Byrne's Dictionary of Irish Local History (57 page)

Stanley's ‘instructions'
.
See
Education, National System of.

Staple, Ordinance of the
.
See
Statute Staple.

star chamber
.
See
castle chamber, court of.

statant
. In heraldry, an animal in profile with all four legs on the ground, the forepaws placed together.

State Paper Office
. Senior government officials regarded their papers as private property and usually transported them back to England when their term in Ireland ended. The State Paper Office was established in 1702 for the purpose of making copies of the records of the
chief governor
, including books of entries, warrants, petitions and orders, so that incoming officials would have some idea of what their predecessors had been up to. The extensive collection of papers of the chief secretary (dating from 1790) escaped the destruction of state records in the Four Courts in 1922 as they were stored in the State Paper Office in the Birmingham Tower in Dublin Castle. The National Archives was established with the merger of the Public Record Office and the State Paper Office in 1986.

stations
. The custom of saying mass in private houses that was common in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries and which survives today.

statistical surveys
. A series of county surveys prepared by landowners and Protestant clergymen under the supervision of the
Royal Dublin Society
. They contain valuable social and economic information about Ireland in the early nineteenth century. Surveys were not compiled for counties Fermanagh, Kerry, Laois, Louth, Limerick, Longford, Waterford and Westmeath and the survey of Tipperary remains in manuscript form in the National Library of Ireland. The list of counties surveyed (together with authors' names and compilation dates) includes:

statute
. An act of parliament.
Poyning's Law
(1494) severely circumscribed parliament in its legislative function. No parliament could be held in Ireland without licence from the monarch. The
chief governor
was required to certify under the great
seal
of Ireland the causes and considerations for holding the parliament and, once approved, parliament was unable to propose legislation or consider any matters other than those that had received the monarch's consent. Since parliament could not originate bills until it met and since it could not do so while in session, its sole function lay in accepting or rejecting bills which originated in the
privy council
or in Westminster. By 3 & 4 Philip and Mary, c. 4 (1556) permission was given to the lord lieutenant to certify cause to the king while parliament was in session but it was not until the late seventeenth century that original legislation in the form of ‘heads of bills' began to issue from both houses. Heads of bills were propositions similar to acts of parliament with the single difference of commencing with ‘We pray that it may be enacted' in place of ‘Be it enacted'. Having passed either house, heads of bills were sent to the lord lieutenant and the Irish privy council and, if acceptable, were transmitted from there to the English (British from 1704) privy council, the English attorney-general and solicitor-general for their perusal. The heads were returned to the originating house via the Irish privy council having passed the great seal of England. After three readings in both houses they were finally dispatched to the lord lieutenant who gave the royal assent. At any stage once the bills left parliament they could be altered, amended or rejected but when returned with the English seal affixed the Irish parliament was unable to make any alterations. It must either accept or reject the bill
in toto
. In 1782
Yelverton's Act
modified Poynings' Law to the extent that bills originating in either house were deposited in the lords' office and a copy attested by the Irish great seal was forwarded to England to receive the royal assent. The power of the lord lieutenant and the privy councils of Ireland and Britain to alter or originate bills for Ireland was removed. If approved by the king the copy was returned to Ireland with the English great seal affixed on the right side together with a commission to the lord lieutenant to give the royal assent. All bills except money bills were returned to the lords' office to await the royal assent. The monarch retained the veto over bills, a prerogative never subsequently exercised. Statutes are numbered by
regnal year
and chapter which serve as the call number in the National Library of Ireland. The 1878 Intermediate Education Act is numbered 41 & 42 Vict., c. 66 which means the sixtieth chapter of the statutes enacted in the forty-first and forty-second regnal years of Queen Victoria. (
Irish statutes
; Hayden, ‘The origin', pp. 112–25; Johnston-Liik,
History of the Irish parliament
; Kelly, ‘Monitoring', pp. 87–106)

Statute of Uses
.
See
use.

statute rolls
. The statute rolls which began as a series in 1427 comprised both the public and private statutes passed in the Irish parliament from Henry VI to James I. In 1861 there were 45 rolls. The original rolls were destroyed in 1922 except for the year 1594 – which Charles McNeill was reading when the anti-Treatyites burst into the Four Courts. However, the rolls for the years 1427–72 had already been published in two volumes by the Public Record Office and a volume for the years 1473–81 appeared in 1939 based on surviving
Irish Record Commission
transcripts. Both are printed in the original Norman French, the legal and general language of the court, with parallel English translations. The Record Commission's transcripts of the parliamentary rolls for 1484, 1485 and 1493 are to be published by the National Archives. (Berry,
Statutes
;
Idem, Statute rolls
;
Idem, Statute rolls of the parliament of Ireland, first to the twelfth years of the reign of King Edward the fourth
;
Irish statutes: revised edition
; Morrissey,
Statute rolls
.)

Statute Staple
. The Irish staple emerged in the thirteenth century as a regulatory body to govern the trade in basic or staple goods such as wool and hides. Dublin, Cork, Waterford and Drogheda were designated staple towns and it was only in these towns that such goods could be sold to foreign merchants. Later other towns, such as Carrickfergus, Belfast, Derry, Galway, Kilkenny, Limerick, New Ross, Sligo, Wexford and Youghal were also so designated. By the seventeenth century the staple's significance as a trade regulatory body had declined and it became a means by which loans could be raised and spare capital ventured in relative security. The staple officers, comprising a mayor who was elected annually by the merchants of the staple and two constables, supervised the financial transactions and enforced repayment. The borrower entered into a bond of recognisance, known as a statute staple, to pay the creditor a fixed amount on a specified date plus interest at 10%. This fixed sum was usually twice the amount borrowed and represented security for repayment of the loan. Failure to repay could lead to imprisonment or the seizure of property. The records of the Dublin Staple are held in the city archives and have recently been issued on CD-ROM by Dublin City Archives. (O'Brien, ‘The Irish staple', pp. 42–56; Ohlmeyer and Ó Ciardha,
The Irish statute staple books
.)

Steelboys, Hearts of Steel
. In the late 1760s the absentee earl of Donegall attempted to raise a substantial sum of money to complete his mansion at Fisherwick Park in Staffordshire by imposing heavy fines upon his Antrim tenants as a consideration for renewing their leases. Inevitably, intermediate landlords sought to recoup their investments by canting farms at higher rates. Styling themselves Steelboys or Hearts of Steel, the under-tenants resisted and engaged in a campaign of intimidation, house-burning and cattle-houghing to deter others from settling on new terms or from taking up the farms of ousted tenants. Evictions, excessive rent demands, increased competition for land, unrest over
county cess
and a fodder famine encouraged the spread of discontent into counties Derry, Tyrone, Down and Armagh. In retaliation large numbers of troops were dispatched to the disturbed areas and several Steelboys were brought to trial at Carrickfergus but were acquitted by partisan juries. When the trials were brought to Dublin the defendants were again acquitted. After some fierce confrontations and executions the outrages dissipated about 1773, assisted by largescale emigration. (Donnelly, ‘Hearts of Oak', pp. 7–73; Maguire, ‘Lord Donegall', pp. 351–76.)

stinting
. The regulation of cattle grazing on common land. When common land was stinted graziers with liberty of pasture on the commons were restricted to a specific number of cattle.
See
collop, soum, cow's grass.

stipend
. Salary, payment.

Stopford rule
. In 1844 Archdeacon Stopford of Meath began a campaign to change the national school regulation that required managers of
vested schools
to exclude all children from religious instruction unless their parents asked that they be present. The regulation was introduced as a safeguard against proselytism but to Stopford it hindered Anglican ministers in their duty to convert Catholics. In 1847 the commissioners of education yielded and re-interpreted the rule to mean that school managers could not compel children of one denomination to be present at the religious instruction of another. By abolishing the safeguard the commissioners encouraged the drift towards denominational schooling for parents were unlikely to permit their children to attend schools where they would be targets for proselytisation. In non-vested schools the commissioners of education had already yielded on this issue to Presbyterians in order to secure their connection with the national system. From 1866, however, the attendance of children of one faith during the religious instruction of another faith was forbidden. (Akenson,
The Irish education experiment
, pp. 200–1
passim
.)

stoup
. A basin for holy water set into the wall at the entrance of a church.

Stowe Manuscript
. Dating from c. 800 ad, the Stowe manuscript comprises extracts from the gospel of St John and liturgies of the eucharist, baptism and prayers for the sick. Stowe is so-called because it was found in the Duke of Buckingham's library at Stowe House. Possibly written in Tallaght, Co. Dublin, the manuscript contains 67 leaves of minuscule, angular script. It is preserved in the
Royal Irish Academy.

Strafford Inquisition
(1635–37). A series of inquisitions into landownership in Connacht conducted by the lord deputy, Thomas Wentworth (later earl of Strafford) as part of a wide-ranging programme to boost royal revenue. Wentworth arrived in Connacht with a commission to find the king's title to Connacht (with the exception of Leitrim) by instructing juries of the largest landowners in each county to find for the king or suffer the loss of their estates. All proved amenable with the exception of the Galway jury which relented only when the jurors were hauled before the court of
castle chamber
and heavily fined. Apart from some dispersed fragments only the records for Co. Mayo survive. They provide, barony by barony, a list of proprietors, the extent and location of their holdings together with notices of church lands, abbey lands, land held by
dower
, incidences of
wardship, reversions
, mills and fisheries. The existence of so recent an inquisition obviated the need for the the commissioners of the
Civil Survey
(1654–56) to survey Connacht. (O'Sullivan,
The Strafford inquisition
.)

strays
. Wandering domestic animals which were impounded and, if left unclaimed, forfeited to the manorial lord. Owners of strays were liable to fines in the manorial courts.
See
waif, poundage.

string course
. A moulded horizontal band around a building which projects out from the wall.

striping
. An early nineteenth-century innovation associated with the
rundale
system of commonfield agriculture, striping was the process by which inter-mixed holdings within a single arable field were consolidated. Striping gave each farmer a consolidated share of the various qualities of land which he had previously held as a cluster of scattered plots. It was achieved by creating new straight boundaries at right angles to the contours and across the different soils while at the same time equalising access to water, roads and pasture. When mapped, evidence of striping can be seen in ‘
ladder farms
', a series of parallel, long, narrow fields. A less common alternative was the practice of squaring which involved throwing the land into squares as opposed to stripes.

subsidy
. A parliamentary grant to the crown. Subsidies were levied on property owners and were overseen by county commissions appointed to assess the levy and compile lists of taxpayers. The lists were conveyed to the
sheriff
who collected the levy. The names and payments of taxpayers were entered on the subsidy rolls which are records of the court of the
exchequer
. Twenty-four subsidies were voted between 1662 and 1668 and a further 24 from 1672, each subsidy being to the value of £15,000 and levied at the rate of 2
s
. 8
d
. in the pound on all owners of property of the value of £1 yearly or possessed of goods valued at £3 or more. The original subsidy rolls perished in 1922 but transcripts survive for the period 1634–69 in the Public Record Office of Northern Ireland and the National Archives. (
PRI rep. DK,
33, pp. 44–47; Walton, ‘The subsidy roll', pp. 47–96.)