Byrne's Dictionary of Irish Local History (42 page)

original writ
. A writ in fixed or certain form which issued from
chancery
to initiate a real (land) action at common law and to summon a defendant in a personal action.

orthostat
. (Gr.,
orthós
, straight +
statikós
, causing to stand) An upright boulder serving as the wall of a megalithic tomb.

OSA
. Order of Saint Augustine.
See
Augustinian.

Ossory, Red Book of
. See
register, episcopal.

ousterlemain
. (Fr., to remove the hand) 1: The taking of land out of the king's hand following a judgement for a plaintiff who claimed that the crown had no title to it.
Ousterlemain
also applied to the extinction of a guardian's control over an estate upon the coming of age of his ward. The action on attaining majority of suing out ousterlemain to obtain possession of an estate is the same as the action of suing out livery. Males came of age at 21 years, females at age 16 2: The writ or judgement associated with such an action.
See
livery, to sue out and majority.

outdoor relief
. The provision of relief to paupers through the
poor law
system but without the necessity for them to enter the workhouse. Outdoor relief was specifically prohibited under poor law but the failure of public works schemes to meet the needs of the distressed in 1846–7, the financial strain on the
exchequer
and the realisation that it would be cheaper simply to feed the people prompted the government to re-consider. Under the Temporary Relief of Distressed Persons in Ireland Act (10 & 11 Vict., c. 7), or the Soup Kitchen Act as it was popularly known, public works were phased out by late spring 1847 and replaced by soup kitchens where direct relief in the form of cooked food or soup was to be provided to the distressed. Soup kitchens, run by local relief committees and funded by local contributions and a matching government grant, were to operate until autumn 1847 after which the provisions of the Poor Law Amendment Act (10 Vict., c. 31) – which allowed for outdoor relief under poor law for the first time – would come into play. The aged and infirm, children and widows with two or more dependent children would be entitled to relief either within or without the workhouse. The able-bodied could receive outdoor aid (in the form of cooked food) only in the most desperate circumstances for a period no longer than two months and only if the workhouse was full or infected with fever. In return they were required to work for ten hours at tedious, repetitive and unproductive tasks such as stone-breaking, tasks intentionally designed to discourage applicants from seeking relief instead of productive employment. A requirement that the destitute attend each day at the workhouse to collect the cooked food was intended to restrict the number of applicants for outdoor relief and the delegation of food distribution to shopkeepers or meal contractors meant that there were fewer and less accessible distribution points than had been the case with the soup kitchens. Another factor which inhibited the take-up of outdoor relief was the controversial ‘
quarter acre clause
' (Gregory Clause) in the Poor Law Amendment Act which deemed that occupiers of more than a quarter acre of land could not be classed as destitute and were therefore ineligible for poor law relief. Thus the starving were required to yield up their means of future subsistence and enter the workhouse if they were to be relieved. Although the quarter acre clause proved a most effective way of restraining applicants from applying for relief, a staggering number of people presented themselves for aid. By February 1848 445,000 people were receiving outdoor relief and by June that figure had risen to 830,000. Soup kitchens, outdoor relief and
rate-in-aid
were the means by which the government progressively heaped responsibility for the economic burden of relief on the poor law unions of Ireland.
See
Malthus. (Kinealy,
This great calamity
.)

outfangtheof
.(OE,
fang
, to lay hold of, seize) A medieval manorial franchise which has been interpreted to mean either the right of the lord to seize and prosecute a thief living beyond the manor but captured within or the right of the lord to pursue and seize a thief outside his jurisdiction and to bring him back to try him in his own court. The most likely interpretation is the latter for there already existed a separate franchise,
infangenetheof
, which permitted the lord to prosecute thieves caught within the jurisdiction of the manor.

outlawry
. The legal process by which a person was deprived of the protection of the law, forfeited his goods and chattels and the power to seek redress in any court beyond attempting to reverse the outlawry by writ of
error
. Formally, a person was outlawed after writs of
capias, alias
, and
pluries
were returned by the sheriff
non est inventus
(he is not to be found). An exigent issued to the sheriff to demand the defendant's appearance at five successive county courts completed the process, failure to show rendering him automatically outlawed.
See
attainder.

outshot
. In vernacular architecture, a small rectangular projection in the wall of a cottage designed to contain a bed. It was usually screened by a curtain. The outshot was commonly referred to as a
cuilteach
(back house) in Irish, less usually as
cailleach
. (Lucas, ‘Contributions', pp. 81–98.)

overseer
. A parish official. Church-wardens bore the responsibility for assisting the poor of their parish but they were assisted by parishioners acting as overseers. The overseer's main function was to assist in the collection of parish cess and distribute relief to the poor. He also aplotted or assessed the parish for the parish cess. In the eighteenth century the overseer became a statutory post.

Owners of land of one acre and upwards in the several counties, counties of cities and counties of towns in Ireland, Return of
(1876). Issued by the Local Government Board and modelled on similar publications covering England and Wales, the
Return of owners
lists in alphabetical order the names and addresses of owners of one statute acre and upwards for each county, together with the extent and valuation of their lands. Also included are the numbers of owners of less than one statute acre in each county and the total valuation of such lands together with the grand totals for each county and provincial and national aggregates. (
Return.)

oyer et terminer,
commission of
. (Fr., to hear and determine) A commission which developed in the thirteenth century to try and judge criminal cases. Commissions of
oyer et terminer
were issued for the determination of specific individual cases of a serious nature such as treason or murder or an epidemic of a certain type of crime which had broken out over a wide area.

pad
. An easy-paced horse.

paindemaine
. A fine bread.

Pairlement Chloinne Tomáis
. An anonymous seventeenth-century verse composition in Gaelic which satirises those Irish natives who rented land from English settlers and helped them develop their estates. The author derides them for their vulgar aping of the new gentry and their fashions while patronage of traditional poetry and music was in serious decline. (Bergin, ‘Pairlement', pp. 35–50, 127–31, 137–50, 220–36.)

palatinate
. A
liberty
. A major lordship which exercised jurisdiction exclusive of the royal courts with the exception of the four reserved pleas of rape, arson,
treasure trove
and
forestalling
and correction of officers. Palatine rights were delegated by the crown to the lord so that he was, in effect, a royal official – though a hereditary one – and entitled to the dues and profits that would otherwise accrue to the king. Within the palatinate the lord's writ ran and the lord's peace was kept but it was the king's law that was administered. Royal officials could not enter unless the lord failed to execute a royal writ. Palatinates were administered as small-scale states. The senior official was the omnicompetent
seneschal
who exercised the same functions within the palatinate as the
justiciar
did for the whole country. Other officers included a
chancellor
, treasurer, an
escheator, sheriff
and
serjeants
. The palatinate of Tipperary retained its distinct jurisdiction until 1715 when it became defunct with the attainder of the second duke (2 Geo. I, c. 8). (Murnaghan, ‘The lordship', pp. 846–59.)

Palatines
. Refugee peasant families from the Palatinate of the Rhine who settled in counties Limerick and Kerry (and in smaller groups in Dublin and Wexford) early in the eighteenth century. In all over 800 families arrived in Ireland and a supervisory commission allocated them by lots to a number of landlords. Each family received an annual government allowance of 40 shillings to encourage them to settle. The Palatines conformed to Anglicanism and responded warmly to Methodism but remained culturally and socially aloof from local communities. Although initially successful, the colony was rapidly thinned out by emigration and by 1726 only 126 families remained. (Hick, ‘The Palatine', pp. 113–132.)

Pale
. The English Pale in Ireland comprised the counties Dublin, Kildare, Louth and Meath, the areas of medieval and early modern Ireland where royal writ ran most completely.
See
maghery.

paleolithic
. (Gr.,
paleo
, ancient +
lithos
, stone) The earliest stone age period.

paleography
. The study of ancient writing and inscriptions.
See
secretary hand.

palimpsest
. A manuscript containing an erased yet slightly visible text beneath a new text. Manuscripts were so effaced on account of the scarcity of parchment. The term is used in historical geography to describe a hidden or partially hidden landscape which, if interpreted correctly, can yield evidence about earlier land use.

palisade
. A defensive barrier composed of upright stakes driven into the ground.

pall
. (L.,
pallium
) A robe worn by an archbishop or bishop at his inauguration, the presentation of which indicates his elevation to the episcopacy. The pall is a charge (device) on the heraldic escutcheons of the archiepiscopal sees of Armagh and Dublin.

Palladian
. A constantly evolving architectural style which persisted well into the nineteenth century. It was based on the work of Andrea Palladio (1518–1580), a sixteenth-century Italian architect who drew his inspiration from an eclectic range of sources including the classical architecture of ancient Rome, the mannerism of Michaelangelo and Vignola, Bramante and the Byzantine architecture of Venice. Inigo Jones was captivated by Palladio's work when he journeyed through Italy in 1613–14 and used it as a basis for renewing the dated architecture of contemporary England. From 1700 there was a Palladian revival which gained supremacy around 1730. Palladio's
Four books of architecture
were consulted by, among others, Christopher Wren. Bellamont in Co. Cavan, Lord Charlemont's Casino in Marino, Co. Dublin and the provost's house in Trinity College are examples of Palladian architecture in Ireland.

Palles Commission
. A
royal commission
appointed to investigate the working of the intermediate education system from its establishment in 1878. Reporting in 1899, The commission heavily criticised the narrow examination programme on offer and acknowledged the heavy burden placed on schools by the
payment-by-results
system. Palles, nevertheless, recommended the retention of public examinations and a modified payments-by-results system whereby grants would be paid in block rather than on the basis of individual examination results. The commissioners proposed a greater emphasis on mathematics and science and to that end suggested a special equipment grant for the teaching of science.
See
secondary schooling. (Palles.)

pannage
. The right to graze swine in the woods.

parc
. An artificial intertidal growing bed for oysters comprising sections of the foreshore marked off with stones, walls of mud, wattle or cement to retain a couple of inches of water at low tide.

parcener
. An heir.

paring and burning
. The practice of paring and burning the sod to increase the potato yield in marginal areas by adding phosphates to the acidic soil. The benefits were short-term and the land rapidly reverted to waste within a few years. Also known as bettimore.

parish
. An ancient ecclesiastical division denoting the jurisdiction of a priest. The medieval parish became the civil parish of the Established church, the smallest administrative unit of civil government. It was responsible for the upkeep of roads within its boundaries and for the welfare of the aged, sick and abandoned, all of which were overseen by the general
vestry
and financed by the parish
cess
. The civil parish was disestablished by the passing of the
Church Temporalities Act
(3 & 4 Will. IV, c. 37, 1833). This act revoked the right of the
church-wardens
to levy parish cess and thereby ended its civil role. Catholic parishes, a relatively modern creation owing to the difficulties presented by the Reformation, the turmoil of the seventeenth century and the
penal laws
, continue to be formed in the developing suburbs of the larger towns and cities.
See
six-day labour.

parish school
. Legislation passed during the reign of Henry VIII (28 Hen. VIII, c. 15, 1537) laid upon the clergy of the Established church the duty to establish a network of English schools throughout Ireland, a duty witnessed more in the breach than in the observance. All beneficed clergymen were required to keep or cause to be kept within their vicarage or rectory an English language school. The statute was poorly implemented and was effective only within the Pale. Additional legislation from 1695 (7 Will. III, c. 4, 8 Geo. I, c. 12 and 5 Geo. II, c. 4) yielded greater results for parish schools began to emerge in numbers throughout the eighteenth century. Heavily oriented towards advancing Protestantism, the schools proved unable to attract Catholic pupils. By 1832 there were only 782 in existence with a total enrolment of 36,498 children. (
Eleventh report of the commissioners of the board of education in Ireland,
HC 1810–11 (107) VI; Akenson,
The Irish education experiment
, pp. 21–4.)