by Joseph Byrne
redemption. In a deed the phrase ‘subject to redemption’ indicates that the transaction is a mortgage.
redshank. A Scottish mercenary footsoldier serving in Ireland.
re-entry. A legal term for eviction and the act of repossession.
reeve. Senior manorial official under the bailiff. See sheriff (shire-reeve).
refection. Refers to a number of exactions or impositions on local populations obliging them to provide refreshment and lodgings. In its most severe and prolonged form – coyne and livery – the inhabitants had to maintain soldiers quartered on the area by the chief lord, together with horses and horseboys. Coshering, another form of refection, involved the provision of refreshment to the chief lord and his retinue as he progressed through his territory. To avoid being eaten out of house and home tenants often substituted cash payments for coshering. The least exacting form of refection was that provided by an erenagh to the diocesan bishop on his visitation which usually lasted only a day and, at most, occurred on but four occasions a year.
Reformed Presbyterian church (Covenanters). The Reformed Presbyterian church originated in the seventeenth century with those Presbyterians who sought to adhere strictly to the National Covenant (1638) and the Solemn League and Covenant (1642) – hence the name Covenanters. Purists with regard to Presbyterian doctrine, it was not until the mid-eighteenth century that the first Reformed Presbytery was established in Ireland.
regardant. In heraldry, a creature in profile with its head looking backwards.
regency. 1: A period during which a kingdom is administered by a substitute owing to the incapacity or absence of the reigning monarch. In British history the term refers to the period 1810–20 when George III was ill and and the future George IV acted as prince regent 2: A classical style of architecture (c. 1800–30) which borrowed structural and ornamental features from ancient Greece and Rome. Its most noted proponent was the architect John Nash.
regency crisis. In 1789 George III became insane and the Irish parliament voted to request the Whig-associating Prince of Wales to act immediately as regent of Ireland. The Tory government of William Pitt and the Irish administration wanted the regency to be effected by an act of parliament which would have enabled them to limit the regent’s powers and delay the appointment. The Irish parliament was emphasising its equality with and independence from the imperial parliament but it was also gambling (unsuccessfully, as it transpired) that the next government would be composed of Whigs. The issue descended into farce when the king recovered his sanity just as the Irish delegation arrived in London to address the Prince of Wales. The independent action of the Irish parliament during the regency crisis raised government concerns about the wisdom of legislative independence and prompted FitzGibbon (the attorney-general) to threaten the Irish house of commons with union should it fail to follow Britain in all regulations of imperial policy. Despite such threats, a strong and coherent opposition, the ‘Irish Whigs’, emerged to uphold the independence of the Irish parliament. See whig clubs.
regicide. A king-killer.
register, episcopal. Episcopal registers are compilations of diocesan documents including papal bulls, royal grants, letters, clerical appointments, resignations and disciplinings, leases and advowsons. They may also include stray but interesting material. The fourteenth-century Red Book of Ossory, for example, includes a treatise on brandy and the text of 60 songs. See Alen’s Register, Register of Armagh, Crede mihi, Reportorium Viride. (Lawlor, ‘Calendar’, pp. 159–208; Idem, ‘A calendar of the Liber Niger’, pp. 1–93; McCaffrey, The black book.)
regium donum. Literally, the king’s gift or bounty, the regium donum was an annual grant of £600 to Presbyterian ministers inaugurated by Charles II in 1672. Payments were halted under James II but re-introduced at an increased rate of £1,200 by William III in gratitude for Presbyterian support for the Williamite cause in Ireland. Presbyterian ministers also expected him to legislate for greater toleration but the antipathy of the Church of Ireland towards dissenters ensured the rejection of his 1695 toleration bill. The regium donum was withdrawn by the Tory government in 1710 to prevent the further expansion of Presbyterianism but was restored in 1718 by a Whig administration and increased to £2,000. In 1802 the government, seeking to secure the loyalty of Presbyterian ministers – some of whom had been implicated in the 1798 rebellion – increased the grant considerably and paid it directly to the ministers in a graduated scale ranging from £50 to £100 conditional upon continued loyalty. State subvention of Presbyterianism ceased in 1869 when the Church of Ireland was disestablished. In compensation for the loss of the regium donum, the sum of £750,000 was given to the Presbyterian Synod of Ulster to be divided equally among its ministers. (Beckett, Protestant, pp. 106–115; Pike, ‘The origin’, pp. 225–269.)
regnal year. Until the seventeenth century deeds were dated by the current year of a monarch’s reign which dated from the day, month and year of accession. Thus the regnal year 3 Elizabeth I occurred between 17 November 1560 and 16 November 1561. Acts of parliament were also dated by the regnal year.
regrate. To forestall or abbroach. The offence of acquiring or diverting victuals and goods bound for market to raise prices. It was punishable by imprisonment and loss of the goods.
regular, canons. Members of religious orders living in community usually under Augustinian rule as opposed to the secular or parish priests.
relief. A feudal incident (the others were wardship, escheat and marriage) which required the heir of a deceased chief tenant to make a money payment or fine (usually equivalent to one year’s profits of the land) to the crown to take possession of his estate. Relief was paid by an heir of full age. On a manorial estate relief paid by a tenant to the lord was known as an entry fine.
relief acts. A series of legislative acts that successively reduced the penal restrictions imposed on Catholics and dissenters in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. Concessions began in 1750 when Catholics were permitted to enter the lower grades of the army. The ‘Bogland act’ of 1771–2 (11 & 12 Geo. III, c. 21) enabled them to take leases for 61 years of not more than 50 acres of unprofitable land and to be free of taxes on the same for seven years. The relief act of 1778 (17 & 18 Geo. III, c. 40), introduced in the Irish parliament by Luke Gardiner, permitted Catholics to take land at leases of 999 years if they took the oath of allegiance but they could not purchase land in freehold. The 1704 gavelkind act (2 Anne, c. 7) was repealed and Catholics could now inherit in the same manner as any other citizen. In 1780 the Test Act (19 & 20 Geo. III, c. 6) was repealed, making dissenters eligible for office. Gardiner’s second relief act (21 & 22 Geo. III, c. 24, 1782) allowed Catholics who swore the oath of allegiance to purchase, hold and bequeath freeholds and leases on the same terms as Protestants. The performance of priestly duties by Catholic secular clergymen and any regulars then resident in the country was legalised provided such duties were not exercised within a church with a steeple or bell. The assumption of any ecclesiastical title or rank remained forbidden. Catholics could now own a horse valued in excess of £5 and the power vested in the grand jury to levy Catholics for the depradations of privateers was revoked. Catholics could open and keep schools if licensed by the local Anglican bishop. In the same year Presbyterian marriages conducted by Presbyterian ministers were legalised (21 & 22 Geo. III, c. 26). Sir Hercules Langrishe’s 1792 act (32 Geo. III, c. 21) permitted Catholics to practise law, though they could not become members of the inner bar. Catholic schoolmasters were no longer required to obtain a licence and restrictions were lifted on foreign education, the number of apprentices a Catholic might keep and inter-marriage. Chief Secretary Hobart’s 1793 act (33 Geo. III, c. 21) admitted Catholics to a limited franchise, restored their right to vote in parliamentary elections, to become members of municipal corporations and seek civil and military office. The offices of lord lieutenant, chief secretary, chancellor of the exchequer, attorney-general, solicitor-general, together with
membership of the privy council remained closed to them, however, and they could not become generals, judges or king’s counsels, governors, sheriffs or sub-sheriffs or members of parliament. They could serve in the ranks and hold commissions but only in Ireland and remained excluded from positions in the staff. The remaining disabilities – the right to sit in parliament, to hold senior government and legal offices and military rank above colonel – were largely though not completely removed in 1829 when the relief act which emancipated Catholics was passed.
Relief Commission. A temporary commission established in November 1845 by Robert Peel to advise the government and treasury on distress, to manage food depots nationwide and to oversee and grant-aid the work of local relief committees. It was composed of senior members of the administration including the under-secretary, Edward Lucas, Sir James Dombrain (Inspector General of the coastguard), Edward Twistleton (poor law commissioner), Sir Randolph Routh (Commissariat Department of the army), John Pitt Kennedy (former secretary to the Devon Commission), Harry Jones of the Board of Works and the scientist, Sir Robert Kane. Lucas’ criticism of government policies led to his replacement as chairman by Routh in 1846. The commission was stood down in August 1846 and a second commission was formed in February 1847 under Sir John Burgoyne tasked with supervising the implementation of the Temporary Relief Act (the ‘soup kitchen act’), a transitional measure introduced to facilitate the transfer of responsibility from central government to the individual poor law unions in autumn 1847. The records of the Relief Commission (1845–47) are held in the National Archives. (Kinealy, This great calamity.)
relief committee. The relief committee provided relief at local level during periods of crop failure and food shortages in the nineteenth century. The pattern began in 1816–17 with the establishment of a central relief committee to allocate funds to local committees during the harvest crisis of those years. It was reactivated in 1822 when the severely wet weather of the previous autumn precipitated the failure of the potato crop. That summer the committee disbursed £175,000 to local committees which distributed food for free or at reduced prices and supported local relief works, supplementing government-organised public works such as road and harbour construction. When blight struck in 1845 the Relief Commission was established to organise food depots and co-ordinate the work of temporary local relief committees, to purchase and re-sell at cost price the Indian corn imported by the government. Local committees, if they wished, could instigate smallscale public works to help the impoverished to earn money to purchase food and in extreme cases free food could be distributed. Membership of these voluntary committees usually comprised local gentry, clergymen, merchants and large farmers and they financed their purchases by charitable subscription and a matching grant from the government. By the summer of 1846 almost 700 local relief committees were distributing food to the distressed. These temporary initiatives proved successful in staving off widespread starvation and it was intended to stand down the Relief Commission and the local relief committees from August 1846. The re-emergence of a general blight that month and the failure of the public works scheme to meet the challenge presented by widespread distress led to the establishment in early 1847, under the Temporary Relief of Distressed Persons in Ireland Act (10 & 11 Vict., c. 7), of a new relief commission and the reactivation of local committees to provide direct relief in the form of cooked food or soup in soup kitchens. By July over three million people were being fed daily. In August 1847, however, these temporary measures were ended and the administration of relief was transferred to the poor law system in an attempt to make relief a burden on local rather than British coffers.
relieving officer. The Poor Law Amendment Act (10 Vict., c. 31, 1847) which permitted poor law unions to give outdoor relief under certain conditions, provided for the appointment of relieving officers who were to compile lists of applicants for relief for the poor law guardians. Relieving officers were also empowered to dispense immediate provisional relief in cases of extreme urgency. They frequently found themselves in disputes over relief entitlement arising out of the ‘quarter acre clause’ in the same act which forbade the granting of relief to anyone who occupied more than a quarter of an acre of land. Such persons were not considered to be destitute and were eligible for relief only if they surrendered their holding. It was the relieving officer’s task to confirm the claims of applicants to occupy a quarter of an acre or less. The government intended this clause to be applied stringently but overlooked the fact that the wives and children of men holding more than one quarter of an acre, however destitute, were thereby deemed undeserving of relief. Legal advice compelled the government to re-consider and poor law guardians were instructed to provide provisional relief in cases of urgent necessity to the families but not the occupier so long as he retained his holding.
remainder. A conveyancing term which refers to the creation of a future interest in an estate, in particular to the possession of an estate by someone other than the grantor at some future time. If Smith conveys the fee simple (freehold) of Ballyduff to Murphy for life and the remainder to O’Brien, upon Murphy’s demise the estate will devolve to O’Brien in fee simple. See reversion.
remembrancer. A government official whose function it was to collect debts due to the crown. The remembrancer kept a record of income and expenditure in the memoranda rolls.
remonstrance. A formal petition in which aggrieved bodies sought the favour of the monarch and the respite of their difficulties. In medieval times, as writs were very expensive, petitioning was the means by which an impoverished and aggrieved party set out the facts of his case and asked for relief of the king. If the petitioner was deemed to have a remedy at law, the petition was denied. After the Restoration in 1660 several remonstrances were submitted on behalf of the Catholics of Ireland. The most contentious, drafted by Richard Bellings in 1661, tried to resolve the difficulties existing between the crown and Catholics regarding the conflicting claims of king and pope to hold supreme temporal and spiritual authority. Ormond, the lord lieutenant, agreed to grant toleration to Catholics in return for an acceptance of the king’s sovereignty in temporal affairs and a repudiation of the pope’s authority to release subjects from their allegiance. A gathering of Catholic clergy in Dublin in 1666 could agree only to the first of these which Ormond rejected as insufficient. Later Rome expressed its opposition to the remonstrance and the issue died. See Catholic Petition, petition.
Remonstrant Synod. From 1830 the Remonstrant Synod comprised those Presbyterian ministers, elders and congregations who had withdrawn from the Synod of Ulster rather than conform to the evangelical wing’s requirement that all candidates for the ministry subscribe to the Westminster Confession, a practice that had ceased in the previous century.
Renewable Leasehold Conversion Act (1849). By this act (12 & 13 Vict., c. 105) leases for lives renewable forever (to all intents and purposes, perpetuities) were converted into freehold. See lease for lives renewable forever.
rental. A manorial or estate document which records the rents owed to the lord by his tenants. It usually contains the names of the tenants and their rents and is a much briefer manorial record than the extent or the custumal.
rent roll. Unlike the rental – which lists the payments owed by the tenants, – the rent roll is a record of what they actually paid. It contains the names of the tenants and their payments.
rentcharge. A charge placed on the rental income of an estate to repay a mortgage or to provide an annuity for a member of the landowner’s family.
Renunciation, Act of (1793). See Declaratory Act, parliament, statute, Yelverton’s Act, replevin. A legal action dating back to the fourteenth century which was initiated to seek the return of property wrongfully taken and for compensation for loss. Replevin was particularly valuable in cases where a landlord seized property in excess of the value of unpaid rents. A successful action meant the return of the confiscated goods. Replevin is distinguished from trover, a similar common law act
ion, in that it required the return of the property rather than the compensatory market value of the goods.
Reportorium Viride. Compiled in 1532–3 by John Alen, archbishop of Dublin (1528–34), Reportorium Viride comprises an annotated schedule of the churches of the dioceses of Dublin and Glendalough. It should be examined in conjunction with Alen’s Register, a contemporaneous compilation of documents relating to the see. (White, ‘The Reportorium’, pp. 173–222.)
Representative Church Body. A corporation authorised by government to hold and manage the property of the Church of Ireland after it was disestablished in 1869. Although the church was largely disendowed the clergy were guaranteed a life income in the form of annuities payable by the state. To shed the administrative responsibility of paying the annuities Gladstone offered a bonus of 12% if the majority of the clergy in each diocese agreed to commute their annuities to a lump sum and vest it in a new paymaster, the Representative Church Body. A majority accepted the proposal and a sum in excess of £8 million was paid. Skilful management of the fund, augmented by a lay annual subscription known as the parochial assessment, secured the financial future of the church. See Irish Church Act, sustenation fund. (Acheson, A history, pp. 205–7.)
reprisals. Compensatory grants of land which were to be offered to Cromwellian settlers to persuade them to yield their holdings to Catholics restored by the Acts of Settlement and Explanation.
reredos. A decorative screen on the wall behind an altar.
rescript. A written reply from the pope to a petition or legal inquiry. This could be in the nature of an edict or decree.
reserved pleas. The four pleas which the crown reserved to itself when granting liberty or manorial status. These were arson, rape, forestalling and treasure trove.