THE ENGLISH ADMINISTRATION AND IRELAND

English parliamentary declaration of the realm as an empire affirmed the absolute sovereignty of the king. The state was thus asserted to be the authority dominating all others within the realm. The authority was essentially civil, to which ecclesiastical authority was necessarily subordinated. The civil administration was derived from the monarch in whose court its central activities were based. The government was English, as the realm was defined as that of England to whose monarch subordinate entities belonged. These included French areas and the Channel Islands as well as Wales and Ireland. The Irish administration was, therefore, of marginal interest to the English civil, central administration. This section is concerned to indicate briefly those parts of the London administration which were involved with Irish affairs and which produced documentary material referring to Irish matters. By contrast with Ireland, administrative history in England is well established and more detailed information on the institutions noted here can be found in G. R. Elton, England 1200–1640.

English monarchs, ministers and council

The title ‘lord of Ireland’ continued to be employed by successive English monarchs until in 1541 Henry VIII was proclaimed king of Ireland. The change of title, however, made little difference to the way in which Ireland was governed. In the course of the next one hundred years, the kings and queens of England occasionally took a personal interest in Ireland and directed government policy there, but, on the whole Irish affairs were left in the charge of their chief ministers and council.

CONTINENTAL ACCOUNTS OF IRELAND

The medieval visitor to Ireland frequently seems to remind us of a Victorian traveller in darkest Africa. Through the ages travellers have often emphasised the primitive and unusual in stories and descriptions aimed at a greedy and sensation-minded public. Much of rural western Europe provided or could have provided material for such travellers, even more recently than in pre-Cromwellian Ireland. Until England's breach with Rome much of the geography of Ireland remained unknown except through occasional travellers. Many of these came on pilgrimage from the continent to Saint Patrick's Purgatory or would regard that as an essential place to visit if in Ireland on other business. The accounts of such travellers which have come down to us are of much the same pattern, centred around encounters with local chiefs, usually hospitable and sometimes concerned to secure from their visitors substantial rewards for their attentions.

The bleakness of life outside the castles of the great and the risks and dangers to which visitors were exposed were as clear as they had been in Primate Colton's visitation of Derry in the late fourteenth century, as they had been to Chiericati in 1520, and to Bishop Monluc who visited O'Doherty on Inishowen, just as they were to the first Jesuits Salmeron and Brouet who quickly withdrew from Ireland when they realised that Tyrone feared to entertain them in defiance of Henry VIII's displeasure.

The surviving descriptions which have been located of Charles V's emissaries in Ireland and those of later European monarchs, while business-like regarding the resources of revolting lords like Desmond, O'Brien or O'Neill, are not dissimilar to such early Tudor reports, from viceroys penetrating remote and inaccessible areas, as those of Lord Leonard Grey in the late 1530s.

This work attempts to provide a critical guide to the written sources for early modern Irish history: 1534–1641. The task of researchers in this area was made particularly difficult by the burning of much relevant documentary material in the Public Record Office of Ireland at the beginning of the Irish civil war in 1922 and by the destruction of other records before and since then. The problem of the loss of documents has to a large extent determined the way in which this volume has been organised. The first four chapters assess the administrative sources, civil and ecclesiastical, central and local, Irish, English and foreign. The approach in these chapters is administrative in order that all the documentation produced by early modern institutions in Ireland or elsewhere in relation to Ireland can be noted. This enables the surviving documentation to be fitted into an administrative context and emphasises the need to consider the surviving documents in relation to what has been destroyed. The approach in the next two chapters is chronological as the contemporary writings, maps and drawings are described. The references in these chapters are necessarily selective but the chronological arrangement allows the most significant types to be noted. In chapter seven archival collections with early modern material are briefly described. The large number of repositories listed here was considered necessary because of the destruction of so much of the archives of the central and local Irish administrations. Many of the documents noted here are not archival in the strictest sense of the word, for which reason it was thought useful to indicate where possible the provenance of the documents noted.

It is not always easy to decide whether in Ireland matters are local rather than national. In Gaelic Ireland political power was dispersed among a large number of lordships varying in size from a province to a landed estate. Local allegiances and autonomy were usually more important than affairs at a national level. Traditional associations between family communities and localities were sometimes so strong that territorial names were originally peoples' names. In the English sphere, from the time of Richard II administrative convenience tended to visualise a feudal hierarchy on a provincial basis perhaps by analogy with the ecclesiastical structure. (There was, however, some uncertainty as to the number of provinces, Meath being for some traditional purposes the fifth province or cúige, to use the Gaelic term. Louth continued to be regarded as within the Ulster fifth until after the incorporation of Meath in Leinster when Louth was added to that province.) However, the shrinkage of the English administration in Ireland after the Bruce invasion led extensively to a breakdown of relations between local and central government. The area normally responsive to royal administration in Ireland, known from the middle of the fifteenth century as the English Pale, extending south from Carlingford Lough to Dalkey and west from the Irish sea to include most of the modern counties of Louth and Dublin as well as parts of Meath and Kildare, represents a small territory in parts of two provinces. Within the Pale and in limited areas outside, the remnants of the Anglo-Norman structure of local government survived into the sixteenth century. In most parts of Ireland, however, by 1534, the autonomous lordship was the only local authority.

Any attempt to assess archival collections of early modern Irish history documents is made difficult by the absence of adequate guides to the material. None of the main repositories has published an up to date catalogue to the documents in its custody. Indeed, many of the published catalogues date to the nineteenth or early twentieth century and are, very often, little more than a brief list of the documents in the respective collections. Information is rarely provided as to the provenance or origin of the document. Even the brief description of the document is sometimes inaccurate or misleading. The result is that research in early modern Irish history can be very exciting. The possibility of discovering unknown or unused documentation still exists. However, the absence of adequate guides can also make research very frustrating. Close scrutiny of bibliographies, particularly those in post-graduate theses, or, better still, verbal consultation with other researchers is often the easiest way to acquire up to date information on the contents of the repositories.

R. J. Hayes, Manuscript sources for the history of Irish civilisation is the most comprehensive guide to sources for all periods of Irish history. The eleven volume work which is being continued in supplementary volumes, lists most collections now in public repositories as well as many in private collections. Hayes planned this work in connection with the National Library of Ireland and his work is the best guide to manuscripts in N.L.I. It is not quite so satisfactory for other repositories of early modern material because it tended to rely on what was listed in the printed catalogues.

The capital city of Ireland in the early modern period was unquestionably Dublin. It should follow that Irish civil, central administrative affairs were located at Dublin. In so far as it was the seat of the chief governor it could also be argued that Dublin was the governmental centre. The answer was not always that simple. For most of the period it was not the ecclesiastical capital. For crucial civil matters, especially after 1534, London asserted itself as the central authority. Even in times of weakness London endeavoured to reserve a right to intervene by distinguishing between the monarch's locum tenens (his lieutenant), usually resident at court, and a deputy in Ireland.

From as early as the mid thirteenth century and possibly earlier, the appointment of chancellors, treasurers and other officials functioning in connection with the chancery and the exchequer created a structure of central government. Under a dominating chief governor resident in London other office-holders might only transact routine functions. Yet it might be assumed that the tradition of a functioning chancery and exchequer was unbroken even if their location was sometimes removed temporarily out of Dublin. In times of royal strength, when the monarch's office-holders in England could function for Ireland, the central Irish civil administration might appear to be more of a local authority. On such occasions Dublin would not traverse the central assumptions of London preferring to assert its right to channel all decisions from and to the monarch. That only occasionally Dublin did assert its omnicompetence should not delude the student into uncritically accepting unqualified assertions of monarchical control for London.

In a survey of the historiography of early modern Ireland, it might appear quite justifiable to dismiss anything written before the scientifically-minded nineteenth century. To do so, however, would be to erode from that history the nuances that have overlain all thinking about Ireland and particularly the successive phases in which historical writers were dominated by one presupposition or another. Nor would it seem justifiable to omit an analysis of the changing concepts in historical writing and the steps in the elaboration of a methodology. Reference was made in chapter five to some of the main contemporary writers who sometimes included an account of the events of the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries in their writings. This chapter concentrates on interpretations since 1641 with particular reference to the use made of documentary sources. It begins with a brief introductory account of Irish historiography before that date.

THE PRE-RENAISSANCE TRADITION

Gaelic literature looked back to a long tradition in which few changes can be detected over centuries. In Gaelic Ireland there was a tacit ignoring of Hiberno-Norman civilisation. Until the end of the sixteenth century the writers were concerned with the fortunes of the families who were their patrons. References beyond the Gaelic sphere were almost accidental. Irish learning was essentially concerned with people, with families, with the genealogies regarded as the title deeds of rulers, with poetry in their honour, with annals associated with centres of learning and religion, with the history of persons and institutions, with individual parts of the Gaelic sphere, but never with the history of Ireland as we understand it today.

The modern institutional history of the church in Ireland begins in the twelfth century with the establishment of the diocesan system in four provinces. From the coming of the Normans under Henry II the church was closely associated with the state and this continued until 1870 when the church of Ireland was disestablished. As the reformation and the English breach with Rome in the sixteenth century led to the splitting up of the church, the sources must be considered in the subdivisions of ‘church of Ireland’ and ‘Roman catholic’. In the seventeenth century presbyterianism brought into the country by Scots planters was organised as a third Christian church. No one since W. D. Killen, with the possible exception of Edward M. Eyre, has attempted to write the history of the church in Ireland as a single organisation. Yet the consciousness of the insularity of Ireland, which breaks through the writers, frequently reveals the reality of the institution in its similarities and differences from the church universal.

The continuity in the Irish church before and after the breach with Rome needs to be stressed. It is for this reason that this chapter begins with a short account of the church before the breach. It might also be noted that this chapter is concerned primarily with the documentation produced by the different organisations of the early modern churches. It is not concerned to document the religious practices of early modern Ireland which may not always be revealed in the ecclesiastical sources.

BEFORE THE BREACH

Institutionally, the church in Ireland was organised as elsewhere, the unit being the diocese whose ordinary official was the bishop or his vicar.

MAPS

The assumptions and axioms of contemporary commentators and observers changed drastically in early modern Ireland and notably between the mid sixteenth century and the mid seventeenth century. In no body of source material does this emerge so dramatically as in contemporary maps. Ireland, from being one of the perimeter areas represented by symbolic amorphous shapes, becomes involved in the western cosmographical revolution. Thanks to the necessities of defending the English monarch's realm from possible invasion, coastal maps of a new type emerge as strategic points are fortified and mapped. The administrative expansion following the defeat of the Geraldine rebellion is gradually recorded in terms of the necessities of coastal defence, of conquest, of colonisation and of administration. All this is carried out by a great variety of amateur mappers of varying quality, many of them improved through contacts with professional cartographers from Italy or the Low Countries. It is not always clear whether the maps were the works of soldiers, engineers, draughtsmen or even cartographers, the latter conceivably perfecting their products in studios remote from the scenes depicted. The presence of substantial numbers of documents coloured brightly is a reminder that the period was one in which painting was increasingly in vogue. Administrators and scholars with literary ambitions frequently employed maps in which they embodied questionable references to islands, sea monsters and other Irish mythological allusions, and often accompanied their references with substantial documentation. This suggests the need for alertness because modern repository policy detaches drawings from descriptions. It is necessary to bear in mind that to be adequately critical the student must consider the totality presented by an author to his patron.