An analysis of the Dublin Guild Merchant Roll c. 1190-1265

Abstract

The international composition of the population of medieval Dublin is very well reflected in its Guild Merchant Roll. While the document itself cannot give more than a glimpse of the town and its trade, it nonetheless provides the historian and the archaeologist with almost 8500 names, the majority of which can be dated by the years they entered into the merchant guild. An attempt has been made in this dissertation to rearrange the data contained in the edited version of the Dublin Guild Merchant Roll to make the information more readily accessible. Using an Excel spreadsheet the bulk of the names has been processed and sorted - yet the reading order of the individual names has virtually remained unchanged. In its revised form, a piece of information likely to be contained in the document can now more easily be tracked down in a previously unmanageable block of data. A computer disk with the entire document in its new form has been appended to facilitate further research. Roughly 50% of the entrants have a toponymic as part of their surname. Most of them have been given a modern place-name so that the printout of the database also serves as an improved index to place-names.