Byrne's Dictionary of Irish Local History (24 page)

finial
. In
Gothic
architecture, the carved ornamental foliage adorning a spire or pinnacle.

fire, ordeal by
. In medieval times, the means by which an accused person cleared himself of an accusation either by walking barefooted and blindfolded over red-hot ploughshares or by grasping a red-hot iron in the hand. Feet or hands were then bound and if after three days the wound had healed the accused was declared innocent. If they remained unhealed he was guilty.

fireboot, firebote
. A tenant's entitlement to an allowance of fuel from the land he occupies.

firkin
. 1: A small cask or barrel 2: A measure of capacity which varied according to commodity but which in England was equivalent to a quarter barrel or one half of a
kilderkin
.

First Fruits, Board of
. First fruits represented the first year's revenue of all Anglican ecclesiastical benefices which was payable as royal taxation after the Reformation (25 Hen. VIII, c. 22), replacing payments to the papacy known as
annates
. Clergymen were also liable for the twentieth parts, a tax of 12 pence in the pound annually out of all benefices as they were valued at the Reformation. In 1711 the
twentieth parts
were forgiven and the first fruits were granted to the Board of First Fruits, a body established for the purpose of buying up impropriations (
tithe
in lay hands). Composed chiefly of Anglican prelates, the board was empowered to finance the building and reparation of churches, purchase
glebe
land and construct glebe houses. It was funded from 1778 by an annual parliamentary grant – usually of about £5,000 – and received £46,863 as compensation for the loss of clerical boroughs at the
Act of Union
. The annual grant was increased to £60,000 in 1813 but reduced to £10,000 in 1823. In all, more than £1 million was disbursed between the Union and 1823. Initially the money was used to provide interest-free loans to clergymen to build glebe houses. From 1808 (48 Geo. III, c. 65) the board was given the freedom to apply the funds as it saw fit and it began to make non-repayable grants to clergymen with low incomes. This impacted significantly on church organisation. The number of benefices increased by 25%, there was a 30% increase in the number of churches, the number of glebe houses rose from 354 to 829 and the number of absentee clergymen declined. In 1833 the board's functions and income were transferred to the Ecclesiastical Commissioners for Ireland as part of the reforming
Church Temporalities (Ireland) Act
.
See
impropriate.

first instance, case of
. A case other than one on appeal.

flachter
. A type of push plough used to remove the
scraw
or sod and prepare the turf for cutting. It consisted of a semi-circular or shovel-shaped blade mounted on a shaft which was topped by a broad cross-bar. The blade of the flachter was driven under the sod by powerful thrusts of the thigh against the cross-bar. (Evans, ‘The flachter', p. 82–7.)

fletcher
. A person who makes or deals in arrows or bows and arrows.

Flight of the Earls
. The departure from Ireland on 14 September 1607 of Hugh O'Neill, earl of Tyrone, and Rory O'Donnell, earl of Tyrconnell, Cuconnacht Maguire and about 100 others, the reasons for which remain unclear. Apologists for the earls claim the flight was precipitated by fears that the government was plotting against them or present it as a tactical retreat to seek aid personally from Philip II. Others have argued that the extension of English law to Ulster, the persecution of Catholics and attempts by the government to drive a wedge between Gaelic overlords and their vassals represented developments to which the earls were unable to adapt. Government apologists claim the earls fled to escape justice following the discovery of a plot by O'Neill to seize Dublin Castle and establish a new government. Their flight without permission created the opening for the plantation of Ulster. (Canny, ‘The flight of the earls, pp. 380–99; McCavitt, ‘The flight of the earls, 1607', pp. 159–73.)

flotsam
. Goods afloat in the sea after a ship has sunk or run aground.

flux, bloody
. Highly infectious, bacillary dysentery which was transmitted by contaminated food, fingers and flies and characterised by bowel colic, painful and exhausting straining and a bloody discharge from the bowels. It was recorded in Ireland as early as 763 ad and was known as
ruith fola
. According to Gerard Boate, a seventeenth-century Dutch physician, dysentery was so common in Ireland that the English inhabitants called it the ‘country disease'.

folio
. 1: A leaf of a manuscript 2: A leaf number as in f.8, which means folio 8. The reference f.8
r
. indicates the front of the leaf (
recto
), the side to be read first, f.8
v
. is a reference to the back of the leaf (
verso
).

Foras feasa ar Éirinn
(A basis for knowledge about Ireland). Written by Geoffrey Keating (1580–1644?), an
Old English
Catholic priest,
Foras feasa ar Éirinn
is a narrative history of Ireland down to the twelfth century. A mixture of history, myth and religion, Keating's history tells the story of the Catholic community in Ireland with particular emphasis on the shared heritage of both native Irish (
Gaeil
) and Old English (
Sean Ghaill
) Catholics. Probably completed in 1634 and not printed for nearly a hundred years, it was the most popular book ever written in Irish and circulated widely in manuscript form. Keating collected a vast amount of material including stories, historical tracts and poems and gained access to manuscripts such as the
Book of Leinster
. He used succession lists of Irish kings as the framework to hold together his narrative. Keating was well versed in the writings of Welsh, English and Old English commentators on Ireland as is evident in the preface to the book where he savages, what he claims were, the false accounts of Ireland produced by
Giraldus Cambrensis, Edmund Spenser, William Camden, Richard Stanihurst, Meredith Hanmer
and
Fynes Moryson
. He was born in Tipperary, a descendant of early English settlers, and was educated to the church at Bordeaux and (probably) Rheims before returning to serve in Ireland in the early seventeenth century. (Keating,
Foras feasa ar Éirinn;
Cunningham,
The world of Geoffrey Keating
.)

forestall
. 1: To waylay 2: The offence of impeding normal trading by preventing, purchasing or diverting goods before they reach the market in order to raise prices. Also known as regrating.

forma pauperis
. Permission granted by the courts to a pauper to sue without cost. It was introduced by 10 Chas. I, c. 17 (1635) and was allowed where a pauper swore that he was not worth five pounds and acquired a certificate from a lawyer stating that he had good cause to sue.

form of the beads
. Introduced in 1538 by the Protestant archbishop of Dublin, George Browne, the ‘form of the beads' was a statement of faith to be read during divine service. It repudiated papal authority, pronounced papal bulls and excommunications worthless, affirmed the supremacy of the monarch and outlined church teaching (which, at that time, differed little from Catholic teaching). (Maxwell,
Irish history
, pp. 123–4.)

'49 officers
. Officers and soldiers who had served in Ireland before 5 June 1649 and who were entitled to arrears of service pay (‘49 arrears') which were to be discharged out of forfeited land in Ireland.

forty-shilling freeholder
.
See
franchise.

fosse
. A defensive ditch around a farmstead such as a ringfort.

fosterage
. The Gaelic practice of fostering out children with the intention of developing or reinforcing political and military connections between the lesser and greater lords. Lesser septs paid to foster the child of a noble family and to have their own children fostered in the homes of nobles. Thus the whole business of fosterage was usually accompanied by the transfer of cattle. Fosterage facilitated the assimilation of the fostering sept into the lord's protection and affinity. Together with
gossipred
, it was banned by the English administration in 1366.
See
Kilkenny, Statutes of. (Fitzsimons ‘Fosterage', pp. 138–49.)

foundling hospital
. A hospital founded principally to remove abandoned and destitute children from the streets. Two were established in Ireland in the eighteenth century, one each in Dublin (1707) and Cork (c. 1750), both in association with
houses of industry
. Attention to the well-being of inmates was notoriously slipshod and for the majority of children admission to a foundling hospital amounted to a death sentence. Between 1737 and 1743, 2,700 children out of almost 4,000 foundling admissions perished in the Dublin hospital. Conditions appear to have worsened over the years. Reporting in 1827, the commissioners of Irish education inquiry claimed a survival rate of one child in five. Children were accepted from the age of one year, received schooling from age eight to twelve and then progressed to apprenticeships if they managed to survive that long. The Irish Miscellaneous Estimates committee recommended that admissions should cease in Dublin in 1830 but there remained a large number of children such as children at nurse, sick children and newly-apprenticed children who needed support beyond that date. The Cork institution was shut down in 1856. (Foundling Hospital.)

Four Courts
. 1: The four central royal courts of justice were
king's bench, chancery
, the
exchequer
, and
common pleas
. All evolved from the undifferentiated
curia regis
or king's council, the assembly of advisers and officials which attended the king. The individual courts appear to have developed from specialised smaller committees operating within the
curia regis
which gradually became formalised as separate institutions replete with their own staffs. One of the earliest to develop was the exchequer, the administrative department presided over by the treasurer which controlled income and expenditure. On its judicial side the barons of the exchequer resolved disputes concerning the royal revenues. Chancery, the royal secretariat through which all important state and legal documents passed and where records of the rolls were preserved, was headed by the king's secretary and chief adviser, the
lord chancellor
. The chancellor's role as adviser or conscience to the king in the resolution of cases for which common law provided no remedy led to the delegation of equitable jurisdiction to that court. The sheer volume of work coming before the
curia regis
and the inconvenience to litigants of having to trail around the country after the king prompted the creation of a permanent court at Westminster which heard civil disputes between commoners. This practice was replicated in Ireland in the thirteenth century when the itinerant judges sat in Dublin to hear common pleas. The
curia regis
retained its judicial role and continued to hear criminal cases as well as civil pleas. When a chief justice and
puisne
judges were appointed, this side of the
curia regis
became a separate court too, the court of king's bench. Common law was introduced to Ireland after the English model but because the king's writ ran only within the Pale it was not until the seventeenth century that the Gaelic
Brehon law
was finally supplanted by the royal and local courts 2: The complex of buildings on the bank of the Liffey designed by Thomas Cooley and constructed (with some modifications) by James Gandon. The site was originally intended as a location for a records repository but in 1785 it was decided to relocate the superior courts there from their unsatisfactory accommodation at St Michael's Hill near Christ Church. Comprising a central domed pile and wings which form two quadrangles, the four courts were housed in different corners of the complex. A new building was added to accommodate the rolls court and a
nisi prius
court was later erected. (Culliton, ‘The Four Courts, Dublin', pp. 116–131.)

Four Masters, Annals of the
. The popular name for
Annála Ríoghachta Éireann
, the
Four Masters
is a synthesis of earlier annals, recording events in Ireland from earliest times down to the beginning of the seventeenth century. The work was compiled by Micheál Ó Cléirigh, Fear Feasa Ó Maoil Chonaire, Cú Choigcríche Ó Cléirigh and Cú Choigcríche Ó Duibhgeannain in Donegal during the years 1632–6. Ó Cléirigh, a Franciscan, travelled throughout Ireland assembling materials for research on history, historiography and other subjects. The
Annals
include detailed descriptions of events of local significance, items of national interest and a small number of references to international events together with references to social and material culture. They are particularly useful for family relationships and references to men of learning.
See
John O'Donovan. (O'Donovan,
Annals.
)

franchise, elective
. Until the twentieth century the qualifications which enabled citizens to exercise the elective franchise in Ireland were complex, discriminatory and exclusive. Catholics were disfranchised entirely from 1728 until 1793 and were debarred from parliament from 1691 until 1829 because they would not take the
oath of abjuration
and declare against Catholic doctrine. Between 1704 and 1780 Protestant dissenters, although disbarred from municipal corporations, remained eligible to vote and sit in parliament. Irish women became eligible to vote in local government elections from 1898 but were denied the parliamentary franchise until 1918 when those aged over 30 were enfranchised. In 1923 the Irish Free State reduced the age qualification for women to 21 and the government of Northern Ireland followed suit in 1928. Before the
Act of Union
the 300 seats in the Irish house of commons were filled by the votes of a tiny minority of the population. Trinity College, for example, with an electorate of 92 fellows and scholars, sent two MPs to parliament while 55 corporations, each comprising 12 or 13 burgesses, sent 110. Knocktopher had a single qualified voter in 1783. In all, 97 boroughs (55 corporation, 36 freeman and 6 manor boroughs) were controlled by an individual patron or patrons. Hence, although some boroughs were hotly disputed, contested elections were largely confined to the 32 county constituencies, the eight county boroughs, Londonderry and Swords. Apart from membership of a corporation,
freeman
status or, in the case of the 12 ‘potwalloping' boroughs, residency of six months (one year from 1782), eligibility to vote was restricted to the forty-shilling freeholders (owners or lessees for lives of land worth forty-shillings above rent). The forty-shilling freehold was the qualification under which Catholics obtained the right to vote following Hobart's 1793 relief act. It was a short-lived concession. The emancipation act of 1829 – which permitted Catholics to sit in parliament – abolished the forty-shilling franchise by raising the threshold to ten pounds and at a stroke reduced the county electorate from over 200,000 to 37,000. The Representation of the People (Ireland) Act (2 & 3 Will. IV, c. 88, 1832) increased the county electorate to 60,000 by admitting more leaseholders and the borough franchise to 30,000 by introducing a single qualification, occupation of property valued at £10 or more. Compared with England and Scotland the Irish elective franchise was hopelessly inequitable. In England one person in five was entitled to vote, in Scotland one in eight yet only one in 20 held the franchise in Ireland. The 1850 Irish Franchise Act (13 & 14 Vict., c. 69) transformed the electoral process dramatically. The county threshold was raised to £12 but the franchise was now extended to embrace occupiers (and not only owners or leaseholders) of holdings valued at £12 or more. As a result, the electorate more than doubled, rising from 60,597 in 1832 to 135,245 by 1851–2. Under the Franchise Act the borough occupier franchise was lowered to £8, a threshold that was subsequently halved from 1868 by the Representation of the People (Ireland) Act (31 & 32 Vict., c. 49). Proportional inequities in the franchise were removed throughout the United Kingdom when a single qualification of £10 was admitted by the 1884 Representation of the People Act. A year later new constituencies were created with the abolition of all but nine of the boroughs and the subdivision of the counties and the boroughs of Belfast and Dublin. Almost 750,000 people were now entitled to vote in parliamentary elections, a figure which climbed to over two million by 1918 when males over the age of 21 and females aged 30 or over were enfranchised (7 & 8 Geo. V, cc 64, 65). Until the introduction of the secret ballot in 1872 (35 &36 Vict., c. 33), balloting was a public affair with the elector's preference being declared aloud and registered alongside his name. Inevitably this enabled landlords to influence their tenants' votes. By the time the secret ballot was introduced, however, tenants had already begun to exercise their franchise unfettered by such intimidation.
See
borough. (Hoppen,
Elections
.)