The Medieval Kingdom of Lough Erne

by Katharine Simms

 

1.         The creation of a unified kingdom

The present county of Fermanagh certainly takes its name from the Fir Manach of earlier times, a people occupying the comparatively fertile land between the modern Enniskillen and Lisnaskea, ruled at first by the Ó hEignigh family among others, and later by the Maguires. Nevertheless, readers of Fr. Livingstone’s The Fermanagh Story will hardly need reminding that many other population groups shared the territory now contained within a single county boundary.[1] It was Lough Erne itself that shaped the area and gave it unity, and Lough Erne was then spoken of as one continuous stretch of water from Belleek to Belturbet. For the Irish, the ‘Upper Lake’ was Lough Oughter in county Cavan. It is a sign that the kings of the Fir Manach had extended their power far beyond the Enniskillen-Lisnaskea area, beyond the modern baronies of Tirkennedy and Magherastephana, when we find that the first Maguire chiefs are referred to in contemporary documents as ‘King of Lough Erne’ in 1297, and ‘chief of the Irish of Lough Erne’ in 1314.[2]

However the great lake was not always the heart of a separate kingdom in this way. In the early period, certainly up to 818 AD, it formed a boundary between the provinces of Connacht and Ulster. Under that year the Annals of Ulster preserve an entry which tells us that materials for roofing an oratory were transported across the frozen lake ‘from the lands of Connacht to the land of Uí Cremthainn’.[3] The Uí Creamhthainn were the western group of kingdoms belonging to the loosely-knit Airghialla peoples of Ulster. It seems that their power centred on the great ring-fort beside the town of Clogher, Ráith Mór Muighe Leamhna, at present being excavated by Mr. Richard Warner of the Ulster Museum.[4] Since the original Fir Manach of the Enniskillen-Lisnaskea area formed a part of this group kingdom, politically speaking they faced inland towards Clogher and turned their backs on the lake, at that time a no-man’s-land between two territories, the kind of location typically used for church foundations in early Ireland.[5]

This state of affairs, however, was already on the point of changing by the beginning of the ninth century. In 827 A. D. the group-kingdom of the Uí Creamhthainn suffered a shattering defeat at the hands of Niall Caille, king of Aileach, later to become High-King.[6] The Fir Manach and other small territories along the shore of Lough Erne came under the overlordship of the Northern Uí Néill. So irresistible was the expanding power of Aileach, that the western side of the lake was eventually forced to submit also. The frontier of Ulster was pushed back to Lough Melvin and the Lower Lake, at any rate, became a channel of communication rather than a borderline. This is the picture presented to us by the Book of Rights, a work apparently composed in Munster in the second half of the eleventh century. The king of Aileach is said to claim a direct tribute from the men of Lurg, occupying the northern shore of the Lower Lake. Similarly the men of Tuath Rátha, now the barony of Magheraboy on the western shore, are directly subject to Aileach. By contrast the Fir Manach are still members of the federation of Airghialla and pay no tribute, though the Airghialla themselves owe a political allegiance to Aileach.[7] In other words, the population groups around the lake might now belong to the province of Ulster and come under the single overlordship of the Northern Uí Néill, but they were not linked one to another. In the second half of the eleventh century the lake was not yet the heart of a sub-kingdom.

Turning to the annals for this period, it seems clear that the Fir Manach, who occupied the most fertile land along the lake shore, were the most powerful among the neighbouring populations, for their rulers sometimes bear the title ‘high-king of the Airghialla’.[8] No doubt this meant little more than that they dominated their own immediate area, as the other kings to whom this title was applied dominated the areas of Monaghan or Armagh. In the late eleventh and early twelfth centuries the Fir Manach are seen to be locked in a three-cornered struggle against the O'Rourkes of Breifne in the province of Connacht[9] and against the people of Tír Eoghain, followers of the king of Aileach.[10] Presumably they were striving to prevent the men of Connacht from recapturing the western shores of the lake, while to the north they were trying to extend their influence over the men of Lurg, drawing them away from the direct control of the king of Aileach. The successful outcome of this struggle would lay the foundations of Fermanagh as we know it today.

The annals simply record the battles, without explaining their political consequences, but something can be deduced from looking at the ever-changing boundaries of the new diocese of Clogher in the twelfth and early thirteenth centuries, a question that has been studied in some detail by H. J. Lawlor and Fr. Gwynn.[11] By the late thirteenth century, after switching its episcopal see from Clogher to Louth and back again, after splitting in two and rejoining, stretching its boundary as far north as Ardstraw in county Tyrone and retracting, the diocese seems to have settled down to include at its western end the church-lands attached to St. Patrick’s Purgatory in Lough Derg and all the modern county Fermanagh, except for the barony of Knockninny and part of Clanawley, the lands west of the Upper Lake. Apparently these were still a part of Breifne in Connacht. Evidence that the territories in the rest of Fermanagh were now linked politically as well as ecclesiastically comes when the Annals of Connacht first use the title ‘King of Lough Erne’ in 1234. What is more surprising is that the man who bears this title, Aonghus Mac Giolla Fhinnéin (‘Leonard’ in the modern form), was not descended from the original Fir Manach at all, but came from the western, ex-Connacht, side of the lake. The old ruling dynasties of Fir Manach, Ó hEignigh, Ó Duibh Dara, Ó Maoil Ruanaidh, disappear at this time, and are never heard of again. Having fought for a century and a half to create the kingdom of Lough Erne, also called at this time the ‘seven tuatha of the Fir Manach’,[12] they were not to reap the fruits of their labours.

 

2.         The rise of the Maguire family

All over Ulster it is the same story. Suddenly the old royal families died out completely, or lapsed into obscurity – Ó Maoil Doraidh and Ó Canannáin in Tír Conaill, MacLochlainn in Tír Eoghain, Mac Duinnshleibhe in Ulaidh, Ó Ruadhagáin in Airthir, Ó Cearbhaill in Airghialla. In their place new dynasties rose to prominence, whose names are still familiar today – O'Donnells, O'Neills, O'Hanlons, MacMahons and Maguires. The only likely explanation for such a widespread and simultaneous alteration is the fall of the Mac Lochlainn kings of Aileach, first defeated by the influence of the High-King Ruaidhri O'Conor and then caught between the O'Neills and the Norman invaders. From the ninth to the twelfth centuries the other kings in Ulster reigned in the shadow of the over-kingdom of Aileach. When it disappeared overnight, a whole network of traditional alliances and dynasties seems to have dissolved.

During this period of anarchy the newly-created kingdom of Lough Erne was snatched from hand to hand. In 1185 the king of Tír Conaill brought a fleet of English allies from his own territory by the falls of Assaroe into the lake to plunder the surrounding lands and force their inhabitants to submit.[13] In 1207/8 another king of Tír Conaill invaded only to be defeated by Niall MacMahon, chief of the Monaghan area, who led both his own subjects and the Fir Manach to battle, acting as over-lord of the two districts.[14] Even after the MacMahons lost their hold on the rest of Fermanagh, they continued to rule the eastern barony of Clankelly up to the late fifteenth century.[15] Meanwhile in 1211-12, a first determined attempt at conquest by the Anglo-Normans was beaten off by the joint efforts of O'Donnell, O'Neill and MacMahon, and the castles they built at Belleek and Clones were destroyed.[16]

The annals give O'Neill the leading role in organising this defensive campaign, but as yet the O'Neills were too occupied in the struggle against the Mac Lochlainns and the English colonists to rebuild the over-lordship once wielded by the kings of Aileach. Instead, for most of the thirteenth century the O'Donnells claimed a certain authority over the Fir Manach.[17] Aonghus Mac Giolla Fhinnéin, king of Lough Erne, joined O'Donnell’s naval hosting against O'Reilly in 1231, and a later member of this family, Énrí Crosach Mac Giolla Fhinnéin (+1285), was supplied by the genealogists with a rather unlikely pedigree, tracing his ancestry to a famous king of Tír Conaill who died in 1027. The first major challenge to O'Donnell influence in Fir Manach came not from O'Neill but from the Anglo-Normans. After the conquest of Connacht both Tír Conaill and the kingdom of Lough Erne were claimed by the FitzGerald lords of Sligo. Although the Fermanagh area was never actually colonized in the medieval period, it would be a mistake to think it escaped the invaders' influence completely. Maurice Fitzgerald apparently had a castle on Lough Erne which was destroyed by Brian O'Neill in 1248, and then in 1252 he erected another on the 1211 site at Caol-Uisce, near Belleek, which he planned as the central stronghold for a new lordship of ‘Lough Erne and the Seven Tuatha of Fir Manach’.[18] This castle of Caol-Uisce was razed by Gofraidh O'Donnell in 1257, but in 1299 the FitzGerald claims passed into the hands of Richard de Burgh, the ‘Red Earl’ of Ulster. Richard de Burgh dominated the whole north of Ireland very much as the Mac Lochlainn kings of Aileach had done in the twelfth century. On the death of his grandson, the ‘Brown Earl’, in 1333, a local jury reported that like the other Irish chiefs in Ulster, the king of Fermanagh held his lands from de Burgh, by the service of maintaining forty mercenary soldiers billetted on him. A later revision of this statement, drawn up in 1342, adds that Fermanagh also paid the Earl an annual tribute of eighty cows.[19]

            Now the rulers of Fir Manach from whom this tribute was exacted were the earliest Maguire chiefs. The first king of this surname, Donn Carrach Maguire, appears in the annals under the year 1264, before he took power over the Seven tuatha, and a contemporary poem, Rogha na cloinne Conaill, mentions him as an enemy of Domhnall Óg O Donnell, king of Tír Conaill.[20] Unlike Mac Giolla Fhinnein, the Maguires came from the original homeland of the Fir Manach, between Enniskillen and Lisnaskea, and they were related to the old royal dynasty of O hEignigh. It seems quite possible that their justifiable claim to the kingdom of Lough Erne was sponsored by the Earls of Ulster. Certainly during the period of de Burgh rule, on the death of Donn Carrach in 1302 the throne passed peacefully to his son Flaithbheartach Maguire, who in 1314 and 1315 was summoned with the other Irish chiefs to aid the King of England against the Scots.[21] Flaithbheartach was succeeded in 1327 by his son Ruaidhri, and in 1333 it is this Ruaidhri who is said to owe service to the Earl of Ulster for his land of Fermanagh. This calm succession from father to son is in marked contrast to the instability of the thirteenth century. Even after the de Burgh power waned in Ulster with the murder of the Brown Earl in 1333, the Maguire family retained unbroken control of the territories around Lough Erne for the next three centuries, bringing their subjects the all-too-rare blessings of continuity, peace and prosperity. Gradually in the course of the fourteenth century they changed their allegiance from a slight association with the O Donnells of Tír Conaill to a position of complete subordination to the O Neills. This was particularly true during the long reigns of Thomás Mór Maguire (1395-1430) and his son Tomás Óg (1430-1471), who put their military forces entirely at the disposal of the O Neill chiefs of Tír Eoghain, and by so doing ensured firstly that the O Neills achieved complete supremacy in Ulster, and secondly that they themselves, living under the protection of the O Neills, enjoyed for the greater part of the fifteenth century comparative tranquillity and even wealth. After about 1470 the power of the O Neills broke up as a result of succession struggles within the family, and the O Donnells became the leading chiefs in Ulster. In Fermanagh there was a transition period of fierce civil war before the Maguires placed themselves under O Donnell’s protection.[22] During the sixteenth century there were disputes between O Neill of Tír Eoghain and O Donnell of Tír Conaill as to who was overlord of Fermanagh, but the great O Neills, Shane the Proud and Hugh Earl of Tyrone, in Queen Elizabeth’s reign, counted the Maguires among their vassal chiefs.[23]

 

3.         The spread of the royal dynasty

All through the medieval period the Maguires played very little part in the major Irish upheavals, such as the Bruce Invasion, and the Gaelic Resurgence which drove back the Anglo-Norman colonists in the late fourteenth century. Instead they concentrated on securing their own borders and gradually rounding off their territory by acquiring new land. This outward pressure was associated with the desire of the younger brothers of successive chiefs to carve out minor lordships for themselves. In the Maguire family this ambition was particularly understandable because there was no hope for the junior members of succeeding to the kingship itself. In the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries the throne almost always passed from father to son, probably indeed to the eldest son.[24] In this system of inheritance the Maguires would have been imitating not only current English practice but, and this is perhaps more relevant, the practice of the O Neills, who were beginning to use quite a strict system of succession by primogeniture over the same period.

            Baulked of the kingship, the junior Maguires aspired to be subchiefs, holding their lands as vassals of the head of the family. As well as conquering new areas, however, they were only too prone to acquire sub-chieftaincies by dispossessing local families within the kingdom of Lough Erne, sometimes to find themselves later ejected in turn by yet another branch of the Maguires. The first such minor lordship was established by Amhlamh, son of Donn Carrach Maguire (+1306). He crossed to the western side of the lake and displaced Mac Giolla Fhinnein as chief of Muinntear Peodachain. His descendants, the Clann Amhlaimh remained to dispute this title with the Mac Giolla Fhinnein family, and the area now bears their name as the barony of Clanawley. It is noteworthy that the boundary of this barony extends further south than the older diocesan border, touching the western shore of the Upper Lake. It is possible this extra land represents conquests by Clann Amhlaimh at the expense of Breifne.

            The half-barony of Coole on the eastern shore of the Upper Lake had been united to the territory of Dartraighe in Monaghan in the pre -Norman period. In 1007 the king of Dartraighe, Treinfhear O Boylan, was killed on Lough Erne by the men of Tír Conaill. Another O Boylan, this time a professor of poetry, was murdered in 1119 by the men of Lurg and Tuath Rátha.[25] Again it seems that the lake formed a communication link, turning these quite widely separated territories into hostile neighbours. At some time before the fifteenth century, since by then the O Cassidys of Coole were Maguires physicians, this small area was absorbed into the united kingdom of Lough Erne. The transfer may have been effected by a younger brother of Tomás Mór Maguire, who was known as Art of Coole (+1397).

            Of the shoreline round the Upper Lake only the barony of Knockninny remains unaccounted for. This too seems to have come under Fir Manach control by 1450, when we are told that Cathal son of Tomás Óg Maguire owned a house at Cnoc Ninte.[26] Finally another son of Tomás Óg, known as Donnchadh Ceallach Maguire, appears to have established himself in the barony of Clankelly, wresting its overlordship from the MacMahons after two centuries of contention.[27]

            Meanwhile western Fermanagh was ruled almost as a separate lordship in the early fifteenth century by Aodh Maguire, brother and tánaiste (i.e. ’deputy’) to the chief, Tomas Mór.[28] When he eventually died in 1428, Tomás Mór and his sons banded together to prevent such extensive powers passing on to Aodh’s descendants The Clann Aodha were confined to the barony of Lurg, where they replaced the local chief, O Muldoon; and control of western Fermanagh as a whole went to Pilib Maguire, brother and tánaiste to the next chief, Tomás Óg.[29] One might have expected that when Pilib died in 1470 and Tomás Og retired in 1471, western Fermanagh would have passed to Donnchadh Ceallach, brother and tánaiste to the new chief, Éamonn Maguire. But instead Clann Philib retained possession of their father’s lordship, and soon used their power to displace Éamonn Maguire himself from the chieftaincy. Once the long tradition of succession from father to son was violated in this way, it was never fully recovered, and for the remaining century of so of Maguire rule the chieftaincy alternated between the Clann Philib in western Fermanagh and the Clann Tomáis Óig in the east. The succession struggles that had long marred the history of other Gaelic lordships became commonplace in this area too.

            It is important to point out that when a junior branch of the Maguire family took over a sub-chieftaincy, this did not imply that the original ruling family of the area was wiped out, or even that it leaders lost all their estates. Lordship in Gaelic Ireland was based as much on tributes and services as on landed property. In 1503 and 1536 we find the O Muldoon family, the original rulers of Lurg, still playing a significant role there as followers of Clann Aodha Maguire. The Clann Aodha in turn were dominated by Clann Philib, who were rulers of western Fermanagh even when one of their number was not chief of all the Seven Tuatha, as often happened. Under the weight of so many superimposed lordships it is not surprising that the O Muldoon family of Lurg lost much of their former prestige; but their decline was a gradual one, and in general the spread of the Maguires appears the outcome of enforced submission followed by economic and political oppression, rather than a series of massacres and confiscations.

 

4.         The pattern of life in the medieval kingdom

When we turn from examining the details and try to form some conclusions that will help us to visualize what it was really like to live in medieval Fermanagh, on thing stands out clearly. Fermanagh was in every sense of the word a SUB-KINGDOM. That is to say, on the one hand it was a larger territory than the local units of government found in Early Christian Ireland. The kingdom of Lough Erne contained within its jurisdiction approximately seven of the older tuatha and each tuath, instead of being governed by a petty king, was held by one or more vassal-chiefs, who rendered tribute and service to Maguire, and often belonged to the same royal dynasty. On the other hand, the whole kingdom of the Erne was not large enough to be politically viable without the protection of an overlord – O Donnell, O Neill or even the Earl of Ulster. In exactly the same position of sub-kingship were the neighbouring lords, O Rourke of West Breifne, O Reilly of East Breifne and MacMahon of Airghialla; and in each case the territory occupied by these lords became under the English administrators a county, respectively Leitrim, Cavan and Monaghan. It was the binding together of such lesser territories under his overlordship that made the Great O Neill of Tír Eoghain so powerful, and it was the determination of the English governors to separate him from these vassal-lordships, and to keep each one independent of its neighbours and weak, that caused all the wars in Elizabethan Ulster.

            Though it was not in itself very large or rich, Fermanagh had good natural defences in the hills and woods which surrounded it, and was never successfully invaded and colonised by the Anglo-Normans, nor was it often subjected to severe harrying by the neighbouring chiefs. To make an impact on Fermanagh, the raiders needed a fleet of ships, and some of the most spectacular raids were made by the O Donnells coming up the river from near Ballyshannon.[30] Maguire himself kept a fleet, which he used in battles against the O Donnells and the O Reillys, and in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries he is recorded as coming off victorious in naval encounters.[31] These points: the natural defences of the country, a feeling of security and a lack of ambition on the part of its inhabitants, are brought out in a fifteenth-century poem to Tomás Óg Maguire, ‘Do mheall an sochar Síol gColla’:

Prosperity has beguiled Colla’s seed, Eochaidh’s dauntless race…

Their great blessings have ruined them…

Though Tomás’s son may think of going to the Conn’s Fort to be crowned, his race will not follow him, finding it too hard to leave their charter-land.

‘We must not go to the Dún of Eamhain, and thus rouse up war with Í Néill nor to Dún Geanainn either; securer are our own lands.’

Who would not feel bound to stay in his company beside the hilly-shored Éirne? I know a land whose hills should not be exchanged for any smooth plaine

Broad plains in the centre of the land, soil earliest to bear all plants, a

line of fair thick woods set about the Fir Manach, protecting them.

A forest of masts is on the Eirne- it makes one start with joy to see them; green banks – one could gaze on them for ever! – are on each side of it.[32]

The lake was so important to the Maguire chiefs that they lived on the banks right beside the water’s edge. The fifteenth-century king Tomás Óg owned the castle of Enniskillen before he was forced to hand it over to his brother, Pilib the tánaiste.[33] A poem to Tomás Óg describes his residence, not as a castle, but a timber house on the shore of the lake:

The house of Tomas, grandson of Pilib, when one comes to its threshold one sees a herb-garden and ships, and there is only a fence between them. A strip of lake by the side of the house, a green clearing in front of it: the reflection of its purple outlines – a borrowed beauty – in the lake.[34]

Of all the ruling families in Gaelic Ireland, the Maguires present the most appealing picture to modern eyes. Before 1471 their kingdom escaped much of the continuous cattle-raiding, fratricide and civil war from which less stable neighbouring lordships suffered. They did not win fame as great warriors, indeed one unkind poet of the fifteenth century wrote ‘ Maguire with his palsied hand has a weapon which will not stand combat’; [35] but they excelled in the other virtue required of every Irish prince, that of open-handedness. The first king of their name, Donn Carrach Maguire, is said to have habitually entertained twice the number of guests supported by the more powerful MacCarthy, king of Desmond. Donn’s grandson, Ruaidhri ‘of the Hospitality’, was called ‘ one that bestoed most of gould, Silver, cattle & other guifts upon poets & bards & others of theire kind in Ireland’.[36]

            As a matter of fact, in addition to visiting bards, the kingdom of Lough Erne had an unusually large number of poets and learned families of all kinds settled within its borders. Of poets proper there were the hereditary families of Ó Fialáin, Ó hEodhusa and MacRibheartaigh. In addition there were two families of historians, Ó Luinin and Ó Cianáin, hereditary lawyers, the O Breslens, hereditary physicians, the O Cassidys. Many such men combined native Irish learning with an ecclesiastical appointment,[37] while families whose tradition was more purely clerical also produced men ‘eminent for wisdom’, canon lawyers, public notaries, and the ‘Great Master’ Ó hEoghain, who in the fourteenth century was said to have been ‘lecturing continuously in Oxford for fourteen years’ before becoming archdeacon of Clogher.[38] In the fifteenth century, while still supporting court poets, the Maguires’ patronage was directed more particularly at the church. Tomás Mór was described as:

A man that frequently set up oratories and churches and monasteries and holy crosses and images of Mary, and established peace amongst clergy and laity and defended his territory against its neighbours.[39]

His son Tomás Óg was also said to be

A man that made churches and monasteries and Mass chalices and was (once) in Rome and twice at the city of St James (of Compostella) on pilgrimage.[40]

The building programmes outlined in these entries are evidence not only of the Maguires’ piety but also of the prosperity enjoyed by the Fir Manach in this period, a prosperity mentioned in the first poem quoted above.

            However, neither prosperity, learning nor even piety, it appears, could bring the church in Fermanagh into line with the standard of discipline normally demanded, if not always kept, in the rest of Europe at this time.[41] The chief source of our information about the medieval kingdom of Lough Erne is the Annals of Ulster, originally compiled in the late fifteenth century by Cathal MacManus, archdeacon of Clogher, father of over a dozen children whose successive births he proudly records, and sub-chieftain of a branch of the Maguires who had long intermarried with other hereditary clerical and poetic families. In his annals casual references to the sons and daughters of bishops, and the female companions of abbots abound. Indeed it could be argued that Cathal MacManus, by allotting a disproportionate amount of space in his chronicle to news about his friends and relations, the other learned and clerical families of Fermanagh, has given his readers a false impression that such families were found more plentifully in this area than anywhere else in Ireland, Other Gaelic lordships, perhaps, had an equal concentration of hereditary bards and clergy, but they cannot be traced in comparable detail. Nevertheless, the feeling that Fermanagh stood out in this regard, and many other general conclusions to be drawn from the medieval annals and poetry, receive startling confirmation in a letter written by the Attorney-General of Ireland, Sir John Davies, to the Earl of Salisbury in 1607.

            Davies toured the area with Sir Arthur Chichester, Lord Deputy, just before the decision was taken to plant Ulster. He took down a detailed account of taxation and land-ownership as it had existed under the rule of the Maguires from the sworn evidence of the inhabitants themselves. Though the full report is now lost, and we have only the summary of his findings contained in a single letter, the author was unusually well-placed to gather accurate information, not always the case with English observers of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. As we have already seen hinted at in the bardic poetry, Davies remarks, ‘Generally the natives of this country are reputed the worst swordsmen in the north, being rather inclined to be scholars or husbandmen, than to be kern, or men of action’.[42] Another of his observations has greater importance, for it may supply the fundamental explanation both for the unusually large number of hereditary learned families in Fermanagh and for the general disregard of the laws on celibacy amongst the clergy.

Davies tell us:

The Church land was either monastery land, corbe land, or herinach’s land; for it did not appear unto us the Bishop had any land in demesne. But certain mensall duties of the corbes and herinachs; neither did we find the parsons and vicars had any glebe lands at all in this county.[43]

The original monasteries of Early Christian Ireland had largely fallen into decay by the twelfth century, their estates remaining in the hands of hereditary church tenants who were under the authority of a ‘successor’ (comharb, ‘corbe’) of the founding abbot or a superior, (Airchinneach, ‘herinach’) of the ecclesiastical settlement. These were often laymen, but Monsignor Ó Fiaich has shown that such laymen holding ecclesiastical positions might continue to perform some of the functions of clerics, while they widened the tradition of monastic learning to include a study of native Irish history and poetry.[44] Elsewhere in Ireland the twelfth-century reformation, in which St Malachy played so large a part, eventually resulted in the coarbs and erenaghs being dispossessed of at least some of their lands, which were then used to endow the new parish and diocesan organisation being set up.[45] If, however, Fermanagh had completely escaped this stage of the reformation, as Davies implies, and all church lands were still in the hands of hereditary ecclesiastical tenants, then the temptation, even for a reforming bishop, to appoint his parish clergy from the ranks of such hereditary church families would be very great, and many of the medieval bishops of Clogher were not distinguished for their zeal or asceticism.[46] On the other hand, if all the tax-free church-lands remained undiminished in the possession of hereditary clerics, patrons or scholars of Irish and Latin learning, they provided an economic base to support more families of bards, historians, harpers and master craftsmen than could have subsisted on the unaided generosity of the Maguires alone. Sir John Davies mentions tax-free lands that were specifically set aside for the support of poets, historians and galloglasses, but implies that these in themselves were not very extensive, in all something over 2, 000 acres, perhaps as much as 3, 000.

            His account of landownership in Fermanagh is rendered rather obscure by the curious units of area measurement then in use, taths (or tates), quarters and ballibetaghs. He explains that in Monaghan a tath is 60 English acres, a quarter 240, and a ballibetagh 960 acres; but in Fermanagh though the terms are the same, the measure is far larger. Thus while he gives round figures for the amounts of profitable agricultural land held by different groups in the lordship, it is not possible to convert these into modern acreages, only to express the relative proportions involved. Even then, he gives no figure for the amount of church land. The Maguire chief of Fermanagh had almost a ballibetagh of land around the castle of Enniskillen, which he farmed directly, and another four ballibetaghs of mensal lands, the largest estate being held by the MacManus family, who paid him food-rents. About two ballibetaghs of land, as mentioned above, supported poets, historians and galloglasses, or perhaps rather the hereditary commanders of the galloglass troops. The remainder of the land in Fermanagh was subject to taxation by Maguire; it amounted in all to 511/2 ballibetaghs and was divided into a large number of very small estates, partly as a result of the ‘gavelkind’ system of inheritance in force there. Davies comments contemptuously ‘almost every acre of land hath a several owner, which termeth himself a lord, and his portion of land his country’.[47] To set this remark in its context- Davies had instituted his enquiry partly in order to draw up a register of qualified jurymen, the equivalent of the English forty-shilling freeholder. In Monaghan he has decided that nobody came up to this standard who owned less than 120 acres, or two taths of land. Applying the same qualification in Fermanagh he was surprised to find that over 200 freeholders were possessed of two taths or more, presumably estates of 120-200 acres and upwards. His tone implies that in the average English shire of the time most of the land was shared out between ten or twenty families who held it in very large estates, while the rest of the population were tenants, or yeoman farmers with few pretensions to gentility. By contrast in Fermanagh, Davies’ comment suggests, land-ownership was the prerogative of the nobility, however small the estate involved. The Irish word for a farmer in the medieval period was sgológ, a schoolman, a church tenant, and it seems probable that in the normal way it was only on the privileged church-lands that a peasant could hope to amass wealth.

            Above the petty landowners were the chiefs, and above the chiefs was Maguire. Davies explains:

As Maguire himself had a chiefry over all the country, and some demesnes that did ever pass to him only who carried that title, so was there a chief of every sept, who had certain services, duties or demesnes, that ever passed to the tanist of that sept and never were subject to division.[48]

Elsewhere he implies that there were normally only one or two ‘septs’ or ruling families to each barony, so that here we are dealing with a rank like that of taoiseach or chieftain of a tuath.[49]

            Below the small freeholders were the tenants, a class about whom Davies tells us nothing. One remark he makes, however, is illuminating. He says, ‘The habitations of this people are so wild and transitory, as there is not one fixed village in all this county’.[50] This raises the question of the Ulster ‘creaghts’ (caoraigheachta, ‘herds’), since it has been stated that by the late sixteenth century almost all the inhabitants of Ulster habitually led a nomadic life, following their herds of cattle from pasture to pasture.[51] As early as the end of the fourteenth century, a Catalan pilgrim, who travelled to Lough Derg by way of Armagh, wrote of the inhabitants of the lands he crossed:

Their dwellings are commonly, and the greater part, near oxen; and with the oxen they make their dwellings, and every day they go moving through the pastures; in the manner of the alams of Barbary, and of the land of the Sultan, they issued one day from their towns and they go many together.[52]

To this picture it may reasonably be objected, of what use were the minute sub-divisions of land, every acre, so to speak, with a separate owner, if the rest of the population was nomadic? Here it is relevant to emphasize that the land so divided was taxable land, elsewhere described as ‘land arable and manured’. The herds would normally graze rough pasture, hills and boggy ground. It may well be that what outsiders took to be a completely nomadic life was in peace-time confined to ‘booleying’, the seasonal migration of a whole village from winter fields to a summer pasture. In that case the extent and bounds of the rough grazing would be well-defined, and known to pertain to the owners of certain arable fields in the lowlands, as a fourteenth-century tract speaks of the ‘booley’ on the mainland which belonged to the monastic community of Scattery Island in the Shannon estuary.[53]

            A Spanish captain, shipwrecked during the Armada, describes his flight across Co. Leitrim. At one point he came on ‘a lake, around which there were about thirty huts, all forsaken and unoccupied’.[54] He entered one of these huts to pass the night, and found it full of sheaves of oats. Next morning when he woke, a band of reapers were working outside the whole day until at nightfall they departed. These men may well have sown their fields in spring while they were occupying the huts, and then followed their cattle to the summer pastures, only returning temporarily to gather in the harvest. Again this incident fits in better with a pattern of seasonal migration rather than a completely nomadic life, since a man who has sown a field of oats cannot afford to stray too far from it before harvest-time. In times of war, however, it is clear that whole communities frequently left their lands with all their cattle and moveable property, sometimes migrating considerable distances, and subsisting for long periods of time by grazing their cattle on other people’s lands. It is mainly to these wartime migrants that the Irish annals apply the term caoraigheachta or ‘creaghts’,[55] though some of these herds seem to have belonged to a class of ‘professional refugees’, that is, outlaws, mercenary soldiers and their followers, or even disreputable poets.[56]

            In addition to these group migrations, Tobias Caulfield, speaking of Co. Tyrone in 1610, says ‘by the custom of the country the tenants may remove from one lord to another every half year, as usually they do’.[57] The country was thinly populated, and Caulfield adds that neighbouring lords were always glad to acquire more tenants. Under these conditions the tenants were not paying rent so much to acquire grazing rights, since pasture was readily available. The advantage one lord could offer above another was his ability to protect them and their cattle from assault and theft, even from the arrears of rent demanded by their last lord. This principle explains the superimposed chain of overlordship seen everywhere in Fermanagh. The simple tenant was protected by the landowner. The landowner was protected by the chief of the tuath, the chief by Maguire, and Maguire himself was under the protection of, let us say, O Neill. Again and again in Irish literature we find the theme that a King’s fundamental duty was to shelter and defend his people, both from outsiders and from each other. This motif is expressed emphatically in a late sixteenth-century poem by Tadhg Dall Ó hUiginn, Parrthas Fodhla Fir Manach – ‘Fermanagh is the Paradise of Ireland’:

None interfereth with any other in this pleasant earthly paradise;

There is none bent on spoil, nor any man suffering injustice.

There is no reaver’s track in the grass…

No misfortune threatening her cattle, no spoiler plundering her…

It is not the properties of stones, nor is it the veil of wizadry, that guards the waters of its far-spread lands; it is not the smooth slopes, or the wood, nor is it the sorcerous arts of druids.

They have a better protection for all boundaries – a shepherd sufficient for every one is the man – one alone is their guard.

Brian Maguire of the bared weapons, son of Donnchadh, son of Cú chonnacht; guarding buckler of Donn’s land…

Towards Ulster he is the ocean’s surface; towards Connacht a rampart of stone…

Fermanagh of the fortunate ramparts is the Adam’s paradise of Inisfail.

The descendant of the noblemen from Bregia’s castle is as the fiery wall surrounding it.[58]

This is an exotic picture – Fermanagh as the Garden of Eden and Maguire the angel with the flaming sword guarding it -–but in its own way it conveys a very real ideal of kingship.


 

[1] P. Livingstone, op. cit. (Enniskillen, 1969), pp. 17-19. In dealing with the early history of Fermanagh, I am deeply indebted to Mgr. Tomás Ó Fiaich for permission to consult his important M. A. thesis on ‘The Kingdom of Airgialla and its Sub-Kingdoms’ (Sept, 1950), no. 820 in the Library of University College, Dublin.

[2] K. W. Nicholls, ‘The Register of Clogher’ in Clogher Record vii no. 3 (1971-2), p. 422; Foedera, conventiones, Litteras et cujuscunque generis Acta Publica…ed. T. Rymer (revised ed. A. Clarke, F. Holbrooke and R. Sanderson), vol.. ii, pt. 1 (London, 1818), p. 245. See also Calendar of the Close Rolls, Edward II, 1313-18 (London, 1898), p. 218.

[3] A[nnála] U[ladh], Annals of Ulster, ed. W. M. Hennessy and B. MacCarthy [4 vol.s, Dublin, 1887-1901)], vol.. I, p. 309 – A. D. 817/18.

[4] R. B. Warner, ‘The Excavations at Clogher and their Context’ in Clogher Record viii no. 1 (1973), pp. 5-12.

[5] P. Ó Riain, ‘Boundary Association in Early Irish society’ in Studia Celtica vii (1972), pp. 17-19.

[6] A. U. A. D. 826/7. I am here following Ó Fiaich (above, note 1) in giving key importance to this battle in the piecemeal subjugation of the Airghialla.

[7] Lebor na Cert, the Book of Rights, ed. M. Dillon (Irish Texts Society, Dublin, 1962), pp. 60-1, 62-3, 73 note 2, 83.

[8] A. U. A. D. 998/9, 1048, 1127.

[9] A. U. A. D. 1057, 1101; [Annala rioghachta Eireann]; A[nnals of the kingdom of Ireland by the] F[our] M[asters] ed. J. O Donovan (7 vols, Dublin, 1851)], A. D. 1102, 1106; [The] A[nnals of] I[nisfallen] ed. S. MacAirt (Dublin, 1951)], A. S. 1107.

[10] A. U. A. D. 1076, 1077, 1080, 1118; A. I., A. D. 1122, 1 128.

[11] H. J. Lawlor, ‘The Genesis of the Diocese of Clogher’ in Journal of the Co. Louth Archaeological Society iv (1916-20). Pp. 129-59; A. Gwynn, ‘Armagh and Louth in the Twelfth and thirteenth Centuries’ in Seanchas Ardmhacha i, no. 1 (1954), pp. 1-11; no. 2 (1955), pp. 17-37.

[12] The Red Book of the Earls of Kildare ed. G. MacNiocaill (Dublin, 1964), nos. 32, 86, 91; see also A. U. A. D. 1369.

[13] Miscellaneous Irish Annals, ed. S. Ó hInnse (Dublin, 1947), pp. 72-3.

[14] Ibid., pp. 86-7; [The] A[nnals of] L[och] C[é, ed. W. M. Hennessy (2 vols. Reprinted Dublin, 1939)], A. D. 1207.

[15] K. W. Nicholls, ‘The Register of Clogher’ in Clogher Record vii no. 3 (1971/2), p. 412; A. U. A. D. 1466, 1472.

[16] A. U. A. D. 1211, 1212, 1213; A. L. C., A. D. 1212, 1213.

[17] A. U., A. L. C., A. D. 1241, 1281; A. F. M., A. D. 1256, 1262, 1272; and see A. U. vol.. ii pp. 292-3, note 2.

[18] A. U., A. D. 1248, 1252; The Red Book of the Earls of Kildare, nos. 31-2.

[19] G. H. Orpen, ‘The Earldom of Ulster, Pt. IV’ in Journal of the Royal Society of Antiquaries of Ireland xlv (1915), p. 141; Public Record Office, London: Chancery Miscellanea C 47-10-20-14.

[20] L. MacCionaith (eag. ), Dioghluim Dána (Baile Átha Cliath, 1938), 1. 393.

[21] Above, note 2.

[22] A. U. A. D. 1472-77, 1484-88.

[23] Calendar of Carew Manuscripts 1515-74, p. 308; 1601-3, p. 213.

[24] See A. U., A. D. 1394, 1395, 1430, 1439, 1447, 1450, 1471.

[25] A.U., A.D. 1006/7, 1119. See P. Ó Maolagáin, ‘Uí Cremthainn and Fir Fernmaige’ in Journal of the Co. Louth Archaeological Society xi (1947), p. 161.

[26] A. U.

[27] A. L. C., A. D. 1264; A. U., A. D. 1310, 1379, 1441, 1468.

[28] A. U., A. D. 1407, 1416, 1419-20, 1421.

[29] A. F. M., A. D. 1428, 1429; A. U., A. D. 1432, 1445, 1447, 1455, 1469; A[nnala] C[onnacht]; the Annals of Connacht, ed. A. M. Freeman (Dublin, 1944), A. D. 1461.

[30] A. F. M., A. D. 1272; A. U., A. D. 1369, 1508, 1514. See also note 13 above.

[31] A. U., A. D. 1369, 1432.

[32] L. MacKenna (ed.), Aithdioghluim Dána (2 vols, Irish Texts Society, Dublin, 1939-40), no. 28, verses 1, 3, 17, 18, 20, 21, 23.

[33] A. U., A. D. 1442.

[34] From the poem, ‘Beith re dán dlighidh ollamh’, Book of O Conor Don, f. 259a. My translation.

[35] K. H. Jackson (ed.), a Celtic Miscellany (revised ed., Harmondsworth, 1971), p. 234.

[36] The Annals of Clonmacnoise ed. D. Murphy (Dublin, 1896), A. D. 1302, 1338.

[37] E. g. A. U., A. D. 1396, 1400, 1441, 1447, 1477, 1498.

[38] A. U., A. D. 1382.

[39] A. U., A. D. 1430.

[40] A. U., A. D. 1480.

[41] See C. Mooney, The Church in Gaelic Ireland, 13th to 15th Centuries (vol. ii no. 5 in A History of Irish Catholicism ed. P. J. Corish, Dublin, 1969), pp. 56-60.

[42] H. Morley (ed.), Ireland under Elizabeth and James I (London, 1890), p. 370.

[43] Ibid., p. 364.

[44] T. Ó Fiaich, ‘The Church of Armagh under Lay Control’ in Seanchas Ardmhacha v, no. 1 (1969), pp. 98-9, 109-115.

[45] M. Glancy, ‘The Primates and the Church Lands of Armagh’ in Seanchas Ardmhacha v, no. 2 (1970), pp. 370-1.

[46] See above, note 41.

[47] H. Morley (ed.), Ireland under Elizabeth and James I, p. 372.

[48] Ibid.

[49] On this point see D. Ó Corráin, Ireland before the Normans (Dublin, 1972), pp. 28-30; F. J. Byrne, Irish Kings and High-Kings (London, 1973), p. 270.

[50] H. Morley (ed.), Ireland under Elizabeth and James I, p. 374.

[51] J. P. Prendergast, ‘The Ulster Creaghts’ in Journal of the Royal Society of Antiquaries of Ireland iii (1854-5), pp. 420-30.

[52] ‘Two Early Tours of Ireland’ ed. J. P. Mahaffy in Hermathena no. 40 (1914), p. 8.

[53] ‘The Miracles of Senan’ ed. C. Plummer in Zeitschrift für Celtische Philologie x (1915), pp. 18-19.

[54] H. Allingham and R. Crawford, Captain Cuellar’s Adventures in Connacht and Ulster, A. D. 1588 (London, 1897), p. 56.

[55] A. U., A. D. 1390, 1429, 1431, 1432, 1433, 1435, 1470; A. C., A. D. 1405: 15, 1412: 17, 1419: 3, 1420: 10, 1421: 10, 1462: 6; A. L. C., A. D. 1478; A. F. M., A. D. 1584; Miscellaneous Irish Annals, pp. 158, 164.

[56] H. F. Berry (ed.), Statute Rolls of the Parliament of Ireland, Henry VI (Dublin ,1910), pp. 35, 37.

[57] Calendar of the State Papers: Ireland 1608-10 (London ,1874), p. 533.

[58] E. Knott (ed.), The Bardic Poems of Tadhg Dall Ó hUiginn (2 vol.s, Dublin, 1922, 1926), no. 13, verses 7, 9, 13, 14, 15, 16, 18.

 

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