Riotous Assemblies

by William Sheehan

  26. Cal. Carew MSS, 4, no. 197.

  27. J. Lynch, Portrait of a Pious Bishop: the life and death of the Most Rev. Francis Kirwin, Bishop of Killala, ed. and trans. C. P. Meehan (Dublin, 1848), p. 27; J. Hardiman, The History of the Town and County of the Town of Galway (Dublin, 1820), pp. 93–4.

  28. C. Tait, ‘Riots, rescues and “grene bowes”: Catholic popular protest in Ireland, 1570–1640’, in R. Armstrong and T. Ó hAnnracháin (eds), Catholics and Presbyterians: alternative establishments, forthcoming; C. Tait, ‘Adored for saints: Catholic martyrs and the Counter-Reformation in Ireland, c. 1560–1655’, Journal of Early Modern History 5 (2001), pp. 128–59.

  29. C. Tait, Death, Burial and Commemoration in Ireland, c.1550–1650 (Basingstoke, 2002), pp. 54–6.

  30. B. Whelan, ‘The impact of warfare on women in seventeenth-century Ireland’, in C. Meek and C. Lawless (eds), Studies on Medieval and Early Modern Women: victims or viragos? (Dublin, 2005), p. 129; Cal. S.P. Ire., 1633–47, pp. xxxvi, 274. It is difficult to tell how common food riots were in early modern Ireland. Suggestions that they were rare are taken to task in R. Wells, ‘The Irish famine of 1799–1800: market culture, moral economies and social protest’, in A. Randall and A. Charlesworth (eds), Markets, Market Culture and Popular Protest in Eighteenth-Century Britain (Liverpool, 1996), p. 179.

  31. Day, ‘Cooke's memoirs of Youghal’, pp. 45, 47; the townsmen had gained the right to organise themselves into companies in 1610; in 1616 prices for candles and tallow were fixed, so the attack on ‘foreign’ butchers may have been part of a wider campaign to prevent undercutting of prices within the industry.

  32. Crawford, A Star Chamber Court in Ireland, pp. 527–8. On the Sextons, see C. Tait, ‘A trusty and wellbeloved servant: the career and disinterment of Edmund Sexton’, Archivium Hibernicum 56 (2002), pp. 51–64; C. Lennon, ‘Religious and social change in early modern Limerick: the testimony of the Sexton family papers’, in Irwin et al., Limerick: history and society, pp. 113–28.

  33. Thompson, Customs in Common.

  34. Cal. Carew MSS, 4, no. 197.

  35. For the way such a conflict played out in Limerick in the 1590s, see Tait, ‘Broken heads and trampled hats’.

  36. J. Walter, ‘Faces in the crowd: gender and age in the early modern crowd’, in H. Berry and E. Foyster (eds), The Family in Early Modern England (Cambridge, 2007).

  37. R. A. Houlbrooke, ‘Women's social life and common action in England from the fifteenth century to the eve of the Civil War’, Continuity and Change 1 (1986), pp. 171–89; A. Wood, ‘“Poore men woll speke one daye”: plebian languages of deference and defiance in England, c. 1520–1640’, in T. Harris (ed.), The Politics of the Excluded, c. 1500–1850 (Basingstoke, 2001), pp. 76–7.

  38. M. Harrison, Crowds and History: mass phenomena in English towns, 1790–1835 (Cambridge, 2002), p. 140.

  39. D. L. Horowitz, The Deadly Ethnic Riot (Berkeley, 2001).

  40. See Tait, ‘Broken heads and trampled hats’ for a fuller discussion of this.

  41. Day, ‘Cooke's memoirs of Youghal’, p. 49.

  42. R. Ruff, Violence in Early Modern Europe, 1500–1800 (Cambridge, 2001), p. 170; S. Ó Suilleabháin, Irish Wake Amusements (Cork/Dublin, 1976), pp. 125–6.

  43. B. McGrath (ed.), The Minute Books of the Corporation of Clonmel, 1608–1649 (Dublin, 2006), pp. 271–2.

  44. Ruff, Violence in Early Modern Europe, p. 191.

  45. M. Ingram, ‘Ridings, rough music and the “reform of popular culture” in early modern England’, Past and Present 103 (1984), pp. 79–113.

  46. E. P. Thompson, ‘Rough music reconsidered’, Folklore 103 (1992), pp. 3–26, and quotation on p. 16.

  47. In England and parts of Ireland, Ascension Thursday and Rogation (the three days beforehand) were a time for ‘beating’ boundaries (processing around parish limits to bless and mark them) and giving to the poor. K. Danaher, The Year in Ireland (Cork/Dublin 2001), p. 128; R. Hutton, The Stations of the Sun (Oxford, 1998), pp. 277–88.

  48. Hutton, Stations of the Sun, pp. 134–45.

  49. Danaher, Year in Ireland.

  50. Hutton, Stations of the Sun.

  51. Desiderata Curiosa Hibernica, p. 157.

  52. On gesture, see J. Walter, ‘Gesturing at authority: deciphering the gestural code of early modern England’, in M. Braddick (ed.), The Politics of Gesture: historical perspectives (Past and Present, Supplement, 4, 2009).

  53. Skrimishe = scrimish or scrimmage in the obsolete meaning of ‘an outcry, alarm’ (OED).

  54. J. T. Gilbert, ‘Archives of the town of Galway’, HMC Tenth Report, Appendix, Part V (London, 1885), p. 391.

  55. C. B. Herrup, ‘New shoes and mutton pies: investigative responses to theft in seventeenth-century East Sussex’, Historical Journal 27 (1984), pp. 811–30; B. Rich, The Irish Hubbub or the English hue and crie (London, 1618); F. Moryson, Shakespeare's Europe: unpublished chapters of Fynes Moryson's Itinerary, ed. C. Hughes (London, 1903), p. 484; E. Spenser, A View of the Present State of Ireland, http://www.ucc.ie/celt/published/E500000–001/index.html, accessed 26 March 2010; B. K. Smith, The Acoustic World of Early Modern England (1999), pp. 303–12.

  56. Crawford, A Star Chamber Court in Ireland, p. 479; another case of raising the cry is found on p. 478.

  57. Spenser, View.

  58. See C. Tait, Death, Burial and Commemoration in Ireland, 1550–1650 (Basingstoke, 2002), pp. 35–38, 175–6; Marie-Louise Coolahan deals with ‘literary keens’ written by Irish women as a means of both lament and petition to patrons: M. L. Coolahan, Women, Writing and Language in Early Modern Ireland (Oxford, 2010), pp. 14–62.

  59. B. Rich, A Catholicke Conference betweene syr Tady MacMareall a popish priest of Waterforde, and Patricke Plaine a young student in Trinity Colledge by Dublin in Ireland (London, 1612), pp. 5–6; P. F. Moran (ed.), Spicilegium Ossoriense (Dublin, 1874), p. 123.

  60. W. Brereton, Travels in Holland and the United Provinces, England, Scotland and Ireland (London, 1844), p. 155.

  Chapter 2

  1. I wish to thank Dr Eamon Darcy and Dr Robert Armstrong for commenting on early drafts of this chapter. Dates are Old Style (Julian Calendar) with the calendar year taken to begin on 1 January. Spelling has been modernised.

  2. W. Farmer, ‘Chronicles of Ireland, 1594–1613’, ed. C. Litton Falkiner, English Historical Review, 20 (1907), p. 546.

  3. Calendar of the ancient records of Dublin, in the possession of the municipal corporation of that city (Dublin, 1892), III, pp. 523–36.

  4. NAUK, S.P. 63/217/95, printed in Calendar of State Papers in Ireland, 1603–06 (London, 1872), p. 355.

  5. C. Lennon, The Lords of Dublin in the Age of Reformation (Dublin, 1989), p. 176.

  6. Ibid., p. 171.

  7. J. McCavitt, ‘Lord deputy Chichester and the English government's “mandates policy” in Ireland, 1605–1607’, Recusant History, 20 (1991), p. 328.

  8. As quoted in Lennon, Lords of Dublin, p. 178.

  9. NAUK, S.P. 63/218/45, printed in Cal. S.P. Ire., 1603–06, p. 453; NAUK, S.P. 63/229/108, printed in Cal. S.P. Ire., 1608–10, p. 475.

  10. Cal. S.P. Ire., 1611–14, pp. 96–7.

  11. Lennon, Lords of Dublin, pp. 197–8; NAUK, S.P. 63/217/49, printed in Cal. S.P. Ire., 1603–06, p. 302.

  12. V. Treadwell, ‘The establishment of the farm of the Irish customs, 1603–13’, English Historical Review, 93: 368 (1978), pp. 591–2. Poundage was a customs tax whereby a duty of 1 shilling was imposed on every pound of goods imported or exported.

  13. Ibid., pp. 598–9.

  14. V. Treadwell, ‘Sir John Perrot and the Irish parliament of 1585–6’, Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy, section C, 85 (1985), pp. 259–63.

  15. As quoted in Lennon, Lords of Dublin, p. 199.

  16. ‘Letter-book of Sir Arthur Chichester, 1612–14’, ed. R. D. Edwards in Analecta Hibernica, 8 (1938), pp. 95–6.

  17. Cal. Carew MSS (London, 1873), vol. VI, 1603–1624,
pp. 164–70.

  18. B. McGrath, ‘The membership of the Irish House of Commons, 1613–1615’ (MLitt dissertation, TCD, 1986), p. 26.

  19. NAUK, S.P. 63/232/12, printed in Cal. S.P. Ire., 1611–14, p. 249.

  20. Desiderata Curiosa Hibernica; or, a select collection of state papers, ed. [John Lodge], (Dublin, 1772), vol. I, pp. 158–60.

  21. D. Hirst, Representative of the people? Voters and voting in England under the early Stuarts (Cambridge, 1975), p. 14.

  22. M. Kishlansky, Parliamentary Selection: social and political choice in early modern England (Cambridge, 1986), p. 56.

  23. Ibid., p. 61.

  24. Ibid., p. 229.

  25. V. Treadwell, ‘The Irish parliament of 1569–71’, Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy, section C, 65 (1966), p. 86, and idem, ‘Sir John Perrot and the Irish parliament of 1585–6’, pp. 260–3.

  26. NAUK, S.P. 63/232/12, printed in Cal. S.P. Ire., 1611–14, p. 362.

  27. Bodleian Library, Oxford, Carte MS 62, fo. 132.

  28. Farmer, ‘Chronicles of Ireland’, p. 546.

  29. Cal. S.P. Ire., 1611–14, p. 441.

  30. Calendar of the ancient records of Dublin, iii, p. 28.

  31. J. McCavitt, Sir Arthur Chichester: Lord Deputy of Ireland, 1605–16 (Belfast, 1998), p. 67, Lennon, Lords of Dublin, p. 199, ‘Letter-book of Sir Arthur Chichester, 1612–14’, p. 19.

  32. Carte MS 62, fo. 132.

  33. Lennon, Lords of Dublin, pp. 201–2.

  34. B. McGrath, ‘The membership of the Irish House of Commons, 1613–1615’, p. 21.

  35. Carte MS 62, fo. 132.

  36. NAUK, S.P. 63/232/12, printed in Cal. S.P. Ire., 1611–14, p. 362.

  37. Farmer, ‘Chronicles of Ireland’, p. 546.

  38. J. Barry, ‘Civility and civic culture in early modern England: the meanings of urban freedom’, in P. Burke, B. Harrison and P. Slack (eds), Civil Histories: essays presented to Sir Keith Thomas (Oxford, 2000), pp. 186–9, 194.

  39. Farmer, ‘Chronicles of Ireland’, p. 546.

  40. Carte MS 62, fo. 132.

  41. Farmer, ‘Chronicles of Ireland’, p. 546.

  42. Calendar of the ancient records of Dublin, p. 534.

  43. Carte MS 62, fo. 133.

  44. Ibid.

  45. Farmer, ‘Chronicles of Ireland’, p. 546.

  46. C. Blair and I. Delamer, ‘The Dublin civic swords’, Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy, section C, 88 (1988), p. 130.

  47. British Library, Cotton MS Titus B.X, 222, printed in Cal. S.P. Ire., 1611–14, p. 354.

  48. Lambeth Palace Library, London, Carew MS 616, fo. 122, printed in Cal. S.P. Ire., 1611–14, p. 342.

  49. Farmer, ‘Chronicles of Ireland’, p. 546.

  50. Carte MS 62, fo. 132.

  51. N. Garnham, ‘Riot acts, popular protest, and Protestant mentalities in eighteenth-century Ireland’, Historical Journal 49 (2006), p. 418.

  52. R. Bolton, A Iustice of Peace for Ireland (Dublin, 1638), pp. 205–6.

  53. Carte MS 62, fo. 132.

  54. Carte MS 62, fo. 132; Farmer, ‘Chronicles of Ireland’, p. 546; NAUK, S.P. 63/232/12, printed in Cal. S.P. Ire., 1611–14, p. 362.

  55. NAUK, S.P. 63/232/12, printed in Cal. S.P. Ire., 1611–14, p. 362.

  56. Cal. S.P. Ire., 1611–14, p. 441.

  57. Farmer, ‘Chronicles of Ireland’, p. 546; Carte MS 62, fo. 132.

  58. Lennon, Lords of Dublin, p. 59.

  Chapter 3

  1. Patrick Comerford, bishop of Waterford, to Luke Wadding, guardian of St Isidore's in Rome, 24 February 1630, in G. D. Burtchaell and T. U. Sadleir (eds), Report on the Franciscan MSS preserved at The Convent, Merchants’ Quay, Dublin, Dublin: Historical Manuscripts Commission, 1906, p. 20. I would like to express my gratitude to the Humanities Institute of Ireland for the facilities they have put at my disposal. I would also like to give a special word of thanks to the editor for his continued patience.

  2. For example, Sir Walter Aston to Lord Conway, 5 June 1624, Cabala, Mysteries of State in Letters of the great Ministers of K. James and K. Charles, printed for M. M. G. Bedell and T. Collins, London, 1653, p. 49; information concerning the relations between the Irish and Spanish [1626], Cal. S.P. Ire., 1647–60, pp. 67–9; Falkland and the Irish Privy Council to Charles, 11 August 1628, Cal. S.P. Ire., 1625–32, p. 219.

  3. See G. Redworth, ‘Perfidious Hispania? Ireland and the Spanish match, 1603–23’, in H. Morgan (ed.), The Battle of Kinsale (Bray, 2004), pp. 255–64; M. Empey, ‘Ireland, Spain and “the protection and defence of the Christian religion”, c. 1622–35’, in D. M. Downey and J. C. MacLennan (eds), Spanish-Irish Relations through the Ages (Dublin, 2008), pp. 103–22.

  4. In 1630 there were only seventeen bishops, following the deaths of Hugh MacCaghwell of Armagh (1626) and Edmund Dungan of Down and Conor (1629); see D. F. Cregan, ‘The social and cultural background of a Counter-Reformation episcopate, 1618–60’, in A. Cosgrove and D. MacCartney (eds), Studies in Irish History presented to R. Dudley Edwards (Naas, 1979), pp. 85–117.

  5. Archbishop Matthews’ report to the Congregation of Propaganda, 4 February 1623; P. F. Moran, History of the Catholic Archbishops of Dublin, since the Reformation (Dublin: James Duffy Printers, 1864), pp. 289–92.

  6. Some of the leading citizens of Drogheda to Propaganda Fide, 27 May 1623; B. Millett OFM (ed.), ‘Catalogue of Irish material in fourteen volumes of the Scritture originali riferite nelle congregazioni generali, in Propaganda Archives’, in Collectanae Hibernica, x (1967), pp. 50–1.

  7. Letter from the superior of the Carmelite order, March 1628; Moran, History of the Catholic Archbishops of Dublin, pp. 313–14. One Catholic bishop wrote: ‘our countrie is so furnished with clergiemen that ere it be long we are like to have one against every house’ – Patrick Comerford, bishop of Waterford and Lismore, to Luke Wadding, 30 October 1631, Wadding Papers, 1614–38, ed. B. Jennings (Dublin, 1953), p. 609.

  8. John Roche, bishop of Ferns, to the Congregation of Propaganda, 1 December 1629; Moran, History of the Catholic Archbishops of Dublin, pp. 396–9.

  9. Bishop Bedell to Archbishop Ussher, 18 September 1630; R. Parr, The life of the Most Reverend Father in God, James Ussher, late Lord Arch-Bishop of Armagh, Primate and Metropolitan of all Ireland, printed for Nathaniel Ranew (London, 1686), p. 453.

  10. [Sir John Bingley's] account of the state of the Church in Ireland, [21 March] 1629, Cal. S.P. Ire., 1625–32, p. 442; such was the impact of the Counter-Reformation in Dublin that Archbishop Bulkeley could even name Catholic parish priests and calculate how many recusants there were in his report on the state of the Protestant church in 1630; M. V. Ronan, ‘Archbishop Bulkeley's visitation of Dublin, 1630’, Archivium Hibernicum, viii (1941), pp. 56–98.

  11. Proclamation for the banishment of Jesuits, &c., 21 January 1624, Cal. S.P. Ire., 1615–25, p. 459; R. Steele (ed.), A Bibliography of Royal Proclamations of the Tudor and Stuart Sovereigns, 1485–1714, 2 vols (Oxford, 1910), ii, p. 26.

  12. Irish Privy Council to the king and English Privy Council, 31 January 1629; Moran, History of the Catholic Archbishops of Dublin, p. 315.

  13. Proclamation of the Lord Deputy and Council, 1 April 1629, Cal. S.P. Ire., 1625–32, p. 445; Steele (ed.), A Bibliography of Royal Proclamations … 1485–1714, ii, p. 31; P. J. Corish (ed.), ‘Two seventeenth-century proclamations against the Catholic clergy’, Archivium Hibernicum, xxxix (1984), pp. 53–7.

  14. Lord Deputy [to the Privy Council] touching the regulations against papists, 5 April 1629, Cal. S.P. Ire., 1625–32, p. 446; similar claims were made a month later: Falkland [to Lord Dorchester], 2 May 1629, ibid., p. 450.

  15. Falkland to Ussher, 14 April 1629; Parr, The Life of the Most Reverend Father in God, James Ussher, p. 407.

  16. Ibid.

  17. Draft of [Lord Dorchester] to the Lord Deputy touching his Majesty's purpose to recall him, 3 April 1629, Cal. S.P. Ire., 1625–32, pp. 445–6. Falkland petitioned the king for a reprieve,
but his removal was confirmed in August 1629; the king to Falkland, ibid., p. 475.

  18. Draft of instructions for Adam Viscount Loftus of Ely, and Richard Earl of Cork, the King's Lords Justices for Ireland [n.d.], Cal. S.P. Ire., 1625–32, pp. 471–2.

  19. F. X. Martin, Friar Nugent: a study of Francis Lavalin Nugent (1569–1635), agent of the counter-Reformation (London, 1962), p. 270. Propaganda Fide was the department of the Roman Curia responsible for missionary work and related activities, including the safeguarding of the Catholic faith in areas where it was threatened.

  20. Cork to Dorchester, 22 December 1629, Cal. S.P. Ire., 1625–32, p. 499; see also the comments of Sir Thomas Dutton who claimed that ‘the whole of Ireland is now more addicted to popery than it was in the time of Queen Elizabeth’; Dutton to the king, 20 December 1629, ibid., p. 498.

  21. Sir Charles Wilmot, general of the Irish army, to Dorchester, 17 December 1629, ibid., p. 498.

  22. N. Archbold, ‘Evangelic Fruict of the Seraphicall Franciscan Order’, BL (British Library), Harleian MS 3888, p. 212.

  23. Cork to Dorchester, 9 January 1629[/30], HMC, Report no. 12, Appendix, Part II: Report on Manuscripts of Earl Cowper, K.G., preserved at Melbourne Hall, Derbyshire, 3 vols (London: Eyre & Spottiswoode, 1888), i, pp. 398–9: ‘there were many active spirits descended of good houses who held dangerous principles’.

  24. Sir James Ware's diary of events and occurrences, 1623–47, Dublin City Library, Gilbert MS 169, fo. 197; in his diary, Cork specifically stated that the archbishop and mayor ‘by direction of us, the Lords Justices, ransackt the howse of ffryer in Cookstreet’; Richard Boyle, Earl of Cork, The Lismore Papers (first series) viz. autobiographical notes, remembrances and diaries of Sir Richard Boyle, first and ‘great’ Earl of Cork, never before printed, ed. A. B. Grossart, 5 vols (London, 1886), iii, p. 13.