Abstract
Issues of ethnicity have been central to much of the academic writing about Anglo Norman Ireland over the past century, and Stephen Hewer's new book dents some long-standing assumptions about the status of the English and the Irish and their inter-relationships. In seeking to question twentieth-century orthodoxies, he finds his starting point in the writings of historians Edmund Curtis, Jocelyn Otway Ruthven and James Lydon. That the work of successive medievalists at Trinity College Dublin had a significant influence on how medieval ethnicities were understood was perhaps reinforced in recent times by the reissuing of their selected essays, edited by Peter Crooks, in Government, War and Society in Medieval Ireland: Essays by Edmund Curtis, A.J. Otway-Ruthven and James Lydon (2008). Contributions by other historians, particularly those specialising in sources of Gaelic as well as English origin, emerge from this study as having had a lower profile or impact through much of the twentieth century, although the important contribution of Kenneth Nicholls to our understanding of ethnic relationships in medieval Ireland is recognised by Hewer. The work of Freya Verstraten Veach on Gaelic naming practices is also acknowledged. The influence of recent work by Paul Brand, Seán Duffy and John Gillingham is evident, but the findings of Sparky Booker's broader, but related, study of the late medieval period, Cultural Exchange and Identity in Late Medieval Ireland (2018) are not mentioned at all.
Hewer's focussed study of ethnic identities and legal status in medieval English Ireland, from circa 1250 to 1320, investigates how a range of ethnic and social groups including Gaelic men, Gaelic women and English women, were dealt with in the royal courts. The study also extends, for comparative purposes, to peoples of the Irish Sea region such as Manx, Welsh, Scots, Hebredians, and Ostpeople who had a presence in Ireland. Gaelic clerics are treated separately because they were usually accorded privileged status in the royal courts.
The court records on which Hewer bases his investigation were in Latin, and the ways in which the relevant terminologies of identity have been translated and interpreted has varied over time. Only fragments of original legal records survive, and thus the study is largely based on evidence mediated through calendars of documents, mostly prepared prior to 1922. These include the unpublished Record Commissioners calendars of ‘plea rolls’ and ‘memoranda rolls’ compiled in the mid-nineteenth century and now in the National Archives (Ireland), and three published volumes of the Calendar of the Justiciary Rolls or Proceedings in the Court of the Justiciar of Ireland, preserved in the Public Record Office of Ireland (1905, 1914, 1956), compiled by James Mills and others before the original documents were destroyed.
In searching these sources Hewer recognises, of course, that ‘no ethnicity in medieval Ireland was “pure”’ since intermarriage was so common. It also emerges that Irishness was not always a cultural or descent marker, but merely a geographical one, and Hewer is alert to the need to differentiate between evidence drawn from surnames as identifiers, as ethnic references, and as geographic references (pp. 29–30). Thus, he translates Hibernica/-us as Gael when used as a legal, ethnic marker, but leaves the term in Latin when the ethnicity is unclear. Some people identified as Hibernica/-us did not have Gaelic names, and Hewer allows for the possibility that some of those so identified by English officials were the English of Ireland.
Conclusions drawn from the close reading of records of court cases involving non-English people in thirteenth-century English Ireland suggests that ethnic discrimination was not the norm. Rather, society was more ethnically diverse than traditional narratives allow, and free Gaels formed a significant element of the population in areas under English legal jurisdiction. These free Gaels were willing and able to participate in the new legal framework, an indicator that they were accepted within that world. Social status, rather than ethnicity, was a key determinant.
The legal status of women of various ethnicities is analysed in a lengthy chapter which explores the differing status of single and married women, including women within inter-ethnic marriages. Issues such as women's access to the royal courts, their capacity to own land and other property, and the implications of marriage for their access to the law, are teased out, in so far as the evidence will allow. Methodologies developed in recent years for the study of women identified in medieval English legal records are used to good effect and the fragmentary evidence from English Ireland is skilfully analysed while broad generalisations are avoided.
Throughout the book the analysis relies heavily on evidence of personal names as a guide to ethnicity. Many of these names are challenging to interpret, and admirable attempts are made to guess the Gaelic form of many forenames and surnames mentioned. For example, Neamhain Ó Fionnghalaigh is suggested for the ‘Neyvin Offagnale’ found in a calendar entry (p. 55). Compiling a useable index to such a book is not easy, in an era when name forms were very fluid. Unfortunately, the index to this volume falls short of providing a coherent guide either to the book's themes or to the people and places discussed. Most of the cast of hundreds of minor personalities mentioned in the text are not indexed, which is reasonable enough, though a few seemingly random criminals and victims of crime have wandered in. The more prominent individuals that are included – if they lived in medieval times – are only indexed by forename, even where they have recognisable surnames. Thus, ‘Donnchadh Cairprech Ó Briain’ is listed under ‘D’, ‘Gerald de Prendergast under ‘G’ and David de Roche, lord of Fermoy, under ‘D’, all without cross-references from the relevant surname. Various de Burghs, male and female, lay and ecclesiastical, are dispersed through the index according to forename, while some O’Kellys discussed are indexed under ‘W’ for William, even though the modern surname Ó Ceallaigh is supplied as clarification. In the case of bishops there is a helpful cross-reference from the name of the diocese. Modern historians are indexed by surname. A note of explanation at the head of the index would have been useful, but systematic cross-referencing is also required. The alphabetical sequence of index terms (within ‘D’, ‘G’, and ‘L’, for example), should also have been checked. Index aside, the book itself is logically structured in a series of well-written thematic chapters, and the implications of its findings for our understanding of ethnic relationships in medieval English Ireland are clearly elucidated.