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This copy has been supplied on the understanding that it is copyright material and that no quotation from the thesis may be published without proper acknowledgement. Trinity College Library Dublin University of Dublin THIS THESIS MAY BE READ ONLY IN THE LIBRARY Trinity College Library College Street Dublin 2 Ireland The Ormond lordship in County 1515-1642 Kilkenny, bv David Edwards A dissertation for the degree of Ph.D. at the University of Dublin, Trinity College 1998 Declaration This thesis has not been submitted as an exercise for a degree at this or any other University. It is entirely my o~vn work. .........~~__,3_ __£L_-_-c_L_ David Edwards (Candidate) C.~~ - - . . . ¯ ,.L .~[_, : < ~.~-,. ~,,;~,~ f~;’ ... ~;. ’ -.. .. , ~.~.~0, ~. ’~i’~!~" ..". ~.; "~ . ! . "" ... ¯ .. : ~-~ ~: .... .~,’. ,i .... )...,.. ~.~.~_ ~,.,... Preface and Acknowledgements This thesis has been ill preparation for ten years, nearly a third of my life. When I conlmenced x~ork on it I x~as a scra~vny, long-haired student with barely a penny to my name. And 1 smoked 10 cigarettes a day (xvhich probably accounted for nay pennilessness). A lot has changed since then. Although I still ha\e the long hair. it is turning grey nox~: I am married, I haxe a job, responsibilities, and I haxe just bought a house. I gaxe up smoking long ago. Yet, through all these mutations my thesis has remained with me. A stubborn and increasingly umvelcome companion, it has trudged along behind me, nagging me, making demands, dewing me to finish with it. Since coming to Cork in 1993 1 have repeatedly persuaded myself that 1 would soon be free of it - all it needed x~as just a fe~ more months" ~ork, no more, definitely no more. But still it remained to defx me. this creature of mx oxen creation, "’E&~ards" unfinished thesis". Its refusal to \ield has caused me embarrassment, for time and again I haxe declared confidently its being "almost done" to any x~ho asked (parents. friends, academic colleagues, my wife). Nox~ that it is finished 1 cannot quite believe it. I suppose I should be relieved. Wasn’t Frankenstein destroyed by his monster? I could not have overcome this obstinate little beast without the support of friends and academic colleagues. My thanks, then, to nay oldest friend, Dr Patrick Rovcrofl. a geologist whose oxvn research project proved equally ambitious, though not quite as stubborn, as mine. For many years we have sx~apped progress reports, talking long into the night x~ith the music on. If I talked too much it is because Paddy is a great listener: our conversations allowed me to "tell the story" of the Butlers, and to explain their world, to a non-specialist not afraid to ask awkx~ard questions. Likewise another great friend, my former History teacher at school, Ronnie Wallace, who kindly brought me to Kilkennv to viex~ the topography and some of the castles of the Ormond country. Dr James Murray, Dr Adrian Empey and Dr Jane Fenlon provided useful archival information, and Peter Farrellv kindly volunteered to act as a guide Mien I requested access to the Kilkenn\ Corporation Archives in March 1996. Dr Hiram Morgan spotted a particularly daft error in Chapter Four: my thanks to him for pointing it out. At University College, Cork, I have been privileged to work x~ith Kenneth Nicholls, who not only has enabled me to locate many archival materials that naight otherwise have escaped me, but also offered to read an earlier draft of this work, an offer I eagerly’ accepted. He played no small part in bringing m\ work forxvard. Having reached a inore advanced stage, the text benefited considerably from the critical gaze of nay supervisor, Dr. Ciaran Brady’, whose comments were ad|nirablv constructive. Special mention of m\ fornaer flatmate, Brian Donovan, with whom I have enjoyed a remarkable academic partnership and friendship over the years. Together x~e have hunted evidence in most of the major, and many of the minor, archive centres of Britain and Ireland, s~apping information on our respective topics. In truth, nay thesis is just one panel of a triptych that ~e have painted betxYeen us. The middle piece, our survex of Irish manuscript materials in Britain, British Sources ,]or b’ish History, 1485-1641, has just gone to the publishers. I expect the third and final panel, Brian’s study of early nmdern Count} Wexford, to be finished soon. Let this be a spur to him. For enduring its lurking presence, and putting up with my endless promises of ’It’ll be finished soon’, this thesis is dedicated to Clodagh, nay wife. D. Ed Cork, February 1998 iv Contents Preface and acknowledgements Conventions Abbreviations Map of the Baronies of County Kilkenny iv vi vii ix Introduction Part I The Passage of Power: A Structural Account Chapter 1 County Kilkenny, Ormond Country Chapter 2 The Omlond Inheritance 7 69 Part II Chapter 3 Chapter 4 Chapter 5 Chapter 6 The Rise and Fall of the Ormond Lordship" A Political Narrative Revival and Rupture: The Crisis of Coign and Livery, 1515-69 The Encroachment of Central Government, 1569-1603 The Politics of Religion, 1603-28 The Collapse of Ormond Power, 1619-42 124 186 245 290 Conclusion 339 Appendices Bibliography 345 354 Conventions The following should be noted: Precise dates are given in old style, in accordance with the Julian Calendar that was in use in Ireland throughout the sixteenth and early’ seventeenth century, but the }’ear is taken as beginning on 1 January. . In most places I have endeavoured to give recognisable modern forms of personal names: hence Butler not Butiller, Botyller or Boteler, Comerford not Quemeforde, and Grace not Gras. Likewise with placenames: Burnchurch not Bronchurch or Brantchurch, Derrynahinch not Durrenehenche, Higginstown not Ballyhyggyne, etc.However, I have not always been consistent in this. I have retained some old placenames, such as Cant~,vell’s Court (presently’ Sandford’s Court) and Drt, mroe (nov, Mount Loftus), as their modern names, deriving from post-Cromwellian settlers, seem anachronistic in a x~ork dealing with the pre-1650 period. Elsewhere, in order to avoid confusion I have chosen what are now unusual, even archaic, spellings of certain names. Thus I have followed Edmund Curtis in rendering the Archdeacon family as Archdekin in order to differentiate them from church officials of the same name; this seemed especially advisable given the case of John Archdeacon who was Treasurer of the Archdiocese of Cashel early in the reign of Elizabeth I! And the Fitzgeralds, alias Barons, of Burnchurch and Brownesford, are usually given as Fitzgerald or Barron-Fitzgerald, for they were gentry, not titled peerage. . When giving quotations I have modemised tile spelling and punctuation. , All currency denominations are given in pounds sterling unless otherxvise indicated. vi Abbreviations Anal. Hib. A.O. Bagwel I, Stuarts B.L. Bod. Lib., Oxford Butler Soc. Jnl. Cal. Carew MSS Cal. Fiants Ire. Cal. Patent Rolls h’e. Cal. S.P., Dora. Cal. S.P.. Rome Cal. S.P.. Spanish Carrigan, Ossorv C.O.D. D. G.E.C., Complete Peerage hlq. Lagenia Ir. Econ. Soc. Hist. Ir. Mon. & Epis.Deeds Jnl. J.R.S.A.L Kilkenny & S.E. of Ire.Arch. Soc. Jnl. Lamacraft (ed.), h’. Funeral Entries Analecta Hibernica Archive Office Richard Bagwell, h’eland under the Stuarts (3 vols., London 1909- 16) British Library’, London Bodleian Library’, Oxford Universib Butler SocieO’ Journal Calendar of the Carew Mauscripts preserved in the archiepiscopal libraw at Lambeth, 1515-1624, ed. J.S. Brewer & W. Bullen, 6 vols., London 1867-73. Calendar of the Fiants of h’eland from Henry VIII to Elizabeth L printed in the appendices of 7th to 22nd Reports of the DepuO’ Keeper of the Public Records in h’eland (Dublin 1875-90). Calendar of Patent & Close Rolls of ChanceO’ in Irelandjbr the reigns of Henry VIII to Elizabeth L and Charles L ed. James Morrin (Dublin 1861-3). Calendar of State Papers relating to English affairs. Domestic, ed. R. Lemon & M.A.E. Green, 12 vols., London, 1856-72. Calendar of State Paper, relating to English affifirs, Rome, preserved in the l/2ttican Archives and Library, ed. J.M. Rigg (2 vols. London 1916) Calendar of State Papers relating to English affairs. Spanish, preserved in the Archives of Simancas. ed. Martin Hume William Carrigan, HistoJ3’ & Antiquities of the Diocese of Ossory (4 vols., Dublin 1905). Calemtar of Ormond Deeds’, ed. Edmund Curtis, 6 vols., Irish Manuscripts Commission, Dublin, 1932-43. Chancery Pleadings Calendar of State Papers relating to h’eland, ed. H.C. Hamilton, E.G. Atkinson & R.P Mahaffy, 24 vols., London 1860-1912. Deed George Edward Cockayne, The Complete Peerage of Britain & h’eland, new edition ed. V.H. Gibbs and others (13 vols., London 1910-59). Historical Manuscripts Commission Reports h’ish Historical Studies, the joint journal of the Irish Historical Society’ and the Ulster Society’ for Irish Historical Studies htquisitionum in Officio Rotulorum Cancellarie Hiberniae asservatum, Reportorium. Vol. I (Dublin 1827) h’ish Economic and Social HistolT h’ish Monastic & Episcopal Deeds’, 1200-1600, ed. Newport B. White (Dublin 193 I). Journal Journal of the Royal Society of Antiquaries of Ireland Kilkenny & South-East of Ireland Archaeological Society Journal C.T. Lamacrafl (ed.), hqsh Funeral Entries in the British Museum, special volume of h’ish Memorials of the Dead (Dublin 1907). vii L. & P.. Henr~’ VIII Ms/MSS N.A.I. Neely, "Kilkenny city" N.H.I., N.L.I. Ossory Arch Soc. Jnl. P.R.O. P.R.O.N.I. R.C. R.H.A.A.I R.I.A. Proc. R.O. Soc. S.P. S.P.. Henry VIII T.C.D. Water ford & S.E. of h-e. Arch. Soc. Jill. Letters and Papers, Foreign and Domestic. of the reign of Henr)’ VIII, ed. J.S. Bre~ver and others (21 vols. in 32 parts, London 1862- 1932). Manuscript/Manuscripts National Archives of Ireland (formerly’ the Public Record Office, Dublin). W.G. Neely, "A Social and Economic History of the City’ of Kilkenny during the Ormond period, 1392-1843 (D. Phil. thesis, Queen’s University,, Belfast 1987). New History of h’eland National Library of h-eland Ossorv Archaeological SocieO’ Journal Public Record Office, London Public Record Office of Northern Ireland Record Commissioners (Ireland). Royal Historical & Archaeological Association of Ireland. Royal h’ish AcadenLv Proceedings Record Office Society State Papers State Papers. Henr)’ VIII ( 11 vols., London 1830-52). Trinity College, Dublin Waterford and South-East of Ireland Archaeological Society Journal. viii The Baronies of County Kilkenny Fassadinin & Idough Knocktopher Introduction It is well known that during the late medieval and early modern period most regions of Ireland ~ere closely identified with tile aristocratic lineages that ruled them - for example, much of Wicklow was known to contemporaries as tile Bymes’ country’ (Crioch Branach) in deference to tile O’Bymes, who controlled tile area from Greystones to Glenmalure,t most of Tyrone and part of Derry and Armagh was the O’Neills" country (Duiche Neill/Tir Eogham),’- and late medieval Cork was divided between the countries of the Barretts, the Barrys, the Courcys, the Roches, the Condons and, of increasing influence, the countries of MacCarthy Reagh, MacCarthy Musketry and the Desmond Fitzgeralds.3 In all, according to one source, by the beginning of tile sixteenth century there may’ have been as many as 90 such ’countries" in Ireland existing as autonomous and semi-autonomous territories under the sxvay of native lords and chiefs) In the absence of a strong central government these countries, also known as lordships, were the key components of political life. Po~er was measured by the size and prosperity, and the military capacity, of each aristocratic territory. Great lordships expanded, or at least preserved the integrity of their frontiers, while ~eaker ones contracted, unable to defend their boundaries,s Until the late 1500s Ireland was primarily a land of lordships, a place of constantly shifting frontiers where, above all, politics was usually conducted locally’. Despite ackno~vledging the importance of the native lordships in the framework of everyday life before 1641, Irish historians know relatively little about them. In part this has been due to a shortfall in the availability’ of surviving archival material: the letters and papers of many of the old ruling lineages of Ireland are no longer extant, having been lost through destruction, dispersal and neglect. But it is also true that, until recently, historians have been so preoccupied with the ’grand narrative" of sixteenth- and early’ seventeenth-century Ireland - essentially a story’ of English reconquest and native aristocratic revolt - that, often, it has not been possible to include discussion of the intricate, highly local, worlds of the lordships in the general histories of the period.6 Although there have been fine case studies of individual ruling families, in general such studies have been confined to the great lordships as and when they impacted on the main narrative, i.e. when they engaged in rebellion and were overthrown: hence the grooving body of ~ork dealing with the Kildare rising of 1534, the risings of Shane O’Neill of 1560-1, 1562-3 and 1564-7, the Kavanagh-Butler rising of 1569, the Desmond and Fitzmaurice risings of 1569 and 1579, and, even more so, the Tyrone rising of the 1590s.7 Although not all lords and chiefs rebelled, it could be argued that explaining Liam Price, "The Bvrnes Countrx in the 16th Century and the manor of Arkloxv’. J.R.S.AI.. lxvi (1936). pp 41-66. but for a major revision of Price’s work see Kenneth Nicholls. Crioch Branach: The O’Byrnes and their Cotmtr} . Rathdrum Htstorical Jnl.. i(lbrthcommg) -’ Eamon O Doibhlm. "O’Neills "’o~n countt3"" and its families. Seanchas Ard Mhaca. ~i (19711. pp 3-23. -~ Kenneth Nicholls. "The development of lordship in Countx Cork. 1300-1600". in P. O’Flanagan & C.G. Buttimer (eds). Cork Htstor3" & SocieO’ {Dublin 1993). pp 157-97 aSP. Heno’ I7//. ii. pp 1o31. s Kenneth Nicholls. Gaelic andgaehctsed h’eland m the 3hddle Ages (Dublin 1972). pp 21-5: Katherine Simms. From Kings to II’arlords: The Changing Political structure of Gaelic Ireland m the Later Middle Ages (London 1987). pp 10-20. See also Mary. O’Do~vd. "Gaelic Economy a,ld Society’. in Ciaran Brady& Raymond Gillespie (eds). Natives & Newcomers The Making of Irish Colontal SocieO’. 1534-164l (Dublin 1986) ~’ There are signs that this has started to change. ~ith t~vo of the most important recent general studies of the sixteenth centur}. b> Dr Lennon and Dr Brady. attempting to lbllo~v the trail blazed by Nicholls in 1972 (Nicholls. Gaeltc& gaeltctsed Ire.. pp 126-77) m making the provincial lordships more central to the analysis: Colm Lennon. Stxteenth-Century Ireland The Incomplete Conquest (Dublin 1994}: Cmran Brad’,. The Chief Governors The Rtse and Fall of Reform Government m Tudor h’ehmd. 1536-1588 1Cambridge 19951 As ~et. lto~e~er, general studies of the seventeenth centur~ ha~e failed to pa.~ more than passing attennon to Itl’e m the lordships 7 E g. for the Kildare rising see Brendan Bradsha~. "Crom~elhan retbrm and the origins of the Kildare rebellion. 1533-4". Trcmsacttons of the Royal Htstortcal Soc. 5th series, xx~ il 11977): Steven G Ellis. "Tudor polic~ and the Kildare ascendant}. native revolt has occupied Irish historians made to explain tile decidedly thorny issue ~as widespread though often ambivalent.’~ preoccupation with revolt, but also because of the economic history, studies of the lordships have been and on the dealings of their rulers with the English forces such as France, Spain and the papacy. As inordinately, with comparatively fe~ attempts of native collaborations with the cro~n, which Furthermore, and again largely because of the slow development of Irish social and primarily focused on external relations royal government or with international a restllt, the internal workings of the lordships have usually been treated as of only secondary importance.~° Helping to rectify this imbalance is one of the principal objectives of this thesis, which draws upon the extensive archive of arguably the greatest "collaborators" of all, the Butlers, earls of Ormond, to examine in detail the ebb and flow of aristocratic control in a major Irish lordship during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, a period of massive upheaval when the composition of the native noble elite was wholly transformed by English reintervention. Ironically, the present work took shape in a paper dealing with a rebellion - the 1569 Butler revolt - during the preparation of which the author discovered that the insurrection was as much due to internal as external pressures.~j Previous studies of the revolt had concentrated almost entirely on external elements, laying great stress on the instability caused b} factional intrigues against the Butlers at the English royal court,~2 but an examination of the actual movements of the Butler rebels before and during their rebellion did not find this perstlasive. On the contrary, it emerged that those of the Butlers who rebelled did so because of changes made against their wishes to the military and political structures of their territories by the head of the dynasty, ’Black’ Thomas Butler, tenth earl of Ormond. Far from being simply an anti-English revolt, it seemed the rising was also a family dispute, an anti-Ormond revolt, the result of a profound crisis within the ranks of the Butler lineage. The added fact, 1496-1534. I HS. xx (1977); ldem. "The Kildare rebellion and the earl} Henrician Reformation. Htstor;caIJnl. xix (1976): La~vrence McCorristine. The Revoh of Silken Thomas .-1 Challenge to Hem3’ 17II (Dublin 1987) For Shane O’Neill: James Hogan, Shane O’Neill conies to the court of Elizabeth’, in Seamus Pender (ed), Feilscrtbhmn Torna (Cork 1947); Ciaran Brad}. Shane 0 .Vedl (Dublin 1996); Idem. "The killing of Shane O’Neill: some new evidence’, Irish Sword, xv (1982); Hiram Morgan, "The end of Gaelic Ulster: a thematic interpretation of events betxveen 1534 and 1610", LH.S., xx~i. No 101 (May 1988): Caoimhin Breathnach, "The Murder of Shane O’Neill: Oidheadh Chuinn Cheadchathaigh’, Erm, xliii (1992). For the KavanaghoButler revolt: Donal Moore. English action. Irish reaction: The Mac,~htrrough Kavanaghs. 1530-1630 (Maynooth 19871; ,lames Hughes. "Sir Edmund Butler of the Dullough’, R.H.-I,-I.I Jnl., i (1870): Hubert Butler. "An Anti-English Butler’. Butler Soc Jnl., i (1968). For the Desmond-Fitzmaurice revolt: C R. Sasso, The Desmond Rebellions. 1569-73 and 1579-83 (Unisersit} Microfilms International, Michigan 1984): Ciaran Brad~. "Faction and the origins of the Desmond rebellion of 1579". ZH.S. xxii 11979). And for Tyrones rebellion: Idem, Sixteenth centur} Ulster and the lailure of Tudor reform’, in Ciaran Brad}. N, lar30"Doxvd & Brian ’sValker (eds). Ulster .-In Illustrated HtstoO" (London 1989)3 Paul ~Valsh. The IVtll and Famth of Hugh 0 .Ve~ll (Dublin 1930 ~: Cyril Falls, "Hugh O’Neill the Great’, Irish Sword. ~i I 1963): F. M Jones, "Pope Clement VIII (1592-1603) and Hugh ONeill’. Bulletin of the Irish Committee for Histor;cal Sciences. new series, ii No 73 11953): Nicholas Canny. "Hugh O’Neill and the changing l,ace of Gaelic Ulster’. Stadia H;bernica, x (1970): Hiram Morgan. Tyrones Rebelhon The Outbreak of the .Vine }’ears War m Tudor Ireland (Dublin 1993): Idem, "Hugh ONeill and the Nine Years War in Tudor Ireland’. Historical Jnl., xxxvi (1993): ldem, Faith and Fatherland in Sixteenth Century Ireland’, HistoO. Ireland, iii, No. 2 (Summer 1995 J; J,J. Silke, "Hugh O’Neill. the Catholic question and the Papacy’, Irish Ecclesiastical Record, 5th series, xciv (1965). ’~ Although the term collaboration" has acquired a pejoratise meaning, especially in regard to events during \Vorld War Txvo, I use it only as it is defined by the O,xford English Dictiona~T- i.e., as "xvorking in combination with another " Until ve~ recentk native collaborators have appeared oqk fitfull~ in the seconda~ literature, despite their numerous and various nature. For the O’Connors Sligo, see Mary’ O’Do~sd. Power. Politics and Land. Early Modern Shgo. 1568-1688 (Bellast 1991 ) Other~vise. see especiall} Anne Chambers, Chieftain to Knight: Tibbot Burke. 1567-1629. 1st l’iscount Mayo (Dublin 1983); Ciaran Brad). "The O’Reillvs of East Breifile and the Problem of Surrender and Regrant’, Breeze, vi (1985) Unfortunatel} a study of the O’Farrells overemphasises their cooperation with the English croxvn by overlooking the evidence of their resistance: Raymond Gillespie. "A Question of Survival: The O’Farrells and Longford in the Seventeenth Centur}", in Idem leds.). Longford Essays m CounO Histo#3" (Dublin 1991 ). 10 This said. there are nonetheless some particularly valuable insights into local poxver arrangements in O’Neill countrs in Canny, Hugh O’Neill’, passim, Morgan. Tyrone "s Rebelhon. pp 85-135, and Brad), Shane 0 ".Veill, pp 8-21. Kno~sledge of the mechanics of Kildare power have been advanced by Steven G.Ellis, Tudor Frontiers and .Voble Power: The Jlaking of the Br#ttsh State (Oxford 1995). chapter 4 ii David Ed~sards. "The Butler revolt of 1569". I HS., xxviii. No. I I 1 (Mat 1993), pp 228-55 ~-" John Curtis. "The Butler revolt of 1569" lunpublished M A dissertation, St Patrick’s College, Ma~nooth. 1983): Nicholas P Cann). The Ehzabethan conquest oflrel, md apattern estabhshed 1565-76 (Hassocks 19761. pp 52-3. 149-50; Ste~en G Ellis. Tudor Ireland Cro~ln. commumO’ and the conflict ofcttltltres. 1470-1603 ILondon 1985 I. pp 260-1 previously overlooked, that the Butler rebels faced considerable local opposition ~ithin Kilkenny and Tipperary, mainly from tile local gentry’ and merchants, only pointed to one conclusion: the exercise of authority’ within "tile Ormond country" x~as more complex, more multi-dimensional, than historians of the sixteenth century had pre\iousl} suggested. To understand the politics of the Butlers of Ormond, one needed to in~estigate not only the Butlers, but tile other local families too. The merchants and gentry ~ere important players in the affairs of the area, crucial to the power of the earl of Ormond, yet little was known of them. Who were they? Why did they support Ormond against his rebel kinsmen in 1569? What could the earl offer them that the rest of the Butlers could not? Was their support actually more important to the earl than that of his own family? Any full-scale study’ of the earls of Ormond intlst also contain an account of tile gentry of the earldom. What follows attempts to explore the ways in ~hich aristocratic po~xer relationships operated within the Ormond lordship in County Kilkenny, not only at a high political level between lord and state, but from top to bottom, betxveen the lord, his immediate family, his more distant kin, his clients, tenants and neighbours, his supporters and enemies. Implicitly it rejects the idea, pedalled by hostile English colonists and government officials such as Edmund Spenser and Sir John Davies (xvhose views, easily accessible in print, have sometimes been repeated uncritically by’ scholars of the period, especially’ by’ English historians)~s that the nature of noble po~ver in all the Irish lordships was uniformly, and excessively, tyrannical.~a Oil the contrary, as far as we can tell, each lordship, or cotintry, had its own customs, its own level of tyranny.~5 If the Ormond lordship in Kilkenny was typical of the great Anglo-lrish lordships - a question that must seek its ansxver elsewhere, being outside the confines of this study - then it would seem that demands could ~ary considerably over time, depending on circumstances. Crucially, it was only in periods of major crisis that the overlords, the earls of Ormond, were openly tyrannical, seeking without consent to impose heavier exactions than was customary. At most other times, consent was vital to the exercise of lordship by tile earls, and it was achieved as it had been since the late middle ages - partly through bullying, partly’ through compromise, after an "assembly" of the leaders of the local gentry and merchants, a gathering which served a similar function to the oireachtas of the Gaelic territories.~6 It is interesting to note in this regard that, in order to sustain the notion of unrestrained tyranny to his English readership, Spenser derided public assemblies in Irish lordships as being commonly attended by ’all the scum of loose people’ of the cotintry.~7 Whatever of conditions elsewhere, this definitely was not the case in the Ormond country, ~vhere assemblies continued to be held as late as 1608. attended by the gentlemen and freeholders (or petty’ nobility) of the area.Is Though the earls jealously guarded their i_~ The ~orst example of this is A.L. Ro~vse. The Expansion oJEh-abethan England (London 19551. an intemperate but highly influential work of English nationalism which drew hea~ il’, on the writings of Spenser. Da~ ies. Raleigh. Sidney and Gilbert to celebrate the English reduction of Irish "barbarism" m the reign of Elizabeth I. Ro~se’s ~ ie~s ~ere echoed in one of the great academic textbooks, G.R. Elton. England under the Tudors ( I st ed., London 1955: 2rid ed. London 1974 I. chapter 13, which spoke of England’s ~var m Ireland against "tribes still virtually m the savagery, of the Bronze Age’. Despite such major contributions to the history’ of Elizabethan Ireland as Canny, Elizabethan conquest, and DB Quinn. The Ehzabethans and the h’ish (Ithaca 1966). which laid bare the prejudicial nature of Spenser and Davies et al. Elton did not modi~ the text for the 1983 reprint of his book. Similarly, another leading expert on Tudor England has described the native Irish lords as semi-barbaric chieftains" (Joel Hurstfield. Ehzabeth I and the Unio’ of the Realm (London 1971 ), p.781 i4 Edmund Spenser. ,4 I’iew of the Present State of Ireland, ed. ~VL Renwick (Oxford 1c~70): Sir John Da~ ies. "A discovery of the true causes ~s hy Ireland was never entirely subdued [1612]’. in Henry Morle~ (ed.). Ireland under Ehzabeth and James 1 (London 1890). pp 295-6. 15 Nicholls, Gaehc & gaeltcised Ire.. pp 31-40. As Professor Canny has noted, ho~ever, it is ditticult to be sure of the extent of the differences bet~seen Gaelic Irish and Anglo-lrish lordships, in particular, because unlike Anglo-Irish sources, Gaelic sources are predominantly the product of a warlord culture, and rarely contain complaints of abuses (Ca.my, Elizabethan conquest, p21) i,, C.A Empey & Katherine Simms. "The ordinances of the White Earl and the problem of coign m the middle ages’, R I.,4. Proc., section C. Ixxv (1975), pp 161-87. 17 Spenser. I’ien. pp 77-9. For scholark discussion of the Irish assembly(olreachtasj, see Simms. From K;ngs to Warlords. pp 60-78, esp. 69-75. ~hich is the best statement on the matter to date. i.~ NL.I, Ms. I 1.044. and note 16 abme. po~ser, nonetheless the} usually attempted to reach a consensus with the local gentry about how various aspects of local life were to be managed and regulated. In contrast, the royal government that Spenser and Davies served was inclined less and less to seek support for its policies through parliament, the national assembly, ever more eager to irnpose its will by decree, by diktat. As well as striving to map out the limits of power enjoyed by the earls of Orrnond over Kilkenny societ}’, in order to chart how their authority developed at a time of fundamental change in Ireland, what follows also endeavours to measure the impact of English governmental expansion on the cotlnt}. Increasingly Irish historians are becoming aware of just how disruptive the English reintervention was to provincial life. The crown government’s underlying antipathy to the principle of devolution meant that initial efl’orts to control Ireland through reform and assimilation gave way inexorabl}’ to rnore aggressive methods designed to destroy the independence of all its various lordships,i? It is often overlooked that the Ormond lordship ~as adversel\ affected by the royal assault on aristocratic po~er. While historians have noted the benefits of collaboration that accrued to successive earls during the sixteenth century - particularly to Thomas, the tenth earl, in the reign of Elizabeth 12° - close attention has not been paid to the often uneas}’ relations that existed between the earls and government officialdom. In fact, periodically, from as early as the 1530s, the earls faced serious denunciations of their power by members of the colonial administration in Dublin, and this even though their cooperation was usuall}’ critical to the success of the government’s plans. Time and again before 1603 the earls were forced to expend their energies in trying to neuter such criticisms, generally through court intrigue, but also through temporary withdrawal of cooperation with Dublin, so that they rarely felt totally sectlre. Paradoxically, during the sixteenth century it x~as under Queen Elizabeth I (1558- 1603), the monarch who ~as most protective of Ormond interests, that these defensive strategies became most urgent, as crown officials in Dublin became less tolerant of the priveleged position of the Ormond territories and began working tirelessly to undermine the earldom. Following the queen’s death the assault gathered pace and, in a political, religious and legal confi’ontation with the eleventh earl, the Catholic Walter Butler, that has rarely been noted in the histories of seventeenth century Ireland,2t the Ormond lordship was finally overthrown under a less sympathetic monarch, James I (1603-25). Despite long years of collaboration with the state, by the earl}’ seventeenth century the earldom’s public association with Counter-Reforlnation Catholicism and its capacity for political independence left it exposed to new royal demands, and it was ruthlessly cut down by Protestant government officials. The dramatic reduction of the earldom has been ignored by historians primarily because the Ormond dynasty survived its Jacobean downfall to stage something of a comeback under Charles I (1625-49). Indeed, having succeeded to the title in 1633 its most famous representative, the Protestant twelfth earl of Ormond, James Butler - the future first duke - subsequentl} ascended the ladder of state power with such speed before 1641 that he has generally been celebrated by historians as the great saviour of his lineage. As will be shown below, it is difficult to sustain such an interpretation. Quite apart from his personal i, For the ongoing debate surrounding the chronolog$ of the crow n’s replacement of a programme of retorm ~ ith one of reconqucst, see Brads. The Chief Governors and Cann}, Ehzabethan conquest, chaps 3 and 8, but also Idem. "Re~ ismo the re~isionist’.IHS,xxx. No 1181No~ 1996). pp 242-54. and also David Ed~ards, ’Be~ond Reform: Martial La~ and the Tudor reconquest of Ireland’, thstor3" Ireland. ~. No 2 (Stunmer 10971. pp 16-2 I. 2, Ciaran Brad.~. "Thomas Butler. earl of Ormond (1531-1614) and reform in Tudor Ireland. in ldem (ed 1, Worsted m the Game. Losers m lrtsh Htstoo" ( Dublin 1989): Cyril Falls. "Black Tom of Ormonde’, Irish S~ord. v ( 1961-2) 21 It is complete[) ignored in the mos! recent surve} of the period, Brendan Fitzpatrick. Seventeenth Centuta Ireland 77~e l l’ar ofRehgtons IDublin 1988) 4 shortcomings as a politician, which were considerable, tile t~elflh earl found it impossible to repair the damage that had been done to his dynas~ while he ~as a child, during tile 1610s and "20s, when tile government’s anti-Catholic programme ~as at its peak. It is only’ possible to appreciate the quite miserable state of his inheritance, and the devastating impact of the crown’s hostili~’ to his grandfather, Earl Walter, by examining in detail extant local evidence, looking beyond the lives of the earls to (once again) assess the condition of their friends and followers among the Kilkenny gentry’. By’ pursuing this broader perspective a totally’ different impression emerges of political trends in the Ormond country during the early-to-mid seventeenth century. Essentially, ~hile Jarnes, the Protestant t~velflh earl, soared to prominence in Dublin after 1633, befriending his masters in the colonial administration and making a string of concessions to the greater centralisation of state pov, er, his authority at home in Kilkenny deteriorated rapidly, for the anti-Catholic policies that had humbled his grandfather Earl Walter remained in place to worry the traditional clients of his house, the local gentry and merchants. Hence, regarding those accusations of tyranny which have so hampered our understanding of the x~orld of the Irish lordships, it will be argued here that in Kilkenny the development of greater control over the county by the central government, and the complete acquiescence to croxvn policy’ of Earl James, the ruling lord, before 1640, led to cries of misrule by’ the local community. The great Kilkenny revolt of 1641-2 was aimed not just at the recovery of recently’ lost local privileges, but also at the overthrow of what the county cornmunity perceived as English governmental tyranny. Harsh as Ormond rule had doubtless been in the time of the twelfth earl’s predecessors, by the beginning of the 1640s the Kilkenny gentry’ had decided they preferred a return to the old feudal order to the continued grox~th of state power. To attain this goal they rose tip against Earl James, their nominal overlord, whom they perceived as a traitor to his blood and to the political customs of Ormond country. What follows, then, is not a standard biographical account of the Butlers, earls of Ormond, during the sixteenth and earl\ seventeenth centuries, but rather a history of their earldom. Although endeavouring, as it must do, to paint detailed individual portraits of each of the five earls that ruled Kilkenny between 1515 and 1642 - from the Gaelic warlord, Piers Ruadh Butler, the eighth earl, to that haughty young supporter of an absolutist Protestant kingdom, James, the twelfth earl - it also attempts to explain how each of the earls interacted with the county comnaunitv. It is as intlch a work of social and economic history’, and even historical geography, as it is of political history, for in order to reconstruct the skeleton of the Ormond power structure, and to measure how it changed and evolved over time, it was necessary to rediscover such aspects of local life as rents charged per acre, land quality and land use, the strength of commerce, trade routes, urban and rural population distribution and clientage and kinship networks. By’ thus broadening the scope of my analysis to examine the earldom as inuch as the earls I am afraid I have written a very big history, much bigger than I anticipated when commencing nay’ work. I only hope it provides sufficient new insights to justify its bulk. Part I The Passage of Power A structural account Chapter One County Kilkenny, Ormond Country Introduction Ill many ways early modern Count)’ Kilkenny was different from what it is today, a quietly prosperous corner of the province of Leinster. In early modern times it stood out among its neighbours, and was by far one of tile most important areas of Ireland. As scholars have noted, it was only ’in theory an ordinaD county subject to the Dublin administration’: in reality it was a place of strength, a regional capital or centre of power in the mid-south of the country.~ This was not especially unusual. For much of the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries Ireland was more a patchwork of regions, great and small, than a unified country or state, and in many places the authority of individual families counted for much more than that of the colonial government in far-away Dublin.-~ For its own part County Kilkenny owed its high status almost entirely to the presence of one family, the Butlers of Ormond, leading Anglo-Irish magnates who had chosen it as the centre of their lordship in the course of the middle ages. Thanks mainly to the Butlers’ prominence, Kilkenny had its golden age between 1515 and the 1640s, possessing a strategic significance in national affairs that it has rarely enjoyed since. Physical geography ~vas the foundation upon which the Butlers of Ormond built. Kilkenny’s situation was highly advantageous, ideal as a power-base. According to one observer who wrote of it in the 1580s, County Kilkenny lay almost at the centre of the southern Leinster borderlands, holding a strong physical frontier with the territories of the MacGiollapadraigs (or Fitzpatricks) and the O’Mores in Laois, and with various branches of the Kavanaghs in Counties Carlow and Wexford.3 Indeed, centrality was arguably its greatest asset. Standing more or less equidistant between Dublin and Cork, it was also a useful midpoint between Leinster and Munster. The shire capital, Kilkenny city, was a hive of interprovincial business, serving as a popular overnight stop for travellers between the two provinces.4 By the standards of the time the county was a crossroads, a place where the south-east of the country encountered the south-west, 5 and vice versa. I D.B Quinn & K~\’ Nicholls. "Ireland in 1534". in .VHI, iii, p8 3 For the general state of Ireland in the sixteenth centu%+. see lbid, pp 1-38: Philip Wilson, The Beginnings of Modern Ireland (Dublin 1914). chap. 1: Steven G. Ellis. Tudor b’eland Crown. CommuniO" and the CoJ!t7tct of Cultures, 1470-1603 (Dublin 1985), chaps 1-2: Mary O’Dowd, "Gaelic Economx and Societ}’. in Ciaran Brady& Raymond Gillespie (eds). Natives & Newcomers: l-he Making of Irish Colonial SocieO’. 1534-1641 (Dublin 1986), pp 120-47, 3 See the translation of Stanihurst’s tract On Ireland’s Past: De Rebus in Hibernia Gestis" in Colin Lennon. Richard Stanihurst. The Dublmer. 1547-1618 (Dublin 1981 ). p. 14 I 4 E.g.. Thomas Fitzgerald to Boyle, 30 Aug 1616 (N L.I., Ms. 13+236 (7)). and Lamacraft (ed.). lr. Funeral Entr+es. p 141 5 Unfortunately Professor Smyth. a geographer, has missed this historical point in his otherx~ ise uselid account of the county and its regions: W.J. Smyth. "Territorial, Social and Settlement Hierarchies in Seventeenth Centu~ Kilkenn.~ ". in W Nolan & K. Whelan (eds), Ktlkenn)v Htstory& SocieO’ (Dublin 1991 ). pp 128-60. esp Pp 127-9 7 It should be noted that this physical centrality gave the county’ an unttsttal hybrid identity’ which it has since lost, for it then belonged to Munster ahnost as mttch as it did to Leinster. This was widely recognised at a high political level. Commissions issued to Kilkennx county officials before 1640 often required them to take control of Munster shires like Waterford, Cork and Limerick along with Kilkenny itself) Even as late as the early seventeenth century, Kilkenny remained something of a geographical and administrative oddity, most of the time inclttded on the Leinster assize circuit, but occasionally, when circumstances dictated, lumped in with Mtmster as well." This interprovincial centrality was ideally suited to the Butlers" needs. As they saw it, by’ holding Kilkenny they could control a critical avenue between the two most densely populated provinces of Ireland. It followed quite logically’ that, should the need to do so ever arise, by threatening to cut this avenue off, the dynasty could easily. hold the Dublin executive to ransom and exact guarantees for the maintenance of its powerful position. For this reason alone, County Kilkenny (not Tipperary) had become the capital of the Ormond lordship during the later medieval period,s The fact that the Butlers of Ormond were able to continue to dominate Kilkenny during the early’ modern era - and even to increase their standing there - is ample testament to their power and ability, for the sixteenth and early seventeenth century is generally acknowledged by historians to have been a time when the central government expanded at the expense of regional lords such as they.9 This is not to say that the Ormond Butlers were left unmolested by the state after 1515 - nothing of the sort, as we shall see - but it does indicate that the government was more respectful of the family than it would otherwise have been had they been based somewhere else. In general, rnainly because of its anxiety’ over access to the south, the Dublin administration allowed the Butlers, strong and relatively’ loyal, a freer hand than most in the conduct of their affairs. The policy’ had dramatic results. By’ 1603 the house of Ormond had built up an extraordinary territorial hegemony in Kilkenny, so much so in tact, that the government felt that its policy’ had to be changed. The crown felt compelled to spend much of the early seventeenth century trying to chop the dynasty down to a more manageable size. In particular, the eleventh earl of Ormond, Walter Butler (1614-33), suffered enormously because of the extent of his inheritance and the potential range of his authority. Eventually, this attempt by the crown to destroy’ the Ormond lordship in County Kilkenny, and to remould it in its own image, would end in failure, serving only’ to alienate many’ among the shire community, who for reasons of their own greatly resented the state’s interference. What this chapter will seek to do is (i) examine just how po~verful the Ortnond presence was across the early modern era, in order to discover if the post-1614 assault by the state stood any chance of success, and (ii) determine how much and what sort of support existed in the shire for what was, after all, an extremely’ overmighty 6 Cal. Fiants Ire. Eltz. 1. nos. 469. 542. 666. 682. 725. 828. 2430. 3860 and 4776 Like,vise. the constable of the Cot, ntv Waterford gaol in the reign of James I was a Kilkennyman (Cal Patent Rolls Ire.. James I. p.204) 7 John McCa~itt. ""Good planets in their several spheares": the establishment of the assize circuit in earl~ se~ enteenth centt, p, Ireland’. htsh Jurtst. xxiv (1989), pp 266 and 273 8 C.A. Empe.~. "The Butler lordship’. Butler Soc. Jnl.. iii (1970-1). pp 174-87: Neely. Kilkenny city", pp 2-4 9 Ciaran Brad~. "The government of Ireland. 1540-83" (unpt, blished Ph.D. thesis. Trinity’ College. Dublin. 1980}: Nicholas P. Canny. The Elt-abethan conquest oflreland, a pattern established. 1565-76 (Hassocks 1976): Aidan Clarke & R. Dudley Ed~vards. "Pacification. plantation and the Catholic question, 1603-23". N.H.I., iii (Oxford 1976). pp 187-232. 8 earldom. To begin this anal}sis, and dra~s attention to tile highly Iocalised nature of political po~ser in the early modern period, it will be necessary to describe the earls" lands, which t’ormed the ~ery foundation of their authorit}. The Ormond presence In a sense, it was onl} a matter of time before tile government became concerned b} the sheer scale of the Ormonds" poxver-base in tile shire. Even in 1515 tile ancestral estate of tile head of tile d xnasty, tile se\enth earl of Onnond, Thomas Butler(1478-1515). \~as \er\ large; ]lJspra~ling across tile count\, it accounted for approximately 40-45,000 acres, nearly one-sixth of all available land.~ At the time of the earl’s death, in August 1515, the Ormond estate already had a firm hold over the Kilkennv countryside. The estate ~as then cross-shaped, and as such it affected most parts of tile county, stretching from the manor of Kilmocar in tile north to Grannagh near Waterford in tile south, ~hile simultaneously fanning out to embrace Goxvran in the east and Callan in the x~est. Hox~ever, great as this ~as. it was merel~ a platform for the much greater estate that lay in store for his successors ill the ~ears ahead. The seventh earl’s death provided tile turning point. Thomas x~as the last of what could be called the medieval earls of Ormond - the Carrick line of earls, descended directly fiom Edmund Butler, earl of Carrick (1318) - and when he died ~ithout an} sons, he cleared the way for the rise of the gaelicised Pottlerath branch of the famils, headed by Sir Piers Butler, a distant relative. Piers. or Piers Ruadh (Red Piers), to~ oive him his contemporary alias,~: ~as just what tile crown government was looking for in the earl} sixteenth century. Unlike Thomas, who lived in London and had long been an absentee landlord, Piers had a strong presence in tile county, and he was also a major military figure. The government hoped that by recruiting him as its anchor- man in Kilkenn\ and Tipperary, it ~ould be able to improve its grip over the south and south-east of the countrx. In time Piers benefited hugel5 flom the crox~n’s favour. Although his claim ~as not x~ell grounded in English la\~. because he x~as tile strongest candidate in Ireland he was recognised as the heir to tile earldom of Ormond. eventually becoming tile eighth earl in 1538, once all the other claimants had been silenced.~-~ His succession had major implications for the size of the Ormond estate. Immediately he was able to add his oxvn holdings to it. some 19,000 acres by tile mid-1530s,~4 an increase of more than 40% on the estate as it stood in 1515. This was just the beginning, for under the ne~ Pottlerath line of earls, the Ormond patrimon} in Kilkennv was set to more than double in size before Piers Ruadh’s anglicised grandson, tile tenth earl. Thomas. died in November 1614. The government greatly facilitated the expansion of the estate betxveen 1536 and 1542, tile era of the suppression of the monasteries. Eager to persuade the Butlers to go along with Henry VIIl’s breach with Rome. the royal administration resorted to bribery, deciding to offer Piers and his family a major share of the spoils of the suppression in return for their support of Plantation acre:. 1654 measurement For the development of the Ormond estate before 1515. see (" 0 D. HI. nos 7(.). 95. 1 I0.. 119. 160. 172.218-2tl and 234: DB (,)uinn ~ed I. Ormond papers. 1480-1535./bid. i~. Appendix. pp 312.32S-’~ and 344-5 II Cotmtx Kilkennx had about 263.000 acres, according to 1654 measurements {see Appendix 1 belong) 12 Qt, mn (ed). Ormond papers’, p 345. and .lames Carue~ (ed). Poems on the Butlers (Dublin 1945). pp 8-11 13 See thaptcr 1~o belong, and CA Empe3. Rags to riches Piers Butler. eio_hth earl of Ormond. 1515-39. tJl,:.’er Soc ,/hi. n. no 3 (19841. pp 29t)-312 la COD.l~.nos 127. 134. 172. 176. 179and 182 9 tile king’s religious changes.~5 Tile offer was accepted, and b~ August 1542 Piers’s successor as ninth earl, his eldest son James (1539-46), had been granted four ex-monastic sites in tile shire, tile Cistercian abbeys of Duiske and Jerpoint, the prior}’ of Kells, and the Augustinian friar} of Callan, grants which added a f\lrther 14,000 acres to his holdings.~’ In quantitative terms these grants had a profound impact on landholding patterns in County Kilkenny. Prior to 1542 the religious orders, if taken together, had ranked as the second largest landowners in the shire, behind the Butlers of Ormond. Now tile}’ were gone, swept away overnight, and largely because of the government’s policy towards their former estates, the distance separating the Ormond Butlers from the rest of tile local proprietors was greatly enhanced. The Onnonds had been given almost 75% of all the land that the religious orders had possessed in the county, and if the grant of Inistioge prior} to Earl James’s .younger brother, Richard Butler (the tilture first viscount Mountgarret), is taken into account, then the dynasty’s share of the spoils was closer to 80% of the total acreage seized by tile crox~n,j- For them, the dissolution of the monasteries was a bonanza. The dissolved estates were destined to remain in Butler hands for more than a hundred }’ears, a notable fact, for it stands in stark contrast to trends in England. There many of the noble families ,~vllo profited from tile suppression quickly transferred their ex-religious possessions to the land-hungry gentry in return for read~ money. English historians ha\e consequently often viewed the latter part of tile reign of Henry VII! as a vital one [’or tile development of the gentry as a powerful group in society.~s Thanks to the Butlers" good fortune, however, County Kilkelmy in southern Ireland followed an entirely different path. The dynasty’s long-term monopolisation of all grants acted as a stumbling-block for the shire gentry, for it prevented tile emergence of a local market in ex-monastic land such as appeared all over England and Wales (or for that matter, in neighbouring County Wexford) after the 1530s.19 In short, in Kilkenny the dissolution stifled the progress of the gentry by increasing the Ormond Butlers" dominance over them. The Butlers would not have been able to curtail the Kilkenny land market to the extent that they did x~ithout the continuance of royal favour. All the ex-monastic land that James the ninth earl had received by 1542 had come in tile form of 21-year leases, implying that the interest of his successor, his eldest soil and heir, Earl Thomas, in the temporal possessions of such jewels as Jerpoint Abbey and Callan Friary was set to expire in the early 1560s. But Black Tom (as the tenth earl was known) never needed to renex~ the leasehold. Reared at the ro\al court since the mid-1540s, he was well liked by successive English monarchs, who because of his court background felt sure of his loyalty. As a restllt, they saw to it that the monastic lands became the permanent property of his family. This was done by changing the form of tenure under which the lands ~ere held: Jerpoint and Callan were regranted to him by Queen Mar} in 1558 to hold in 15 For the politics behind this. see Chapter Three belo~v: see also Ellis. Tudor Ireland. pp200-4, and Brendan Bradsha~. The dtssolution of the rehgtous orders of lrehmd under Hem3’ 1711 (Cambridge 19741. 16 Cal Ftants h’e. Hem’v I "111. nos 161 and 241-3: N B White led). Extents o/lrlsh monastic possesstons. 1540-1 I Dublin 1943). p 197. NLI.D2337andD 2350 17 Cal Fronts h’e Henry I "111. no. 239 18 .Iox ce Youngs. Stxteenth Century Englamt t London 1984). pp 161-4: R H Tax, he\. "]’he Rise of the Gentr~ . Economic HIstor3 Revlew. Xll19411. H.I Habbakuk. ]he Market for Monastic Propert,,. 1539- 1603".1btd. XXVllll1958) 19 D M. Palliser. The Age of Elizabeth lLondon 1983). pp 87 and 89-90: Brian C. Donovan. A conmmmt} in transition the ro}al libem and Count.~ of Wexford. 1536 - 1603" (unpublished BA. dissertation. Trinit)College. Dublin 1989). chapter 3 passim. 10 capile " ""forever.- and in 1578 Elizabeth 1 gave hiln Kells Prior~, also for e~er, but this time in free socage.- The Kells grant ~as particularly advantageous. Under socage tenure, the clo~n gave tip its claim to various feudal dues, including the wardship of the land during a minori~ 2-~ Thanks to grants like these, the tenth earl’s long career (1546-1614) ~as a high point for the Kilkenny estate of the Butlers, earls of Ormond. In addition to consolidating the gains made by his father James and his grandfather Piers, Earl Thomas also bought a great deal of land in his oxvn right. In plain statistical terms he acquirect approximately 13,050 acres in the shire. He continued to drink deep of the ~ell of royal favour as long as Elizabeth I remained on the throne, gaining a string of grants and privileges that greatly enhanced his wealth. Occasional debts to the crown notwithstanding, Black Tom of Ormond was far and away one of the richest men in Elizabethan Ireland. All the land that he bought in County Kilkenny he gained absolutely, paying hard cash for it, and by the time of his death in 1614 his purchases had taken his ancestral estate to unparalleled heights. In County Kilkenny no less than 90,000 plantation acres - about one acre in three - belonged to him.2-~ The massive growth of the estate under the eighth, ninth and tenth earls had major implications for the scope of Ormond po~er in the shire. Quite simply, the authority of the earldom was no longer a major factor in local life, it ~.as instead the major factor. The Ormond estate was literally everywhere, covering upland and Io~vland alike, densely distributed across 78 ¯ ~4of the shire’s 139 parishes.- For the ordinary people it must have had a claustrophobic presence. By the beginning of the seventeenth century there were at least 25 castles in the county that belonged to the earl and were manned by his men: these overlooked most of the main highways and thoroughfares, and enabled a close watch to be kept on all sorts of travellers coming into and going out of the shire. In a real and physical sense, Count Kilkenny was just ~hat outsiders often called it - "the earl of Ormond’s country’.25 With the earl’s servants spread so widely across the shire, very little happened without his knowledge or without his consent. Rather like a giant modern industrial concern such as General Motors in Detroit, the earldom affected the fortunes of the great majority of the county’s inhabitants, rural as well as urban, rich as well as poor. Each }’ear the yield of its vast acreage swamped the local markets and fairs, so that more than any other estate, it probably played a major part in determining food prices in the area¯ Thanks to the size of its estate, it would have had an inordinate influence on the relationship between supply and demand. The earldom’s influence could also be felt in other more visible ways. Apart from some of the local to~vn-based industries, the Ormond household was one of the biggest employers in the shire. All }ear round it required a host of domestic servants to tend to its daily needs: ushers and porters to guard access to its many castles and tend to its guests; victuallers and cooks to provide and prepare food" maids and laundresses to do the cleaning: blacksmiths, saddlers and stable-boys to care for its horses; woodsmen to chop fuel, and so on. At an} one time these 20 N.A.I., Lodge MSS. Records of the Rolls. vol. 1. pp 127-31: this grant was confirmed to him by Elizabeth 1 in 1563. ’,~hcn the cro~vn rent (£49.3s.9d (IR)) was also abolished (Cal. Eiants h’e. El#-_. 1, no. 504). 21 N.A.I. Lodge, Lodge MSS, Records of the Roils. vol. I. p.401. 22 A.K.R. Kiralfl (ed }. Potter’s Htstorical Introduction to the Engl#sh Law (4th edn.. London 1962). pp494-5 - For a list of his purchases see NLI. Ms. 2506. tbl 22r 24 Ibid. Mss 975. 2543 and 2560. See Appendix 1 below - E.g. James Buckle~ (ed I. A vice-regal progress through the south and ~est of Ireland. 1567". 11ater[ord & S E of Ire. Arch Soc Jnl. xii 11909). p67 11 domestic servants numbered in the Io~ hundreds, and through their family connections tile inflnence of their aristocratic employers reached down to touch the lives of thousands more in the coting’. The management and exploitation of the estate like~ise necessitated the hiring of a multitude of agricultural ~orkers, either specialists such as drovers and shepherds, who were retained throughout the )’ear, or general farm labourers, who were only engaged during the summer and at harvest tinle.26 Noble power on such a grand scale as this was increasingl} rare in Ireland in the earl,,’ seventeenth century, a time Mien the native nobility was rapidly subdued and redtlced b} the expanding centralised state.27 But the decision taken by the government after 1614 to divide tip the estate and dismantle the lordship was destined to have far-reaching and cotinter-productive restllts partly because the cro~vn did not flilly appreciate just hox~ central the earldom had become to local life. Each region of the shire had its o~vn special relationship with the earls (not always bad). In some areas there were very strong ties indeed, for during the course of tile sixteenth century, while their estate was growing, the earls had taken the opporttinity to develop certain regions in a manner which filrthered their interests. It should be pointed out that this did not necessarily improve each area very much. However, it did often improve the earls" influence, for they recruited local supporters everywhere in the shire, and as x~e shall see, in some places they managed to create a community of friends and clients that ~ere sometimes x~holly dependent upon them. All over the cotlnty, the earldom of Ormond had friends and allies. Even where it came into conflict with local vested interests, it often had tile means to make useflil friendships (through financial inducements and other strategies) which could overcome or sidestep the difficulties. As tile royal government would eventually discover to its cost, all too many of the most important people in County Kilkenny - landlords, merchants, soldiers, la~vyers, even clergy - were Ormond people, just as acre by acre and field by field the shire as a whole was Ormond country. Of course, the cruel irony for the croxvn after 1614 was that many of these fl’iendships and alliances had been forged during the preceding century, the very time xvhen it had actiwly facilitated the expansion of the earls’ influence. The Northern Uplands Nowhere in the county was the growth of the Ormond power-base felt so profoundly as it was in the north, in the baronies of Galmoy and Fassadinin and the northernmost parts of Crannagh and Go~vran. Upland country, with hills to the east and x~est guarding entry into the Nore Valley, it was of immense strategic importance to the shire economy. Possession of it was a prerequisite of meaningfill overlordship. Hence, commencing in the 1510s and continuing well into the earl}’ seventeenth century, successive earls of Ormond made control of the 20-mile area stretching from Urlingford to Castlecomer one of their principal territorial objectives, lit doing so, they totally transformed tile character of the region. But not necessarily for the better: at their instigation, between c1515 and 1640 northern County Kilkenny experienced a protracted three- stage development which, as it worked itself out, entailed at least as much suffering as progress for the local people. 26The Ormond household account book tbr 1630/I (N.L I.. Ms. 2549) pro~ ides a detailed picture of the importance of the estate in local aft’airs 27 Nicholas Cann). From Rt:/brmation to Restoration. chapter 6: WF.T. Butler, Cop~scattons in Irish HIstoo’lDublin 1917), chapters I-4. 12 lnitialb, before the Ormond expansion got under way, the north had been a quietl,, prosperous, occasionally dangerous, inter-ethnic zone, a place where (usually) little happened and the Gaelic Irish and Anglo-Irish lived side by side - though with the Anglo-Irish becoming increasingb gaelicised, with families such as the Graces acting as patrons to Gaelic scribes, and their leaders adopting laudatory Gaelic pseudonyms, such as teasog, the bearded (Oliver Grace, c1470), and crios iaraan, the iron-belted (John Grace, c1520).28 This had been the case for maybe foR ,,’ears, since the 1480s or so, a time when - significantly enough - the influence of the house of Ormond had been in temporary decline. The peace was soon shattered b\ the rebirth of Ormond po~ver after 1515. hnmediately the north of the county became a battleground, providing the setting for a long bitter struggle between the Butlers of Ormond and their most threatening neighbours, principally the Gaelic MacGiollapadraigs (alias Fitzpatricks) of Upper Ossory in modern County Laois and the O’Brennans of ldough in Fassadinin, but also including the Anglo- Irish earls of Kildare, who owned an irnportant fort at Glashare in Gahnoy.2~ It was only when these conflicts began that the north of the shire took on its present appearance, becoming shorter but broader in shape, as the borders ~sith Laois and Carious changed forever. Previously, e~er since the early thirteenth century, northern County Kiikenny had been a long strip of land more or less coterminous xvith the diocese of Ossory. Running north as far as Slie~ebloom in Upper Ossoo:, it had included the medieval fees of Offerlane, Coolbally, Gortnycross, Aghmacart, Ballygennan and Gortreny in the modem-day baronies of Upperwoods, Clarmallagh and Clandonagh, Count5’ Laois.3° After 1515, however, the county and the diocese diverged, and these lands seem to have been overrun by the MacGiollapadraigs, Mlo expelled their Anglo-lrish occupants (chiefly the Graces), and proceeded to withdra~v the entire territory’ of Upper Ossory - suddenly completely Gaelic - from Count)’ Kilkenny. They’ did this mainly to evade the jurisdiction of the Kilkenny sheriffs, xvho were usually Butler creatures, and as such unlikely to grant the MacGiollapadraigs a fair trial tot" their alleged offences.31 The fact that the office of sheriff stayed in the hands of the Butlers of Ormond and their supporters until the 1580s (see Appendix 3) insured that Upper Ossory never returned to County Kilkenny. Instead it remained unshired and aloof, existing as an autonomous Gaelic lordship under the MacGiollapadraigs until 1600, when it ~vas finally re- shired by the government as part of County Laois (alias Queen’s County), to which it has been ¯ ]’~ attached ever since.-- After 1515 the boundary that separated it from north CounD Kilkenny soon became a hard frontier made up of a series of woodlands and man-made ditches stretching from ¯ 33Cooinacrutta through Coolcashin to Kihnenan and Loughtll. On the northern side of this frontier was an aggressive native Irish dynasty that succeeded in cutting off almost all contact with the partly gaelicised Anglo-lrish county belo~v them. The era of inter-ethnic mixing that seems to have characterised the region in the late fifteenth century was over. It ~ould not return until peace came after the end of the Nine Years War in 1603. .’s Ibid, Ms, 8315 (9): Sheffield Grace, ,Uemor;als of the Famil)’ of Grace (2 vols., privately printed, London, 18231. i, pp 18-19: O~en O’Kelb. The Place-Xames ofCounO KtlkemO’ (Kilkenny Archaeological Soc., 1985). p.29. 29 The border ~ ars are treated in detail in Chapters Three and Four belong. 30 Eric St..lohn Brooks (ed.), Kmght’s Fees for Cos. ~l’e.yford. Carlou’ & KilkemO’ (Dublin 1950). pp 227. 265 and 270-2, 31 Charles McNeill led. ~. "Lord Chancellor Gerrard’s Notes of his Report of Ireland’, Anal Htb. no, 2 ( 1931 ), pp 162-3. 167-8 and 219: AIm~ick Castle. Duke of Northumberland Papers, Ms 470. ff32v-33r 32 Cal Ftants lre Ehz I. no 6610 33 Details of this trotmer can be gleaned from a late Ehzabethan description of the Ormond lands3 C.O D.. ~ i. Appendmx 1 13 The other Gaelic territor} ill the north, H3-Duach or ldough in Fassadinin - a place of bleak. ~et. cold hills~4 - had a comparable experience, though its native inhabitants, the O’Brennans, did not fare nearly as ~ell as the MacGiollapadraigs. Like the klacGiollapadraigs, the O’Brennans sax~ their territory change counties follox~ing the Butler resurgence, but ~vhereas Upper Ossorv escaped from Count} Kilkenn}. Idough xvas draxvn into it as the sixteenth centur} progressed. During the middle ages it had been included in County Carlox~ as part of the Irish inheritance of the Bigods, dukes of Norfolk.~-~ Ho~vever, by the 1540s (if not a lot earlier)-~° Idough ~vas being claimed by the Ormond Butlers, and they had their claims recorded formally in a document of state in March 1547, xvhen an inquisition post mortem x~as made for the estate of the ninth earl, James Butler, x~ho had died six months earlier. Though it x~as admitted in court that the earl had received no rent for it fi’om the O’Brennans, ldough x~as registered as part of his Kilkenn} estate to be passed on to his son and heir "Black" Thomas. the tenth earl.~- As things transpired, ho~ever, it ~as really under Earl Thomas that the territory exentuallx became part of the Ormond countr5 in Count} Kilkenn\. By the earl} 1560s. as Earl Thomas’s po~er x~as grooving in Dublin and London, members of his family increased their grip on ldough to such an extent that the Clan Wickelow sept of the O’Brennans x~ere po~verless to prevent a major military incursion onto their lands by the tenth earl’s brother, Sir Edmund Butler of Cloghgrenan,~s and some of the O’Brennans began enlisting as soldiers in the Butler t’orces.~’~ The process of aggrandisement continued throughout the reign of Elizabeth 1, and in the 1580s manv of the O’Brennans entered into a last desperate (and unfortunately poorly documented) battle for survival, refusing to ackno~vledge the authority of the sheriff of County Kilkenny.4° and in 1590 they ambushed Edmund Butler. second viscount Mountgarret, x~hen he and his forces dared to parade through Idough.~ In the next few years, hoxvever, O’Brennan resistance ground to a halt. In 1594 the tenth earl received a grant of several pieces of land in the area that had been forfeited to the croxvn by attainder, and he also began buying out other parcels of O’Brennan land. All told, through an intermediary. Patrick Grant, he acquired more than 5,000 acres across Idough in little over a }ear. Bx 1604 the O’Brennans realised that they had no choice but to accept the earl’s overlordship, and Gilpatrick O’Brennan. the chief of the strongest sept, the Clan Moriertagh, duly became fi’iendlv xvith the earl.4-~ Soon at’terx~ards, b\ 1608, the entire territory x~as included xvithin the boundaries of Cotmt\ Kilkennv xxith the O’Brennans" agreement, becornirlg part of the barony of "Fassadinin and Idough’, as the earl of Ormond xvanted. One of the constables of the 34 Smxth. Territorial. Social and Settlement Hierarchies. p 129. -- McNeill (ed I. ’Lord Chancellor Gerrard’s Notes’. p.219: B.L.. Harleian Ms. 430. ff204~-206r ~" The O’Brennans max have been drax~n tnto Kilkenn.~ temporaril.~ circa 1400: James Graves. The Ancient Tribes and Territories of Ossorx. No. I" Kllkenm & SE oflre..4rch Soc. Jnl.. I ~1849-51). p.238. 3~ COD. i~. no 361 38 Sir Edmund Butler to A.rnold. 11 June 1564 (PRO.. S.P. 63/11/4): N. Murphy. The O’Brennans and the ancient temtorx of H~- Duach’. Ossm~ .qrchueological Socten dnl. 111874-91. p399 3~ Cul Ft~mts Ire Eh- L no 911 List ofexecutcd traitors. Sept 158311’RO.SP 63"108341:CO.D..~t. no 8912~ 4.1 H .kl C. Egmont 3LS’S. i. p 23 I= B L. Add Ikls 47.172. Iol 100rl 42 (’OD. ~i. nos 8012~andO9 43 N LI. D 3340 14 barony was William O’Brennan of Ballyhomyn (one of the Clan Moriertagh). and the chieftains ¯44 of all four O’Brennan septs ~ere named among its "principal gentlemen . Thus the rebirth of Ormond po~ver after 1515 changed the boundaries of north Kilkenny forever, sundering the county’s age-old ties with a strong Gaelic region ~hile annexing a ~eaker one that had once been part of Carlo~. But not just the Gaelic lands along the northern borders ~ere affected b} the Ormonds" restirgence. For the Anglo-Irish too, the entire late medieval settlement pattern was quickly overturned follo~ ing the outbreak of hostilities in 1515. Several of the oldest Anglo-lrish lando~vning families in the area were forced to sell tip and leave, among them the Launts of Coulshill, the Pembrokes of Ballyragget and the Freneys of Clone and Rathbeagh, each of whom had lived in the north since the fourteenth century or earlier.45 Without exception they sold or mortgaged their lands to the Butlers of Ormond,46 and by the 1540s the dynasty had moved into the area in earnest, pushing its estate further and further north to~ards the present border ~ith Laois. The net restllt of the Ormonds" expansion was that large parts of the baronies of Fassadinin, Gahnoy and northern Crannagh and Go~vran ~ere cordoned off as Anglo-lrish military zones. Existing castles were renovated and some new ones constructed as the Ormond Butlers established a string of garrisons in the area, situated mainly at Glashare (which the Ormonds got in 1537 after the collapse of the Kildares), Foulkscourt, Tubbrid, Coulshill, Ballyragget and Kihnocar. Backing them tip in this enterprise were several markedly gaelicised Anglo-Irish client families, in particular the Butlers, viscounts Mountgarret, the Graces - a major lineage based at Courtstown Castle who controlled ’Grace’s cotintry’ in the Slieveardagh hills - and the Shortals, the Purcells and the Archdekins (alias MacCodys or McOdos).47 Although they were all freeholders, most of these families were creatures of the earldom, feudal subjects who held their lands directly in fee of the earls, the lords of the fee, usually in return for fealty, military service, suit of court and a nominal rent charge. This was the case with the Mountgarret Butlers. the Courtsto~vn Graces, the Shortals of Ballylorcaine, and the Archdekins of Bav, nballinlogh, who held their lands in tee by knight’s service of the earls" manor of Kilkenny, and the Purcells of Ballyfoyle and Foulkesrath, who held of Go~sran manor.4s It is noteworthy that even in the i 620s. long after the border wars had ended, the earls continued to keep accounts of all the local landlords who o~ed them fealty and suit of court)<) Feudalism ~as the backbone of the Ormond lordship throughout the county, but it ~vas especially important in the north, where the earls" demands for military service were most often required. The feudal client families of the region gave frequent military support to their overlords. Sometimes they established new garrisons of their own, or else they supplied many of the officers and troops ~ho served in the Ormond forts,s° The Graces were perhaps the most useful in this regard, with various members of the family taking charge of the Ormond castles at Rathvilly, County Carlo’~v, Glashare and Foulkscourt, Cotlnty Kilkenny, and Kilcooley, Boulick 44 Cal. Carew MSS. 1603-24. p29. 45 E.g.. C.O.D. ii. nos. 258,377 and 397: Ibid. iii, nos. 50. 127. 144 and 209. 46 lbid. i~. nos, 69. 134. 176. 182: Ibid. ~. nos. 7, 14 (1), 46, 127. 145,267: Ibid. vi. nos. 89 (2). 99 (I)1N.LI,, Ms. 2506, Iol. 22r 4’v Although the .4a’chdekins of Count} ~Vatertbrd ~ere a late branch of the Kilkennv line, the~ did not lbllo~ their seniors in retaining tills gaelicised alias after 1600 Mar~ O’Do~d, Irish concealed lands papers. Anal Htb, no 31 (1984). pp 88 and 91 48 Details of the feudal bond~ t.~lng most of the cotint~ "s landlords to the earldom are given in Cal. Care~ .t155" 1515-74, no273 49 NL.I.Ms 11.05313) 50 Eg. Cal Ftunts h’e. Ehz 1. nos 90. 787,950. 1057. 1065. 1184, 1899. 1903. 1933. 2013. 2025, 2058 and 2064 15 and Roscrea. Count~ Tipperar}.-~l V~’ithin barel\, a ~oeneration. northern Count\ Kilkenn\ (and tile territorx to either side) had become a no-go area patrolled bx marauding gangs of Anglo-Irish pro-Ormond soldiers ~vllo cared little for the rule of lax~. It remained like this for most of the sixteenth century. Reputed 18th-centur’, rums of Courtsto~n Castle. scat of the (iraccs tfrom Sheffield Grace. Memortals o/the Fwmh of Grace 12 ~ols.. pmatel} printed. London 1823), ii) The effect on the northern economy ~as catastrophic. As the level of violence intensified, important local colnmercial and population centres shrivelled tip. The manorial village at Durro~ on the Laois-Kilkenny fi’ontier was badly hit. Church property, held by the bishops of Ossory, it had enjoyed considerable prosperity late in the fifteenth century, apparently thriving as a neutral trading post bet~een Gaelic Ireland and Anglo-lreland.-~2 After 1515 the oncoming Butler restirgence sent it into an instantaneous decline. The Purcells of Foulkesrath, longstanding Butler supporters, began illegally exploiting the bishops" lands in the area.53 By the 1540s, rather than attracting inerchants and skilled craftsmel~, Durrox~ was getting the undivided attention of the Butler and MacGiollapadraig armies, both of M3om xsere afraid that the bridge it guarded connecting Kilkenny to Laois xsould fall into the hands of the other.5a The boundaries of Durro~s manor, and the range of its manorial rights and privileges, were disputed by the rival dynasties for a long time afterxvards. As late as 1635, the sheriff of County Kilkenny was compelled to intervene there in order to prevent the chief of the MacGiollapadraigs, the fifth 51 Lambeth Palace Library. Xls 601. p40 IRath~ ill.~ 1: Subn~ission of.lohn Grace. 7 No~ 1578 P R (). S P 63,’68/16 (Roscrea); H.M.C. htsh Prtvl’ (’ounctl Book, 1556--1. p 100 (Glashare & Foulkscourt): N LI. Ms 2507. tL~l 17~ (BoulickL St Kieran’s College. Kilkenn~. Carrigan MSS. Vol 18. p 23 (Kilcoole}) 52 E.g.. sometime bet~scen 1460 and 1478 the boundaries of Durro~s manor had been publicly ratified b\ both the Anglo-lrish Archdekins/alias NIc (’od~s) and the Gaelic MacGiollapadraigs: H.J. Laxslor (ed). "Calendar of the Liber Ruber of the diocese of Ossor)." R I.~ Proc. section C. XXVI1119081. p. 170¯ 53 C.O.D.. i~. no 30. 54 Much of the hisior~ of Tudor-era Durrm~ can be gleaned from a series of depositions made in 1577. calendared in N B White led ). h" .lion & Epts Deeds 1200-1600 IDublm. 1936), pp 213-21 16 baron of Upper Ossory, Barnaby, from encroaching any further on its lands, which were norrnally controlled by the servants of the earl of Onnond. Thanks to all this friction, Durrow village failed to develop as it should have, into an important market town, and instead it had to eke out a humble existence as a small border settlement, becoming the sort of place that attracted members of the early modern underworld, thieves, smugglers and cattle rustlers looking to sell their stolen commodities far from more advanced centres where government officials might be found.55 (It remained a detached part of County Kilkenn5 until 1837). The village of Freshford had a similar experience; here too the re-emergence of the Butlers apparently put paid to its growth and development.56 By the 1560s the manor house of the bishop of Ossory - Freshford was also, like Durrow, an episcopal manor - and the bishop’s sturdy little castle at Upper Court x~ere both dilapidated, and the surrounding area ~as described as "depopulated, deserted and not yielding any rent’.57 Conditions thereabouts did not improve for a long time. and it was well into the seventeenth centurx before Freshford became a sizeable population centre again, finally counted as one of the lesser towns in the county in the 1650s, the era of Cromwell.ss Suffice it to say’ that had it not been for the series of local wars sparked off by the rise of the Ormond Butlers after 1515, Freshford xvould probably have become a town much earlier than it did. Right across the north, the expansion of the Ormond lordship brought considerable dislocation, and with population levels shrinking, land values also fell. Early in the sixteenth century the local land market had apparently been quite buoyant, if a series of deeds from north- western Fassadinin are anything to go by’. Commencing in the mid-1490s and continuing until the late 1530s. the townlands of Rosconnell, Loughill and Ballyoskill, situated next to the border with Laois, had been the subject of five leases made by’ the St. Leger family, the owners. Despite the fact that the land involved was frontier land, the St. Legers had had no trouble getting a good return fi’om it, for as yet there was no shortage of willing tenants. Accordingly, each of their five leases had been made for short periods of time - 7 years, 5 years, 3 years, 9 years and 3 years respectively- and the rent demanded by the St. Legers had kept on rising, from 10 shillings (lr.), a summer sheep (i.e. one sheep out of every flock) and 10 gallons of butter circa 1495, to £4 (Ir.), a pig and a sheep in 1537, i.e. an eight-fold increase or thereabouts in forty’ years,s9 But even by 1537 conditions had begun to change. The re-emergence of the Butlers of Ormond led to a rise in violence and the new tenant, the rector of Rosconnell, Rory O" Bergin, felt compelled to ask the St.Legers for a guarantee that they would only’ colne to visit Rosconnell ’in good faith and not otherwise’: in other words, he feared that the St.Legers would station their troops on his leasehold as they joined forces with the Butlers in waging war against the MacGiollapadraigs in the north.6° His fears were soon realised. By 1549/50 there was all-out war between the St.Legers and the MacGiollapadraigs, and Rosconnell and its environs was overrun 55 Vie~ of frank pledge at Durro~. 1635 IN A I.. Co. 1759): Charles McNeill (ed). "Lord Chancellor Gerrard’s notes of his report of Ireland’. Anal l-/’b, no. 2 (1931) pp 165-6: NAN R C 6/2. Chancerx Decrees. Charles 1 -Charles 11. pp 141-2 56 Freshtbrd seems to have been expanding in the late fifteenth century, as the bishops of Ossor?. invested hea~ik in it. conunissionmg :eme major building ~orks in the vicinity: Carrigan. Ossory’. ii. p.251: Moran. "Bishops of Ossor’,’. p247 57 NAI.M 2816. pp 3-4 58 .Uercurms Po/zncus. no.436. 1658 (Ibid. Prim MSS. no.32). 59 COD. i~. no 4! 1)-(5). 60 [bid. no 4(5) 17 Chart 1.1 The wealth of the gentry, circa Landowner’s name Main estate J. Grace O. Shortal G. Purcell P. St. Leger D. MacShane Fitzpatrick R. Purcell W. Sweetman G. Blanchville J. Cantwell P. Forstall T. Den E. Butler N. White T. Dobbin T. Comerford F. Comerford R. Comerford R. Fitzgerald Forstall Rochford Shee Tobyn Walton Dobbin Devreux & W. Lincoll Twye Rothe Fitzgerald Howling E. Walsh P. Walsh J. Butler J. Tobyn J. Howling Daton Strange Gall Freney Fitzgerald O’Dea Fitzgerald Power J Aylward Northern uplands Courtstown Ballylorcaine Ballyfoyle Tullaghanbroge Kilmocar Foulkesrath Midland basin Castle Eve Blanchvillstown Cantwell’s Court Kilferagh Grenan Paulstown Knocktopher Lisnetane Ballymack Callan Ballybur Burnchurch Kilmanehine Killary Kilkenny Cahirlesky Waltonsgrove Thomastown Mallardstown Tuitestown Kilkenny Danginmore Kilree Southern uplands Castlehowell Listerlin Duiske Killosnory Derrinahinch Southern lowlands Kilmodally Dunkitt Gaulskill Ballyreddy Brownsford Gurtines Powerswood Aylwardstown Kilkenny 1560 Acreage Total Value Value Per Acre (£stg) (pence) cl0,000 5,380 c4 500 i 400 1 300 550 £120 2.9 £80 3.6 £67 3.7 £27 4.6 £i0 1.9 £I0 4.4 1,210 2,950 3,550 1,530 2,600 3,240 85O c850 58O c400 390 1,420 35O 59O c400 1,070 1,050 c200 55O 2OO 150 190 220 £74 £67 £6O £51 £51 £40 £40 £40 £4O £40 £30 £30 £20 £2O £2O £2O £2O £12 £i0 £i0 £i0 £6 £5 14.7 5.7 4.1 8.0 4.7 3.0 11.3 11.3 16 5 24 0 18 5 5 0 13 7 8 1 12 0 4 5 4 6 14 4 4 4 12 0 16 0 7 6 5 5 c13,000 2,390 8,600 720 1,060 £151 £27 £20 £I0 £7 2.8 2.7 0.5 3.3 1.6 2,850 5,650 1,910 2,080 1,950 2,000 4O0 870 £67 £51 £30 £60 £5O £20 £5 £13 5 6 2 2 3 8 6 9 6 2 2 4 3 6 3 6 Source: Lambeth Palace Library, Ms. 611, fol. 87. b v both their armies?~ The MacGiollapadraigs proved tile stronger, constantly pre}ing upon tile local inhabitants, raiding and burning their farms, and eventually tile St.Legers ,,~ere forced to leave tile area. Sometime before tile 1570s they handed over their Rosconnell estate to "Black’ 62Thomas Butler, tenth earl of Ormond, in exchange for lands else~vhere in the county. Earl Thomas did not take possession of the land in order to exploit it economically- indeed, it is recorded that he received no rent at all from Rosconneil or Ballyoskill in 1576~’3 - but rather, he intended to transform it into a buffer zone for the protection of his lands at Kilmocar and Dunmore further to the south. Hence his decision to sub-let the Rosconnell estate to one of his most experienced captains, the constable of Kilmocar fort, Donill Mac Shane Fitzpatrick, who remained in forcible possession there until tile closing years of the sixteenth century. By this time tile value of the area had noticeably stagnated, bringing the earl a rent of a mere £5 (stg) per annum. Had it not been for the disturbances of the previous sixty’ years it would doubtless have been worth a great deal more. It was not a coincidence that once peace returned early.’ in the seventeenth century Rosconnell, Ballyoskill and Loughill quadrupled in value in the space of less than ten }ears, producing a rent return of £20(stg) per annunl by Easter 1610.6~ Rosconnell’s experience was not untypical of other estates in tile north of tile shire. As Chart 1.1 opposite demonstrates, by the 1560s, after more than fifty years of political violence, the value of property in Galmoy, Fassadinin and northern Crannagh and Gowran ~as lagging far behind tile value of property’ in County Kilkenny’s midland basin. Although a certain disparity between the two regions xvas inevitable - after all, the midland basin was the economic heartland of the county - the fact that land anyxvhere in the midlands was worth on average three times as mtlch as land in tile north was highly significant, lit strict economic terms, the north had much going for it - mineral deposits, some of the best arable land in the county, and some high quality grasslands for grazing horses, cattle and sheep in the Slieveardagh and Johnswell hills. As Professor Smyth has observed, there are "pockets of superb [farming] land ... at Lisdowney and Ballyragget’, and some of the county’s best champion ground runs through Freshford, Dunmore and Mavne. By and large, only the ~et, damp hill country around Idough and Castlecomer provided a tough environment for agriculture.6~ Yet, despite all this, land across the region struggled to reach a valuation of even 3.7d per acre, a trivial amount by tile second half of the sixteenth centur}. Conditions were worst at Kihnocar - it was Ormond’s land, and therefore a target for MacGiollapadraig attacks - but even the most valuable holding in the north, that belonging to the Ormond client family, the Purcells of Ballyfoyle, was worth relatively’ little. The Ballyfoyle estate in Fassadinin and northern Go~vran, which inchided lands at Muccully and Kihnadum, was quite highly developed in the reign of Elizabeth I. A schedule of goods dra~vn tip after 1578 recorded that the deceased head of the family, Geoffrey Purcell, had made the most of the rolling hill country, breeding horses oil an extensive stud farm, and keeping large numbers of cows, 61 Ibid. ~. no 3111 )-13): Ca/ Flants h’e. Eduard !’1. no 399 62 Ibid. ~i. Appendix I, ppl44-5. 63 N,LI. MS 2506, fol 8r. Rosconnell is here given as Garranconnell 64 Ibid. fol 10~. x~hich gives the half-~eark rent charge of£2 10s 0d 65 Ibid. fol.36~ Perhaps the most telling piece of evidence regarding the rapid improvement in Rosconnells lbrtunes after 1600 is the liict that in 1611 the head of the St. Legers. Edmund St. Leger of Tullaghanbroge. tried to challenge the earl of Ormond’s title to the estate, e~en though his family had gladb given tip possession of it many }ears earlier (TC.D. NIS2512, p 25) 66 Sm}th. "Territorial. Social and Settlement Hierarchies’. pp 127-8 18 sheep and pigs there as ~vell.6v Nonetheless, the Ballyfoyle land ~as only worth a little more than 5d per acre, its economic potential clearly unrealised in a time of local political turmoil. Up until tile close of the Elizabethan period the Purcell family had constantly to be on their guard against armed incursions onto their lands by night-time interlopers looking to steal their livestock or plunder and intimidate their tenants.6s The same was true for the Graces of Courtstown and the Shortals of Ballylorcaine, the principal landowners on the other side of the Nore Valley, in northern Crannagh. Like the Purcells they too were steadfast supporters of the Butlers of Ormond, but because their lands were closer to the MacGiollapadraigs" territory in Laois, they paid more heavily for their allegiance than the Ballyfoyle Purcells did. By the earl}’ 1560s the Graces and the Shortals could expect as little as 2.9 - 3.6d per acre from their respective estates, having suffered more than most as a result of the increase in violence following the rise in Ormond power.6’~ Chart 1 2 Northern tenancies on the Ormond estate, 1593 (excluding manors) Tenant Leasehold Acreage £ s d Rent (per acre) Robert Purcell of Foulkesrath Shanganagh & Coolcrahin c700 3 10 0 1.2d Richard Mor Purcell of Kilmocar Connohy. Kilmocar, etc. 2,410 15 0 0 1.5d Redmund Reagh Purcell of Esker Graigera~e 450 4 0 0 2 Id Donill Fitzpatrick ot’Kilmocar Market Castle & Rosconnell 1,300 5 0 0 09d .lohn ButlerofCastlecomer Aghtubbrid&Cloghvoilhed cl.050 10 0 0 24d Garret O’Do~ ill of Baleen Ball}spellane&Borresmore 1.000 20 0 0 48d BamabyritzDonillFitzpatrick Durrm~ 1.340 10 0 0 18d (Source: Nlichaehnas rental. 1593 (N L.I.. Ms 2506, ff 10v-I Iv): Cal Ftants lre., Eliz. 1, nos 3948 and 4329: C.O.D., vi, no, 99 (3)) Ironically families such as these could not have survived the harsh climate of the mid-to- late sixteenth century without economic aid from the earls of Ormond. Although loyalty to the Ormond banner was directly responsible for their predicament, only the Ormonds had the capacitT to nurse them through their difficulties. As we have seen, the earls possessed a huge ancestral estate - and one which was growing rapidly, especially in the north - and from 1550 onwards they placed this at the service of the northern Anglo-Irish landowning community, offering cheap tenancies as a reward to the Graces and their like for their continued loyalt}. 67 NA.I.. C.P., parcel F. no33. 68 Cal. Ftants h’e. Ehz I., no. 3816. 69 Ibid. Edward 17. no. 946. 19 According to the Ormond rental for Micllaelmas 1593, the tenth earl’s tenants in Fassadinin and Galmov ~sere charged barely 2d per acre for some very large leaseholds there. Details of some of tile tenancies are set out in Chart 1.2 abe.re. The lesser Purcells were particularlv fortunate, three of them occupying almost 3,600 acres in Fassadinin in return for a rent charge of just 1.6d per acre. Of these Robert Purcell of Foul’,esrath got easily the best deal. Possessing a modest 550- acre estate of his o~sn at Foulkesrath, he was able to more than double the amount of land available to him by leasing a fllrther 700 acres at Shanganagh and Coolcrahin close by, for which the tenth earl asked just 1.2d per ac~e. There is no doubt that le:,ses such as these strengthened greatly the bonds that tied the northern Anglo-Irish squires and gentry to the earls of Ormond. To a large extent, they helped the much older feudal ties to continue in operation. By offering such big leaseholds for very little money, the earls made the majority of the local landlords econornically dependent upon them to some extent, buying their Io\altv through an unusual system of estate management that defined profit in political, not financial, terms. Thanks to these giveaxvay Ormond leases, the Anglo-lrish landowning conuntmi~ that still existed in north County Kilkenny circa 1550 remained in place until 1600 and beyond, possessing a considerable amount of cheap leasehold land to exploit as best they could and thereby cushion the blo~ of the overall decline in local property values that accompanied the Ormond- MacGiollapadraig border wars. Tile economic protection offered by’ the Ormonds should not be underestimated, for it had at least one major effect on the north which outlasted the Ormonds" own predominance, as it helped to accelerate the decline of the Gaelic way of life there. Early in the seventeenth century, the local Anglo-Irish landox~ners (Ormond associates all) began to expand into Idough, previously the most unreachable part of tile north. They continued doing so even after the earldom fell into decline follox~ing the accession of the eleventh earl, Walter, in 1614. The principal Anglo-lrish families involved were tile Mountgarret Butlers and various branches of the Purcells. Shortals and ComerfordsJ° and between them they brought to its logical conclusion a policy’ that had been begun by the earls of Onnond in the sixteenth century. Capitalising on the O’Brennans" economic ~.eakness,7 by the beginning of the 1630s they had managed to acquire perhaps as much as a quarter of the entire territory of ldough, thereby insuring its transformation fi’om a wholly Gaelic region to one of mixed ownership where the now relatively ~ealthv Anglo-Irish were rapidly gaining the upper hand. The cultural ramifications of their expansion were soon widened with the arrival by their sides of local New English adventurers such as Sir Cyprian Horsfall, Oliver Wheeler, Henry’ Mainwaring and the English-born Ridgeways, earls of Londonderry.72 Within barely a generation, between 1600 and 1630, Idough had succumbed to the lure of outside riches, with larger and larger parts of it yielded up by the O’Brennans, first for Anglo-Irish, then New English, money. And so it was that the Anglo-Irish families of the north - so often the oppressors of commerce before 1600 - acted as harbingers of tile market economy after that date. Without the Ormonds’ previous protection, they might never have been able to do so. 7O For the Comertbrds on part of the Clan Moriertagh’s land at Rathcally in 1634/5, and also at Clogherank, see N.L.I., Ms. I 1.044 (92), 71 An idea of the po~ ert} of the O’Brennans can be gleaned from a 1621 deed of mortgage, x~here Donogh McFirr O’Brennan 1the mortgager) spoke of his ’urgent and necessara uses’ of 1/18 (stg). quite a modest sum at that date (H.B McCall. The Family of H’andesJi)rd of Ktrkhngton d Castlecomer i London 1904 J. p.262 ). 72 lnq Lagema. Co I,(ilkennx. Charles 1164~ 20 It is interesting to note that the acquisitions by the Mountgarret Butlers and the Purcells et al ill tile uplands of Idough were accompanied by all increasing tendenc~ among tile O’Brennans to embrace English (or, more precisely’, Anglo-Irish) cultural norms. As early as 1604 certain members of tile clan like "James ritz Ed~ard O’Brennan of Rathcallv" began the adoption of English christian names,73 a trend which seems to have become ~idespread b5 April 1635, ~vhen six of the ten clan members who were summoned as jurors to Kilmocar manor court had English-style first names. Meanwhile, English replaced Latin as tile normal language used in legal documents such as deeds of conveyance.75 Eventually, however, the great strides that tile Anglo-lrish landowners had managed to make in Idough despite the Ormonds" downfall were utterly undone largely because of tile earldom’s collapse. Ill 1635/6, cursed with soaring financial problems, Earl Waiter’s successor, James, the twelfth earl and future duke (1633-88), agreed terms x~ith leading members of the royal administration ill Dublin to pass ldough in its entire~’ over to Christopher Wandesford, the Master of the Rolls. It will be shown in Chapter Six below that he had no right to do so. For tile present purposes it will be enough to examine the impact of Wandesford’s arrival, insofar as it affected the locals and helped to alter their hitherto quite positive view of the earldom of Ormond. The twelfth earl’s deal ~ith Wandesford threatened to bring wholesale change in its wake. At once the proprietorial rights of all the other landoxvners in tile area, Gaelic Irish, Anglo- Irish and New English, were overthrown by’ the state. Idough seemed set for a massive upheaval. Wandesford envisaged establishing a private plantation there centred around Castlecomer, bringing ill colonists as tenants fi’om England, skilled farmers and artisans who he hoped x~ould transform the landscape and revolutionise the local economy. His tenants duly began arriving ill Idough from 1638 onwards, and by’ 1641 they had managed to build a small English-style village at Castlecomer, to create a 4,000-acre parkland ill the adjoining hill country, and to open new mining works there.7~ Had tile twelfth earl of Ormond not been close to bankruptcy, Wandesford mi~lt never have gained entry to the region. Traditionally the general improvement in the economy of north Cotmty Kilkenny after 1600 has been associated with the arrival of Wandesford’s little colony at Castlecomer. To an extent this is plausible: with the development of Castlecomer the north began to take on its modem form. However, there is reason to believe that, for the period tip to 1642, the economic importance of the Wandesfords" arrival has been exaggerated. For one thing, the changes at Castlecomer and its surrounding area were actually’ quite modest. The village of Castlecomer, the centre of the little colony, struggled to come to life, and probably had a population of barely two hundred by 1641/2. Mines were already" in operation in the area long before tile Wandesfords came - there are references to a mine (probably a coalmine) operating in the 1490s,77 and to a furnace being worked at Kildergan (alias Kildroyn or Killerghan) in 1622TM - and by’ tile 1630s an ironworks belonging to the earl of Londonderry was also tip and running.79 Likewise, the 73 N.L I.. MS. 4147. p.5. 74 Ibid. Ms I 1.044 192). Although the document is called a View of Frank Pledge, it is realb just the proceedings of a manor court. 75 Ibid. Ains~vorth Reports. Vol. 5. ’Prior-Wandes/brd Papers’. pp 1361-9: McCall, Fatally’of llandesford, p.262 76 McCall. Famih of ll’andesford, pp 77-8: William Nolan. Fassadmm.Land. Settlement & Soclen’ m South-East Ireland. 1600- 1850 (Dublin 19791. pp 54-6. 77 C.S.P.I.. 1601-3 & ,4ddend~t 1565-1654. p.671. 78 Indenture bet~een Walter Archer of Kilkenny. Tirlagh FitzThomas of Kildergan and Laurence. Lord Esmond. 8 Dec. 1622 (N Ll, ~3,’andesford Papers. uncatalogued). Details of this can be found in Nolan, Fassadmm. pp 54 and 229. n.64. 79 McCall. Family ofllkmdesford, Appendix. no. 178. 21 Chart 1.3 Regional corn varieties, (bushels demanded as tithes) 1621 Barhny & rnwnland (with acreage) Crop typPs %lh~at Oats Barley Rye Barley Oat malt malt Calmoy Borrismore (484) 4 4 4 - - Shillellogher Kllbrlcan (159) 2 - - - 2 Kells Crovebeg (c126) 5 - - - 2 Rogerstown (233) 3 - - - 3 Shortalstown (c187) 5 - - - 6 Lemonsto~nn (199) 8 8 8 - - Kildrummy (361) 3 - - - 4 Kilmogeny (186) 1 3 4 - - Kilree (221) 7 - - - 7 Haggard (c81) 6 - - - I0 Dan~immore (c185) i0 - - - i0 Danginbeg (170) 12 - - i0 Rossenarra (242) i0 - -- -- 6 Clonmacshanboy (c185) 4 -- -- 4 Castleho~ell (603) 4 - - - 2 Newchurch (c187) - 5 - 2 - Knocktopher LismacteiEe (721) - 12 - 2 Castleganny (402) - 20 - 6 Kilbeacon (3,510) - i0 - 3 Kiltorcen (365) I0 - - - Ballyhale (666) 9 - Kilkerhill (308) 6 - - Tithe Thtal tnta] crnp (x 10) - 12 120 1 5 50 4 Ii Ii0 3 9 90 6 17 170 - 24 240 4 II ii0 - 8 80 7 21 210 - 16 160 I0 30 3OO 8 30 300 8 24 240 4 12 120 3 9 90 - 7 70 - 14 140 - - 26 260 - 13 130 I0 i0 30 300 9 9 27 270 i0 8 24 240 Wandesfords" plans to establish an iron pot manufactory at Castlecomer ~ere frustrated b~ a long battle over the sale of a pot-making patent,s’~ Admittedly the arrival of the Wandesfords and their tenants did bring some profound changes, especially outside Castlecomer village, in tile surrounding count~’side. Hitherto, because of its mountainous terrain and inhospitable climate, Idough had been predominantly an area of pastoral farming. During the late sixteenth centur}, for example, it ~as stated that the tenants of the earl of Ormond "did manure and sow" only a small part of the earl’s land there, preferring instead to have his lands divided up into a series of "booleys or dai~ places" where they could graze their cattle.8~ But immediately after the annexation of the territo~’ by Christopher Wandesford in 1635, it seems a lot more land was given over to arable farming. One of Wandesford’s tenants is known to have had a naalthouse attached to his home at Castlecomer,s2 while another operated a scythe mill. The scythe mill was especially important. According to one of Christopher Wandesford’s earliest biographers, "it wrought scythes in such abundance that the Irish, who had hitherto suffered their grass ... to rot on the ground, no~ imitated the English manner of mowing and preserving hay’.s3 As Dr. Nolan has noted, there is no reason to cast doubt on the local tradition that the Wandesfords introduced the art of haymaking to Idough.84 Yet this was not so remarkable as it might seem. The changes the Wandesfords made to Idough’s economy were in step with the trends emerging elsewhere in the north of the county in the seventeenth century. With the coming of