Byrne's Dictionary of Irish Local History

by Joseph Byrne

  grand sergeanty. One of two chivalric tenures (the other was knight-service), grand sergeanty bound the tenant to perform some service for the king such as bearing his banner or performing some deed at the coronation. Only a chief tenant could hold land in grand sergeanty.

  grange. The outlying farm of a monastic institution that was worked by lay brothers. Granges were extra-parochial and therefore not subject to tithe. At the time of the dissolution it had become practice to lease granges to laymen.

  great acre. A Gaelic spatial measure which in Tipperary was equivalent to twenty English acres.

  great council. A late medieval assembly of the privy council, temporal and spiritual peers and Pale magnates, often indistinguishable from (and sometimes functioning as) parliament. After the passage of Poynings’ Law in 1494 the great council ceased to exercise legislative functions although it retained a consultative role with regard to proposed legislation before it was sent to London for approval. During the Tudor period great councils were summoned to declare a general hosting.

  greave. Shin armour.

  Gregory Clause. See ‘quarter acre clause’.

  grenadier. Originally a grenade-bearing soldier, grenadiers were elite troops usually selected for their height and excellent physical condition.

  griddle. A circular metal plate on which bread and cakes were baked.

  Griffith’s Valuation. Griffith’s Valuation is the term commonly used to describe the manuscript and printed documentation produced between 1848 and 1865 in the course of a nation-wide valuation of land and houses. It was undertaken to establish a uniform and equitable basis for the levying of county cess and the poor law rate. Local taxation was a contentious issue in the early decades of the nineteenth century. Tithe levied for the benefit of the minority Established church was overwhelmingly and unwillingly borne by the Catholic majority. County cess, levied by the county grand jury on land occupiers for the purpose of road construction, bridge-building and for the construction and upkeep of public buildings such as courthouses, was prone to manipulation and assessed disproportionately because of inefficient and partisan valuations. From 1838 a third tax, the poor law rate, was introduced to provide relief for the destitute under the Poor Law Act of that year. Completed in 1842, the poor law valuation was criticised because it was conducted by persons unskilled in valuation and it was claimed that the holdings of large landlords had been undervalued.

  The first step towards the establishmment of a uniform national system of land measurement and valuation was the creation in 1825 of the Boundary Department of Ireland under the supervision of Richard Griffith (1784–1878). This body was tasked with identifying and sketching the boundaries of every townland, parish and barony in the country. The registers and sketches produced by the survey, known as ‘boundary sketches’ or ‘boundary records’ are retained in the National Archives and the Public Record Office of Northern Ireland. Within a year legislation (7 Geo. IV, c. 2) was passed to make provision for a uniform and equitable system of land and tenement valuation for the purpose of grand jury (county) cess charges. Griffith was appointed commissioner of valuation and work commenced in 1830. As it was the smallest land division, the townland was selected as the basic unit for valuation purposes and hence this valuation became known as the Townland Valuation. It was largely concerned with the taxable fertility value of land and the taxable value of buildings. Towns were not included. The value of land was assessed at the rent that one could reasonably and fairly expect to receive for it in a year based upon its fertility. Each townland was examined independently in lots by three valuators who surveyed the soil and determined an agreed valuation through consensus. This valuation was then entered in a ‘land field book’, was numbered and then plotted on the six-inch ordnance survey map. Houses to a value in excess of three pounds were valued at the rent they might reasonably be let for in a year with one-third of the valuation deducted. Details were entered in a ‘house field book’, again after an agreed valuation was established. The townland valuation was completed and printed for 25 counties by 1848. The manuscript books can be found in the National Archives and the Public Record Office of Northern Ireland. Printed versions are available in the National Library, the Valuation Office and the Public Record Office of Northern Ireland.

  The introduction of the poor rate tax in 1838 and the criticism which accompanied it prompted parliament to re-consider the Townland Valuation. A parliamentary select-committee felt that the tenement (land, house, mill, bog, fishery) was a more appropriate unit for valuation purposes than the lot system employed in the Townland Valuation and recommended that both cess and poor law rate be separately assessed on a tenement basis. Thus, even before the Townland Valuation for county cess had been completed, further legislation (9 & 10 Vict., c. 110, 1846) required Griffith to undertake separate valuations of the entire country on a tenement basis for both cess and poor law purposes. The Tenement Valuation, also known as the Primary Valuation of Tenements, commenced in 1846 moving from south to north and lasted until 1852. For the local historian, three of the manuscript books prepared by the valuators are particularly useful. The ‘field’ or ‘perambulation books’ name and number every occupier so that his holding can be located on the valuation map, name the immediate lessor and provide a description and valuation of the holding. The ‘house books’ name the occupier and describe the function, quality, dimensions and valuation of buildings. The ‘tenure books’ indicate the mode of tenure, the annual rent and the commencement date and term of leases. The tenement valuation for each union was published and subsequently reprinted to take account of adjudications by a board of appeals on the claims of some occupiers that the valuation was incorrect. The records produced by the Tenement Valuation are in the National Archives and the Public Record Office of Northern Ireland while the Valuation Office retains the numbered ordnance survey maps. The final act in the saga of land and tenement valuation occurred as a consequence of the Tenement Valuation Act of 1852 (15 & 16 Vict., c. 63) which legislated for the creation of a single valuation of lands and tenements for the purpose of all tax assessments. This final valuation, conducted between 1853 and 1865, remained in effect in the Republic of Ireland until 1982.

  The loss of the individual census returns for the early decades of the nineteenth century in the Four Courts fire in 1922 together with the official destruction of censuses in the latter half of the century have given Griffith’s Valuation a status among genealogists that it might not otherwise have attained. For the local historian, the enormous detail it provides in terms of the extent, quality, valuation and tenure of holdings together with details regarding building use makes it an invaluable resource for re-constructing nineteenth-century communities. Of particular importance is the series known as the ‘cancelled books’ which are retained in the Valuation Office and regularly updated to document changes of ownership, improvements, alterations to boundaries or the construction of new buildings, all of which affected the accuracy of the valuation. The ‘cancelled books’ provide a continuous profile of alterations to the fabric of the local environment down almost to the present day.

  Completion Dates of the Tenement Valuation (15 & 16 Vict., c. 63, 1852) (O’Brien, The Irish land question, pp. 85–119; Reilly, ‘Richard Griffith’, pp. 106–113; Vaughan, ‘Richard Griffith’, pp. 103–22.)

  grist mill. A corn mill.

  groat. A coin worth four pence.

  grogram. A coarse silk fabric.

  groined roof. A roof whose edge is made by the intersection of two vaults.

  Gross Survey. Little is known about the Gross Survey (1653–54), an unmapped, civil inquisition into landownership conducted as a preliminary to the sequestration of land forfeited as a result of the 1641 rebellion. Completed by December 1653, the first phase of the survey embraced the ten counties (Antrim, Armagh, Down, Meath, Westmeath, Laois, Offaly, Limerick, Tipperary and Waterford) that were to be allocated to soldiers and adventurers. Thereafter the remaining counties we
re surveyed with the exception of those counties in Connacht for which the Strafford Inquisition was available. The records of the Gross Survey were destroyed by fire in the Four Courts, Dublin in 1922. (Lyne, ‘Three certified Gross Survey extracts’, pp. 157–186.)

  guardians, board of. The administrative body of a poor law union comprising elected guardians and ex-officio guardians such as local magistrates. The boards were usually dominated by middle-class Catholics as opposed to the magistracy and grand juries which were bastions of Protestantism. The electoral process associated with membership of the boards is credited with acculturating Catholics to the mechanics of electioneering. The administrative experience acquired in running the poor law unions from 1840 – when all new local government functions (including public health, sanitation, vagrancy, veterinarian and responsibility for workhouses and orphans) were mandated to the union boards – prepared them for the task of administering the county councils when they emerged in 1898. See Poor Law Commission. (Crossman, Local government, pp. 43–63.)

  guilds, trade and craft. Mutual aid and regulatory associations of merchants or craftsmen in towns and cities. Guilds monopolised trade and industry in their areas, controlled entry into the trades and crafts through apprenticeships and insisted on common standards of workmanship. Each guild had a patron saint and its own chapel with a chantry (endowment) for masses to be said for deceased members. Before the Reformation the Dublin guilds played an important role in the Corpus Christi pageant, each portraying a trade or craft-related biblical scene. Their greatest impact, however, was at the level of municipal politics, their significant presence on urban corporations enabling them to exercise control over many aspects of city life. The 25 trade guilds of Dublin, for example, dominated the municipal government of that city from the fourteenth until the nineteenth centuries, returning 96 members (the Commons) to the council, all of whom became eligible for election as sheriff, alderman and lord mayor. Guild membership, the key to a successful career in city politics, was originally obtained through completion of an apprenticeship or by birth (sons of guild members). Non-tradesmen, however, were admitted in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries for political reasons. The exclusiveness of the guilds extended beyond control of the trades and crafts. Catholics and Quakers were denied membership except as ‘quarter brothers’. See quarterage. The Catholic Relief Acts of 1792 and 1793 cleared the way for Catholics to obtain full membership but, with the exception of the tailors, the guilds refused to yield. The weavers, in fact, set a prohibitive membership fee and other guilds claimed that Catholic membership contravened their charters. In the eighteenth century the restrictive practices of the trade and craft guilds clashed with a growing demand for deregulation. Guilds were ideal for small scale undertakings but better communication, expanding markets and large-scale production rendered them superfluous. Combinations of journeymen (the precursors of trade unions) began to challenge the guilds and urban corporations and exclusion from full membership appears to have impacted minimally on a growing and thriving Catholic middle-class. Political power was wrested from the guilds in the nineteenth century. After the passage of the Catholic Emancipation act in 1829 the guild monopoly of civic power was no longer sustainable. The Municipal Corporations Reform Act (1840) stripped them of their civic role and all but one, the guild of goldsmiths, were rapidly disbanded. (Clark and Refaussé, Directory; Clune, The medieval gild system; Webb, The guilds.)

  guilds, religious. Organisations of lay men and women established by royal charter in the middle ages to promote the spiritual welfare of their members. Also known as sodalities or confraternities, the guilds were governed by a master and two wardens and structured like trade guilds. The chief function of a religious guild was to maintain a chantry (or endowment) for the celebration of mass for deceased members. The chantry was supported by bequests, endowments and the income accruing from land investments. Unlike their English counterparts which were abolished in 1547, Irish religious guilds survived the Reformation, remained almost completely within the Catholic fold and continued to support their chantry chapels in Anglican parish churches into the eighteenth century. Catholic confraternities or sodalities began to appear again from the middle of the nineteenth century following the establishment of the Archconfraternity of the Holy Family in Limerick in 1844 by the Dutchman Henry Belletable and the preaching Redemptorists. Within decades there were confraternities throughout the island. Individual confraternities or ‘divisions’ were divided into sections of up to 20 men. They were led by a secretary and advised by a chaplain. On the feast of Corpus Christi they paraded through towns behind banners dedicated to their patron saint. (Buckley and Anderson, Brotherhoods; Clark and Refaussé, Directory; Ronan, ‘Religious customs’, pp. 225–247, 364–385.)

  gules. In heraldry, denotes the colour red.

  gunmoney. Money coined from melted-down cannon, ordnance, bells and copper and brass objects by order of James II to ameliorate the desperate scarcity of specie during the Williamite War.

  H

  habeas corpus, writ of. Originally a writ by which a court summoned before it a person or persons whose presence was essential for the conduct of its affairs. Later it was used to secure the release of a person improperly incarcerated or the production in court of a detained person. Essentially it acted as a constraint upon the exercise of a capricious arbitrary power. Although habeas corpus was legislated for in England no such legislation was enacted for Ireland and this was an issue on which the eighteenth-century ‘patriot’ party campaigned. In 1782 they achieved their goal with the passing of Sir Samuel Bradstreet’s Liberty of the Subject Act (22 Geo. III, c. 11). However, the chief governor and privy council retained the power to suspend the act by proclamation during an invasion or rebellion and in times of crisis the right of habeas corpus was regularly suspended and detention without trial or internment permitted.

  hagbush. An arquebus or a portable firearm that rested on a support or tripod when in use.

  ha-ha. An eighteenth-century landscape feature, a ha-ha was a sunken ditch which kept livestock from the environs of the big house and, unlike a wall, fence or hedge, ensured an uninterrupted view of the demesne.

  halfendale. A half part.

  halbert. A weapon that is both a spear and an axe. A pike.

  Hanmer, Meredith (1543–1604). An English clergyman, historian and author who came to Ireland in 1591 and served successively as archdeacon of Ross, treasurer of Waterford cathedral, vicar choral at Christ Church and chancellor of St Canice’s, Kilkenny. During his twelve-year stint in Ireland Hanmer researched Irish history and consulted contemporary and earlier writers and chronicles, the fruit of which was his Chronicle of Ireland. This annalistic compilation commences with the arrival of the Partholonians and includes an Irish-English vocabulary. It was published by Sir James Ware in 1633. (Ancient Irish histories, i, pp. 1–410.)

  hanaper, clerk of the. In full, the clerk of the crown and the hanaper, he was an official in chancery who received the payments for sealing writs and issued patents and commissions. The hanaper itself was originally a hamper into which writs were thrown by the clerk of the hanaper.