Kieran’s Our City, Our Town Article, 

Cork Independent, 19 February 2015

Cork Harbour Memories (Part 11) –Charters and Governance

      If Cork’s maritime connections in medieval times created financial profit and a basis for a settlement, the idea of Cork as a civilised place, a civitas, or a social body of the citizens united by law, was as important. The last few weeks, the column looked at Bordeaux, Lisbon and Southampton to try and tease out an idea that places such as Cork developed in the context of larger maritime traditions and collective ideas of how to be an urban entity. The granting of charters also influenced the walled town’s progressive nature as part of the Anglo-Norman colony. Charters wove new rules and regulations, bye-laws in one sense, for citizens to follow.

      Between the years 1185 and 1900, Cork received no less than seventeen charters. These official records were legally binding. Many were reactions to what was going on within the wider Anglo-Norman colonies at a point in time. The politics, ambitions and interests of various kings who aspired to advance aspects of his governance were also significant. Many encompassed laws that were also brought to bear on other English settlements. In medieval times charters encompassed ideas of controlling those who lived within fortresses such as Cork. Cork charters influenced laws to improve the town walls, augment powers of mayors, carve up living space within the town, make new trading laws and establish new taxation laws. All tried as well to ease tensions amongst citizens, who felt disillusioned with the elite and other reckonings such as the deals struck with Gaelic Irish families to keep them in check. Many of the concessions embodied in these charters contributed in no small measure to build up the confidence and the identity of the city.

     The first Charter granted to the town of Cork appears to have been one from Prince John in the year 1185. It was his brother Richard (the Lionheart) who sent him to Ireland to rule, whilst he was pursuing the Crusades. In time to keep his French barons from rebelling, John increased taxes in the territories he ruled and signed the Magna Carta in 1215 to keep his English barons happy. The 1185 granted to the citizens of Cork gave the same free laws and free customs as the citizens of Bristol enjoyed. It confirmed to the citizens of Cork all their enclosures of land to them and their heirs being entitled to free laws and customs as well. The walled town was to have as part of its functions, that of a fortress. In the early days of the Anglo Norman colony in Ireland, the interest was in securing the land won.

    The next charter was granted by Henry III, dated 2 January, 1242, which focussed on raising taxation from citizens. Twelve years previously, in 1230, the King had attempted to re-conquer the provinces of France that had once belonged to his father, but the invasion was a debacle. In a fresh attempt to reclaim his family’s lands in France, he invaded Poitou in 1242, leading to the disastrous Battle of Taillebourg. All these campaigns cost money – hence unpopular taxes were raised across many towns and feudal estates. The Cork charter of 1242 granted to the citizens the right to hold the City of Cork with its holdings in fee farm, at a rent of four score marks, to be paid annually at the Exchequer. It further granted that citizens and their heirs could have all the duties on wine and the money arising from them providing a certified document was created showing that shippers did pay their dues. The taxation net also encompassed nearby creeks and strands. There was special provision made for some citizens who did not have to pay tolls, customs and for quay space. The head of the Corporation is in this charter is described as the “Provost”.

     A series of other confirmatory charters followed – Edward I, dated 12 June, 1291. Edward I’s charter dated 13 October, 1303 granted murage grants or grants towards defences to the “bailiffs and men of Cork” for a period of six years. The same grant was given to other towns in Ireland for a similar time. Edward I, nicknamed “Longshanks” due to his great height and stature, was one of the most successful of the medieval monarchs. Edward made great strides in reforming government, consolidating territory, and defining foreign policy. He negotiated a peace with France in 1303 and retained those areas that England held before the war. He introduced a Parliament in Dublin and increased commerce in a few coastal towns, but most of the country was controlled by independent barons or Celtic tribal chieftains. Hence defences were important – hence why Cork’s walls and the walls of other towns were granted funding.

    Eroded by the tide and by the run of the river, the walls of Cork would have had to be regularly maintained by the city’s stone masons. The recent excavation book on South Gate Bridge carpark (edited by Maurice Hurley and Ciara Brett) revealed the base of a random rubble town wall construction on timber beams and compacted sand and gravel sitting balanced into the underlining swamp. There were disparities in the fabric of the wall found implying a considerable amount of rebuilding of the upper coarses of the wall.

To be continued…

Kieran’s new book, Cork Harbour Through Time (with Dan Breen) is now available in Cork bookshops.

Caption:

780a. Effigy on tomb of Prince John in Worchester Cathedral (source: Cork City Library)

780b. Effigy on tomb of Henry III in Westminster Abbey

780c. Early fourteenth-century manuscript showing Edward I and his wife Eleanor

Kieran’s Our City, Our Town Article, 

Cork Independent, 12 February 2015

Cork Harbour Memories (Part 10)

– Cork’s Medieval Woollen Trade

      Apart from large tracts of wine imports into the walled town of Cork in the thirteenth century other imports included various cloths of English and French origin. Foreign spices and vegetables were also imported for consumption amongst the English and native Irish. The ports involved in the latter comprised Bristol, Carlisle, Pembroke and Southampton. Italian Merchant Companies brought in pepper and onions.

     The construction of Cork history has a habit (probably like elsewhere as well) to reduce Cork’s international connections to just lists. Mining into the cities that Cork was connected with does show allow a way of reflecting more on the energy, drive and forces at work in maintaining a city and its urbanity. It would great to go back in a time machine to see the human stories playing out in our city on a swamp. I have always felt that many of Cork’s missing historical jigsaw pieces are to be viewed elsewhere – in the thirteenth century Cork was part of a necklace of North Atlantic cities through which an Anglo-Norman colonies rose, expanded and in time eventually contracted.

    On Cork’s import records, Southampton features alot. In the thirteenth century, Southampton’s offering to Cork was wool. My own research led me to visit this southern English port city of the sea. Much of its medieval heritage was destroyed during World War II – so only bits and pieces of medieval towers, walls and churches survive. With a trip to Southampton library one can trace the development of the city through maps. Size-wise, its medieval town was about Cork’s size. Prominent in the old medieval town and a building that has survived the test of time is one of the old wool houses. The Wool House on Town Quay, which is more than 600 years old, built in 1417, was closed in 2011 and the artefacts moved to the new SeaCity Museum. In the last year, campaigners have criticised the local Council’s decision to approve plans to turn Southampton’s former Maritime Museum into a pub and micro-brewery – one of the description emerged was that it was an emblematic building of the city’s history. Emblematic was a word that stuck with me during my visit that goods can become emblems of a colony and its identity and ultimately legacy.

     History plaques in Southampton’s old medieval core reveal that the wool trade reached its height in the thirteenth century and a majority of townspeople derived their income from it. Southampton’s location was ideal, near to the sheep rearing districts of Hampshire and the Wiltshire Downlands. There are many works on medieval trade in England by scholars. Eileen Power who pioneered the study of the wool trade in Medieval England way back in 1941, a study which many scholars refer to, reveals that wool was an emblem of many aspects of society – control over the land and the construction of social class. England was for a great part of the Middle Ages the largest and most important source of fine wool gave her a key position. The barons of England in 1297 roundly stated that the wool of England amounts to half the value of the whole land. The merchant Ordinance of the Staple called it the “sovereign merchandise” and “jewel of this realm of England”.

    Welsh and Irish wool was imported, but it was coarser, and in some manufactures the use of Irish wool was prohibited. A good part of the Italian cloth industry and almost the whole of the industry of the Low Countries depended on English wool. The English nation, from king to peasant, was intensely wool-conscious and wool helped in its own way in the construction of social hierarchies and identities. The English economy, society and government responded, each in its own way, to variations in the wool trade – its ebb and flow, its shifting associations with the crown, and its continually changing organisation. A wool tax was one of the primary new sources of royal revenue at the end of the thirteenth century.

    Perhaps sheep were also an emblem of landscape control and transformation in any physical environment. The short-woolled sheep was the native of poor pastures, hills, moors and downs. It was found on the Welsh and Scottish borders, Yorkshire moors and chalk downlands of the South. The long-woolled sheep belongs to rich grasslands, marshes and fens in the midlands of England. The Midland wools formed a middle grade, and the chalk downlands of South and South-East England produced mainly coarser grades. Those of Devon and Cornwall, which were too coarse for the foreign market, were not exported at all. Statistics of all the demesne livestock for the four Eastern Counties (Norfolk, Suffolk, Essex and Cambridgeshire) and the four Western counties (Cornwall, Devon, Somerset and Dorset) and for one great monastery, Ely Abbey – eight shires – carried some 292,000 demesne sheep. Records for the years 1310–11 record English exports of 35,509 sacks of wool with a percentage of that arriving through King’s and Queen’s Castle of Cork’s medieval docks for sale and distribution.

 To be continued…

 Kieran’s new book, Cork Harbour Through Time (with Dan Breen) is now available in Cork bookshops.

Caption:

 779a. Romanticised view of Southampton, c.1450 (source: Southampton City Council)

 779b. Remains of one of the Medieval entrance gates, Southampton (picture: Kieran McCarthy)

Kieran’s Our City, Our Town Article,

Cork Independent, 22 January 2015

Cork Harbour Memories (Part 7) – The Towns We Know Well

   In the thirteenth century, places such as the walled town of Cork, and developing towns such as Kinsale and Youghal became centres for collecting masses of local produce for export. How these towns interlinked with each other and worked for the benefit of each other for the Anglo-Norman frontier in southern Ireland are interesting questions.

      As part of the colonisation process, sub collection points in the county were deemed important. The Sheriff of Cork in June 1299 listed 38 Anglo-Norman related market towns up and running in the most fertile countryside of County Cork. Today the majority are well known settlements; some were recognised as having further potential and developed into the villages and towns we know today. The map, inset, shows a web of frontier settlements, which were strategically placed adjacent feudal manors, on important inland routeways, fordable points of rivers and near coastal access. If one overlays main roads on this map, the settlements also influenced the development of rough roads to and from them – the early lines of some of the county’s well known routeways were created, especially roads from Cork to Fermoy, Mallow, Kinsale and to Youghal. These market spaces influenced political and civil order in and around them; their presence would have influenced spaces for people to belong to, to be controlled in and would have created their own identity structures. They maintained and encouraged the creation of agriculture practices. The regulation of trade became the lot of these locations, through administration, paper work, and the granting of privileges and immunities to its traders.

     Both Kinsale and Youghal have striking and beautiful built heritage, both were founded in the early thirteenth century. In the last number of years, in Youghal the Heritage Council and Town Council have worked up an insightful report (Conservation Plan, 2008) in an attempt to conserve and showcase its town walls. Youghal received its charter of incorporation from King John in 1202. It was mostly populated by new settlers from Bristol, a city that retained strong trading links with Youghal during the medieval period. These links are also inherent in the town’s coat of arms, the same as Bristol’s – a tower and a ship. In the thirteenth century growing trade and the presence of native Irish living outside the town required the citizens of Youghal to enclose an area of approximately 17 hectares with a wall.

    In 1224, Maurice Fitz-Gerald founded a Franciscan monastery on the south side of the town, which was the first religious foundation of the order in Ireland. It is recorded that he originally intended the building for a castle, but that, in consequence of some harsh treatment which the workmen received from his eldest son, he changed his design and determined to devote it to religious uses: but, dying in 1257, it was completed in 1260 by his second son, Thomas, whose son, in 1263 or 1271, founded a Dominican monastery, called the Friary of St Mary of Thanks. At this time the town had attained some commercial eminence, for in 1267 the amount of customs paid was £103. By the late thirteenth century and early fourteenth century Youghal was the sixth largest port in Ireland, after New Ross, Waterford, Cork, Drogheda and Dublin, trading timber and wool for spices, grain and wine with the rest of Ireland, England, Wales, and Europe. The principle ports of England and Wales supplied the town with the products of their different industries.

    In 1226 King Henry III granted permission to Andrew Blundus to have a weekly market at his manor in Kinsale. In the years following this grant, extant town records tell of Irish attempts to subvert the new feudal systems. These factors led in the course of time to the establishment of an Anglo-Norman garrison in the area. Believed to have been commenced during the mid-thirteenth century, Kinsale’s town walls were repaired in the mid-fourteenth century, damaged in the battle of Kinsale in 1601, largely destroyed in the siege of 1690 and subjected to some repairs in the eighteenth century. Samuel Lewis, in his Topographical Directory of Ireland in 1837 notes that “three of the gates were remaining till near the close of the last century; Nicholas gate was removed in 1794, Friars gate in 1796, and Cork gate in 1805”.

   The fourteenth century in Cork marked further progression in the development of the town as an Atlantic port. In 1326, Cork became a “staple” town. In otherwords, it was required by English law that Cork became an official market place. Dublin and Drogheda were also made staple towns. The regulations attached to a staple town in summary were far more attractive to foreign merchants than to the Irish themselves. Foreign trade was encouraged under this new system and it suppressed any profit making initiatives on the part of the native Irish. This new law was only one of several laws enacted in order to attract more foreign trade into Ireland. Such was the success of the Irish laws, in 1353, Bristol became a staple town as well as several other ports in England.

 To be continued…

 Kieran’s new book, Cork Harbour Through Time (with Dan Breen) is now available in Cork bookshops. 

Caption:

 776a. Kieran’s map of thirteenth century County Cork market towns/spaces, as listed by the Sheriff of Cork, June 1299 (source: information collected in A F O’Brien’s chapter Politics, Economics and Society, c.1170 to 1593 in P O’Flanagan & C Buttimer, Editors, 1993, Cork History and Society, pp-93-94).