Recent years have witnessed a growing interest in the social history of pre-modern Ireland. Scholars, in particular, have sought to look beyond the arena of high politics and explore, where possible, the lives of those comprising the lower strata of society. 2018 witnessed the publication of Sparky Booker’s Cultural Exchange and Identity in Late Medieval Ireland: The English and Irish of the Four Obedient Shires (Cambridge) and Stephen Hewer’s Beyond Exclusion in Medieval Ireland: Intersections of Ethnicity, Sex, and Society under English Law (Turnhout) was published in 2021. Joanna MacGugan’s very welcome study follows in the wake of these recent historiographical developments.
As the title of the book suggests, this volume (like the two aforementioned titles) deals with the history and culture of England’s Irish colony. The author makes it abundantly clear that scholarship on high and later medieval Ireland has, to date, focused overwhelmingly either on the mechanics of governance within the crown’s Irish lordship or upon the fortunes of the great magnatial dynasties (such as the de Burghs, Butlers, and FitzGeralds). There are, of course, obvious reasons for this: the historical record produced by the colonists has allowed scholars to trace the development of the crown’s lordship in detail. MacGugan, however, contends that this same historical record can be used to probe and investigate the lives of common folk in medieval Ireland. The introduction provides a succinct overview of the book’s methodology (focusing on how we can interpret the sources and what they can tell us about evolving legal and cultural attitudes towards life and death), historiography pertaining to the topic, and a brief overview of the history of the lordship during the later middle ages.
The book itself is divided into two main sections. The first part focuses on the jurisdiction of the coroner and examines how oral culture (and cultural memory) shaped the legal tradition in the colony, with a particular emphasis on the jurisdiction of the coroner. The first chapter examines how the social or collective memory of death informed the local (lex loci) and customary laws of the colony. MacGugan highlights some fascinating cases which underline how jurors thought “historically” in this period. For instance, jurors often described deaths as taking place during the tenure of a particular archbishop of the reign of a certain king; this frame of reference was also used during inquisitions or when litigants sought to justify their claims. MacGugan makes a convincing case for thinking of customary law as a constantly evolving tradition, shaped by these fluid dynamics. Chapter two examines the issue of cultural memory and customary law in more detail. Customary law, as the name suggests, was not uniform: oftentimes this led to diverging interpretations of the law and legal tradition. Using a series of intriguing case studies, MacGugan explores the complex jurisdictional landscape in Dublin and how such historical thinking led to significant disputes between municipal and ecclesiastical authorities in and around Dublin. The third chapter examines how the Dublin authorities moved to formalise or, at the very least, impose some degree of uniformity on thelex loci. The “Laws and usages of the city of Dublin” is a fascinating text and MacGugan’s examination of the source reveals the significant role played by oral culture in shaping the colony’s legal tradition.
The second section of the book centres on the concept of publica fama, or social reputation. One’s honour was hugely important within the medieval world and it was underpinned by a variety of elements including perceptions of trustworthiness, credibility, respectability, and lineage. An individual’s good name, however, was also susceptible to rumour, gossip, and idle talk. This second section offers some fascinating insights into the world of medieval social networks. Chapter four examines how families attempted to insulate themselves and their good name. This was particularly challenging. Due to a variety of factors, families of colonial extraction expanded into cadet branches during the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries: extended kin groups (as typified by the le Poers), notably those residing on the fringes of the lordship, became increasingly involved in criminal behaviour. Community policing became an ever more important means of maintaining law and order within the colony (from the government’s perspective) and a means for the accused to secure protection and eventually, if possible, pardons. Chapter five builds on this and investigates the importance of cultivating a good reputation in more detail. Maintaining a good image in the eyes of the law--and the jurors--was hugely important in mitigating against a more severe sentence. MacGugan draws attention to the importance of cultivating a positivepublica fama as a means of offsetting harsh punishments: jurors’ familiarity with the reputation and history of a particular family could literally mean the difference between life and death.
The sixth chapter discusses the issue of royal pardons during the reign of Edward I. Put simply, the English king needed soldiers to fight in Scotland during the mounting series of military crises in the early 1300s. Pardons, therefore, offered a way out of capital punishment through military service. However, as MacGugan, demonstrates, it was not a straightforward process. Once again, an individual’s publica fama played a central role in determining if such a pardon could be secured. Using the Lawless family as the main case study, the chapter explores the central role of the wider kin group and social network in influencing the justiciar in this regard. The final chapter explores the issue of ethnicity and homicide. The ethnic identity and status of both the accused and victim played an important role in determining the punishment. MacGugan makes the point that the passing of time, coupled with successive intermarriages, often blurred the line between the crown’s English subjects in Ireland and the indigenous Irish. As a result, persons were often reliant on their publica fama as a means of proving their ethnicity. The chapter reveals the extent to which publica fama was elastic in this regard; it also makes the astute observation that this elasticity could only function in such a fluid environment where ethnic lines were already very blurred.
Overall, this is a very fine study and Joanna MacGugan is to be commended. On a very basic level, the book will be of great utility to anyone interested in exploring the exercise of the law within colonial Ireland during the high medieval period: for instance, the book offers a very helpful and insightful overview of the functions of the crown’s various legal officers. On a more specific level, the book is a fascinating study of how oral culture shaped the colonial historical record. One is left in no doubt as to the importance of reputation in this period and one can only wonder what other periods of Irish history would benefit from adopting a similar approach to the extant source material. Another great strength of the book is the range of parallels drawn with other regions of Europe. MacGugan finds many points of comparison with England but also, on a number of occasions, points to developments on the continent. There are perhaps a few areas that MacGugan could have examined in a little more detail. It should be noted that MacGugan consulted a relatively narrow base of primary sources. The study primarily engages with calendars of the court of the justiciar during the late thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries. As the author acknowledges, this book emerged out of her PhD thesis and research was undoubtedly carried out over a number of years and before the launching of Virtual Record Treasury of Ireland. This online repository emerged from the Beyond 2022 project (funded by the Irish and British governments) and has made a huge volume of archival sources pertaining to the colony freely accessible. That being said, a good deal of other records could have been considered, notably the calendar of Irish Chancery rolls which were, until their recent incorporation into the Virtual Record Treasury of Ireland, accessible and hosted online by Trinity College Dublin. This, however, is a very minor point in the grand scheme of things. To pardon the pun, MacGugan has judiciously selected and forensically examined a core set of primary sources. The approach taken not only reveals a great deal about the inner workings of the colonial legal system, it also sheds a great deal of new light on the neglected area of medieval Irish social history.