by Joseph Byrne
vicar. Whether the senior Anglican clergyman in a parish was a rector or a vicar depended on the disposition of the tithe. Where the great tithe was appropriated to a cathedral chapter or dignity or impropriated to a layman the incumbent was a vicar and he was entitled to the small tithe only. He was a vicar because he performed the ecclesiastic duties vicariously for the cathedral chapter, monastic institution or lay impropriator. An incumbent in full possession of the parish tithe was a rector. See appropriate, impropriate.
vicars choral. Minor canons, skilled in singing, who deputised for the prebendaries (canons) for choral purposes in the cathedral and kept records of choir attendance. Not all vicars choral performed such duties. Often they simply collected the money associated with the post. In many cathedrals the vicars choral were endowed separately from the dean and chapter and they usually held a parish as well.
viceroy. The lord lieutenant.
Victorine Canons. An order of canons devoted to mystical theology which was founded by Richard of Saint-Victor, Paris. The Rule of St-Victor, a strict Augustinian rule, was introduced to the canons of the priory of St Thomas the Martyr in Thomascourt, Dublin, sometime after 1192 by John Comyn, archbishop of Dublin. Since it was customary for Victorine houses to enjoy abbatial dignity, the priory was thereafter referred to as Thomas’ Abbey and the prior was elevated to the status of an abbot. Comyn’s desire to introduce the Victorine rule appears to have derived from his earlier association with the English Victorine houses at Bristol and Keynsham in Somerset, formed when he served as archdeacon of Bath. (Gilbert, Register of the abbey; Gwynn, ‘The early history’, pp. 1–35.)
villate. A land measure equivalent to 100–120 acres, also known as a carucate or ploughland.
villein. A serf or unfree peasant bound to a lord or estate. The Gaelic equivalent was known as a betagh, or in Latin as hibernicus, nativius or betagius.
Vincent de Paul, Society of St. A voluntary, charitable society founded in Paris in 1833 by Antoine-Frederic Ozanam to provide short-term relief to the poor in times of distress. The provision of financial and other assistance through a system of home and institutional visitation has been a consistent feature of the society’s work since its establishment in Ireland in 1844. Latterly, the SVP has adopted a more proactive approach to the issue of poverty. Counselling and budgeting services, resource centres, hostels for the homeless and drugs projects are the visible evidence of a policy which aims to promote self-sufficiency and personal initiative.
virgate. An early English land measure, usually equivalent to about 30 acres but which varied regionally between 20 and 40 acres.
visitation, episcopal. It was the duty of every Church of Ireland bishop to visit the parishes in his diocese yearly to oversee the activities of his ministers, examine the condition of church buildings and receive a briefing on lay adherence and devotion. The records of these visitations, which were performed more frequently and more conscientiously in some dioceses than others, are contained in visitation books which list the benefices, the clergy, the patron and parish officials, outline the physical condition of the church and church buildings and note the extent of the glebe. The vicar-general sometimes deputised for the bishop at visitations and in the nineteenth century visitations were replaced in some areas by annual convocations or synods of the diocesan clergy. The records of Anglican visitations are held in the Representative Church Body Library. Throughout the eighteenth century and long after the penal religious laws had fallen into disuse, Catholic bishops remained cautious about keeping records. Nevertheless, the evidence contained in Archbishop Butler’s visitation book suggests that by the middle of the century they were conducting parochial visitations to inquire into the state of church buildings and furnishings, clerical discipline, education and religious life in the localities. Where visitation records survive they should be found in the relevant diocesan archives. See visitation return. (Ronan, ‘Archbishop Bulkeley’, pp. 56–98; Dwyer, ‘Archbishop Butler’.)
visitation, heraldic. See herald.
visitation, metropolitan. The triennial supervisory visitation of the metropolitan or archbishop of all the suffragan sees in his province. Until the visitation was completed to the satisfaction of the archbishop all the ecclesiastical powers of the suffragan (excepting ordinations and confirmations) were suspended.
visitation, regal. Regal or royal visitations were conducted by commissioners appointed to investigate the state of the Anglican church in the dioceses. Under Elizabeth I they were used to inquire into the property of the various episcopal sees. Commissions were also issued in 1607, 1615, 1622 and 1633–4 and the reports of the commissioners provide valuable information on Church of Ireland clergy and help to explain why the task of enforcing religious uniformity proved unattainable. Four volumes of manuscript transcripts of regal visitations (1615–1634) are preserved in the National Archives and some printed versions can be found in the journal Archivium Hibernicum. (Phair, ‘Seventeenth-century regal visitations’, pp. 79–102.)
visitation return. A report made by parish clergy prior to a visitation by the local Catholic bishop. It was a formal account of the state of the church and religious practice in the parish with additional information on social and economic conditions. From the middle of the nineteenth century the return was made on printed forms. Where they have survived visitation returns should be found in diocesan archives.
Volunteers. Founded in Ulster in the late 1770s to oppose a French invasion, the Volunteer organisation was a largely Protestant body of gentry, farmers and businessmen. Against a background of war with the American colonies, France, Spain and Holland, the government acquiesced in its formation and supplied it with arms. The movement grew rapidly, principally because it enabled its members to parade in public in colourful uniforms and perform useful policing duties. Later it became a vehicle for articulating concerns about the national interest and its strength ensured that its views could not be ignored. The combination of foreign wars and the parading of the Dublin corps of the Volunteers outside parliament in 1779 enabled Grattan to extract legislation for free trade from the government. The Volunteers continued to hold reviews but largely avoided political intervention during the next few years, a moderation which provoked a radical minority to secede to form an independent corps under Napper Tandy. In February 1782 a Volunteer convention at Dungannon denounced the British claim to legislate for Ireland. This demonstration of popular opinion, coupled with the shock defeat at Yorktown some months previously, contributed towards the successful parliamentary agitation for the repeal of the Declaratory Act and the amendment of Poynings’ Law. See Yelverton’s Act. After 1782, as Volunteer demands became more radical, the aristocrats were frightened away and its influence declined. The movement enjoyed a resurgence following the French Revolution but government action to suppress the Ulster Volunteers together with the Gunpowder and Convention acts of 1793 and the raising of the militia led to its virtual disappearance. See Convention Act. (Smyth, ‘The Volunteers’, pp. 113–36; Ó Snódaigh, The Irish Volunteers.)
voyder. An early rubbish bin.
W
waif. 1: Something loose and straying 2: The right of the manorial lord to any items of property (including animals, stolen goods and jetsam) which were found apparently ownerless and which remained unclaimed after due notice was given. See stray.
waiter, tide waiter. A customs official who met and examined ships arriving on the tide.
wake. The practice of laying a corpse out at home whereupon friends and neighbours spend the night mourning and consoling relatives.
ward. See watch and ward.
wardship. A feudal incident. The sovereign was entitled to the guardianship and custody of chief tenants who succeeded to their inheritance in minority. This involved the administration of the estate and the right to arrange marriage. Usually the crown sold the wardship to the highest bidder and the purchaser was entitled to receive the profits from the estate and a marriage fee. After t
he Reformation guardians were also required to raise wards in English habit and religion and have them educated in Trinity College, Dublin. Chief tenants could avoid this eventuality by vesting their estates in family intimates using a conveyance known as a trust or feoffment to use. The Tenures Abolition Act (1662) extinguished the feudal incidents and the necessity for such conveyances. See livery, to sue out and ousterlemain.
Wards and Liveries, Court of. A financial court which derived from Henry VIII’s desire to increase crown revenue from the feudal incidents of wardship, marriage and relief. Established statutorily in 1540–2 (32 Henry VIII, c. 46 and 33 Henry VIII, c. 22), the court of wards emerged because of the growing practice among chief tenants of making feoffments to use to avoid the incidents. The granting of monastic lands to laymen following the dissolution increased the number of chief tenants and therefore the possibility of increasing crown revenue. On reaching full age a ward was not to pass livery without reference to the court of wards. As a result, liveries were united with wardships in the court and the office of master of liveries merged with it. In Ireland a regular court of wards and liveries was formalised in 1622. It was concerned with revenue arising out of wardship and livery, matters touching the levy or discharge of debts due to the crown, concealments of tenure, refusal of marriage and the levy of consequential fines, inquisitions post-mortem, interpretation of uses and wills and problems of land law whether in the interests of the crown, wards or tenants. Writs of inquisition post-mortem were issued to determine whether the incoming heir to a tenancy-in-chief was a minor. The court was abolished by the Tenures Abolition Act of 1662. (Treadmill, ‘The Irish court’, pp. 1–27; Kearney, ‘The court of wards’, pp. 29–63.)
warden. See church-warden.
warren, connywarren. A rabbit colony. Rabbits were introduced into Ireland by the Anglo-Normans who constructed warrens and farmed the rabbits as a source of food and clothing.
wash mill. 1: A mill race where sheep are washed 2: A mill where lime was applied to leather after it was shorn of hair and washed 3: A machine where limestone and clay were mixed in the process of brick-making.
waste. See year day and waste
watch and ward. The system of night and day security which operated from medieval times. Statute required every collection of three or more English houses to appoint a constable to keep watch during the winter nights. The watch operated during night-time and the ward was responsible for daytime security. Originally all adult males between the ages of 15 and 60 were expected to serve in rotation without payment but from 1750 some watchmen demanded and received recompense for their services. From 1719 grand juries and justices of the peace were required to erect watch houses and equip watchmen with watch-bills, halberts or staves. An annual levy of 3d. on all householders was exacted to pay for the equipment (6d. from 1723). At sunset watchmen were stationed at town gates and at key locations in the town where they observed the streets and called the time on the hour. They were empowered to stop and examine suspects, detain any who failed to give a good account of themselves and present them before a magistrate the next day. Catholics were not excluded from the watch although there was provision to mount a purely Protestant watch during periods of unrest. Each of Dublin’s 21 civil parishes had its own poorly-funded and notoriously inefficient watch. Unchecked public disorder led to the creation of a centralised permanent police force in 1786 which, after several attempts at reformation, metamorphosed into the Dublin Metropolitan Police in 1838. (Herlihy, The Royal Irish Constabulary, pp. 21–23.)
wattle. A frame of upright stakes intertwined with twigs used to make fences, walls or roofs.
way, waia, wey, weigh. A measure of dry goods that varied regionally and according to the type and quality of the goods being weighed. In England a sack of wool weighed 364 pounds and two ways of wool were equal to a sack, making a way of wool equal to 182 pounds. A way of cheese, however, weighed anything from 224 to 330 pounds. A way of salt was equivalent to 25 quarters.
wedge tomb. Dating from the Bronze Age, the east-west aligned wedge tomb comprises a long, main burial chamber, higher and wider at one end and covered by a sloping, flat-slab roof. Wedge tombs often contain an ante-chamber or portico which is separated from the main chamber by a large slab. Although usually single-chambered, some wedge tombs have a second, smaller chamber at the eastern end. (Ó Ríordáin, Antiquities, pp. 62–66.)
weights and measures, keeper of. A government official whose duty it was to enforce weights and measures regulations.
Westminster, Confession of. The Presbyterian confession of faith. Modelled on the Irish Articles of Religion, it was drawn up by the Westminster Assembly which met in Westminster Abbey between 1643 and 1649. The confession declared scripture the sole doctrinal authority and affirmed predestination (the belief that ‘some men and angels are predestinated unto everlasting life, and others foredained to everlasting death’). It contains reformed views of the sacraments and the ministry. The issue of subscription to the Westminster confession divided Presbyterians over the next two centuries. A requirement that ministers and ordinands to the ministry subscribe to the confession created dissension within the Synod of Ulster for some Presbyterians disapproved of its theology and others rejected human formularies as a test of faith. A minority who favoured compulsory subscription seceded from the synod in the eighteenth century. In the nineteenth century, however, the position was reversed. Subscription was made compulsory and the liberal New Light group which opposed subscription withdrew to form the Remonstrant Synod.
wether. A castrated ram.
Whately Commission. See Poor inquiry.
wherry. A fishing vessel, a yawl.
Whig. A term derived from the Scots Gaelic for a horse thief and applied disparagingly to those in the seventeenth century who opposed royal absolutism. Whigs favoured a more limited constitutional monarchy, upheld the principles of the ‘glorious revolution’ and, in Ireland, pressed for stiff measures against Catholics and Jacobites. Comprised largely of aristocrats and wealthy middle-class individuals, Whiggism began to crystallise into a political party from about 1784 under Charles James Fox because of the American War of Independence and the emergence of William Pitt the Younger’s Tory party. By this time the Whigs had begun to develop reforming social and political policies and had come to articulate the views of religious dissenters and industrialists. In the nineteenth century the term ‘Whig’ began to fall into disuse and was replaced by ‘Liberal’. See regency crisis, whig club.
whig club. Following the regency crisis, whig clubs were formed in Ireland to press for the continued independence of the Irish parliament, the eradication of corruption in the administration and modest parliamentary reforms. The involvement of ‘patriots’ such as Henry Grattan and Lord Charlemont together with up to 90 Irish MPs gave the movement considerable weight but by contemporary European standards theirs was a conservative liberalism.
Whiteboys (1761–5). An eighteenth-century secret agrarian society, so called because they wore white shirts over their clothes and white cockades. Whiteboys agitated against the spread of pasture, tithe and the price of conacre land. The movement first emerged in the early years of George III’s reign with the spread of pasturage. A hike in cattle prices following an extended outbreak of cattle murrain in Europe accelerated the process. From 1758 – when free importation of cattle into Britain was granted for five years – huge areas of land were turned over to pasture, commons were enclosed and peasants evicted. Whiteboys reacted forcefully to the enclosure of commons. They destroyed fences, dug up ground, houghed (hamstrung) cattle and sent threatening letters. Whiteboys also opposed the rate at which tithe was exacted. The iniquity of the tithe system under which Catholic peasants were compelled to support a body of (frequently non-resident and hostile) Anglican clergymen was compounded in 1736 when the Irish house of commons condemned tithe agistment on pasturage for dry and barren cattle and effectively exempted rich graziers from tithe, thereby throwing an in
creased burden on the poor. Whiteboys waged war against the tithe-farmer, struck their own tithe rates and warned tithe-payers against exceeding those rates. They also seized arms to furnish their escapades. As a result tithe was not paid over large areas and landlords feared to distrainfor unpaid rent and avoided impounding trespassing cattle. In 1765 parliament declared all Whiteboy activities to be capital offences and grand juries were empowered to levy compensation on disturbed baronies. Magistrates were empowered to search for arms and compel witnesses and suspects to answer on oath on pain of imprisonment but many cases collapsed in court through intimidation or bribery. Whiteboyism, which was strongest among the Catholic peasantry, the landless and the poor of Munster and parts of Leinster, declined for a number of reasons. Repression and the enrolment of large numbers of volunteers under the direction of magistrates checked the movement and the struggle for survival after the drought and harvest failure of 1765 together with a smallpox epidemic in 1766 sapped its energy. (Donnelly, ‘The Whiteboy movement’, pp. 20–54.)
Wide Streets Commission. Founded in 1758 (31 Geo. III, c. 3), the Wide Street Commission was a statutory planning body which radically altered the streetscape in several parts of the city of Dublin. It began in 1758 by clearing away a confused streetline and warren of houses between the Royal Exchange (now City Hall) and the furthest downstream bridge, Essex Bridge, to create Parliament Street. Later came the planning of the Sackville Street – Carlisle Bridge – Westmoreland Street line which, by way of a reconstructed Dame Street, connected with the first project in Parliament Street. The commission laid out a pattern of broad straight thoroughfares and transformed the Tudor and Stuart city into Georgian Dublin. It was abolished in 1849 (12 & 13 Vict., c. 97) and its powers were vested in Dublin Corporation which retains the commission’s records in its archives. (McCullough, A vision.)
