Byrne's Dictionary of Irish Local History (32 page)

BOOK: Byrne's Dictionary of Irish Local History
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Irish Society
. Formed in 1609 by 12 shareholding companies of the city of London, the Society of the Governors and Assistants, London, of the New Plantation in Ulster within the Realm of Ireland (or Irish Society) was granted the city and county of Derry to plant in return for fulfilling certain conditions. Solid defences were to be constructed about Derry city and Coleraine and the native Irish were to be expelled and replaced by imported British settlers. Slow progress in meeting these stipulations resulted in fines, sequestration of rents and revenues and the voiding of the society's charter on several occasions. Nevertheless, the companies were reluctant to dispense with native Irish tenants who proved willing to pay high rents. The South Sea Bubble economic collapse in 1720 ended a profitable period for the shareholders forcing several companies to sell out and a few, strapped for cash, proceeded to lease at low rents but with high entry fines. The remaining holdings were disposed of in the late nineteenth century as a result of the Land War and the various land purchase acts. The Foyle fisheries, the last major asset of the society, were sold in 1952. (Moody,
The Londonderry plantation
; PRONI,
Guide to the records of the Irish Society and the London companies.)

Irish Society for Promoting the Education of the Native Irish through the Medium of their own Language
. Founded in 1818, the Irish Society was a proselytising bible group which sought conversions in Ireland through the medium of the Irish language. Teaching missions were established in Cavan, Kerry, Tipperary, Limerick, in all the western counties and on the islands. The society established a system of elementary education involving paid teachers and inspectors and provided a supply of reading material. Its impact as a proselytising body was minimal.
See
Second Reformation.

ironsides
. Cromwellian soldiers.

J

j
. The Roman numeral for the number 1 which was used at the end of a sequence of numbers probably to deter fraudulent additions. Thus, iijd. = 3d. The practice is still in use in medical prescriptions.

jacks
. Leather quilted coats, occasionally plated with iron, worn by native Irish horsemen during the sixteenth century.

jamb
. A wall, screen or partition in the lobby of a vernacular cottage. A spy window was usually inserted in the jamb to allow light to penetrate into the living area from the open door and to enable visitors to be viewed. Jamb walls are associated with centrally-located hearths and are typically eastern features.
See
hearth-lobby house, direct-entry house.

jetsam
. Goods or any other objects thrown overboard to keep a ship afloat.

jointure
. 1: An annuity payable to a landlord's widow charged on the rents and profits of the land for her lifetime 2: An estate settled on a wife to be taken in lieu of dower.
See
widow's dower.

journey
. A punitive incursion by crown forces into the territory of the native Irish. Journeys might be of a week's duration and were assembled by writ of the governor's privy seal. Incursions conducted by the sheriff and his
posse comitatus
were known as ‘roads'.
See
hosting.

Judicature Act, Supreme Court of
(1877). The Irish equivalent of legislation introduced in England in 1873–5, the Irish Judicature Act (40 & 41 Vict., c. 57) radically re-modelled the administration of the courts in Ireland. The existing courts (
chancery
, queen's bench,
common pleas, exchequer, probate
, matrimonial causes,
admiralty
and
landed estates
) were united into one supreme court which was divided into the high court and the court of appeal in Ireland. The high court comprised five divisions initially: chancery, queen's bench, common pleas, exchequer and probate and matrimonial (admiralty was to abolished and merged with queen's bench upon the death or resignation of the then judge of admiralty). Two further judicature acts (1887, 1897) resulted in the amalgamation of the courts of common pleas, exchequer, probate and matrimonial and admiralty with queen's bench so that by the close of the century the high court had but two divisions, queen's bench and chancery.
See
king's bench. (Newark,
Notes
, pp. 24–5.)

jumper
. A term used to disparage those Catholics who converted to Protestantism in return for material benefits during famine times. Also known as ‘soupers'.
See
souperism.

jurats, jures
. Aldermen, 24 of whom sat with the mayor in the upper house of Dublin corporation. It was from this body that the mayor was elected.

justice of the peace
. The local judicial official who conducted the
quarter-sessions
. In the middle ages as the scope of government increased the administration of justice proved beyond the capacity of the
curia regis
alone. In times of emergency local deputies called
keepers of the peace
or
custodes pacis
were appointed to police troubled areas and borders. Initially their function was a military one but this was gradually extended to include the requirement to maintain law and order in the jurisdiction and to prevent disorder by taking
recognisances
for the peace. From the fifteenth century the keepers of the peace were re-styled ‘justices of the peace'. They were appointed by a commission of the peace after taking the oaths of supremacy and loyalty. Until the seventeenth century the disturbed nature of the country prevented the establishment of an effective system of quarter-sessions in the localities but thereafter a system similar to the English model emerged. Irish justices exercised a much broader jurisdiction than their English counterparts, empowered as they were to try all cases except treason, murder, felonies punishable by penal servitude for life and felonies of a political or rebellious nature. The justices of the peace also developed an ‘out of session' jurisdiction known as the
petty sessions
to deal with offences of a summary nature. The justice of the peace was responsible for the preliminary examination of suspects scheduled to appear before the
assize courts
. On the basis of the evidence before him he decided whether to discharge the suspect or return him to the quarter-sessions or assizes. If he decided that the suspect had a case to answer a bill of indictment was presented to the grand jury which determined whether the bill was true or not. A true bill became an indictment triable before the petty sessions, quarter-sessions or assize courts. The justice of the peace failed to win the confidence of the government or the population at large owing to the incompetence and inactivity of many appointees. Stipendiary magistrates – who exercised the powers of the justices and controlled the constabulary – were appointed in Dublin from 1795 to improve the effectiveness of the administration of justice in the localities and the success of this innovation led to its extension in 1814 to any area proclaimed as disturbed by the lord lieutenant. Permanent and salaried resident magistrates were appointed from 1822 and by the close of the century every district in Ireland had its own resident magistrate.
See
Supremacy, Act of.

justiciar
. The chief governor of Ireland in the pre-Tudor period, also known as the
custos
, deputy justiciar, king's lieutenant, deputy king's lieutenant or chief justice. Later he became known as lord deputy, lord lieutenant or lord justice and later again as the viceroy. The justiciar was an omnicompetent official, the senior military, administrative and judicial authority in the land. He was assisted by an advisory council which comprised key government officials (the treasurer, chancellor, escheator and chief baron of the exchequer, judges and the keeper of the rolls of chancery). From time to time the council was afforced (strengthened) by the addition of leading magnates and only rarely would the justiciar act without the assent of his councillors. The justiciar and his council exercised important judicial functions including the hearing of petitions and the resolution of disputes between great magnates, long after the professional courts had become established.
See
privy council.

justiciar's court
. The court, sometimes referred to as ‘the chief place', which followed the
justiciar
in his peregrinations throughout the country and the forerunner to
king's bench
. Its official title was
nostrum justiciarum Hiberniae sequentia
or the pleas following our justiciar in Ireland. Few justiciars were trained in jurisprudence and the pleas (both civil and criminal) were heard by an attendant justice. When Richard II came to Ireland in 1394 the justiciar's court, because of the king's presence, became the king's bench in Ireland. After he returned to England the justiciar did not return to the court and thereafter it was presided over by professional judges and retained the name of king's bench.
See
Dublin Bench.

justiciary rolls
. The records of the transactions of the justiciar as he travelled in Ireland, largely comprising pleas heard before the justiciar's court. All but one of the original justiciary rolls perished in 1922 but calendars of late thirteenth- and early fourteenth-century rolls have been published. (Mills,
Calendar of the justiciary rolls
; Wood, Langman and Griffith,
Calendar of the justiciary rolls in Ireland.
)

K

Keating, Geoffrey
(Seathrún Ceitinn).
See Foras feasa ar Éirinn
.

keening
. A lamentation performed over a corpse by women who were usually hired for the purpose.

keep
. The stoutest and most secure part of a medieval castle. Also known as a donjon. Originally it was a free-standing structure without a
curtain wall
.

keeper of the peace
. (L.,
custos pacis
) From about 1300 an officer appointed by a commission of peace to maintain order in frontier regions. Usually there were a number in each county and they were chosen from the upper strata of local society. The keeper of the peace performed an essentially military role in the localities, holding musters, assessing arms, repressing crime, taking
recognisances
for the peace and conducting parleys with the native Irish. In the fifteenth century keepers of peace began to assume a judicial role and were sometimes referred to as ‘justices of the peace' but their primary function was to maintain order.
See
justice of the peace. (Frame, ‘Commissions', pp. 3–7;
Idem
, ‘The judicial powers', pp. 308–26.)

Kells, Book of
. Dating from early in the ninth century, the lavishly-ornamented
Book of Kells
is a Latin gospel book of 340 folios. The original golden cover is missing. As there is no
colophon
, the provenance and craftsmanship is uncertain but it is certainly the work of several hands and may have been begun at Iona and completed in Kells, Co. Meath. Seven legal documents in Irish are included in the text in addition to the religious material.
The Book of Kells
and
The Book of Durrow
were presented to the library of Trinity College, Dublin, by Henry Jones, the seventeenth-century Anglican bishop of Meath. (Henry,
The Book of Kells
.)

kerne
. (Ir.,
ceithearn
) Native Gaelic footsoldiers who were equipped with swords, bows, darts or javelins. As mercenaries they were often quartered on the country by Gaelic lords (see coyne and livery). Woodkerne were the sons and relatives of those dispossessed by plantation who took to the woods and used them as a base from which to attack and plunder the settlers.

kerntye, kernety
. (Ir.,
ceithearn tighe
, household kerne) 1: The lord's personal kerne who performed policing duties such as the capture of wrongdoers and the collection of fines 2: The quartering of the lord's kerne, horses, horseboys and dogs on the local inhabitants.
See
coyne and livery.

keyage
. Originally ‘quayage', dues paid for tying up at a formal quayside.

Kildare Place Society
. Properly, The Society for Promoting the Education of the Poor in Ireland, the Kildare Place Society was founded in 1811 and in its first decade developed one of most advanced systems of elementary education in the world. As the society aimed to provide an education for the lower classes ‘divested of sectarian distinctions in Christianity', its schools were religiously neutral. Bible readings were conducted on a daily basis without doctrinal exposition or, to use the contemporary expression, ‘without note or comment'. The fact that this approach had already been endorsed by the Commissioners of Education (1806–12) enabled the society to petition successfully for public funds. It received a grant of £6,000 in 1816, rising to £30,000 by 1831. Kildare Place published the first major series of school textbooks in these islands, established model schools for teacher training and provided an efficient school inspectorate. By 1820 26,474 pupils were enrolled in its 381 schools. Some Catholic clergy and laymen were dissatisfied with the composition of the overwhelmingly Protestant board of governors (of which Daniel O'Connell was a member) and with the practice of reading scripture without note or comment but they tolerated the society's educational work until the 1820s. Serious dissension emerged when, against the background of sectarian hostility created by the
Second Reformation
mission to convert Catholics, Kildare Place began to allocate part of its income to a number of Protestant proselytising bodies such as the
London Hibernian Society
, the
Baptist Society
and the
Association for Discountenancing Vice
. O'Connell resigned and Catholic clergymen sought to keep Catholic children away from the schools. Government support was withdrawn from 1831 and public money was diverted into the newly-established national system of education. The remaining Kildare Place schools were later absorbed into the competing Anglican educational system, the
Church Education Society
.
See
Education, National System of, and Education, Commissioners of. (Akenson,
The Irish education experiment
, pp. 85–122, 143–4; Parkes,
Kildare Place
.)

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