This document summarizes aspects of life in Gaelic Ireland between 1300-1600, focusing on Munster during the 16th century. It discusses Ireland as a clan society organized along lineages, with the poet holding a sacred position. Christianity penetrated religious life but not other spheres. The clan concept was adapted by Anglo-Normans and tensions arose from disputes over land and expansion. Society was stratified with landless clan followers above peasants. The document also outlines England's increasing control over the Irish church and governance.

1. Munster during the Sixteenth Century: Culture, Society, Land
and Rebellion
Introduction:
Scholars agree that by the early fifteenth century Munster ‘had been completely
abandoned by the central administration in Dublin… [by the middle of the fifteenth
century] the earls of Desmond had almost completely replaced royal authority with their
own in Limerick, Kerry, much of Cork and Waterford, and in parts of southern
Tipperary.1
The societal and cultural history of any nation in any given period is of vital importance.
It encompasses all aspects of life, and is therefore its history. Gaelic Ireland in the
sixteenth century is no different. Since Kenneth Nicholls ‘great monument’ was first
published in 1972 and re published in 2003, scholars have provided us with a huge
amount of primary source materials, and secondary sources which help guide students in
their use. In this essay, I have summarised a few aspects of life in Gaelic Ireland between
1300 and 1600: Ireland as a clan society, the poets and their art, the law, and the church
in society.
Adrian IV, by the Bull Laudabiliter, had conferred the Lordship of Ireland upon Henry
II.2
Henry VIII had been declared Head of the Irish Church in 1536, thus severing his
connection with Rome … [in] 1541 a Parliament was summoned … attended [by many
1
MacCotter, P. ‘The Geraldine lineages of Imokilly and Sir John FitzEdmund of Cloyne’ in Edwards, D.
(ed.) Regions and rulers in Ireland, 1100-1650; essays for Kenneth Nicholls. Dublin, 2004, p.54-77.
2
‘In virtue of the Donation of Constantine, by which the Popes claimed temporal dominion over all the
islands of the ocean, Maxwell, C . Irish History from contemporary sources (1509-1610). London, 1923,
p.22
1

2. Irish chiefs who] gave their assent to this measure. In a proclamation of this same year
the King’s style appears as: ‘Henry VIII, King of England, Ireland and France, Defender
of the Faith and on earth Supreme Head of the Church of England and Ireland.’3
An Irish
Statute of 1542 I. 176 is entitled An Act that the King of England, his Heirs and
Successors, be Kings of Ireland (33 Henry VIII, c. I0).4
Such was the state of the church
in Ireland that in 1576 Sir William Gerard the Irish Chancellor recommended that
Archbishop Loftus be translated to a bishopric in England and the profits from his see be
applied to the maintenance of legal affairs within the Pale!5
England’s grasp of power over Ireland, was always “much easier won than kept…”’6
Maps constitute an important primary source for the historian also. Their importance is
emphasized by the inclusion of three maps in The Calendar of State Papers of Henry
VIII.7
‘For the purpose of assisting those, who are curious in Irish topographical history,
in locating the Septs,8
particularly the smaller ones, [and] change of name, which many
places in Ireland have undergone … One of these Maps comprises only the Province of
Munster [i.e., Lythe’s map] and appears, by the frequent occurrence of Lord Burleigh’s
handwriting upon it, to have been much in his use …’ Rough as the maps may have been,
great expense and effort went into their preparation, as we shall see. The Desmond
rebellions of 1569-73 and 1579-83 are good examples of the difficulty of controlling
Ireland and resulted in bringing war to the homesteads of the people in a widespread and
3
Cal Car MSS I p. 183, cited in Maxwell, ibid, p.22.
4
Ibid, p. 101-2
5
Cal Carew MSS II p 55 cited in Maxwell, op. cit.
6
CSPI Hen.VIII, II. 535. quoted in Maxwell, C. op. cit. p.22.
7
‘[Introduction] The Calendar of State Papers of Henry VIII. Vol. II part III: Correspondence between the
governments of England and Ireland 1515-1538. p.a2.
8
Nicholls points out that ‘sept’ was the normal term used by the English. ‘Sept’ seems to be a translation
of the Irish word sliocht which literally means a section sixteenth and seventeenth century English writers
for the basic Irish corporate family group. He prefers to use the term ‘clan’ as being in more general use:
clan is a unilineal descent group forming a definite corporate entity with political and legal functions.
(‘Glossary’, Nicholls, K. W. Gaelic and Gaelicized Ireland in the Middle Ages. Dublin, 2003, p. 224-226).
2

3. ruthless manner, massacres such as that at Smerwick, a distinctly English innovation and
the Plantation of Munster.
Society and culture:
Ireland may be regarded as unique in terms of assets such as its topography.
Kenneth Nicholls points out that ‘Irish genealogical texts constitute a body of material
which is unique in Europe both for its chronological sweep – from the seventh –
eighteenth centuries – and, considering its date and the losses which it has sustained, its
extent.’9
Its individualism is no less apparent in other aspects Gaelic society. Christianity
had infiltrated all aspects of European society where as in Ireland it ‘never seems to have
really expanded outside the purely religious sphere of life.’10
To illustrate this point
Nicholls uses the example of marriage and divorce in Ireland. He says, it ‘tended to be
determined by secular rules quite different from the teachings of the Church on these
matters.’11
He goes on to refer to the uniqueness of the ‘lineage or clan expansion’ that
prevailed in Gaelic Ireland and how crucial it is to an understanding of this period. The
idea of society as clans or lineages was a Gaelic one. K. W. Nicholls describes a clan as
‘a unilineal (in the Irish case, patrilineal) descent group forming a definite corporate
entity with political and legal functions.’12
Nicholls goes to great lengths to emphasise to
the reader that the clan does not in any way represent the ‘socio-familial’ sphere of
society. He also expresses amazement at how speedily the Anglo-Normans adapted to the
9
Nicholls K. W. ‘Genealogy’ in Buttimer, N., Rynne, C., Guerin, H.(eds. )The heritage of Ireland. (Cork,
2000), p. 156-161
10
Nicholls, K. W.: Gaelic and Gaelicized Ireland in the Middle Ages (Dublin, 2003), p. 3
11
Ibid, p. 3
12
Ibid, p. 9
3

4. idea of the clan after invasion, saying, ‘the most outstanding feature in the Gaelicization
of the Anglo-Norman settlers was the speed with which, within the first century
following the invasion, the concept of the clan had become established among them.’13
Anne Chambers notes that ‘To the proud Earl of Desmond, the great gaelicised feudal
aristocrat of Munster, Drury was but a servant, a hireling, one of the contemptible
‘English churls’ of inferior degree.’14
(fig. 2). This sums up how fully the Anglo Normans
adapted to the idea of the clan, and the clan mentality towards those whose lineage could
not be established.
‘A clan may be represented by a single individual only, the only member remaining of
his descent-group, which nevertheless continues to exist so long as any member of it
survives. The small descent-groups within a larger clan may each constitute entities or
clans, while remaining part of the larger one, and may again be similarly subdivided
themselves.’15
Like Christianity, the clan did not penetrate all levels of society. Poorer families did not
belong to a clan, rather just to immediate family. These persons were frowned upon by
the society as ‘mere churls and labouring men.’16
Although there were periods when the
genealogies were not recorded at all, as for instance between 1130 and 1300,17
the
keeping of genealogies was ‘entrusted to the professional families of scribes and
chroniclers.’18
This is one reason why poorer people could not record their genealogies.
Tension and conflict within a clan was very common. The grounds for disputes would
13
Ibid, p. 8
14
Chambers, A. Eleanor Countess of Desmond. (Dublin, 2000). p. 112.
15
Nicholls (2003), p. 9-10
16
Ibid, p. 10
17
Nicholls (2000), p. 156.
18
Nicholls, (2003), p. 10
4

5. come in the form of rights over the clan property.19
Nicholls uses the example of a
seventeenth century lawsuit between two brothers, ‘who held in common a minute
property in county Tipperary’20
, that resulted in one brother murdering the other over the
right to the land, something which very possibly could have been a common outcome in
such cases. When the scale of property went up the scale of violence must have followed.
Historians see the rate of clan expansion as ‘the most important phenomena in a clan
based society.’ The expansion would come from the top down i.e. the dominant stocks
would expand at the expense of the smaller entities, thus commoners would be displaced
by royals. The rate of expansion of an Irish clan should not be underestimated. For
example, Turlough an fhíona O Donnell, lord of Tirconnell (d. 1423) had eighteen sons
(by ten different women) and fifty-nine grandsons in the male line. This was by no means
the exception rather it was common practice.21
‘The concept of the lineage or clan…in
1310…received formal recognition in an Irish statute which decreed that the chief of
every ‘great lineage’ should be responsible for its members, a principal which was
already in force in Hiberno-English law regarding native Gaelic clans, but was now
formally extended to those of Anglo-Norman origin’.
Scholars agree that due to the lack of surviving internal Gaelic administrative
documentation they have had to rely on the views of hostile outsiders when it comes to
researching society and culture in the later middle ages.22
‘The Topographia Hibernie of
Giraldus Cambrensis was the matrix as it were, for descriptions of Ireland from the 12th
century onwards. Such portrayals (mainly by English writers) generally contained some
19
Ibid, p. 11
20
Ibid, p.11
21
Ibid, p. 11-12
22
For example, Simms, K. ‘Bardic poetry as a historical source’ in The writer as witness: literature as
historical evidence; Dunne, T. (ed.) (Cork, 1987), p. 58-75. Historical Studies XVI
5

6. religious or philosophical sanction, stated or implied, for either occupation in the 12th
century (as with Giraldus) or for continued rule or further colonisation in the 16th
century
(as with Stanihurst, Spencer and Polydor Vergil). The general thrust of these portrayals
was that the Gaelic Irish were a barbarous unruly nation; lax or aberrant in its practice of
the Christian religion, a nation much in need of being taken in hand, humanized and
religiously or economically reformed.’23
With the passage of time and painstaking work
of historians more reliable information surfaced regarding Gaelic society and in ‘these
latest accounts [Gaelic society] is seen as a complex and organised system of institutions
with its own principals and rules of arrangement.’24
Irish society in the sixteenth century cannot be divided into two sharply opposed classes
i.e. a free class and a servile class. It is true that there were men known as ‘bond-men’ but
these were not cultivators or peasants. They were the middlemen between the proprietor
of the land and the actual cultivators i.e. the peasantry. These ‘bond-men’ were merely
subjects of the lord.25
‘That the distinction, however, that has been drawn between the
‘free’ and ‘unfree’ elements of the population is certainly unreal in legal terms must not
blind us to its reality in social and economic ones. In practice the status of the great mass
of the population in Gaelic Ireland, the actual cultivators and labourers – ‘churls’, as they
are referred to by contemporary English writers – was very low indeed.’26
The landless
clans of ‘followers’ also referred to in Nicholls’ work were similar to the ‘bonds-men’ in
that they were of a higher social class then the peasantries. These ‘followers’ were to be
found especially in Munster.
23
Caulfield, M. D. ‘Introduction’ The Tenebriomastix of Don Philip O’Sullivan Beare: Poitiers (MS 259
(97): an edition of part of Book I (1-24 and 87-137) with introduction, translation and notes. Ph D thesis,
UCC 2004, p.5.
24
Lennon, C. Sixteenth-Century Ireland: The Incomplete Conquest, (Dublin, 1994), p. 42
25
Nicholls (2003) p. 78
26
Ibid, p.79
6

7. The Poets:
Nicholls refers to the poet as ‘a sacred personage of the Gaelic order.’ Poets (aos dana;
fileadh, singular file) ‘were the most striking group of the learned classes … his position
in late medieval society represented a most extraordinary survival from an earlier and
pre-Christian phase of Celtic life … His versified curses (usually miscalled satires in
English, but their purpose was magical harm, not ridicule) could injure and kill those
against whom they were directed.’ The training of a poet took seven years. 27
James Carney points out that ‘the understanding of this verse requires a knowledge of the
whole Irish genealogical scheme back, at least, to the fifth century, as well as a good
knowledge of Irish topography.’28
He goes on to say ‘Bardic poems are in the main
contemporary historical documents. Any facts alluded to, such as details of immediate
ancestry, must be taken as true, for they had to receive the assent of a contemporary
audience. Poets were trained diplomats. Even when they exercised the office of ollamh to
a given prince they travelled and exercised their art for the benefit of other princes.
Today’s enemy might be tomorrow’s friend, so that, while there are exceptions, poets
praised one man in such generalised terms that they could not thereby incur the disfavour
of another.’29
Duffy, Edwards and FitzPatrick point out that ‘an unhelpful mystique evolved around the
Gaelic literature scaring off interested scholars from outside the discipline. It is
encouraging to note, therefore that one of the principal debates currently raging in Gaelic
27
Ibid, p19, 93
28
Carney, J. ‘Literature in Irish, 1169-1534’ in Moody, T.W., Martin, F.X., Byrne, F.J. A New History of
Ireland, Volume II pt.2, Early Modern Ireland 1534 – 1691 (London, 1976) p. 694
29
ibid. p. 694
7

8. literary studies, concerning the extent to which bardic poetry reacted to the
transformation of the Irish political scene during the Elizabethan and early Stuart period,
or remained unresponsive, locked into age-old conventions, was sparked off by historians
who ventured into the field of Gaelic literature in the late 1970s and 1980s. They provide
a bibliography of approx. ten items over a twenty-year period up to 1998 and the debate
still goes on.’30
Ireland as a lineage or clan society
Ireland may be regarded as unique in terms of assets such as its topography.
Kenneth Nicholls points out that ‘Irish genealogical texts constitute a body of material
which is unique in Europe both for its chronological sweep – from the seventh –
eighteenth centuries – and, considering its date and the losses which it has sustained, its
extent.’31
Its individualism is no less apparent in other aspects Gaelic society. Christianity
had infiltrated all aspects of European society where as in Ireland it ‘never seems to have
really expanded outside the purely religious sphere of life.’32
To illustrate this point
Nicholls uses the example of marriage and divorce in Ireland. He says, it ‘tended to be
determined by secular rules quite different from the teachings of the Church on these
matters.’33
He goes on to refer to the uniqueness of the ‘lineage or clan expansion’ that
prevailed in Gaelic Ireland and how crucial it is to an understanding of this period. The
30
Duffy, S., Edwards, D., and FitzPatrick, E. (eds.) Gaelic Ireland c.1250-1650; land, lordship and
settlement. Dublin, 2001. p. ?
31
Nicholls K. W. ‘Genealogy’ in Buttimer, N., Rynne, C., Guerin, H.(eds. )The heritage of Ireland. (Cork,
2000) p. 156-161
32
Nicholls, K. W.: Gaelic and Gaelicized Ireland in the Middle Ages (Dublin, 2003) p. 3
33
Ibid, p. 3
8

9. idea of society as clans or lineages was a Gaelic one. K. W. Nicholls describes a clan as
‘a unilineal (in the Irish case, patrilineal) descent group forming a definite corporate
entity with political and legal functions.’34
Nicholls goes to great lengths to emphasise to
the reader that the clan does not in any way represent the ‘socio-familial’ sphere of
society. He also expresses amazement at how speedily the Anglo-Normans adapted to the
idea of the clan after invasion, saying, ‘the most outstanding feature in the Gaelicization
of the Anglo-Norman settlers was the speed with which, within the first century
following the invasion, the concept of the clan had become established among them.’35
Anne Chambers notes that ‘To the proud Earl of Desmond, the great gaelicised feudal
aristocrat of Munster, Drury was but a servant, a hireling, one of the contemptible
‘English churls’ of inferior degree.’36
(fig. 2). This sums up how fully the Anglo Normans
adapted to the idea of the clan, and the clan mentality towards those whose lineage could
not be established.
‘A clan may be represented by a single individual only, the only member remaining of
his descent-group, which nevertheless continues to exist so long as any member of it
survives. The small descent-groups within a larger clan may each constitute entities or
clans, while remaining part of the larger one, and may again be similarly subdivided
themselves.’37
Like Christianity, the clan did not penetrate all levels of society. Poorer families did not
belong to a clan, rather just to immediate family. These persons were frowned upon by
the society as ‘mere churls and labouring men.’38
Although there were periods when the
34
Ibid, p. 9
35
Ibid, p. 8
36
Chambers, A. Eleanor Countess of Desmond. (Dublin, 2000). p. 112.
37
Nicholls (2003) p. 9-10
38
Ibid, p. 10
9

10. genealogies were not recorded at all, as for instance between 1130 and 1300,39
the
keeping of genealogies was ‘entrusted to the professional families of scribes and
chroniclers.’40
This is one reason why poorer people could not record their genealogies.
Tension and conflict within a clan was very common. The grounds for disputes would
come in the form of rights over the clan property.41
Nicholls uses the example of a
seventeenth century lawsuit between two brothers, ‘who held in common a minute
property in county Tipperary’42
, that resulted in one brother murdering the other over the
right to the land, something which very possibly could have been a common outcome in
such cases. When the scale of property went up the scale of violence must have followed.
Historians see the rate of clan expansion as ‘the most important phenomena in a clan
based society.’ The expansion would come from the top down i.e. the dominant stocks
would expand at the expense of the smaller entities, thus commoners would be displaced
by royals. The rate of expansion of an Irish clan should not be underestimated. For
example, Turlough an fhíona O Donnell, lord of Tirconnell (d. 1423) had eighteen sons
(by ten different women) and fifty-nine grandsons in the male line. This was by no means
the exception rather it was common practice.43
‘The concept of the lineage or clan…in
1310…received formal recognition in an Irish statute which decreed that the chief of
every ‘great lineage’ should be responsible for its members, a principal which was
already in force in Hiberno-English law regarding native Gaelic clans, but was now
formally extended to those of Anglo-Norman origin’.
39
Nicholls (2000) p. 156.
40
Nicholls, (2003) p. 10
41
Ibid, p. 11
42
Ibid, p.11
43
Ibid, p. 11-12
10

11. Scholars agree that due to the lack of surviving internal Gaelic administrative
documentation they have had to rely on the views of hostile outsiders when it comes to
researching society and culture in the later middle ages.44
‘The Topographia Hibernie of
Giraldus Cambrensis was the matrix as it were, for descriptions of Ireland from the 12th
century onwards. Such portrayals (mainly by English writers) generally contained some
religious or philosophical sanction, stated or implied, for either occupation in the 12th
century (as with Giraldus) or for continued rule or further colonisation in the 16th
century
(as with Stanihurst, Spencer and Polydor Vergil). The general thrust of these portrayals
was that the Gaelic Irish were a barbarous unruly nation; lax or aberrant in its practice of
the Christian religion, a nation much in need of being taken in hand, humanized and
religiously or economically reformed.’45
With the passage of time and painstaking work
of historians more reliable information surfaced regarding Gaelic society and in ‘these
latest accounts [Gaelic society] is seen as a complex and organised system of institutions
with its own principals and rules of arrangement.’46
Irish society in the sixteenth century cannot be divided into two sharply opposed classes
i.e. a free class and a servile class. It is true that there were men known as ‘bond-men’ but
these were not cultivators or peasants. They were the middlemen between the proprietor
of the land and the actual cultivators i.e. the peasantry. These ‘bond-men’ were merely
subjects of the lord.47
‘That the distinction, however, that has been drawn between the
‘free’ and ‘unfree’ elements of the population is certainly unreal in legal terms must not
44
For example, Simms, K. ‘Bardic poetry as a historical source’ in The writer as witness: literature as
historical evidence; Dunne, T. (ed.) Cork, 1987. p. 58-75. Historical Studies XVI
45
Caulfield, M. D. ‘Introduction’ The Tenebriomastix of Don Philip O’Sullivan Beare: Poitiers (MS 259
(97): an edition of part of Book I (1-24 and 87-137) with introduction, translation and notes. Ph D thesis,
UCC 2004
46
Lennon, C Sixteenth-Century Ireland: The Incomplete Conquest, (Dublin, 1994) p. 42
47
Nicholls (2003) p. 78
11

12. blind us to its reality in social and economic ones. In practice the status of the great mass
of the population in Gaelic Ireland, the actual cultivators and labourers – ‘churls’, as they
are referred to by contemporary English writers – was very low indeed.’48
The landless
clans of ‘followers’ also referred to in Nicholls’ work were similar to the ‘bonds-men’ in
that they were of a higher social class then the peasantries. These ‘followers’ were to be
found especially in Munster.
The Poets:
Nicholls refers to the poet as ‘a sacred personage of the Gaelic order.’ Poets (aos dana;
fileadh, singular file) ‘were the most striking group of the learned classes … his position
in late medieval society represented a most extraordinary survival from an earlier and
pre-Christian phase of Celtic life … His versified curses (usually miscalled satires in
English, but their purpose was magical harm, not ridicule) could injure and kill those
against whom they were directed.’ The training of a poet took seven years. 49
James Carney points out that ‘the understanding of this verse requires a knowledge of the
whole Irish genealogical scheme back, at least, to the fifth century, as well as a good
knowledge of Irish topography.’50
He goes on to say ‘Bardic poems are in the main
contemporary historical documents. Any facts alluded to, such as details of immediate
ancestry, must be taken as true, for they had to receive the assent of a contemporary
audience. Poets were trained diplomats. Even when they exercised the office of ollamh to
a given prince they travelled and exercised their art for the benefit of other princes.
48
Ibid, p.79
49
Ibid, p19, 93
50
Carney, J. ‘Literature in Irish, 1169-1534’ in Moody, T.W., Martin, F.X., Byrne, F.J. A New History of
Ireland, Volume II pt.2, Early Modern Ireland 1534 – 1691 (London, 1976) p. 694
12

13. Today’s enemy might be tomorrow’s friend, so that, while there are exceptions, poets
praised one man in such generalised terms that they could not thereby incur the disfavour
of another.’51
Duffy, Edwards and FitzPatrick point out that ‘an unhelpful mystique evolved around the
Gaelic literature scaring off interested scholars from outside the discipline. It is
encouraging to note, therefore that one of the principal debates currently raging in Gaelic
literary studies, concerning the extent to which bardic poetry reacted to the
transformation of the Irish political scene during the Elizabethan and early Stuart period,
or remained unresponsive, locked into age-old conventions, was sparked off by historians
who ventured into the field of Gaelic literature in the late 1970s and 1980s. They provide
a bibliography of approx. ten items over a twenty-year period up to 1998 and the debate
still goes on.’52
The Law:
‘The native Irish legal system was and is usually referred to as the Brehon Law, from
brehon, the English form of the Irish word breitheamh, a judge.’53
The term ‘Brehon
Law’ is a very appropriate one. ‘Irish law was “judge-made” law; its texts distill the legal
rules and remedies developed over the centuries by highly trained professional jurists. It
was an “organic” system that reflected the complexities of Irish society. This explains its
richness and sophistication…Brehon law was the product of a learned class which
51
ibid. p. 694
52
Duffy, S., Edwards, D., and FitzPatrick, E. (eds.) Gaelic Ireland c.1250-1650; land, lordship and
settlement. Dublin, 2001. p. ?
53
Nicholls (2003) p. 50
13

14. transcended political boundaries. As a result, Brehon law was “national,” in the sense that
it was a cultural phenomenon of Ireland as a whole, with few (if indeed any) discernable
regional variations…a vast treasury of judges law survives. The principal document is the
Senchas Már,54
“The Great Collection of Traditional Learning.” This consisted of about
fifty separate texts. Twenty-one of these survive more or less intact, and fragments of
most of the others remain. Most of the texts deal with a discrete topic of law. For
example, the first text in the Seanchas Már is a tract “On the Four Divisions of Distraint”
(Di Chetharshlicht Athgeabala). Distraint was a process by which parties could force
their opponents to court by impounding their cattle.’55
The Law covered all aspects of life
in an agrarian society: Kelly gives a full list of these from the king, through the family
unit, servants, manufacturers, contracts, livestock, foodstuffs, even bees and their honey,
noting especially marriage, and the care of women and children.56, 57
54
The oldest fragments of the Senchas Mar are in Trinity College Dublin (MS. H.2.15) and a facsimile was
published by the Irish Manuscripts Commission in 1931.
55
McLeod, N. ‘Brehon Law’, in Duffy, S. (ed.) Medieval Ireland: an encyclopedia. New York and London,
2005. p. 42-43
56
Nicholls ‘Genealogy’ p. 157
57
Kelly, F. ‘Contents’ A guide to early Irish law. Dublin, 1988 p vii-xii. Binchy, D. A. (ed) Corpus iuris
hibernici. Dublin, 1976 is the compilation of extant early Irish law texts.
14

15. Examples of Taxes:
Taxes were as necessary in early Ireland as they are now. Two of the better known, and
most burdensome were those of coshery (coshering)58
and coyne and livery.59
Both
were obligatory hospitality, with coshering usually lasting ‘two days and two nights …
[around times of the seasonal] major religious feasts like Christmas, Easter ‘As it is
usually understood, coyne and livery was the single most important tax in later medieval
Ireland. It comprised the key element in the system of tributes and exactions used in the
native lordships whereby the lords and chieftains required their subjects to give free
entertainment (food, lodging, etc.) to their servants and followers. Often used as a tax to
meet the maintenance of a lord’s army, the extent to which it could be imposed
determined the military strength of a lordship; conversely, a strong military lord [like the
Earl of Desmond] could impose it as often as he liked, once he had the troops to enforce
it.’
Edwards points out that this term ‘is a hybrid one; used by English writers to describe a
range of taxes in use in the Gaelic and gaelicised lordships … the cuddy, (coid oidche),
[which] was specifically the taking of a night’s entertainment, but was sometimes dubbed
coyne and livery by English observers … bishops in Gaelic areas levied ‘noctials’,
something very similar to coyne and livery. Cosgrove tells us the word ‘‘coyne’ derives
from the Irish term coinneamh and coinnmheadh , both meaning billeting or quartering ...
Livery referred to the practice of similarly supporting horses and grooms without
payment.60
Empey and Simms cite a report entitled ‘State of Ireland and plan for its
58
Edwards, D. ‘Coshering’ in Duffy op. cit., p. 108
59
Edwards, D. ‘Coyne and livery’ in ibid., p. 110-11.
60
Cosgrove, A ‘The emergence of the Pale, 1399-1447’ NHI 2, p. 541-2
15

16. reformation’ (c. 1515) which defined coyne and livery as ‘takeing horsse meate and
mannes meate of the kinges pore subgettes by compulsion, for nought, withoute any peny
paying therfor.’61
Attempts were made by parliament during the fifteenth century to
‘abolish a bad, most heinous and unbearable custom, called coigne.’62
As we know, this
had no effect in Munster and Edwards remarks that ‘Coyne was an especially heavy
burden in the Desmond lordship, imposed as often as once a fortnight on the earls’
subjects, many of whom were reduced to subsistence levels of existence as a result.’63
The Church:
From earliest times Ireland had established a reputation for learning, scholarship and the
ownership of books. Irish Franciscans collected so many books that in 1336 the Pope
[Benedict XII, who was interested in reforming the abuses in the church] instructed them
to compile a list of their books, which should be kept up-to-date.64
Nicholls points out that by ‘the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries the monasteries had
become completely secularized, [but] it must not be supposed that the tradition of
Christian asceticism or monastic piety was absent from Ireland … Abbacies and
priorships came to be treated as simply ecclesiastical benefices, and like other benefices
became quasi-hereditary … ambitious clerics transferred from one order to another
61
Empey, C.A. and Simms, K. ‘The ordinances of the White Earl and the problem of coign in the later
middle ages’ Proc Roy Ir Acad C 75 (1975) p 178-87 quoted in Ibid p 542. (S.P. Hen. VIII, ii, 12)
62
State Papers Ireland John-Hen. V, p 573 cited in Cosgrove, A. op. cit. p. 542 n. 3
63
Edwards op. cit. 2005 p 111
64
Davis, H.M. ‘The library tradition’ Buttimer, N., Rynne, C., Guerin, H. op. cit. The only catalogue of an
Irish house which exists however, dates from the latter half of the fifteenth century and is an inventory of
the books which were in the Franciscan library at Youghal in 1491. Further titles were added to the
catalogue in 1523. The list was written by the Sub-Prior, Brother William O’Hurrily, ‘lest perchance, by
carelessness or neglect, or which is worse, want of conscience … they might be completely destroyed and
no memorial of the remain.’p. 275
16

17. whenever a chance of promotion presented itself.’65
In 1576 Sir William Gerard the Irish
Chancellor recommended that Archbishop Loftus be translated to a bishopric in England
and the profits from his see be applied to the maintenance of legal affairs within the
Pale!66
Through the Donation of Constantine67
Adrian IV, by the Bull Laudabiliter, had conferred
the Lordship of Ireland upon Henry II. Henry VIII had been declared Head of the Irish
Church in 1536, thus severing his connection with Rome. In June 1541 a Parliament was
summoned in Dublin, attended by many Irish chiefs who gave their assent to this In a
proclamation of this same year the King’s style appears as: ‘Henry VIII, King of
England, Ireland and France, Defender of the Faith and on earth Supreme Head of the
Church of England and Ireland.’68
An Irish Statute of 1542 I. 176 is entitled An Act that
the King of England, his Heirs and Successors, be Kings of Ireland (33 Henry VIII, c.
I0).69, 70
The latter years of the 1530s saw the commencement of the dissolution of the
monasteries in Ireland by George Browne, Archbishop of Dublin and John Staples, both
sent to enforce the Act of Supremacy. The Annals of the Four Masters record all of this.71
The destruction of the Cistercian Abbey at Graignamanagh, Co. Kilkenny, was described
65
Nicholls op. cit. p. 125
66
Cal Carew MSS II p 55 cited in Maxwell, C . Irish History from contemporary sources (1509-1610).
London, 1923 p. 30.
67
A document fabricated in the second half of the eighth century , by which the Popes claimed temporal
dominion over all the islands of the ocean. Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church. Oxford, 1997. p 499
68
Maxwell, C op. cit. p.22.
69
Irish Statutes, cited in Maxwell, C op. cit. p. 101-2
70
http://www.heraldica.org/topics/national/ireland_docs.htm#act1542
71
AFM 5, 1576 ‘A heresy and a new error [sprang up] in England, … the men of England went into
opposition to the Pope and Rome … they styled the King the Chief Head of the Church of God in his own
kingdom. New laws and statutes were enacted by the King and Council [Parliament] according to their own
will. They destroyed the orders to whom worldly possessions were allowed, namely, the Monks, Canons,
Nuns …They broke down the monasteries, and sold their roofs and bells, so that … there was not one
monastery that was not broken and shattered, with the exception of a few in Ireland, of which the English
took no notice or heed … it is impossible to narrate or tell its description, unless it should be narrated by
one who saw it.’p. 1445-9.
17

18. by the Protestant Bishop of Ossory, John Bale, in his Preface to Leland’s New Year’s
Gift to King Henry VIII: ‘A greate number of them [people] which purchased those
superstychous mansions, reserved of those librayre bookes some to serve theyr jokes,
some to scoure theyr candlesticks, and some to rub theyr bootes; some they sold to the
grosser and sopesellers, and some they sent over the sea to the bookbinders – not in small
number, but at tymes whole shippes full, to the wonderynge of foren nacyons; yea, ye
universities of this realme [England] are not all cleare in this detestable fact, but cursed is
that bellye which seeketh to be fed with such ungodlye gayness, and so depelye shameth
his natural conterye. I know a merchantmanne, which shall at this time be namelesse, that
bought ye contents of two noble libraryes for forty shillings price: a shame be it spoken.
Thys stuffe hath he occupied in the stedde of grey paper by the space of more than these
ten years, and yet he hath store ynoughe for as many years to come.’72
And so some of ‘the most prominent features of the man-made landscape’73
in Ireland
were torn down and destroyed but the unique topography they were constructed on
remained intact. This will be discussed in the following section.
The Land:
72
O’Leary, P. ‘Notes on the Cistercian Abbey of Graignamanagh’ Journal of the Royal Society of
Antiquaries of Ireland 2 (5th
series), pp 237-47. quoted in Davis ‘The library tradition’ Buttimer, Rynne
Guerin op. cit., p. 276.
73
Quinn, D.B. and Nicholls, K.W. ‘Ireland in 1534’ in NHI III. p. 29
18

19. These however, are not the earliest maps of Ireland. John H. Andrews says ‘Islands have
always held a fascination for the mapmaker … The smaller the island, the stronger its
aura of insularity.74
Ireland’s significance was sufficient for the geographer Ptolemy of
Alexandria to have it feature in his Geographia of the world known to the Romans and
Greeks (ca. CE 150). He provided ‘the latitudes and longitudes of fifty Irish capes,
settlements, estuaries, and cities, [most likely] iron age hill forts rather than urban
communities allows for the earliest construction of the shape and size of Ireland…’75
The
longitudes are reckoned from the Canary Islands Ptolemy’s Geographia was first
published in 1477 (shortly after the introduction of printing into Europe in 1450). To
return to Andrews, he points out ‘Even after an accurate survey the smallness of Ireland
remains hard to express in quantitative terms, mainly because internal and external water
surfaces are so difficult to distinguish … However, its smallness is psychologically
diminished by the nearby presence of an island … actually 2.75 times as large … Ireland
was invaded and feudalised by Anglo-Norman magnates in the middle ages, conquered
by English armies in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and then governed by
British civil servants until the twentieth century.76
A special volume of A new history of Ireland dedicated to maps, genealogies and lists,
published in 1984 warrants the inclusion of Ptolemy’s map of Ireland, ‘based on the
reconstruction in Ordnance Survey … 1956’ and the footnote by F. J. Byrne, shows that
almost two thousand years later, it has given rise to much scholarly debate ranging from
74
Andrews, J. H. Shapes of Ireland: maps and their makers 1564-1839. Dublin, Geography Publications.
1997. p. 1.
75
Ibid., p 26-7.
76
Andrews, J. H. Shapes.. pp. 1-2.
19

20. commerce, through language and surveying throughout Europe, particularly during the
last two centuries.77
Lennon rightly claims ‘That no native cartographical overview [of Ireland] existed about
1500 was due to the lack of those antiquarian and historical studies being pioneered by
the humanists in countries influenced by the Renaissance…In the later sixteenth century
the topographical unveiling of much of the island took place in the context of English
governmental reform proposals.’78
. Andrews’ book cites another source which discusses
the portolan charts79
on which Ireland was represented as early as 1300 prior to giving
giving an account of the various English and other cartographic Irish projects. 80
To show how important these maps were for the contemporary would-be colonisers and
for the modern historian, we can do no better than quote from Edmund Tremayne (1525-
82), secretary to Sir Henry Sidney (Lord Deputy of Ireland 1565-71; 1575-8), in
recommending what became Lythe’s map ‘… it will be liked for that you shall make a
general description of the whole realm. There is not so plain a way to make
77
Moody, T.W., Martin, F.X., Byrne, F.J. (eds) A new history of Ireland IX: maps, genealogies, lists; a
companion to Irish history part II. Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1984. p. 16 fig. 14 ‘Ptolemy’s map of Ireland
c. 150 AD’; n. 14 p. 98 by F. J. Byrne.
78
Lennon, Colm: Sixteenth-Century Ireland: The Incomplete Conquest, (Gill & Macmillan, Dublin, 1994)
p. 1-2
79
A portolan chart. also called Harbour-finding Chart, Compass Chart, or Rhumb Chart, is
a navigational chart of the European Middle Ages (1300–1500). The earliest dated
navigational chart extant was produced at Genoa by Petrus Vesconte in 1311 and is said
to mark the beginning of professional cartography. The portolan charts were
characterized by rhumb lines, lines that radiate from the centre in the direction of wind or
compass points and that were used by pilots… http://www.britannica.com/eb/article-
9060998/portolan-chart
80
Andrews, M. C. ‘The map of Ireland 1300-1700’, Proc Belfast Natural History and Philosophical
Society, 1922-3, p. 16-23, quoted in Andrews Shapes p. 67
20

21. demonstration thereof as by the view of that perfect cart that your lordship hath caused to
be taken in hand … whereby you shall have occasion to describe every part o it with their
frontiers, and all the borders, havens, creeks, and rivers with other notable commodities.
By the same your lordship is able to describe every man his country, of what power he is,
and what he hath been, and how it is neighboured, what quarrels he hath, and how every
war each of them is affected … The places that be fortified already will appear. And so
you may with good commodity thereupon express what your opinion is for fortification
in any other place that your lordship shall think good. … And finally by these means you
shall describe what commodity hath grown of such things as are done and what her
highness shall embrace by proceeding onward ever abating cost behind as she shall
bestow it forward.’81
The ensuing large map (eight and a half feet long and five and a half
feet wide) has not survived, but the one which concerns us ‘A single draght of Mounster’
does.82
Andrews points out ‘Lythe deserves credit for ignoring the well-established
distinction between land and water surveys. His expenses included the hire of boats along
the coast from Kinsale to Dingle as well as in the harbours of Cork and Kinsale, the lower
Shannon … as early surveys go, this one is quite well documented, not only in the
author’s expense accounts but in a series of letters which include a signed specimen of
his distinctive handwriting.’83
Roads are totally omitted in his map, but his recording of
hills, lakes and island (the last two generally too large) and tower houses are ‘plain and
functional …; his choice of subject matter, coasts, inland water, mountains, principal
settlements and territorial divisions’. Bringing as many maps as possible together can
give a description of soil, vegetation (including forests and foodstuffs), animal
81
London. Public Record Office SP63/32/66 June 1571 quoted in Andrews Shapes p. 67 n.17
82
London. Public Record Office. MPF 73.
83
Andrews Shapes p. 63-4.
21

22. husbandry, the flow of rivers and the obstacles they created are needed Topography
affected communication, probably the most important aspects of everyday life, because
society depends on it. It includes all activities e.g., travel, trade, commerce. Manmade
structures of all kinds, including houses large and small, roads, bridges, fortifications,
mills are other features of the landscape which are significant. Weather was of course an
external determinant of the condition of the land and its produce.
‘Much of the evidence for the geographical character of Ireland at this time derives from
the observations of English visitors [including people like Richard Stanihurst, who based
much of his work on Giraldus Cambrensis84
] and it is often difficult, therefore, to
distinguish between the ‘real’ Ireland and Ireland as viewed through the perceptual lenses
of statesmen, soldiers, officials, settlers, and curious observers, few of whom were able to
give objective accounts of their experiences ‘…These biases and often-untrustworthy
contemporary accounts of 16th
century Ireland are balanced out by the actualities of life
and landscape in Ireland that in the main survived the brief and relatively ineffective
attempts at reform and change.85
It was not only for geographical aspects of Ireland that
these subjective views were forwarded by the ‘New English’86
settlers but also for
commercial expansion and colonisation in Ireland. ‘A Discourse of Ireland’ typifies most
Elizabethan projects in that it is coated in propaganda.87
The Discourse ‘is in no sense an
84
Richard Stanihurst, a 16th-century Dubliner. Stanihurst was a highly-skilled Latin author whose works
were published on the continent during the latter part of the 16th century and early 17th century but have
not appeared in modern editions, have mostly not been translated, and have no commentaries. Other
continuing studies have been focused primarily on writings produced by Irish authors from c.1500
onwards. http://www.ucc.ie/acad/classics/CNLS/Background.html
85
.Moody, T. W Martin, F. X. Byrne F. J. (eds)s A New History of Ireland, Volume III, Early Modern
Ireland 1534 – 1691, (Oxford University Press, 1976) p. 142.
86
So-called to distinguish them from the ‘Old English’ settlers. The ‘New English’ settlers would have
been predominantly protestant.
87
Quinn, D. B. ‘A Discourse of Ireland’ (Circa 1599); a sidelight on English colonial policy, Proc Roy Ir
Acad C XLVII (1942) P. 151-66 p. 159.
22

23. objective description or analyses of Irish conditions, but a propagandist tract whose main
object is to encourage the exploitation of Ireland in the economic interest of England.’88
‘Gerald of Wales describes Ireland, at the close of the twelfth century, as a land full of
woods, bogs and lakes, and for most of the country, and especially the midland plain and
the north, the description would still have been true in the sixteenth century.’89
This being
said, it was not true of all of Ireland despite what might be suggested in some
contemporary military accounts (which were prone to exaggeration and contradiction).90
The claim that Ireland is overpopulated by woods and bogs is refuted by Fynes Moryson
(1566-1630) secretary to the Lord Deputy Sir Charles Blount91
in his ‘Description of
Ireland’: ‘…But I confess myself to have been deceived in the common fame that all
Ireland is woody, having found in my long journey from Armagh to Kinsale few or no
woods by the way excepting the great wood of Ophalia [Offaly] and some low shrubby
places which they call ‘glins’.’92
‘The Peyton Survey’, also known as the ‘Desmond Survey’, (the Annals of the Four
Masters do not refer to this under the relevant years, i.e. 1584-86) set up in June1584 to
acquire knowledge of the Earl of Desmond’s escheated property, is a most convenient
and appropriate way to discover information about the lands of Munster in the sixteenth
century.93, 94
This survey was to comment on the lands ‘topography, thus providing us
88
Ibid p. 152
89
Nicholls, K. W: Gaelic and Gaelicized Ireland in the Middle Ages, (Dublin, 2003) p. 5
90
Moody, T. W., Martin, F. X., Byrne F. J. (eds): A New History of Ireland, Volume III, Early Modern
Ireland 1534 – 1691, (Oxford University Press, 1976)
91
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fynes_Moryson
92
Butlin Moody, T. W., Martin, F. X., Byrne F. J. (eds): A New History of Ireland, Volume III, Early
Modern Ireland 1534 – 1691, (Oxford University Press, 1976)p. 143
93
Maccarthy – Morrogh, M. The Munster Plantation, English Migration to Southern Ireland, 1583 – 1641.
(Oxford, 1986) p. 4 -5
94
Ibid Get footnote number.. The Peyton Survey originals were destroyed in 1922; transcript of a small
part of the original Latin calendar for Limerick, PROI, M. 2759; English translation and condensation for
all Limerick and Kerry, ibid, 5037-9. Kerry portion privately printed (n.d.; presented to PROI, 1923); copy
23

24. with a similar opportunity.’95
Sir Valentine Browne was appointed head of the
commission. ‘The commission’s instructions were to discover the area of escheated land,
compute its value, and name the present occupier. Church property was to be recorded.
The topography of the areas, minerals available, timber and stock, all were to be
catalogued and special mention was to be made of corn production and prices.’96
,97
The commission made a detailed report on the topography of County Limerick. ‘Most of
Limerick lies in a half basin with a rim of high land to the west, south, and east, and the
River Shannon to the north. Straggling the Kerry border was Slevelogher, not a
particularly high range of hills with a summit of just over 1,000 feet, but throughout the
early modern period referred to with awe and exasperation since it was sometimes
impassable in wet weather. Three days of continuous rain – not an incredible occurrence
in south-west Ireland – could sever all communications to Kerry…Most of the county’s
interior is under 250 feet. Two Sluggish rivers, the Maigue and the Deel, make their way
north from the surrounding high rim to the Shannon estuary. The region has mostly heavy
soils and the lowlands the lowest rainfall in Munster, 30 to 40 inches a year. The
inadequate drainage, combined with clays, produces a rich grassland ideal for pastoral
farming and today, as in the sixteenth century, wealth lies in herds rather than in crops.
Apart from the way to Kerry, there were no route difficulties to County Cork in the south
or to Tipperary in the east; neither were there internal barriers to communications. Both
in The Kerryman (Tralee), Aug-Nov. 1927. Survey for Mallow translated and transcribed by H. F. Berry,
‘The Manor and Castle of Mallow in the days of the Tudors’, ℑCHAS, 2 (1893). Part of a MS exists,
endorsed ‘a book of parcels of the earl of Desmond’s lands’ (n.d.), but much of this is a verbatim copy of
the 1572 survey of the Earl’s lands, itself probably utilized for later confiscation, SP/63/110/79; Cal,
Carew, 1515-74, pp. 414-18.
95
Maccarthy – Morrogh, M. The Munster Plantation, English Migration to Southern Ireland, 1583 – 1641,
(Oxford, 1986) p. 4 -5
96
Ibid, p. 5
97
Ibid, p. 5
24

25. the Deel and Maigue were bridged in many places, although the lowest crossing over the
latter was at Adare, a good ten miles from the river mouth.’98
From Limerick the
commission travelled to county Kerry, running into much difficulty along the way. Sir
Valentine Browne related to Lord Burghley they had been through ‘woods, bogs,
mountains and dangerous waters’; giving an idea of the dangers of travelling across
Ireland in this period and how hazardous the topography could be. Browne’s son broke
an arm and some of their horses drowned while trying to cross a river.99
In the sixteenth century the county of Kerry was divided into two counties, there was
both an Irish region and an Anglo-Norman region. The Anglo-Norman region, known as
‘Kerry’ designated the Norman northern half, while ‘Desmond’ occupied the southern
Irish half. The boundary was from Dingle Bay up the Maine River, then along the Brown
Flesk tributary until the Cork border.100
‘There were two low-lying areas in north and central Kerry and traversing the first of
these could be difficult because of a lack of bridges on the River Feale. In winter one of
its tributaries, the Brick, was navigable for a large galley up to Lixnawe, seven miles
from the sea. For some time military advisers had pressed for a bridge at the head of the
Feale to allow a route from Limerick into Kerry along the banks of the Shannon estuary.
Rainfall of course was much higher than Limerick. Relief rain soaked most of ‘Desmond’
with 60’’ to 100’’ or more. The mountains in the Dingle peninsula attracted similar
amounts, but north Kerry experienced lower averages of 40’’ to 50’’ a year.’101
For its comparatively small size Ireland has a distinct and varied terrain. Different levels
of land both mountainous and undulating as well as a variety of soils and bogs can appear
98
Ibid, p. 8
99
Ibid, p. 10
100
Ibid, p. 10
101
Ibid, p. 10
25

26. in a small plain. Cultural distinctiveness and traditional lifestyles were in part maintained
by Irelands natural frontiers i.e. mountains, forests and bogs.102
The main woodland areas
[In Ireland, not only Munster] lay to the north-west of Lough Neagh, in the Erne basin,
along the Shannon, in the river valleys of the west and south, and on the eastern slopes of
the Wicklow and Wexford hills, with ‘smaller but significant areas…in eastern county
Down, in the Glens of Antrim, in the Sperrin valleys, on the western coast of Lough
Swilly, on the western coast of Donegal and in north Sligo and south Galway’.’103
Kenneth Nicholls points out ‘in general it could be said that fifteenth and sixteenth
century Ireland was extensively wooded in all mountainous areas, even those of the
western seaboard – and on the margins and islands of the bogs of the central plain.’104
Looking at John Goghe’s map of Ireland (c. 1567)105
and comparing it with Laurence
Nowell’s A General Description of England and Ireland (1564-65)106
reinforces this
statement. Further study of Irish maps, including Eileen McCracken’s map regarding
forestry and highland (c. 1600)107
, and Andrews’ analyses of the maps (examples already
mentioned above), shows that scholars are agreed on this point. Nicholls refers to another
map 66. P. R. O. i. 7. ‘This is a map of the counties of Cork, Kerry, and Limerick, somewhat
roughly drawn on paper, 16 x 12 inches, of which the chief feature is a careful descriptioin of the
forests, coloured green, which then (1580) covered a large part of the province, viz. . ' Glangaruf,'
102
Lennon, C. Sixteenth-Century Ireland, The Incomplete Conquest, (Gill & Macmillan, Dublin, 1994) p. 3
103
Moody, T. W. , Martin, F. X., Byrne, F. J. (eds) A New History of Ireland, Volume III, Early Modern
Ireland 1534 – 1691, (Oxford University Press, 1976) p. 143
104
Nicholls, K. W. Gaelic and Gaelicized Ireland in the Middle Ages, (Dublin, 2003), p. 6-7
105
Smyth, W. J. Map-making, Landscapes and Memory, A Geography of Colonial and Early Modern
Ireland c. 1530-1750, Plate 1d, fig. 2.6 Hibernia, insular non procul ab Anglia vulgare Hirlandia vocata,
John Goghe’s map of Ireland (c. 1567). By permission of Public Record Office, London (MPF 168), (Cork
University Press, Cork, 2006).
106
Smyth, William J. Map-making, Landscapes and Memory, A Geography of Colonial and Early Modern
Ireland c. 1530-1750, Plate 1e, fig. 2.8 Laurence Nowell’s A General Description of England and Ireland
(1564-5). By permission of the British Library (Add MS 62540), (Cork University Press, Cork, 2006).
107
T. W. Moody, F. X. Martin, F. J. Byrne (eds) A New History of Ireland, Volume IX, Maps,
Genealogies, lists, A companion to Irish History part II, (Oxford University Press, 1984) p. 49
26

27. ‘Glanrought’, ' Glanflesky',' Leanmore,' ' Glenglas,' ' Arlo Wood,' and 'Killhugy.' The map furnishes
no clue to the author of it, but it contains a few notes in Burghley's hand, as, e.g., ' Smerwick wher ye
Spanyard was ouer.’ Note.-In addition to the above maps there are said (footnote 19 Historical
Manuscripts Commission, 6th
Report p. 309) to be four others relating to Munster in the possession of
Lord Leconfield at Petworth House, made in connection with the ' general survey of all such lands as
are conteyned within the county of Desmound, as well of such lands as as well as such as wear the
Earl of Clancartyes own demeans, as of all other lands belonging to the Lords and others the
freeholders of the said county.'108
Nicholls points out that the town of Killarney is a good
esample of this; we find that the town is surrounded by mountainous land that in turn is
covered by forestry. In general the map portrays Munster as a predominantly
mountainous region with much forested land encircling this highland. 109
On the other hand, it is worth mentioning that the Dutchman Gerard Mercator’s map
(Angliae Scotiae Hiberniae nova descriptio), although ‘essentially an English view of
Ireland’s place in the British Isles, and his title sets the and by printing ‘Hiberniae’ in
smaller script than ‘Angliae’ and ‘Scotiae’.’110
‘Andrews goes on to say ‘Mercator’s
Ireland was physically well organised. It had no forests and no bogs or waste … The
implication is that the whole country was cultivated apart from the mountain … extensive
coverage [was] given to Ireland’s wealth of rivers and lakes … In human as in physical
geography [he] gives the impression of peace, order and uniformity. Settlement is
108
Dunlop, R. ‘Sixteenth-century maps of Ireland’ The English Historical Review, Vol. 20, No. 78. (Apr.,
1905), pp. 309-337. Stable URL: http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0013-
8266%28190504%2920%3A78%3C309%3ASMOI%3E2.0.CO%3B2-8. Cited in Nicholls K.W.
‘Woodland cover in pre-modern Ireland’ Duffy, P.J. Edwards, D. , FitzPatrick, E. (eds.) Gaelic Ireland c.
1250 – c. 1650. Dublin, Four Courts, 2001. p. 191 n.55.
,
109
ibid.
110
Andrews J. H. Ireland: maps and their makers 1564-1839. (Dublin, 1997). p. 46.
27

28. hierarchical. Towns as opposed to villages are shown by towers and spires with one or
more additional buildings to indicate the more important centres. The contemporary
preoccupation with security appears in Mercator;s liking for the word ‘castle … which
signals a countryside under control, presumably by legitimate forces as in central Europe
… ‘scene by displaying heraldic devices for England and Scotland but not for Ireland’.
111
The foregoing makes it clear that although maps are an important primary sources and
many are available, they cannot be taken at face value. They must be used in connection
with other documentary evidence and need much scholarly interpretation to get a picture
of the land as it was in sixteenth century Ireland.
The Desmond Rebellion:
Their power is emphasised in the entry in the Annals of the Four Masters which states
under the year 1579 ‘The Earl of Desmond] delivered up to the Lord Justice his only son
and heir, as a hostage, to ensure his loyalty and fidelity to the crown of England. A
promise was thereupon given to the Earl that his territory should not be plundered in the
future; but, although this promise was given, it was not kept, for his people and cattle
were destroyed, and his corn and edifices burned.’112
It was the breaking of promises such as this that would later see Eleanor Countess of
Desmond plead her husband’s innocence in a letter to the English Privy Council,
111
Ibid.
112
Annala Rioghachta Eireann. Annals of the Kingdom of Ireland, by the Four Masters, from the earliest
period to the year 1616; edited from MSS in the Library of the Royal Irish Academy and of Trinity
College, Dublin, with a translation, and copious notes by John O’Donovan, (hereafter AFM) Vol 5 p. 1717
28

29. claiming the Earl was forced into rebellion. In 1579 she wrote to the Privy Council and
while ‘giving an objective analysis of her husband’s shortcomings’, she reminds them of
but also insinuates her conviction that he had been pushed by Sir William Pelham, the
Lord Justice of Ireland and Sir Nicholas Malby, [Lord President of Connaught, who had
been appointed temporary governor of Munster113
], into a rebellion that he did not want.
“My husband and his countrie have bene bled by persons who are in authoritie here,” she
wrote, and reminded the Council of her husband’s loyal conduct up to the death of Sir
William Drury [in 1579]. Then, she contends, Sir Nicholas Malby was allowed free rein
in Munster and ‘the place of Justice was void. Malbie marched therewith into my
husbands countrie, murdered certaine of his men, toke and spoyled certaine of his castles,
burned within houses old men and children and within churches bourned certaine
monuments of his ancestors and, a thinge which,’ as the Countess diplomatically assures
the Council, ‘greeved him most, openlie called him a traytor within the cytye of
Lymerick’.’114
Once Desmond had been vilified and tarnished a traitor his whole
‘Kingdom’ of Munster was at risk of plantation by ‘New English’ settlers. This is what
many of the Crown’s officials wanted as they would stand to gain from Desmond’s loss
of land and this is why, after resisting for so many years, the fifteenth Earl of Desmond
was forced into rebellion. ‘The Papal banner was unfurled over his head. The centuries-
old Desmond war-cry ‘Shanid abú!’ gave way to ‘Pápa abú!’ as the Geraldine rode out at
the head of a crusade he neither understood nor with which he could sympathise.’115
113
Chambers, A. Eleanor Countess of Desmond. Dublin, Wolfhound, 1986,2000. p. 130.
114
Countess of Desmond to Privy Council 28 June 1580 (SP 63/73/67) quoted in Chambers, Anne:
Eleanor Countess of Desmond, (Dublin, 2000) p. 149, n. 19.
115
Chambers op. cit. p. 134
29

30. The years prior to the Earl of Desmond being branded a traitor had witnessed contrasting
relations between the Crown’s officials and the Geraldine family in Munster. Basically,
the English wanted Desmond’s lands in Munster so that they could settle ‘New English’
loyal subjects there and run the province on the Crown’s terms. ‘The overall aim of
successive viceroys was, as elsewhere, for crown jurisdiction to flow throughout the
lordships great and small, with the elimination of the overlordship of major aristocrats
over lesser gentlemen. Given their dominance, the prime targets in the southern province
were the Anglo-Norman earldoms, encompassing two palatinates, Kerry in Desmond and
Tipperary in Ormond…’116
Opposition to this had come in the form of the first Desmond
rebellion 1569-73 revolt. ‘James, the son of Maurice, son of the Earl, was a warlike man
of many troops this year [1569]; and the English and Irish of Munster, from the Barrow
to Carn-Ui-Neid, entered into a unanimous and firm confederacy with him against the
Queen’s parliament.’117
Though originally arousing the support of the Butler brothers,
and the Earls of Thomond and Clanrickard and ‘leaving a trail of corpses looted and
burnt out houses and hovels’ in their wake, James FitzMaurice FitzGerald’s 1569 rising
was unsuccessful. The support from the other earldoms was not strong enough and their
following soon subsided as they submitted to the Lord Justice of Ireland, Sir Henry
Sidney, ‘who [had] retaliated with the same ferocity as FitzMaurice had shown to the
planters.’118
Sidney made his way to Munster where ‘he remained for a week besieging
the town [of Ui-Mac Caile]…The town was finally taken by the Lord Justice, and he left
warders in it to guard it for the Queen. He passed from thence through Barry’s country,
and through Gleann-Maghair, to proceed to Cork. Here there was a rising out of
116
Lennon, C. Sixteenth-Century Ireland: The Incomplete Conquest, (Gill & Macmillan, Dublin, 1994) p.
209
117
AFM. Vol 5 p. 1631
118
Chambers, A. op.cit. p. 70
30

31. Munstermen to give him battle; but the pass was nevertheless ceded to the Lord Justice…
From thence the Lord Justice went on to Limerick, and he demolished some of the towns
of Munster between Cork and Limerick…no deputy of the King of Ireland had ever
before made a successful expedition, with a like number of forces, than that journey
performed by him.’119
FitzMaurice had at this time retreated into the Kerry Mountains.
His first attempt at a rising in Munster had failed.
The re-ignition of FitzMaurice’s rebellion [1569-73] was sparked off on the continent of
Europe. The Saint Bartholomew’s Day massacre120
and its religious connotations had
FitzMaurice believe that a crusade in Ireland under a similar flag (i.e. a religious
crusade), would be backed by England’s enemies on the continent. ‘James FitzMaurice
FitzGerald had emerged from his retreat and raised the banner of crusade aloft once more
in Munster.’121
Though this crusade ended with FitzMaurice’s unexpected submission in
1573 to the Lord President, Sir John Perrot, it had a resounding effect in Munster. ‘The
rebellion had made it impossible for the colonisation process started by [Sir Peter] Carew
to make headway in Garrett’s lordship during his absence. It had demonstrated to the
Crown that the earl’s removal had not produced the results anticipated, namely the
extension of English law and custom throughout Desmond and thereby the curtailment of
his power and privileges there. His removal merely exchanged one Gaelic leader for a far
more dangerous and able one [i.e. James FitzMaurice FitzGerald]. Elizabeth had seen no
improvement in her finances resulting from the imprisonment of the Earl of Desmond.
119
AFM. Vol 5 p. 1635
120
4,000 Huguenots seen as cause of religious wars in France 1562-70 massacred Paris 24 August, 1572.
by Catherine de Medici, and her son Charles IX.http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/13333b.htm
This, along with the excommunication of Queen Elizabeth by Pope Pius V in 1570, had turned the
European struggle for power by France, England and Spain into a religious conflict (Oxford Dictionary of
the Christian Church. Oxford, 1997.
121
Chambers, A. op.cit. p. 82
31

32. On the contrary, she had to dig even deeper into her pocket to support her prisoner and
his retinue in England, while at the same time endeavouring to suppress an expensive
rebellion within his territory…’122
. An good example of the cost of ‘Charges of the realm
of Ireland for martial affairs and all other extraordinary charges for one half year ending
last of March 1576 is given in the Carew MSS Vol 628 p. 314: Details are given under
the following headings123
: Diets, wages, and entertainment of the head officers (over
£3,000); Horsemen, footbands attendant on the Lord Deputy [Sidney] (almost £2,000);
Warders in sundry forts and castles (over £3,750), Kernes,124
Pensioners at sundry rates,
Ministers of the Ordnance, Ministers of the Ordnance, Ministers of the Victuals: The sum
total came to £11,832. 0s.7d.’ Added to this were ‘Extraordinary charges, which included
freight, transportation, carriage of letters125
…The whole half year charge almost, £13,000
sterling.’126
So, the cost for that half year was £24,832. 0s. 7d.
This being said, once FitzMaurice had submitted to the Crown, there were some
successes for Perrot who could afford to concentrate his attentions on the ‘reforming aims
of his office as envisaged by Sidney. Already he had established the pattern by
conducting common law sessions throughout the province at which hundreds were
convicted of felonies and treasons and executed. Besides this innovative juridical regime,
Perrot banned aspects of the Gaelic system, including brehon law, coign and livery,
private maintenance of troops, bardic poetry and native dress. The key restriction was on
‘masterless’ men: all followers of lords were to be booked and accounted for, in default
122
Ibid, p. 84
123
Brewer, J.S. and Bullen, W. (eds) Calendar of the Carew MSS preserved in the Archiepiscopal Library
at Lambeth 1575-1588(hereafter Cal. Carew MSS) p. 44-46; with a note that this is a contemporary copy
covering three and a half pages.
124
125
Cal. Carew MSS. p 45 which cost ‘ordinarily £13.6s.8d. per letter’
126
Ibid. p. 45.
32

33. of which they faced death.’127
Within days of Desmond’s return ‘the fortresses of
Castlemaine and Castlemartyr had been repossessed, and it seemed as if Perrot’s work
was being completely undone.’128
Desmond’s return was conditional in that he professed
loyalty to the Queen amongst other carefully arranged conditions, ‘although he was
reported to have said that, for the future, Irish and not English law would be administered
in his territory.’129
Both Sir William Drury and Sir Nicholas Malby were brought into office in the same
period, Drury as president of Munster and Malby as military governor of Connacht.
Drury had been highly recommended by Sidney in a letter dated 1576 to the Privy
Council: ‘Munster needs a discreet and active governor, “for these people are of the most
part Papists, and that in the maliciest decree … delighted in ravyne and licentious life” …
Hasten therefore my good Lords, him that shall take the charge here in the Queen and
country’s behalf, - I crave it; and the only man I hope you will find is Sir William
Druerye.’130
‘These men, both of them soldiers, used violence to combat what the state
called lawlessness, but what retrospection shows us to have been the inevitable reaction
of vested interests to an enforced change in the pattern of society.’131
In a letter from the
Queen, to ‘Lord Justice Drury’132
she commends him on the job he has been doing in the
‘diseased state’ of Munster. The Queen applauds his hands on approach in Munster
saying ‘since your cominge to the place and office of that our realme you have not given
127
Bagwell, R. Ireland under the Tudors ii p. 233-4 cited in Lennon, Colm: Sixteenth-Century Ireland:
The Incomplete Conquest, (Gill & Macmillan, Dublin, 1994) p. 216 n. 10.
128
Brady, C. ‘Faction and the origins of the Desmond rebellion of 1579’ Ir Hist Studies xxii 1981 cited in
Lennon op. cit. p. 217 n.11.
129
Moody, T. W., Martin, F. X., Byrne, F. J. (eds) A New History of Ireland, Volume III, Early Modern
Ireland 1534 – 1691, (Oxford University Press, 1976) p. 100
130
Cal. Carew MSS p. 41-2. The double inverted commas are used in the text.
131
Moody, T. W., Martin, F. X., Byrne, F. J. (eds) op. cit. III p. 102
132
Under the date May 29 1578 we read ‘Instructions given by the Queen’s Majesty … to Sir Wm. Drury,
Knight, [whom] she hath appointed Lord Justice of Ireland …’Cal Carew MSS. p. 130.
33

34. your selfe to ease by makinge a continewall residence at Dublin…but have chosen rather
to be removinge to and from many and the pricipall provinces within that realme, as the
diseased state of that cuntry hath required.’133
The Queen also commends the violence
inflicted upon the people of Munster by Drury and his men, but this violence goes under
the heading of justice in the Queen’s letter. She says ‘that allmoste in all places of this
your jorney where occasion of doinge justice hath been offred, you have not in the
ministration thereof spared the cheefest persons; but proceaded against them by taking
good pledges and bandes, or otherwise orderinge of them as severely as anie of the
meanest sorte and condition; a thinge no doubte moste acceptable to God, who in matters
of justice mislikethe nothinge more then acceptation and regarde of persons.’134
The
Queen also refers to the people of Ireland as ‘ill and disordered persons’135
showing her
complete lack of regard for the Irish. But more importantly the Queen had given Drury
licence to continue with severe violence against the inhabitants of Ireland. ‘In Munster,
violence escalated. Drury executed hundreds of malefactors, some after sentence in the
courts, others by martial law’.136
Lord Justice Drury had originally taken the post of president of Munster in the summer of
1576. Drury ‘embarked on his presidency in a way that was bound to bring him into
collision with the uneasy earl [of Desmond]. Drury wrote enthusiastically to Walsinhgam
about the methods he had begun to employ. ‘… I began the assizes in Cork,’ he reported,
‘where I hanged to the number of 42. Of which some were notable malefactors, one
pressed [i.e. pressed to death] and two gentlemen of the chief of the MacSweeneys
133
Hogan, J. and McNeill O’Farrell N. (eds). The Walsingham Letter-Book or Register of Ireland, May,
1578 to December, 1579, Dublin, IMC, 1959 (hereafter Walsingham p. 34
134
Ibid
135
Ibid
136
Moody, T. W., Martin, F. X., Byrne, F. J. (eds) op. cit. Volume III, p. 103
34

35. hanged drawn quartered; one of these …captain of galloglass … [whose] banner I reserve
for your honour.’137
This is the behaviour was commended by the Queen in her letter to
Drury mentioned above, and one reason why he was promoted to Lord Justice.
Relations between Drury and Desmond were tenuous from the outset (see above p..).
Drury felt threatened by the earl’s army which greatly outnumbered his own. In an
attempt to entice the earl into reducing the capacity of his army, Drury compiled a list of
Desmond’s men and made him directly responsible for their future conduct. Drury
continued to provoke the earl and ‘he next attempted to extract cess, in money and in
kind, from the earl’s tenants in order to defray the expenses of his presidency.’138
The
earl’s blood began to boil. Drury’s next target was the earl’s palatine in Kerry, which had
been deemed void by the Irish Privy Council. Drury claimed that traitors and rebels
resided there and proposed ‘to make a passage for law and justice to be there exercised.’
Drury set out for Kerry with the intention of establishing Crown courts there to prosecute
offenders by English law. This would result in a confrontation between both men’s
armies and Drury accusing Desmond of treachery and reporting to the government that he
was clearly intending to declare war on the Queen’s army.139
An intermediary was badly
needed. This came in the form of Eleanor Countess of Desmond. She pleaded
successfully with Drury not to attack her husband’s army and with great difficulty
managed to defer the earl from doing vice versa.
Rumours of the earl’s imminent arrest sent him into hiding with his family. Sidney tried
in vain to get the fugitives to negotiate in an attempt to develop cordial relations between
137
Calendar State Papers Ireland 1574-85 (hereafter CSPI) xxxv; also quoted in Chambers, A. op. cit. p.
110-111.
138
Chambers, A. op. cit. p. 111; 29
Ibid, p. 111
139
35

36. the earl and president Drury. On receiving a letter from the English Privy Council ‘to
assure them that the rumours of Garret’s [The Earl of Desmond] imprisonment were
totally false, and that it was believed that they had been instigated ‘no doubt by some of
your private enemies, that by practise would be glad to draw you into any undutiful
action that might purchase unto you Her Majesty’s indignation to the overthrow of your
state … We cannot but greatly commend and allow your Lordship … to take better heed
how you credit such false rumours …’140
, Eleanor was inclined to agree with these
sentiments and she convinced Garrett not to play into the hands of ‘his enemies but to
make his peace with the Crown’.’141
After meeting with Sidney and submitting himself to
the Lord Deputy, Garrett agreed to negotiate with Drury. ‘Sidney reconciled Eleanor and
a reluctant Garrett with Drury and, as he reported, ‘made them ffriendes in as good sorte
as I could’. He urged the earl to disband his army, as it was considered a threat to the
Lord President’s position and peace of mind in Munster [this is the sort of loyal conduct
enacted by Garrett to the Crown of which Eleanor would speak of in the afore mentioned
letter to the English Privy Council regarding her husband’s innocence and how he was
forced into rebellion]. Drury was every bit as reluctant to make peace with Garrett. He
privately considered that the Lord deputy had dealt far too leniently with the troublesome
earl, who, to Drury’s mind, was the single greatest obstacle to peace and order in
Munster.’142
But the two men were eventually to reconcile. The Queen in her letter to
Eleanor heightened this air of reconciliation. ‘She wrote in friendly tones to Eleanor in
appreciation of her ‘good travail with your husband, to remove from him this vain fear of
140
CSPI. 1574-85, xli; partially quoted in Chambers, A op. cit. p.113.
141
Chambers, A op. cit p. 113-114;
32
Ibid, p.114
142
36

37. his apprehension and to leave off his number of followers. So have you [Elizabeth
assured her, aware of Eleanor’s personal motivations] declareth yourself no less wise and
loving towards your husband for the preservation of his estate, which might easily have
been utterly ruined if he had not by your good means been brought to the said
submission.’143
Though tried and tested as they were throughout Drury’s tenure, relationships between
both he and the Earl of Desmond remained cordial. Incidents such as the cold-blooded
double murder of Henry Davells and Arthur Carter144
truly tested the relationship between
both men as ‘Drury would probably suspect him [the Earl of Desmond] of being
implicated in the murder, and both Eleanor and Garrett could well believe that the crime
was intended to force his hand and alienate him further from the Crown.’145
In an attempt
to remain loyal to the Crown Garrett distanced himself from such actions, believed to
have been carried out by James FitzMaurice or Sir John or his brother James of
Desmond, ‘he endeavoured to impress it on their minds [Sir William Drury, the Earl of
Kildare and Sir Nicholas Malby] that he himself had no part in bringing over James, the
son of Maurice [who had returned from France ‘and it was rumoured that he had come
with a greater number of ships than was really the case’146
to attack the Crown forces], or
in any of the crimes committed by his relatives…’147
By distancing himself from such
actions Garrett lost many of his men to FitzMaurice’s command and ‘it seems clear that
since 1576 Garrett, with Eleanor’s encouragement, had been making a genuine attempt to
adjust his status in Munster, to conform to the demands imposed on his position by the
143
Ibid, p. 115
144
Ibid, p. 123
145
Ibid, p.123
146
AFM Vol 5 p. 1713-1715
147
Ibid, p. 1717
37

38. Crown, and to maintain some semblance of loyalty to Elizabeth’, while both Drury and
Eleanor were also working together to uphold Garrett’s loyalty to the Queen.148
With the
death of Lord Justice Drury Captain Malby took the reins in Munster [until a new Lord
Justice could be selected, eventually to be Sir William Pelham]. Malby had no intention
of dealing in a cordial manner with the Desmonds.
Before his death and under the influence of Sir Nicholas Malby’s accusations of the Earl
of Desmond’s disloyalty to the Crown, Drury decided to investigate the earl’s recent
conduct. ‘Accompanied by the Earl of Kildare, Eleanor’s brother the Baron of Dunboyne,
and the Baron of Upper Ossory, Drury marched south and established camp near
Kilmallock…The pressures on the Earl of Desmond were now immense. Eleanor’s
brother, on Drury’s instruction, counselled him to repair to the Lord Justice; at the same
time Dr. Sanders, Sir John and his clansmen pressed him from the opposite side to
prohibit Drury passage through the palatinate. His own pride cried out that he, the great
Earl of Desmond, should not be so ordered hither and thither by subordinates and Crown
servants.’149
Garrett’s resulting meeting with Drury’s delegation ended in turmoil, with
the earl erupting in anger. Garrett was slowly but surely being pushed into rebellion. He
was being alienated from the Crown by the Queen’s official’s acts of arrogance in trying
to secure his lands. ‘As the English administration seemed determined to humiliate and
strip him of the remaining vestiges of his traditional power, they intentionally or
accidentally pushed the earl into the arms of Sanders.’150
Is Sanders papal commissioner
‘As for Captain Malby, he, after the death of the Lord Justice, proceeded to Limerick to
recruit his army, and to procure provisions for his soldiers; and from thence he marched
148
Chambers, op. cit. p. 124/129.
149
Ibid p. 125-126.
150
Ibid, p. 128.
38

39. to Askeaton; and it was on the same day that the young sons of the Earl of Desmond
came to look for a fight or prey in the county of Limerick, when they and the captain met
face to face…’151
Malby recounts the events of this battle at Monasternenagh in a letter to
the Privy Council on 4th
October, 1579.152
In this same letter Malby advises the Privy
Council that after asking the Earl of Desmond for ‘his advice and forces to joyne with
mee for the service of hir Majestie’153
he refused, thus accusing him of disloyalty and
treason of the Crown. He goes on to claim that many of the earl’s men were fighting on
the rebel’s side, ‘there were slaine by shott and by the horsemen 140 or 160, and all the
principal captaines and leades of the galloglasses, which were the Erle of Desmondes
owne men…’154
Malby asserts no doubt that the earl is a traitor and is secretly fighting for
the rebels against the Crown even though the earl portrays himself as loyal to the Crown.
After victory against John and James of Desmond at the battle of Monasternenagh the
earl wrote a letter of congratulations to Malby, who was unimpressed by the earls
apparent display of loyalty. ‘The Erle did nowe write to mee that he was glad of that I
had the victorie, and yet is the onlie man that did seeke to cutt my throate, and to be plain
with your honors hee is the onlie archtraytor of Mounster, his two brethren are but
ministers to serve his vile disposition…’155
It was Malby’s actions at Askeaton that were
as good as detrimental to the earl’s relationship with the Crown. ‘The Captain {Malby]…
remained nearly a week at Askeaton, the Geraldines threatening everyday to give him
battle, though they did not do so. The Captain destroyed the monastery of that town, and
then proceeded to Adare, where he remained, subjugating the people of that
151
AFM Vol 5 p. 1719
152
Walsingham p. 200-204
153
Ibid, p. 201
154
Ibid, p. 202
155
Ibid, p. 202
39

40. neighbourhood, until the new Lord Justice, William Pelham, the Earl of Kildare, and the
Earl of Ormond, came to join him, and they all encamped together in Hy-Conillo. The
Earl of Desmond did not come to meet them on this occasion, because his territory had
been ravaged and his people destroyed, although it had been promised to him that these
should not be molested.’156
Sir William Pelham’s behaviour as Lord Justice, was the final
push for the Earl of Desmond. The Carew MSS give us an account of ‘The Estate
wherein the Province of Munster was left by Sir William Pelham, Lord Justice, at his
departure …’157
It was Pelham who proclaimed the Earl of Desmond a traitor on 2nd
November 1579, on
Malby’s advice.158
‘Those compelled to justify the outlawing of the Earl of Desmond to
an uneasy Queen [who wanted to avoid another expensive war against the rebels] claimed
that he had foreknowledge of FitzMaurice’s plans, condoned the murder of Davells and
provided protection for the rebels, including Dr. Sanders. His own apologia – that he had
notified Drury of the invasion [the landing of James FitzMaurice and the squadron at
Smerwick harbour, 18 July, 1579], aided in the capture of Bishop Patrick O’Healy of
Mayo, victualled the Lord Deputy’s men and yielded up his heir as hostage – counted for
nothing.’159
The Earl of Desmond was now a fugitive his only option was rebellion if he
was to retain his ‘kingdom’ of Munster. ‘The whole country from Luachair-Deaghaidh to
the Suir, and from Ceann-Feabhrad to the Shannon, was in a state of disturbance.’ Both
the Irish rebels and the English Crown forces destroyed land and people as they travelled
throughout Munster so as to deny each other the opportunity to avail of any such lands or
156
AFM Vol 5 p. 1721
157
Cal Carew MSS Aug 28 1580 p. 302-310.
158
Bagwell, R. Ireland under the Tudors III London 1880 p.25-30. cited in Lennon op. cit. p.224 n. 21.
159
Lennon, C op. cit. p. 224
40

41. properties, ‘so that between them the country was left one levelled plain, without corn or
edifices.’160
Desmond’s rebellion began with the sacking of Youghal161
. ‘Taking
advantage of decrepit defences, the earl’s followers sacked the town, abusing the women
folk and carrying away rich plunder.’162
The government officials, Ormond [who had
been appointed general in Munster] and Pelham, reacted with un-relenting ferocity,.
‘Ormond and Pelham laid waste the Desmond lands of Limerick and the border lands
with Cork before bringing fire and sword into north Kerry. The capture of Carrigafoyle
castle and the slaughter of its garrison led to the surrender of the strongholds of Askeaton
and Ballilogher. By the summer of 1580 lords such as Decies, Roche, Barry and Sir
Cormac Mactaidhg were responding with alacrity to Pelham’s summons to Limerick, the
Gaelic lords of Kerry had come into Ormond, and the notable belligerents were offered
pardons only if they gave up their superiors.’163
As had happened to FitzMaurice,
Desmond’s followers began to desert him while submitting to the Crown’s officials. It
looked as though brief rebellion was coming to an end, with Desmond now hiding in the
Kerry Mountains, but it was re-ignited by the uprising of James Eustace and Viscount
Baltinglass in Leinster. Eustace, the Annals of Ireland record, ‘having embraced the
Catholic faith and renounced the sovereign’164
, broke down his castles, ‘so that war and
disturbance arose on the arrival of Arthur Lord Gray in Ireland as Lord Justice.’165
Those
who flocked to Eustace’s aid from across the country were forced back into Glenmalure
at news of the impending arrival of Lord Justice Grey’s ‘overwhelming force’ that was
160
AFM Vol 5 p. 1721/1723
161
A detailed description of how Desmond and his follower’s took apart Youghal may be found in a letter
of Sir Nicholas Walshe to Lord Justice Pelham: Waterford, 20 November, 1579. Walsingham p. 228
162
Lennon, C op. cit. p. 225
163
Ibid. p. 225
164
AFM Vol 5 p. 1737
165
Ibid, p. 1737
41

42. ready to besiege them. Grey, selecting ‘the most trustworthy and best tried captains of his
army’, searched Glenmalure. ‘But they were responded to without delay by the parties
that guarded the valley, so that very few of these returned without being cut off and
dreadfully slaughtered by the Irish party.’166
Though it had not coincided with the
Munster rebellion it seemed as though the rebellion in Leinster was the oxygen to its
flame.
Dún an Óir, which had been used by FitzMaurice in 1579, was once again the scene of
much destruction and slaughter. The arrival of continental troops, in aid of the Geraldine
rebellion, at Smerwick in early September realised the Queen’s worst fears that Ireland
would be used by Spain to gain access to England, thus spreading the counter
reformation. Disaster ensued for ‘600 expeditionary soldiers, mostly of Italian birth with
some Spaniards who were dispatched by Pope Gregory’ to assist in refuting the Crown-
inspired reformation and help spread the Catholic faith. ‘The Italian captains came to the
Lord Justice as if they would be at peace with him; [but] the people of the Lord Justice
went over to the island, and proceeded to kill and destroy the Italians; so that of the seven
hundred Italians, not one individual escaped, but all were slaughtered on the spot.’167,168
‘The Munster rebellion continued, but the morale of the leadership never recovered.’169
Since the beginning of the Desmond rebellion in 1579, anyone residing in Munster under
the lordship of the Earl of Desmond was deemed an enemy. A huge army was required in
Munster, thus creating major costs for the Queen. ‘Accordingly, a general pardon was
offered to all but a few named individuals in May 1581. Besides Desmond, Sir John and
166
Ibid, p. 1737
167
Ibid, p. 1743
168
Lennon op. cit quotes the figure of Italian soldiers that arrived at Smerwick as 600 while the Annals of
Ireland give 700 hundred. This is an example of inaccuracy one is bound to encounter in any research of
historical events.
169
Lennon, C. op. cit, p. 226
42

43. Baltinglass, Lord Grey excepted several others from pardon, including Countess Eleanor
for her encouragement of rebels, and David Barry, to whom Lord Barrymore had
conveyed all his lands.’170
The Earl of Ormond was dismissed as general of Munster and
the army was greatly reduced. ‘The effects of these decisions on the ground in the five
counties was to delay the final quelling of the revolt for another two years…The earl
ranged freely throughout the province, striking at his enemies, but the real leadership had
been removed. Sir John of Desmond had been surprised by a party of soldiers north of
Cork city in the early days of 1582 and had been killed, his head being sent to Grey as a
‘new year gift’.’171
During Arthur Baron Grey de Wilton’s tenure as Lord Deputy ‘alarming reports were
reaching England of the devastating effects upon the Munster inhabitants of the policies
with which Grey was most closely associated. The tactic of systematically ‘burning their
corn, spoiling their harvest and killing and driving their cattle’ did not originate in Grey’s
regime but it reached its fullest expression therein.’172
Grey was removed from office in
1582. Under him the suffering of the people of Munster had reached alarming extents by
1582. ‘…Famine conditions were rife in many parts of the province, coupled with disease
brought on by malnutrition. Not only were resources of corn and animals wantonly
destroyed to prevent their providing sustenance to the rebels, but also large herds of cattle
and sheep in Cork, Kerry and Limerick were preyed upon by the expanded soldiery and
the insurgents. Within a six month period down to mid-1582 at least 30,000 people were
said to have died.’173
Any survivors were so ravaged by malnutrition and disease they
might as well have been dead. The poet Edmund Spenser, Grey’s secretary, described the
170
Bagwell op cit. Vol III quoted in Lennon cop cit., p. 226
171
Lennon op. cit., p. 227
172
Ibid, p. 227
173
Ibid, p. 227
43

44. survivors as looking like ‘anatomies of death.’174
‘The Earl of Ormond was reappointed
as lord general of Munster at the start of 1583, Queen Elizabeth thereby gave her backing
to the strategy of drawing away from the Earl of Desmond his principal of supporters by
a mixture of diplomacy and violence. Some of these, such as Lord Lixnaw and the White
Knight, were thought to be still in rebellion through fear of Desmond’s reprisals if he
were to be restored to favour. Consequently it was made absolutely clear that there would
be no pardon for the Geraldine magnate. Furnished with an army of 1,000, Ormond
quickly got into his stride by attempting to localise the rebellion. This he succeeded in
doing by closing off the Glen of Aherlow as a bolt-hole and confining Desmond and a
small band to the mountains of Kerry and west Cork. Gradually, as the spring and
summer of 1583 wore on, the lure of pardons coupled with war-weariness proved too
attractive for Lixnaw, the seneschal of Imokilly and the Countess Eleanor to resist, the
latter surrendering unconditionally in June…By now, however, the fugitive [Desmond]
was in dire straits in the mountainous south-west, having an ever dwindling band of
followers. After a few narrow escapes Desmond was tracked to a cabin at Glanageenty, to
the east of Tralee, by the O’Moriartys on 2 November 1583. His plea for mercy proved
unavailing, and the injured Desmond was beheaded, the body being displayed at Cork
and the head sent to Queen Elizabeth.’175
174
ibid p. 27; the quotation is taken from Spenser, Edmund ‘A view of the present state of Ireland’ (1596).
They looked like anatomies of death; they spake like ghosts crying out of their graves; they did eat the dead
carrions, happy where they could find them; yea, and one another soon after, insomuch as the very
carcasses they spared not to scrape out of their graves. And if they found a plot of watercresses or
shamrocks, there they flocked as to a feast for the time, yet not able long to continue there withal; that in
short space there were none almost left, and a most populous and plentiful country suddenly left void of
man and beast. Yet sure, in all that war there perished not many by the sword, but all by the extremity of
famine which they themselves had wrought.’
http://www2.wwnorton.com/college/english/nael/16century/topic_4/spenview.htm
175
Ibid, p. 228
44

45. Conclusion:
Munster the richer province of the two [here being compared with Connacht] and the one
that, because it was more open to continental invasion, required closer attention,
presented a notable opportunity, following the attainder of the late earl of Desmond and
his associates in 1586, for complete reformation. This, after elaborate planning, was
attempted.’176
New English officials…pressed for a more extensive plantation of exclusively English
born colonists under their own supervision…About a third of the eventual undertakers
had previous experience of Munster…Elizabeth commissioned Sir Valentine Browne and
other officials to prepare a rough survey of forfeited lands, but bad weather, local
hostility, and interminable difficulties over title and fraudulent conveyances delayed the
commissioners: assuming that widespread concealment had and would occur , they
included almost everything in sight and reported in October 1585 that 574, 645 acres of
land, worth precisely IR£9,887 11s.5d., were available for settlement, scattered chiefly
throughout Cos. Limerick, Kerry and Cork….The aim was to plant. Besides subtenants,
eighty-six households with seventy-one household servants per seignory: thus the
government aimed initially to introduce c. 8,400 settlers into Munster, a formidable
undertaking by comparison with the hundred and eight persons landed in 1585 on
Roamoke Island, the first English settlement in North America…in December 1585 the
176
Edited by T. W. Moody, F. X. Martin, F. J. Byrne: A New History of Ireland, Volume III, Early Modern
Ireland 1534 – 1691, (Oxford University Press, 1976) p. 108-9
45

46. conditions of settlement were substantially determined. Yet the detailed measuring and
division of estates did not begin until September 1586…177
177
Ellis, Steven G. Tudor Ireland, Crown, Community and the conflict of cultures, 1470-1603, (London and
New York, 1985) p. 292-293
46

47. Primary Sources:
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the governments of England and Ireland 1515-1538.
Quinn, David B. ‘A Discourse of Ireland’ (Circa 1599); A Sidelight on English
Colonial Policy, (Royal Irish Academy Proc., Vol. XLVII, C, pp. 151-66, Feb., 1942)
John Goghe’s map of Ireland (c. 1567). Public Record Office, London (MPF 168),
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Andrews, J. H., Shapes of Ireland, maps and their makers 1564-1839, (Dublin, 1997)
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48. Duffy, Sean, (ed) Medieval Ireland, An Encyclopedia, (New York and London, 2005)
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Maxwell, C. Irish History from contemporary sources (1509-1610). (London, 1923)
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Moody, T. W., Martin, F. X., Byrne, F. J. (eds) A New History of Ireland, Volume III,
Early Modern Ireland 1534 – 1691, (Oxford University Press, 1976)
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49. Catholic encyclopedia at http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/13333b.htm
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49