Byrne's Dictionary of Irish Local History (51 page)

quoad ad hoc
. (L.) A legal term used to state what the law was as to a matter. It was used in the
court of claims
established under the
Act of Settlement
(1662) to state what the law was with regard to a petitioner's claim.

quiet, to
. An instruction to the sheriff to put a person in possession of an estate and protect him from disturbance.

quoin
. The external corner of a building. Also the interlocking stones which form the corner.

quo minus,
writ of
. (L., by which the less) 1: A legal device invented by the
exchequer
to attract cases of debt between individuals which properly belonged in
common pleas
. The fiction was based on the claim that default in repaying a debt rendered the creditor
less able
to satisfy the debts he owed to the crown, debts which the crown's revenue court, the exchequer, should have cognisance of 2: A writ to restrain a person from committing waste in a wood having granted
houbote
and
haybote
to another so that the grantee was
less able
to exercise his right.

quo warranto,
writ of
. A writ issued on behalf of the crown to inquire by what right a person or corporate body claimed or usurped a privilege, office or liberty and so determine the issue. It was so named because the defendant was required to show
quo warranto usurpavit
(by what right or authority he lays claim to the matter in dispute). In the 1630s Thomas Wentworth, the lord deputy, used
quo warranto
proceedings to sequester town charters in Ireland, thereby extinguishing 16
Old English
seats in the Irish
parliament
amongst other tactics to ensure government control of the house of commons.
Quo warranto
proceedings were also used in the late 1680s by Richard Talbot, earl of Tyrconnell, ostensibly to compel corporations to demonstrate that they had exercised their powers according to their charters. In reality he sought to remove the charters and re-model them to accommodate Catholics. In later times matters of this nature were effected by an
information
in the nature of a
quo warranto
filed by the
attorney-general
.

rack
. An instrument of torture on which an unforthcoming victim was stretched until his limbs were dislocated.

rackrent
. To subject to an excessively high rent.

rampant
. In heraldry, a creature in profile – usually a lion – standing upright with paws in the air.

rapparee
. A tory or bandit. The term derives from the Irish
rapaire
, a half-pike, which some of them bore.

raskins
. (Ir.,
rusg
, bark) A wooden vessel made by scooping out a hollow in a log to leave an edge of about two inches wide including the bark. It was used as a container for butter and was roughly equivalent to a
firkin
.
See
meather.

rate-in-aid
. A temporary tax of sixpence in the pound levied on all rateable property in Ireland to provide additional relief to the most distressed
poor law unions
. It was introduced in 1849 (12 & 13 Vict., c. 24) amidst great controversy because it made relief of distress a charge on the entire country rather than a local one. Thus the more prosperous unions of the north and east were required to subsidise the 22 poorest unions in the west and south. Although Leinster and Munster were taxed more heavily for rate-in-aid, opposition to the proposal was particularly virulent amongst Ulster MPs who saw it as a transfer of taxes from the industrious north to feckless Connacht. Others, including Edward Twistleton, the senior poor law commissioner, objected to the tax on constitutional grounds. As Twistleton saw it, if the Act of Union created a true union then responsibility for distress properly lay with the kingdom as a whole and particularly so in the case of localities that did not have the fiscal capacity to relieve themselves. A second rate-in-aid of two pence in the pound was introduced in 1850. (Kinealy,
This great calamity
, pp. 254–64, 278–9.)

rath (ringfort)
. A circular or near-circular enclosure protected by a clay bank (
vallum
) and outside trench (
fosse
) or a series of banks and trenches. Within the rath there was a raised mound upon which the farmstead of a lord or wealthy individual stood. Nearly 40,000 have been identified in Ireland and the term figures prominently in placenames.
Raths
are classified as univallate, bivallate or trivallate according to the number of banks which form the enclosure. In areas where stone was plentiful the banks were constructed of stone and the fort was called a
caiseal
or
cathair
. (Stout,
The Irish ringfort
.)

Rathbreasail, Synod of
.
See
diocese.

reacaire
. (Ir.) A reciter or singer of poems often accompanied by a harper.

Real Property Act
(1845). The Real Property Act (8 & 9 Vict., c. 119) simplified the complex process of conveyancing by establishing the ordinary deed of grant as the standard mode of conveyance. It gave to a simple deed of grant the same efficacy in relation to the transfer of all corporeal
hereditaments
and tenements as the conveyance that combined the
bargain and sale
and the
lease and release
.

Recess Committee
.
See
Agriculture and Technical Instruction, Department of.

recognisance
. 1: A surety entered into before a court or magistrate to refrain from or to carry out a particular act 2: The sum pledged as guarantee.

record
. A document on which the proceedings of a court of record were entered including common pleas, pleas of land and criminal proceedings. A court of record was a court entitled to hear pleas as distinct from an inferior court such as a manorial court.

recorder
. A magistrate who exercised criminal and civil jurisdiction in a city or borough. The recorder was the sole judge at the
quarter-sessions
held in Dublin, Cork, Belfast, Derry, Cork, Galway and Carrickfergus. Originally he was a person with legal experience appointed by the aldermen and mayor to ‘record' the proceedings of the borough courts and to keep in mind the proceedings and the customs of the city or town, his word being authoritative on these matters.

recovery
. Alienation by tenants-in-tail was forbidden by the statute
De Donis Conditionalibus
(13 Edw. I, c. 1, 1285) but the courts, believing this to be an unreasonable restriction on landowners, permitted the collusive fiction of recovery by which a tenant-in-tail in possession could bar the
entail
and dispose of his property. In practice the vendor allowed the intending purchaser to bring an action against him for the property. Instead of defending his title the vendor called upon a collaborator (a ‘man of straw') who was supposed to have sold him the land previously with good title. Collaborator and intending purchaser then withdrew from the court to parley after which the purchaser returned alone having ‘convinced' the collaborator that he had never had title to the land. The court called upon the collaborator three times to return to defend his title but he never did and so judgement was made in favour of the purchaser. As the tenant-in-tail was now deemed never to have been legally possessed of an estate the entail was effectively barred. The 1834 Fines and Recoveries Act (4 & 5 Will. IV, c. 92) removed the need for such chicanery by providing that a tenant-in-tail could bar an entail by the execution of a disentailing assurance, in effect by executing a conveyance using words that a
fee simple
(freehold) owner would have to use to pass the fee simple. Prior to
De Donis
monastic institutions had employed the recovery to evade the provisions of the statute of
mortmain
which outlawed alienations to corporations or monastic institutions. Rather than ‘purchase' or receive a grant of land, the institutions ‘recovered' land they claimed was theirs as of old title.
See
fine. (Megarry,
A manual
, pp. 57–61: Wylie,
Irish land law
, pp. 219–224.)

recto
. Abbreviated in footnotes as
r
, the side of a document which is to be read first. It is the right-hand or front page. The side to be read second is
verso
(
v
).
See
folio.

rector
. A rector is the Church of Ireland equivalent of the Catholic parish priest, distinguished from the vicar in that the rector was in full possession of the parish tithe. Where the incumbent received only part of the tithe – if a portion belonged to someone else – he was a vicar. The distinction emerged after the Reformation in the sixteenth century when monastic lands and the accompanying tithe were alienated to lay people and religious institutions such as cathedrals. Where tithe was wholly paid to someone other than himself, the resident minister was known as a
perpetual curate
.
See
appropriate, impropriate.

recusant
. In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries a person, usually a Catholic, who refused to attend Anglican services and denied the ecclesiastical supremacy of the crown. Recusants were liable to fines of 12 pence for every offence committed and office-holders in corporations who refused to take the oath of supremacy were heavily fined and forbidden to hold office. In the early seventeenth century, grand jurors who refused to present recusants were hauled before the court of
castle chamber
, fined and imprisoned. The imposition of recusancy fines was not consistently enforced. During international crises they were often over-looked.

redemption
. In a deed the phrase ‘subject to redemption' indicates that the transaction is a mortgage.

redshank
. A Scottish mercenary footsoldier serving in Ireland.

re-entry
. A legal term for eviction and the act of repossession.

reeve
. Senior manorial official under the bailiff.
See
sheriff
(shire-reeve).

refection
. Refers to a number of exactions or impositions on local populations obliging them to provide refreshment and lodgings. In its most severe and prolonged form –
coyne and livery
– the inhabitants had to maintain soldiers quartered on the area by the chief lord, together with horses and horseboys. Coshering, another form of refection, involved the provision of refreshment to the chief lord and his retinue as he progressed through his territory. To avoid being eaten out of house and home tenants often substituted cash payments for coshering. The least exacting form of refection was that provided by an
erenagh
to the diocesan bishop on his visitation which usually lasted only a day and, at most, occurred on but four occasions a year.

Reformed Presbyterian church
(Covenanters). The Reformed Presbyterian church originated in the seventeenth century with those Presbyterians who sought to adhere strictly to the National Covenant (1638) and the
Solemn League and Covenant
(1642) – hence the name Covenanters. Purists with regard to Presbyterian doctrine, it was not until the mid-eighteenth century that the first Reformed Presbytery was established in Ireland.

regardant
. In heraldry, a creature in profile with its head looking backwards.

regency
. 1: A period during which a kingdom is administered by a substitute owing to the incapacity or absence of the reigning monarch. In British history the term refers to the period 1810–20 when George III was ill and and the future George IV acted as prince regent 2: A classical style of architecture (c. 1800–30) which borrowed structural and ornamental features from ancient Greece and Rome. Its most noted proponent was the architect John Nash.

regency crisis.
In 1789 George III became insane and the Irish parliament voted to request the Whig-associating Prince of Wales to act immediately as regent of Ireland. The Tory government of William Pitt and the Irish administration wanted the regency to be effected by an act of parliament which would have enabled them to limit the regent's powers and delay the appointment. The Irish parliament was emphasising its equality with and independence from the imperial parliament but it was also gambling (unsuccessfully, as it transpired) that the next government would be composed of Whigs. The issue descended into farce when the king recovered his sanity just as the Irish delegation arrived in London to address the Prince of Wales. The independent action of the Irish parliament during the regency crisis raised government concerns about the wisdom of legislative independence and prompted FitzGibbon (the attorney-general) to threaten the Irish house of commons with union should it fail to follow Britain in all regulations of imperial policy. Despite such threats, a strong and coherent opposition, the ‘Irish Whigs', emerged to uphold the independence of the Irish parliament.
See
whig clubs.

regicide
. A king-killer.

register, episcopal
. Episcopal registers are compilations of diocesan documents including papal bulls, royal grants, letters, clerical appointments, resignations and disciplinings, leases and
advowsons
. They may also include stray but interesting material. The fourteenth-century
Red Book of Ossory
, for example, includes a treatise on brandy and the text of 60 songs.
See Alen's Register, Register of Armagh, Crede mihi, Reportorium Viride.
(Lawlor, ‘Calendar', pp. 159–208;
Idem
, ‘A calendar of the Liber Niger', pp. 1–93; McCaffrey,
The black book.)

regium donum
. Literally, the king's gift or bounty, the
regium donum
was an annual grant of £600 to
Presbyterian
ministers inaugurated by Charles II in 1672. Payments were halted under James II but re-introduced at an increased rate of £1,200 by William III in gratitude for Presbyterian support for the Williamite cause in Ireland. Presbyterian ministers also expected him to legislate for greater toleration but the antipathy of the
Church of Ireland
towards dissenters ensured the rejection of his 1695 toleration bill. The
regium donum
was withdrawn by the
Tory
government in 1710 to prevent the further expansion of Presbyterianism but was restored in 1718 by a
Whig
administration and increased to £2,000. In 1802 the government, seeking to secure the loyalty of Presbyterian ministers – some of whom had been implicated in the 1798 rebellion – increased the grant considerably and paid it directly to the ministers in a graduated scale ranging from £50 to £100 conditional upon continued loyalty. State subvention of Presbyterianism ceased in 1869 when the Church of Ireland was disestablished. In compensation for the loss of the
regium donum,
the sum of £750,000 was given to the Presbyterian Synod of Ulster to be divided equally among its ministers. (Beckett,
Protestant
, pp. 106–115; Pike, ‘The origin', pp. 225–269.)