Byrne's Dictionary of Irish Local History (21 page)

Education Inquiry (1824–27)
. The Irish Education Inquiry was established by royal commission in 1824 in response to Catholic disquiet over the activities of state-funded, proselytising educational societies, the paucity of funding for Catholic schools, the administration of the
lord lieutenant's school fund
and the extensive state support for the
Kildare Place Society
. Of the five commissioners all but one, Anthony Blake, were Protestants. In addition, Leslie Foster, MP, was a member of the Kildare Place Society and William Grant supported the
London Hibernian Society
. Nevertheless, the commission's nine reports – based on statistical evidence, oral and written submissions and exploratory interviews with Catholic prelates – condemned the Protestant educational bodies, recommended the reduction and ultimate withdrawal of public money from the Kildare Place Society and proposed the absorption of existing voluntary schools into a state system under a new board of management. This board, the commissioners recommended, would oversee schools of general instruction in which Catholics and Protestants would receive a common literary and moral but separate religious education. To this end two lay teachers should be appointed to each school, one of whom must be a Catholic in a predominantly Catholic area or a Presbyterian in a predominantly Presbyterian area. Although Protestant ministers would have access to the schools for the purpose of religious instruction, the spiritual education of Catholic children would fall within the compass of the lay Catholic teacher. The board would receive title to all schoolhouses and be the sole authority for teacher appointments and dismissals. It would hire inspectors, control all moneys related to school-house maintenance and would exercise jurisdiction over texts for general instruction. Despite numerous attempts to bridge the gulf between the Anglican and Catholic hierarchies concerning gospel extracts to be used during common instruction, the commissioners failed to come up with a formula to satisfy all sides. The commission's failure to achieve consensus resulted in the appointment in 1828 of a
select committee
of 21 members under Thomas Spring-Rice which proposed a system of united education under a salaried board of education that would safeguard the religious beliefs of pupils. Ministers of all denominations would oversee the religious instruction of their respective denominations and, subject to approval, the board would print books recommended by the different episcopal authorities for religious instruction. Four days were to be set aside for combined literary and moral education, the remaining two days being assigned for separate religious instruction. School buildings (subject to local provision of a site), teacher-training and gratuities, school requisites and the appointment of inspectors would be funded or part-funded from public money. The report of the select committee was opposed by the Established church and welcomed by Catholic prelates. Nothing came of it, however, until 1831 when its key recommendations became the founding principles of Stanley's new system of national education for Ireland. The second report of the commission of Irish education inquiry (1826–7) comprises an extensive survey of existing school provision at parish level abstracted from the returns of Protestant and Catholic clergymen. Teachers' names and salaries are given, together with details on attendance, religious composition of the pupils and school location. (Education Inquiry; Akenson,
The Irish education experiment
, pp. 92–102.)
See
Education, National System of.

Education, National System of
. The national system of primary education was established in 1831. The regulations for the conduct of the system were founded not on statute but on a series of instructions contained in a letter from Edward Stanley, chief secretary for Ireland, to the duke of Leinster. These regulations derived primarily from an 1828 select committee report on Irish education (see Education Inquiry) that had in turn been informed by earlier commissions and inquiries. Stanley's original letter has not survived but two slightly different versions were published during the early years of the system (see Akenson below for both versions). In his letter, Stanley reviewed developments in Irish education to date. He declared the
Kildare Place Society
, then in receipt of considerable public funds, to be incapable of allaying Catholic fears of proselytisation and therefore not a fit body to be entrusted with responsibility for national education in Ireland. He then proceeded to outline the system that was to be established in Ireland. A superintending board of education, the Commissioners of Education in Ireland, was to be created, composed of men of high personal character including leading ecclesiastics of high rank from the different denominations. This board would exercise complete control over schools that connected with the system. The chief purpose of the national system was to educate children of all persuasions in the same school. Accordingly the board would look with favour on joint applications for aid from Catholics and Protestants. A local contribution of one-third of school building costs together with provision for furniture and books and a contribution towards a teacher's salary were required for any school to receive public funds. Schools would be kept open four or five days each week for moral and literary instruction and the remaining day or two was to be set aside for the religious education of pupils by their respective clergymen. The commissioners would exercise complete control over the funds voted by parliament and over the textbooks to be used in the schools. Local managers would have the right to appoint and dismiss teachers but the commissioners also had the power to dismiss in cases where they were dissatisfied with the conduct of the school. Teachers were to be hired from model or training schools to be established by the board. However well-intended, the national school system very rapidly drifted away from the blueprint outlined by Stanley. The churches exerted powerful pressure on the weak supervisory board of education and within decades the system became
de facto
denominational. For many years the Church of Ireland refused to have any dealings with the national system, many Anglican clergymen believing that the education of children was properly a matter for the established state church. An Anglican institution, the
Church Education Societ
y, was founded to compete with the national system but by the 1870s the expense of maintaining the society drove it into the state system. The board of education published annual reports on all aspects of the administration of the system and accumulated a vast amount of detailed information on local schools through the reports of visiting inspectors, applications for connection, school registers, correspondence, records of salaries and grants and the investigation of complaints. Detailed studies of many local national schools are possible using these sources which are held in the
National Archives
.
See
Cowper Commission, Belmore Commission, general lesson, model schools, payment-by-results, Powis Commission, Stopford rule, vested schools. (Akenson,
The Irish education experiment
; Coolahan,
Irish education
, pp. 3–51.)

Education, Report on
(1791). In 1788 a committee of the Irish house of commons was formed to examine contemporary educational provision. The work was concluded in 1791 but the report was neither presented nor published and no copies of it have survived. However, the committee's findings were made available to the Commissioners of Education Inquiry (1806–12) and the Endowed Schools Commission (1856) and it is through their reports that the 1791 report can be reconstructed. The parliamentarians were severely critical of existing educational provision (
see
diocesan, royal, parish and charter schools) and developed a set of proposals designed to rid the school system of contentious sectarian features. They proposed to place the parish schools under local control (involving lay Catholic representation) and grant access to clergymen of all denominations to minimise the possibility of proselytisation. Overall direction and supervision of the system would be vested in a state central board of control. Although these proposals remained dormant for decades they set the agenda for the early nineteenth century debate on education out of which the national system emerged in 1831. (Corcoran,
State policy
, pp. 149–191; Akenson,
The Irish education experiment
, pp. 69– 74.)
See
Education, Commissioners of.

effigy tomb
. A tomb bearing a likeness of the deceased. The sides of the tomb may be adorned with coats of arms and religious iconography, all of which help to identify the deceased and illuminate aspects of contemporary religious devotion. Also known as a table tomb.

éiric, éraic
. (Ir.) A body fine (compensation) payable under the
Brehon law
system for homicide. The payment was in two parts, payment for the injury (
éiric
) and an honour price (
lóg n-enech
) related to the rank of the individual killed. The
éiric
comprised a fixed payment of seven
cumals
(female slaves but more usually their equivalent value in livestock) for a freeman and was paid to the
derbfine
or agnatic kin of the dead man. One-third of the
éiric
was paid to the victim's lord if he played a part in securing the fine. The honour-price was divided between the victim's maternal and paternal kin. In the event of a murderer defaulting, the blood fine devolved to his kin group and if they failed to provide compensation the victim's kinsmen were obliged to wage a blood-feud to exact retribution.

ejectment
. Eviction, the legal remedy for the non-payment of rent.

ell
. A linear measure equivalent to 45 inches, used to measure linen cloth.

eloign
. (Fr.,
eloigner
, to remove to a distance) To carry off goods beyond the jurisdiction of the sheriff.
See
withernam.

embattled
. An architectural term to describe a building boasting battlements. These were not always for defensive purposes. The parish churches of the fifteenth century (and the Gothic revival churches of the nineteenth) were embattled for decorative purposes.

embracery
. The offence of influencing a jury illegally and corruptly.

embrasure
. A window or door with internally bevelled or chamfered sides.

enceinte
. An enclosing wall or fortification.

Encumbered Estates Acts
. Steep poor law rates and declining rental income during the famine drove many landowners into insolvency. The Encumbered Estates Acts (11 & 12 Vict., c. 48, 1848 and 12 & 13 Vict., c. 77, 1849) were intended to resolve the problem of massive indebtedness by facilitating the sale of encumbered (indebted) estates, discharging the debts and providing purchasers with clean title. Properly this should have been the responsibility of
chancery
but that court proved unable to meet the challenge of large scale indebtedness. The government hoped the new legislation would break the log-jam and transform the face of Irish agriculture with an injection of capital from Britain. The 1849 act superseded and improved the earlier act (which would have clogged up the courts with disputes about title) by providing for the establishment of an encumbered estates court presided over by three commissioners or judges to process the sales. The legislation stated that where any land or lease of land was subject to encumbrances the value of which exceeded half the net annual rent, any encumbrancer (creditor) on such land or lease could apply to the commissioners for the sale of the land or lease and so discharge the encumbrances thereon. All encumbrancers, except the person on whose application the sale had been ordered (and even the latter if the commissioners allowed), could bid for the encumbered property and the successful bidder was vested with an indefeasible title by the court. The judges were authorised to arrange exchanges and divisions – even if lands were not subject to be sold under the act – if this would facilitate the sale of the encumbered property. They were also empowered to sell lands included in different applications in the same sale. The act did not provide, as the
Devon Commission
had recommended, that any of the purchase money should go to tenants who had carried out permanent improvements. It simply allowed for the replacement of one landlord by another. By 1859 over 3,000 estates amounting to some five million acres had passed into the hands of new (mostly Irish) landlords, many of whom immediately set about evicting tenants. In 1858 the encumbered estates court was superseded by the
landed estate court
which, in turn, became the land judges court in 1877. The records of sales conducted under the encumbered estates acts can be found in the National Archives. Advertisements for the sale of properties, known as estate rentals, contain much to interest the local historian including maps, extents, contents, valuation, details of title together with tenants' names, their rents and tenure. (Lyons,
Illustrated incumbered estates.)

endowment
. A gift of money or property to an institution or person. Institutional endowments may comprise the provision of an income or a contribution towards construction, equipping or furnishing costs. The equivalent in human terms was the dowry a woman brought to her marriage.

enfeoff
. To invest with a
fee
or
fief
, to grant.

enfeoffment
. 1: A deed giving a person the
fee
of an estate 2: An estate obtained in this way.

English bill
.
See
civil bill.

engross
. To enclose land with hedges and ditches.

engrosser
. A court official who levied arrears of debts owing to the crown.

entail
. The succession to an entailed estate is limited to a specific line of heirs so that it cannot be sold or passed to anyone else. The holder's interest is that of a tenant for life (
see
life estate). Entails could be barred or destroyed and land freed for sale by a fictitious lawsuit in the court of
common pleas
known as a
recovery
. After 1834 a new process known as a disentailing deed removed the need for such fictitious and expensive actions by enabling an entail to be barred by a simple deed of conveyance.
See De Donis Conditionalibus
.