Lecture Four Wednesday 9th February

Back

An examination of the sources for 17th and 18th century Ireland

 

THIS PAGE IS STILL UNDER CONSTRUCTION

A fire in the Public Record Office (now the National Archives) in 1922 destroyed a lot of the records relating to this period. However, some, especially those in relation to the land settlement survived from other places and the following is an example of some of them.

Whereas there is only a summary introduction here it is strongly recommended that you go through the reading list for this lecture. (sample pages from each of the sources are on reserve in the library)

 

1.       Early English Books Online

2.       Depositions

3.       ‘Census of 1659’

4.       Civil Survey

5.       Down Survey Maps

6.       Books of Survey and Distribution

7.       Patent Rolls of the Acts of Settlement and Explanation

8.       Transplantation Lists

9.       Submissions and Evidence First Court of Claims

10.     Submissions and Evidence Second Court of Claims

11.     Forfeited estates in 1700

12.     Estates purchased in 1703

13.     Convert Rolls

 

1  Early English Books online.

The Early English Books online is a very large on-line collection of almost all of the extant books, pamphlets and broadsheets that were published in Ireland and England in the seventeenth century

These can be accessed through the library computers only. Go to the Maynooth Library Homepage and navigate to the section on data bases.

Click on the EEBO link and you will be automatically linked to this web site.

Once there you can enter details in a comprehensive search engine that will bring up any book written in the 17th century,  that has your search criteria in the front page. For example, if you enter Kilkenny in the Subject Field and 1641 to 1645 in the date range field, when you click search, all the books, pamphlets and broadsides that contains ‘Kilkenny’ in the title between these dates will come up.

You can then click on the individual results were you can read and/or download the original document.

 

2  The Depositions

Under construction

 

3  Census of 1659

The so called ‘1659 Census’ exists for all of Ireland except counties Cavan, Galway, Mayo, Tyrone and Wicklow. In addition, there are some baronies missing for counties Meath and Cork. The historical Geographer, Prof William Smyth, tells us that this source provides an enormous stimulus to our understanding of the complex cultural  worlds of late medieval/early modern Ireland. In particular it allows for an analysis of the interconnections between population densities, economy and ethnicity; it facilitates an exploration of the inter-relationships between settlement and social hierarchies and also allows for a detailed assessment of the varying impact of New English and Scottish settlers on the whole fabric of society.

Arranged by counties, baronies, parishes and townlands and by cities, parishes and street, the 1659 Census returns begin with a column dealing with the number of people per townland or street. The next column headed Tituladoes Names lists persons holding either titles of honour such as lords, knights, esquires and gentlemen or titles of office, profession or calling such as mayors, aldermen, doctors, lawyers and merchants. The final column distinguishes the numbers of people classified as English and Scots as opposed to Irish. At the end of each barony entry, the principle Irish family names and their number for each barony are given. See William J. Smyth, Society and Settlement in Seventeenth Century Ireland: the evidence of the 1659 Census’, in William J Smyth and Kevin Whelan (eds), Common Ground: essays on the historical geography of Ireland (Cork, 1988)

 

4  Civil Survey

For the Civil Survey, as with so many other basic documents of Irish History in the 17th century, it is necessary to rely on copies to take the place of archives which have been destroyed. The fire of 1711, which burned down the surveyor-general’s office destroyed all of the Civil Survey that was in public custody. For more than a hundred years afterwards it was believed that no part of the survey had survived. In 1817, however, the Irish Record Commissioners discovered a set of ‘original Civil Survey barony books’ in the library of Lord Headfort at Kells, County Meath, that covered the best part of 10 counties.

Lord Headfort’s ancestor, Thomas Taylor, had been a sub-commissioner in the restoration court of claims and had prepared the Taylor Books of Survey and Distribution that are now in the Royal Irish Academy. It is presumed that the Civil Survey books found in the Headfort library were made by Taylor for his own use as a commissioner in the court of claims.

The Headfort Civil Survey was purchased by the government and was later transferred to the Public Record Office. They were subsequently burned when the Record Office was burned down during the civil war in 1922. It is fortunate, however, that a copy had been made of these documents that was kept in the Quit Rent Office and it is these that were subsequently published by Robert Simington for the Irish Manuscripts Commission.

These include;

Vol 1    Tipperary (eastern and southern baronies) 1931

Vol 2    Tipperary (western and northern baronies) 1934

Vol 3    Donegal, Londonderry and Tyrone (1937)

Vol 4    Limerick with a section of the barony of Clanmaurice, Kerry 1938

Vol 5    Meath   1940

Vol 6    Waterford with appendices (Muskerry barony, County Cork, Kilkenny city and liberties (part) and Valuation.

Vol 7    Dublin 1945

Vol 8    Kildare (1952)

Vol 9    Wexford (1953)

Vol 10  Parts of County Louth

Simington’s introductions to the various volumes provide a valuable description of the Survey. The only major criticism of the series relates to the inadequacy of the indexing, which in general is confined to the reproduction of the contemporary indexes for each barony. They are difficult to use and omit a large proportion of the names mentioned in the actual text.

The Civil Survey was an essential preliminary to the Cromwellian confiscations of the 1650s. Like Doomsday Book was a stocktaking made by the conquerors with the help of the conquered.

It was a survey by Inquisition, not by mapped measurement, and was carried out in all counties of Ireland except Clare, Galway, Mayo, Roscommon and Sligo (the Cromwellians used the earlier Strafford Survey for these counties).

Commissioners were appointed for each of the 27 counties concerned. They were to inquire into the extent and value of all property belonging to forfeiting persons, the church and the state. They were also, for the better ‘discovery of the interest of the commonwealth’, to inquire into all lands claimed by English and Protestants. They were to ascertain the quality, estimated area and boundaries of the lands surveyed, and also to record the buildings, woods, quarries etc to be found on them. Leases, titles, royalties and other charges were to be noted.

To help them in their task the Commissioners were to summon juries who would view the properties, make the relevant inquiries and, if necessary, ‘to tread the metes and bounds’ of the properties.

When the survey of each barony was completed it was to be sent to the surveyor general, with a duplicate copy to be sent to the registrar for forfeited lands.

Abstracts of the Civil Survey were sent to Sir William Petty and formed the basis on which the Down Survey was made.

During the period following the restoration the Civil Survey was one of the principal records of land tenure. It was used along with the Down Survey for the compilation of the Books of Survey and Distribution.

The information given by the Civil Survey varies greatly for different areas. For example, the topographical and economic information given for Tipperary and Wexford is much richer than that given for the Ulster counties. The content of the survey of a barony evidently depended largely on the jurors, who are sometimes described as ‘the most able and ancient inhabitants’ or the ‘most knowing and sufficient men’ of the locality.

The general scheme of the survey gives the boundaries of each barony and parish with the following information for each townland; the 1641 proprietor, the name of the townland, the estimated area subdivided into arable, pasture, woodland, bog etc and the 1641 valuation. Notes are often attached given particulars of leases, mortgages and other charges, and also of churches, castles, houses, cabins, mills, fishing weirs etc. In addition, the survey contains much incidental information of an economic, topographical or even antiquarian character –the quantity and quality of this information varying greatly in different areas.

The Civil Survey is only one of several sources available for studying the ownership of land in 17th century Ireland. The area which it covers is limited, and in this respect it is inferior to the Books of Survey and Distribution.

 

5 Down Survey Maps

Abstracts of the Civil Survey facilitated the creation of Sir William Petty’s greatest achievement  the Down Survey.  While the Civil Survey and earlier Gross Survey were based on rough approximations of confiscated land, the Down Survey was effected by exact measurement and mapping and is especially important in identifying settlement patterns in mid seventeenth-century Ireland. It was the first serious and successful attempt to map the land of Ireland and was done on a barony and parish level. (The barony maps for all of Ireland are still in existence but the parish maps were mostly destroyed).

The later superimposition of the Down Survey maps on the nineteenth-century Ordinance Survey maps makes it possible to see how the 1640s settlements in Ireland were eventually

buried under landlord demesnes, which was, perhaps, the most enduring legacy of the Cromwellian period in Ireland.

The Civil Survey was a preliminary work in which the forfeited lands were identified and described. It therefore formed the framework for the subsequent land surveys.

On the 11th of December 1654, Sir William Petty contracted with the government to ‘admeasure all the forfeited lands according to their natural, artificial, and civil bounds and to state whether the land is distinguished into wood, bog, mountain, arable, meadow and pasture’. Petty pledged to ‘perform the survey within one year and one month, provided the weather was agreeable and the Tories quiet’. The Down Survey is the mapped expression of the Civil Survey and it was by these maps and index sheets that land satisfactions were made to the soldiers and adventurers, as well as to the other interests included by the Restoration Acts of Settlement and Explanation.

The instructions given to Patrick Raggett, the surveyor in charge of mapping County Kilkenny, reveal the cartographic terms of reference. Raggett was to inquire about previous Surveys such as the Civil. He was to ‘tread the meares according to the old and civil and to take notice how the lands you have agree with the lands itself’. Finally, he was to mark the situation of the ‘present housing, buildings and other remarkable things with some character expressing their condition and repair.

The Down Survey then is a mapped inventory of property ownership and items of settlement and topography.

The terms of reference of the survey precluded the mapping of unforfeited lands except where these lands were completely surrounded by forfeited lands.

Arable land was surveyed in surrounds of 50 acres whereas waste or barren mountain land was measured in units of 500 acres.

In the Down Survey, boundaries are defined in terms of the names of parishes or other territorial divisions abutting on to a given parish.

The terms of reference and the rapidity with which the Survey was completed precluded anything but a cursory examination of landscape items. The Civil Survey gave a much more comprehensive account of the fabric of rural society. The greatest achievement of the Down Survey was the mapping of the confiscated lands and the delineation of territorial boundaries. The field work for the ‘plots’ was completed between 1655 and 1657 by a diverse group which included Civil Surveyors, foot soldiers and students from Trinity College. The parish maps which formed the basis of the Down Survey were generally to a scale of 1 : 10,000.

 

6 Books of Survey and Distribution

The Books of Survey and Distribution were compiled to facilitate confiscation, settlement and taxation. They resemble ledgers and  are laid out in a series of columns and record information relating to land tenures in 1640 and in the post-1660 period.  Aside from being the earliest catalogue of landholders in 1641 (survey side) and after 1660 (distribution side), they provide a very comprehensive list of seventeenth century Irish place names and, more importantly, graphically  depict the destruction of the old Gaelic order.  While these Gaelic, sometimes parochial land units,  were originally accepted as the basis for earlier plantations, including that of Ulster, they were, during  the Cromwellian period, reduced to a simple fraction; the plantation acre.

Out of this new fraction evolved the townland, which became the standard unit used to distribute forfeited land and is the key to reconstructing the entire pattern of landholding in Ireland

Different sets of the Books of Survey and Distribution vary in the extent to which they use the Civil Survey to record Protestant land omitted from the Down Survey. For instanced the Quit Rent Office set includes Civil Survey particulars of the London Companies in county Derry, but omits much of the Earl of Cork’s property in county Waterford and the earl of Kildare’s property in county Kildare sometimes amounting to complete parishes.

These omitted properties, however, are included in the Annesley Set of the Books of Survey and Distribution that have been microfilmed and are now in the National Library.

 

7 Patent Rolls of the Acts of Settlement and Explanation

8  Transplantation Lists

9  Submissions and Evidence First Court of Claims

10 Submissions and Evidence Second Court of Claims

11 Forfeited estates in 1700

12 Estates purchased in 1703

 

13 Convert Rolls

The Act to prevent the further growth of popery’, passed in 1703, made it obligatory on converts from Catholicism to Protestantism to provide proof of conformity. The legal disabilities in relation to property, professions etc., imposed on the catholic by the Act, ceased to operate when he became a protestant, or, in the words of the Statute:

‘from the time of the enrolment in the High Court of Chancery of a Certificate of the bishop of the diocese in which he shall inhabit testifying to his being a protestant and conforming himself to the Church of Ireland as by law established’.

The Act further prescribed;

‘The said Court of Chancery is hereby required to take care that distinct rolls be kept for the enrolment of such certificates which shall publicly hang up or lie in some public office or place belonging to the said Court to be appointed, where all persons may at all reasonable times resort to and peruse the same without fee or reward, and for the enrolment of each and every such certificate the sum of six pence and no more shall be paid’.

These Rolls became known as the Convert Rolls.

The contain the names of Catholics in Ireland who converted to the Protestant Religion between 1703 to 1838. The reason they might have done so was due to the Penal Legislation in relation to catholic landholdings, whereby Catholic land could not be passed down to Catholic sons. In order to keep the land in the family many Catholics converted to Protestantism for the specific purpose of holding on to the land.

The Convert Rolls were transferred from the Chancery Division to the Irish Public Record Office in 1867. Although they were destroyed by fire in 1922, they had previously been calendared and recorded.

The Calendar of Convert Rolls, in two volumes,  is still in the National Archives. Volume 1, covering the years 1703 – 1789, and Volume 2 covering the years 1789 to 1838..

The names are entered in alphabetical order, in order of date under each letter. The Calendar lists the convert’s name, date of certificate and date of enrolment, and supplies addresses or other information for about half of the names. About 2,000 converts either conformed in Dublin, or described themselves as ‘of Dublin’, presumably in an attempt to avoid publicity.

These Calendars were used as the base for the publication by the Irish Manuscripts Commission. See Eileen O’Byrne (ed), The Convert Rolls (Dublin, 1981).

 Back to Top