivation of faculties was a function of the post-Reformation court of faculties. See prerogative and faculties, court of the.

  falcon, falconet. Sixteenth-century light ordnance which fired shot weighing about one pound.

  falding. A coarse woollen or linen cloth.

  falling. (Ir., fallaing) A mantle or cloak.

  fardel. 1: A bundle or pack 2: A fourth part, as in a bread farl.

  farl. A quarter-circle cut from a circular cake of thin bread.

  farm. 1: Originally farm meant food but from the fifteenth century meant rent in cash or kind. The modern use of the word as a tract of land devoted to pasture or cultivation probably derives from leasehold tenure which required the payment of a fixed yearly amount or farm. Thus the condition of tenure (a payment) became applied to its subject (a piece of land) 2: The privatisation of tax collection. Before the emergence of the moder
n bureaucratic state, taxes, dues and fees owing to the state or church were farmed or let to authorised persons who collected and retained them in return for the payment of a fixed sum. This was largely a matter of convenience. The state did not have the machinery to collect revenues such as taxes or customs duties and the clergy wished to be spared the burden and agitation of collecting tithe.