Byrne's Dictionary of Irish Local History (52 page)

regnal year
. Until the seventeenth century deeds were dated by the current year of a monarch's reign which dated from the day, month and year of accession. Thus the regnal year 3 Elizabeth I occurred between 17 November 1560 and 16 November 1561. Acts of parliament were also dated by the regnal year.

regrate
. To forestall or abbroach. The offence of acquiring or diverting victuals and goods bound for market to raise prices. It was punishable by imprisonment and loss of the goods.

regular, canons
. Members of religious orders living in community usually under
Augustinian
rule as opposed to the
secular
or parish priests.

relief
. A
feudal incident
(the others were
wardship, escheat
and
marriage
) which required the heir of a deceased chief tenant to make a money payment or fine (usually equivalent to one year's profits of the land) to the crown to take possession of his estate. Relief was paid by an heir of full age. On a manorial estate relief paid by a tenant to the lord was known as an
entry fine
.

relief acts
. A series of legislative acts that successively reduced the penal restrictions imposed on Catholics and
dissenters
in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. Concessions began in 1750 when Catholics were permitted to enter the lower grades of the army. The ‘Bogland act' of 1771–2 (11 & 12 Geo. III, c. 21) enabled them to take leases for 61 years of not more than 50 acres of unprofitable land and to be free of taxes on the same for seven years. The relief act of 1778 (17 & 18 Geo. III, c. 40), introduced in the Irish parliament by Luke Gardiner, permitted Catholics to take land at leases of 999 years if they took the oath of allegiance but they could not purchase land in freehold. The 1704
gavelkind
act (2 Anne, c. 7) was repealed and Catholics could now inherit in the same manner as any other citizen. In 1780 the
Test Act
(19 & 20 Geo. III, c. 6) was repealed, making dissenters eligible for office. Gardiner's second relief act (21 & 22 Geo. III, c. 24, 1782) allowed Catholics who swore the oath of allegiance to purchase, hold and bequeath freeholds and leases on the same terms as Protestants. The performance of priestly duties by Catholic secular clergymen and any regulars then resident in the country was legalised provided such duties were not exercised within a church with a steeple or bell. The assumption of any ecclesiastical title or rank remained forbidden. Catholics could now own a horse valued in excess of £5 and the power vested in the
grand jury
to levy Catholics for the depradations of privateers was revoked. Catholics could open and keep schools if licensed by the local Anglican bishop. In the same year Presbyterian marriages conducted by Presbyterian ministers were legalised (21 & 22 Geo. III, c. 26). Sir Hercules Langrishe's 1792 act (32 Geo. III, c. 21) permitted Catholics to practise law, though they could not become members of the inner bar. Catholic schoolmasters were no longer required to obtain a licence and restrictions were lifted on foreign education, the number of apprentices a Catholic might keep and inter-marriage. Chief Secretary Hobart's 1793 act (33 Geo. III, c. 21) admitted Catholics to a limited franchise, restored their right to vote in parliamentary elections, to become members of municipal corporations and seek civil and military office. The offices of
lord lieutenant, chief secretary
, chancellor of the exchequer,
attorney-general
, solicitor-general, together with membership of the
privy council
remained closed to them, however, and they could not become generals, judges or king's counsels, governors, sheriffs or sub-sheriffs or members of parliament. They could serve in the ranks and hold commissions but only in Ireland and remained excluded from positions in the staff. The remaining disabilities – the right to sit in parliament, to hold senior government and legal offices and military rank above colonel – were largely though not completely removed in 1829 when the relief act which emancipated Catholics was passed.

Relief Commission
. A temporary commission established in November 1845 by Robert Peel to advise the government and treasury on distress, to manage food depots nationwide and to oversee and grant-aid the work of local relief committees. It was composed of senior members of the administration including the under-secretary, Edward Lucas, Sir James Dombrain (Inspector General of the coastguard), Edward Twistleton (poor law commissioner), Sir Randolph Routh (Commissariat Department of the army), John Pitt Kennedy (former secretary to the
Devon Commission
), Harry Jones of the
Board of Works
and the scientist, Sir Robert Kane. Lucas' criticism of government policies led to his replacement as chairman by Routh in 1846. The commission was stood down in August 1846 and a second commission was formed in February 1847 under Sir John Burgoyne tasked with supervising the implementation of the Temporary Relief Act (the ‘soup kitchen act'), a transitional measure introduced to facilitate the transfer of responsibility from central government to the individual poor law unions in autumn 1847. The records of the Relief Commission (1845–47) are held in the National Archives. (Kinealy,
This great calamity
.)

relief committee
. The relief committee provided relief at local level during periods of crop failure and food shortages in the nineteenth century. The pattern began in 1816–17 with the establishment of a central relief committee to allocate funds to local committees during the harvest crisis of those years. It was reactivated in 1822 when the severely wet weather of the previous autumn precipitated the failure of the potato crop. That summer the committee disbursed £175,000 to local committees which distributed food for free or at reduced prices and supported local relief works, supplementing government-organised public works such as road and harbour construction. When blight struck in 1845 the
Relief Commission
was established to organise food depots and co-ordinate the work of temporary local relief committees, to purchase and re-sell at cost price the Indian corn imported by the government. Local committees, if they wished, could instigate smallscale public works to help the impoverished to earn money to purchase food and in extreme cases free food could be distributed. Membership of these voluntary committees usually comprised local gentry, clergymen, merchants and large farmers and they financed their purchases by charitable subscription and a matching grant from the government. By the summer of 1846 almost 700 local relief committees were distributing food to the distressed. These temporary initiatives proved successful in staving off widespread starvation and it was intended to stand down the Relief Commission and the local relief committees from August 1846. The re-emergence of a general blight that month and the failure of the public works scheme to meet the challenge presented by widespread distress led to the establishment in early 1847, under the Temporary Relief of Distressed Persons in Ireland Act (10 & 11 Vict., c. 7), of a new relief commission and the reactivation of local committees to provide direct relief in the form of cooked food or soup in soup kitchens. By July over three million people were being fed daily. In August 1847, however, these temporary measures were ended and the administration of relief was transferred to the
poor law
system in an attempt to make relief a burden on local rather than British coffers.

relieving officer
. The Poor Law Amendment Act (10 Vict., c. 31, 1847) which permitted
poor law unions
to give
outdoor relief
under certain conditions, provided for the appointment of relieving officers who were to compile lists of applicants for relief for the poor law guardians. Relieving officers were also empowered to dispense immediate provisional relief in cases of extreme urgency. They frequently found themselves in disputes over relief entitlement arising out of the ‘
quarter acre clause
' in the same act which forbade the granting of relief to anyone who occupied more than a quarter of an acre of land. Such persons were not considered to be destitute and were eligible for relief only if they surrendered their holding. It was the relieving officer's task to confirm the claims of applicants to occupy a quarter of an acre or less. The government intended this clause to be applied stringently but overlooked the fact that the wives and children of men holding more than one quarter of an acre, however destitute, were thereby deemed undeserving of relief. Legal advice compelled the government to re-consider and poor law guardians were instructed to provide provisional relief in cases of urgent necessity to the families but not the occupier so long as he retained his holding.

remainder
. A conveyancing term which refers to the creation of a future interest in an estate, in particular to the possession of an estate by someone other than the grantor at some future time. If Smith conveys the fee simple (freehold) of Ballyduff to Murphy for life and the remainder to O'Brien, upon Murphy's demise the estate will devolve to O'Brien in fee simple.
See
reversion.

remembrancer
. A government official whose function it was to collect debts due to the crown. The remembrancer kept a record of income and expenditure in the
memoranda rolls
.

remonstrance
. A formal petition in which aggrieved bodies sought the favour of the monarch and the respite of their difficulties. In medieval times, as writs were very expensive, petitioning was the means by which an impoverished and aggrieved party set out the facts of his case and asked for relief of the king. If the petitioner was deemed to have a remedy at law, the petition was denied. After the Restoration in 1660 several remonstrances were submitted on behalf of the Catholics of Ireland. The most contentious, drafted by Richard Bellings in 1661, tried to resolve the difficulties existing between the crown and Catholics regarding the conflicting claims of king and pope to hold supreme temporal and spiritual authority. Ormond, the lord lieutenant, agreed to grant toleration to Catholics in return for an acceptance of the king's sovereignty in temporal affairs and a repudiation of the pope's authority to release subjects from their allegiance. A gathering of Catholic clergy in Dublin in 1666 could agree only to the first of these which Ormond rejected as insufficient. Later Rome expressed its opposition to the remonstrance and the issue died.
See
Catholic Petition, petition.

Remonstrant Synod
. From 1830 the Remonstrant Synod comprised those
Presbyterian
ministers, elders and congregations who had withdrawn from the
Synod of Ulster
rather than conform to the evangelical wing's requirement that all candidates for the ministry subscribe to the
Westminster Confession
, a practice that had ceased in the previous century.

Renewable Leasehold Conversion Act
(1849). By this act (12 & 13 Vict., c. 105) leases for lives renewable forever (to all intents and purposes, perpetuities) were converted into
freehold
.
See
lease for lives renewable forever.

rental
. A manorial or estate document which records the rents owed to the lord by his tenants. It usually contains the names of the tenants and their rents and is a much briefer manorial record than the
extent
or the
custumal
.

rent roll
. Unlike the
rental
– which lists the payments owed by the tenants, – the rent roll is a record of what they actually paid. It contains the names of the tenants and their payments.

rentcharge
. A charge placed on the rental income of an estate to repay a mortgage or to provide an
annuity
for a member of the landowner's family.

Renunciation, Act of
(1793).
See
Declaratory Act, parliament, statute, Yelverton's Act,
replevin
. A legal action dating back to the fourteenth century which was initiated to seek the return of property wrongfully taken and for compensation for loss. Replevin was particularly valuable in cases where a landlord seized property in excess of the value of unpaid rents. A successful action meant the return of the confiscated goods. Replevin is distinguished from
trover
, a similar common law action, in that it required the return of the property rather than the compensatory market value of the goods.