Byrne's Dictionary of Irish Local History

by Joseph Byrne

  foundling hospital. A hospital founded principally to remove abandoned and destitute children from the streets. Two were established in Ireland in the eighteenth century, one each in Dublin (1707) and Cork (c. 1750), both in association with houses of industry. Attention to the well-being of inmates was notoriously slipshod and for the majority of children admission to a foundling hospital amounted to a death sentence. Between 1737 and 1743, 2,700 children out of almost 4,000 foundling admissions perished in the Dublin hospital. Conditions appear to have worsened over the years. Reporting in 1827, the commissioners of Irish education inquiry claimed a survival rate of one child in five. Children were accepted from the age of one year, received schooling from age eight to twelve and then progressed to apprenticeships if they managed to survive that long. The Irish Miscellaneous Estimates committee recommended that admissions should cease in Dublin in 1830 but there remained a large number of children such as children at nurse, sick children and newly-apprenticed children who needed support beyond that date. The Cork institution was shut down in 1856. (Foundling Hospital.)

  Four Courts. 1: The four central royal courts of justice were king’s bench, chancery, the exchequer, and common pleas. All evolved from the undifferentiated curia regis or king’s council, the assembly of advisers and officials which attended the king. The individual courts appear to have developed from specialised smaller committees operating within the curia regis which gradually became formalised as separate institutions replete with their own staffs. One of the earliest to develop was the exchequer, the administrative department presided over by the treasurer which controlled income and expenditure. On its judicial side the barons of the exchequer resolved disputes concerning the royal revenues. Chancery, the royal secretariat through which all important state and legal documents passed and where records of the rolls were preserved, was headed by the king’s secretary and chief adviser, the lord chancellor. The chancellor’s role as adviser or conscience to the king in the resolution of cases for which common law provided no remedy led to the delegation of equitable jurisdiction to that court. The sheer volume of work coming before the curia regis and the inconvenience to litigants of having to trail around the country after the king prompted the creation of a permanent court at Westminster which heard civil disputes between commoners. This practice was replicated in Ireland in the thirteenth century when the itinerant judges sat in Dublin to hear common pleas. The curia regis retained its judicial role and continued to hear criminal cases as well as civil pleas. When a chief justice and puisne judges were appointed, this side of the curia regis became a separate court too, the court of king’s bench. Common law was introduced to Ireland after the English model but because the king’s writ ran only within the Pale it was not until the seventeenth century that the Gaelic Brehon law was finally supplanted by the royal and local courts 2: The complex of buildings on the bank of the Liffey designed by Thomas Cooley and constructed (with some modifications) by James Gandon. The site was originally intended as a location for a records repository but in 1785 it was decided to relocate the superior courts there from their unsatisfactory accommodation at St Michael’s Hill near Christ Church. Comprising a central domed pile and wings which form two quadrangles, the four courts were housed in different corners of the complex. A new building was added to accommodate the rolls court and a nisi prius court was later erected. (Culliton, ‘The Four Courts, Dublin’, pp. 116–131.)

  Four Masters, Annals of the. The popular name for Annála Ríoghachta Éireann, the Four Masters is a synthesis of earlier annals, recording events in Ireland from earliest times down to the beginning of the seventeenth century. The work was compiled by Micheál Ó Cléirigh, Fear Feasa Ó Maoil Chonaire, Cú Choigcríche Ó Cléirigh and Cú Choigcríche Ó Duibhgeannain in Donegal during the years 1632–6. Ó Cléirigh, a Franciscan, travelled throughout Ireland assembling materials for research on history, historiography and other subjects. The Annals include detailed descriptions of events of local significance, items of national interest and a small number of references to international events together with references to social and material culture. They are particularly useful for family relationships and references to men of learning. See John O’Donovan. (O’Donovan, Annals.)

  franchise, elective. Until the twentieth century the qualifications which enabled citizens to exercise the elective franchise in Ireland were complex, discriminatory and exclusive. Catholics were disfranchised entirely from 1728 until 1793 and were debarred from parliament from 1691 until 1829 because they would not take the oath of abjuration and declare against Catholic doctrine. Between 1704 and 1780 Protestant dissenters, although disbarred from municipal corporations, remained eligible to vote and sit in parliament. Irish women became eligible to vote in local government elections from 1898 but were denied the parliamentary franchise until 1918 when those aged over 30 were enfranchised. In 1923 the Irish Free State reduced the age qualification for women to 21 and the government of Northern Ireland followed suit in 1928. Before the Act of Union the 300 seats in the Irish house of commons were filled by the votes of a tiny minority of the population. Trinity College, for example, with an electorate of 92 fellows and scholars, sent two MPs to parliament while 55 corporations, each comprising 12 or 13 burgesses, sent 110. Knocktopher had a single qualified voter in 1783. In all, 97 boroughs (55 corporation, 36 freeman and 6 manor boroughs) were controlled by an individual patron or patrons. Hence, although some boroughs were hotly disputed, contested elections were largely confined to the 32 county constituencies, the eight county boroughs, Londonderry and Swords. Apart from membership of a corporation, freeman status or, in the case of the 12 ‘potwalloping’ boroughs, residency of six months (one year from 1782), eligibility to vote was restricted to the forty-shilling freeholders (owners or lessees for lives of land worth forty-shillings above rent). The forty-shilling freehold was the qualification under which Catholics obtained the right to vote following Hobart’s 1793 relief act. It was a short-lived concession. The emancipation act of 1829 – which permitted Catholics to sit in parliament – abolished the forty-shilling franchise by raising the threshold to ten pounds and at a stroke reduced the county electorate from over 200,000 to 37,000. The Representation of the People (Ireland) Act (2 & 3 Will. IV, c. 88, 1832) increased the county electorate to 60,000 by admitting more leaseholders and the borough franchise to 30,000 by introducing a single qualification, occupation of property valued at £10 or more. Compared with England and Scotland the Irish elective franchise was hopelessly inequitable. In England one person in five was entitled to vote, in Scotland one in eight yet only one in 20 held the franchise in Ireland. The 1850 Irish Franchise Act (13 & 14 Vict., c. 69) transformed the electoral process dramatically. The county threshold was raised to £12 but the franchise was now extended to embrace occupiers (and not only owners or leaseholders) of holdings valued at £12 or more. As a result, the electorate more than doubled, rising from 60,597 in 1832 to 135,245 by 1851–2. Under the Franchise Act the borough occupier franchise was lowered to £8, a threshold that was subsequently halved from 1868 by the Representation of the People (Ireland) Act (31 & 32 Vict., c. 49). Proportional inequities in the franchise were removed throughout the United Kingdom when a single qualification of £10 was admitted by the 1884 Representation of the People Act. A year later new constituencies were created with the abolition of all but nine of the boroughs and the subdivision of the counties and the boroughs of Belfast and Dublin. Almost 750,000 people were now entitled to vote in parliamentary elections, a figure which climbed to over two million by 1918 when males over the age of 21 and females aged 30 or over were enfranchised (7 & 8 Geo. V, cc 64, 65). Until the introduction of the secret ballot in 1872 (35 &36 Vict., c. 33), balloting was a public affair with the elector’s preference being declared aloud and registered alongside his name. Inevitably this enabled landlords to influence their tenants’ votes. By the time the secret ballot was introduced, however, tenants had already begun to exercise their franchi
se unfettered by such intimidation. See borough. (Hoppen, Elections.)

  franchises, riding the. The act of traversing the boundaries of an area of jurisdiction at regular intervals to prevent the boundaries from being altered or forgotten. In the city of Dublin this was carried out triennially and included the delimitation of the maritime boundary by the casting of a spear as far as possible into the sea.

  Franciscans (Friars Minor). Founded by St Francis c. 1207, the Franciscans first appeared in Ireland in Youghal and Cork c. 1224 and spread quickly throughout the country after Richard Ingleworth, head of the custody (province) of Cambridge arrived in 1231–2. In Ireland the order experienced the dissension that existed elsewhere in Europe between reforming observant Franciscans who sought a literal and austere interpretation of the simple rule of poverty of St Francis and conventuals who espoused a more liberal position. By 1538 the majority of friaries were observant. In the fourteenth century racial discord between Gaelic Irish and Anglo-Irish friars created tensions within the order which was governed by Anglo-Irish provincials until William O’Reilly emerged as provincial in 1461. After this Gaelic friars dominated and the Franciscans became powerful opponents of the Reformation and Tudor expansion. Although the order was suppressed and its friaries sequestered, the Franciscans continued to operate in the environs of their former houses. They opened continental seminaries at Louvain and Rome to train priests for service in Ireland. See conventualism. (Millett.)

  Franciscan Third Order Regular. The Third Order Regular developed from the Third Order Secular, societies of lay men and women who wished to live the Franciscan life but could not profess their vows in the First Order (the Friars Minor) or the Second Order (the nuns) on account of their married status. The rule of the Third Order Secular bound members to fasting and abstinence, prayer, confession and communion, works of charity, assembly for religious instruction and simplicity of dress. The Third Order Regular adopted this rule and added the vows of poverty, chastity and obedience. The first evidence of their presence in Ireland comes from an indult sent by Martin V in 1426 and by the fifteenth century there were over 40 houses. The order appears to have been principally engaged with pastoral work and in educating boys and was largely concentrated in Gaelic areas. It declined significantly after 1600 and was extinct by 1635.

  frankalmoign. Literally, free alms, frankalmoign was an ecclesiastical tenure in which no fealty was owed and the service to be rendered was the duty to pray for the lord’s soul.

  frankhouse. A free hospital operated by the knights hospitallers.

  Frankpledge, View of. A medieval method of social control by which each member of a tithing was responsible in law for the good behaviour of the other members. Described by Holdsworth as ‘a system of compulsory collective bail fixed for individuals not after their arrest for crime but as a safeguard in anticipation of it’ it is uncertain as to what extent it was actually realised on the ground in Ireland. (Holdsworth, English law, i, pp. 13–17).

  frater, fratry. A refectory.

  Fratres Cruciferi, Crucigeri, Canons OSA of the Holy Cross, Crutched Friars. A congregation of Augustinian hospitallers which emerged in the twelfth century in Italy, the Fratres Cruciferi (the cross-bearing friars) founded at least 15 monastery-hospitals in Ireland in the late twelfth and early thirteenth centuries to serve the poor and infirm. The hospitals were maintained by endowments, bequests and indulgences. As well as the brethren, some of the houses had sisters who worked in the hospitals and appear to have had some involvement in the management of the institutions. They were not military hospitallers like the Knights Hospitallers of St John of Jerusalem or the Knights Templars. (Brook, Register.)

  Frauds, Statue of (1695). This statute (7 Will. III, c. 12) was enacted to prevent fraud in relation to trusts, wills and contracts for the sale of land by requiring written evidence of the devise. Henceforth all devises of land, including assignments, grants, trusts and wills must be in written form or risk being declared void.

  freehold. Tenure in fee simple. Freehold land was, and is, a parcel of land held for an indefinite time, as distinguished from a leasehold which is held for a specified period. It generally required the payment of a fixed sum, the chief rent or fee-farm rent, and attendance at the manor court. A heriot was payable on the death of a freeholder and the heir owed an entry fine to enter the land.

  freeman. In medieval times, a citizen possessing personal freedom unlike a serf or betagh. Freemen could take actions in the common law courts on their own behalf unlike the unfree who relied on their lord or the custom of the manor in the case of manorial courts. See advowry. Once admitted to the freedom of a corporate town and entered on the register of freemen, a man was permitted to practice his trade and vote in parliamentary elections. Freedom was attained through the completion of an apprenticeship, through descent from one’s father, by marriage into the family of a freeman or by grace of the mayor and corporation. In Dublin freedom was obtained through the guilds. After the Newtown Act (1747) abolished the requirement that freemen must reside within the corporation boundary, the majority of freemen were absentees who appeared only at election time.

  freemasonry. Irish freemasonry originated in the 1720s with the founding of a grand lodge to oversee local lodges. In its early years the order was riven by tensions between Jacobite and Hanoverian masons and grand lodge authority was not fully accepted by local lodges for over a century. Masonic association with Enlightenment scepticism and rational inquiry encouraged its growth and, despite papal condemnation, Catholics comprised the majority of Irish freemasons in the late eighteenth century. Daniel O’Connell was initiated in 1799 but subsequently distanced himself from the order. Membership crossed class boundaries to include tradesmen, farmers as well as the gentry and nobility. Masonic groups like The Order of Ancient, Free and Accepted Masons of Ireland copied their structure from the craft guilds, the new freemason passing successively by initiation through the three craft degrees of entered apprentice, fellow craft and master mason. There were also many side and higher orders and degrees. The rituals of initiation and the form of meetings were complex and suffused with images drawn from the building trade. Masonic processions on the feast of St John the Baptist persisted into the early 1800s and were attended by displays of lodge regalia and flags. The use of secret rituals, passwords, signs and handshakes together with its exclusively Protestant composition in the nineteenth century encouraged lurid speculation about the true purpose of the order but such practices and symbolism were copied by many other brotherhoods including the Orange Order and the Ancient Order of Hibernians. Like Orangeism and Hibernianism, freemasonry provided a social and mutual aid network to members. (Buckley and Anderson, Brotherhoods; Crossle, Irish masonic records; de Vere White, ‘The Freemasons’, pp. 46–57.)

  friendly society. With their guild-like structure and, in some instances, quasi-masonic rituals and regalia, friendly societies emerged in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries as mutual-aid associations to protect members against expenses incurred through sickness and death. Many employed doctors to provide free medical attention to members and their families, covered funeral expenses and paid death benefit to the bereaved. Members contributed their dues at weekly meetings which were also important social occasions. In 1831 there were over 280 registered friendly societies in Ireland, 119 of which were located in Dublin. The popularity of the friendly society was boosted by the introduction of the National Insurance Act (1911) which legislated for sick benefit and old age pensions for workers who paid an insurance stamp. The act permitted registered friendly societies to collect national insurance payments and to use them to enhance society benefits. After the First World War the increasing involvement of the state in welfare issues and the growth of insurance companies reduced the importance of friendly societies but the support they provided to members continues to be offered by trade and credit unions and in-house company medical aid schemes. (Buckley and Anderson, Brotherhoods.)

  frist. To
grant a delay or respite to a debtor in order that he might pay off what he owes.

  fuidhir. (Ir.) In Gaelic society, a ‘stranger-tenant’, often an outlaw or ‘broken man’ who came from another tribe and sought the protection of the chief. Although he might be granted cattle and land, his was a tenancy-at-will and could be dispensed with summarily. Within Gaelic society he occupied the lowest strata and was despised by other tribesmen.

  fulacht fia. (Ir., roasted deer) Recognisable by mounds of burnt stones in marshy locations, fulachtaí fia are ancient cooking spots at the sites where summer hunting parties bivouacked. They usually contain dug-out trunks or plank-lined pits where water was heated by hot stones.

  full. To cleanse, thicken and soften woollen cloth by washing, shrinking and beating it with wooden mallets or hazel rods, working with the hands or trampling to leave a short pile across the surface.

  fuller’s earth. A hydrous silicate of alumina employed in the cleansing of cloth.

  fulling mill. A riverine mill where cloth was thickened and cleansed, examples of which are recorded in Ireland as early as the thirteenth century.

  funeral entries. The records of funerals of deceased members of families who were entitled to bear heraldic arms. They form part of the heraldic archives of the Ulster King of Arms (since 1943 the Genealogical Office) and contain a record of the name and issue of deceased persons, illustrations of their arms and details of the order of funeral processions for the period 1588 to 1691. The genealogical material contained in the funeral entries was important for arms were hereditary and such records were invaluable in cases of dispute. The funeral entries are held by the Genealogical Office and are available on microfilm in the National Library. See herald.

  furlong. (Literally, furrow long) Originally the length of a commonfield furrow which varied regionally according to the area of the acre in use. The usual length of a furrow is 40 perches which is equivalent to 220 yards, imperial measure. It probably derived from the distance a plough team could plough before resting.