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Late-thirteenth-century Ireland as a region

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Demography

Resumen

La distribución de población de las ciudades irlandesas de fines del siglo XIII se ha usado para determinar el estado de la cultura (usado el término en sentido antropológico) de la isla como una región. La evidencia se deduce ampliamente de las áreas de las ciudades, y del número de lotes de la ciudad (burgages) en los trazados (extents) de tributación. Alrededor de los años 1275–85 Irlanda tuvo una población de cerca de 650.000 habitantes. Su ciudad más grande, Dublín, tenía cerca de 10.000 habitantes, siendo este número aproximadamente el esperado 1 1/2 de la región. Las otras grandes ciudades o grupos de ciudades parecen caer dentro del patrón de tamaño esperado. Así, aunque agudas diferencias sociales y ecónbmicas existen entre I nglaterra la urbana y feudal y la pastoril Irlanda, se presenta la posibilidad de una región política y económica normal. Aunque Eduardo I concedió derechos de ley común a los galesee, los rehusó a los irlandeses, impidiendo asi la integración con los ingleses y dilatando las grietas anglo-irlandesas en el tiempo más favorable para haberlas terminado.

Summary

The population distribution of late-thirteenth-century Irish cities is used to determine the status of culture (the term used anthropologically) of the island as a region. The evidence derives largely from areas of the cities and from numbers of city lots (burgages) in the descriptions (extents) of city taxation. Around A.D. 1275–85, Ireland had a population of about 650,000. Its largest city, Dublin, had about 10,000 inhabitants, thus nearly the expected 1 1/2 percent of the region. The other large cities or clusters of cities seem to fall into the expected pattern of size. So, although sharp social and economic differences existed between the urban and feudal English and the pastoral Irish, the possibility of a normal political and economic region was present. Although Edward I granted common law rights to the Welsh, he refused them to the Irish, thus preventing integration with the English and prolonging the Anglo-Irish rift at the one most favorable time to have ended it.

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References

  1. For an introductory study, see my “The Metropolitan City Region of the Middle Ages,” Journal of Regional Science, II (1960), 55–70, especially the literature cited at the end.

  2. On Irish geography, see T. W. Freeman, Ireland: Its Physical, Historical, Social, and Economic Geography (London, 1942).

  3. See my “Aspects démographiques des débuts de la feodalite,” Annales: Bconomiee, societes cirnlisations, xx (1965), 1118–27. Also see my Late Ancient and Medieval Population. (Philadelphia: Transactions of the American Philosophical Society, 1958), pp. 94–95.

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  8. Such requests are enrolled in the Calendar of Patent Rolls and are especially numerous in the decade of 1280–90, recorded in the Calendar for 1281–92. The recipients of the privilege included clerks (p. 370), a citizen of Dublin (p. 439), and even customary tenants (p. 78).

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  18. The Chester-Irish trade is discussed by D. T. Williams and H. C. Darby, An Historical Geography of England before A.D. 1800 (Cambridge, 1936), pp. 294–96.

  19. Calendar of Patent Rolls, 1272–78, p, 260. 21 The receipts for two years, from Michaelmas, 1281, were as follows (in pounds in round numbers): New Ross, 880; Waterford, 690; Cork, 525; Dublin, 325; Drogheda, 294; Youghal, 152; Galway, 75; Limerick, 21 (Orpen, op. cit. Ireland under the Normans IV, 277).

  20. Russell, Late Ancient and Medieval Populotion, pp. 59–63.

  21. Calendar of Inquisitions post Mortem, V, 22; VI, 327. Hereafter given as CIPM.

  22. Ibid. Calendar of Inquisitions post Mortem IV, 305.

  23. Ibid. Calendar of Inquisitions post Mortem p. 304.

  24. Ibid. Calendar of Inquisitions post Mortem, IX, 131.

  25. Ibid. Calendar of Inquisitions post Mortem IV, 326.

  26. Ibid. Calendar of Inquisitions post Mortem p. 324; Calendar of Documents of Ireland, 1285–92, p, 208.

  27. CIPM, II, 430.

  28. Ibid.CIPM, p. 430; IX, 131. In two parts, VIII, 150.

  29. Ibid.CIPM,; II, 253.

  30. Ibid.CIPM, V, 22.

  31. Ibid.CIPM, IV, 305.

  32. Ibid.CIPM, VII, 374; Cal. Doc. Ireland, 1302-7, p.174.

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  36. Trillek had 113 burgesses with 271 burgages (CIPM, IV, 326).

  37. This percentage was offered in my Late Ancient and Medieval Population, pp. 68–70, and used to estimate the populations of regions in that work. The basis in distribution of population is given in my “Metropolitan City Region,” pp. 60–65. Its validity for Asia Minor regions is shown in my “Late Medieval Balkan and Asia Minor Population,” Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient, III (1960), 270–74, and for the Barcelona-Valencia region in my “The Medieval Monedatge,” pp. 501–3.

  38. G. A. Hill, Dublin before the Vikings (Dublin, 1957), p. 88.

  39. 210–30 to the parish (Russell British Medieval Population, p. 46).

  40. Exchequer: Calendar of Patent Rolls, 1232–47, p. 153; Treasury: ibid.Calendar of Patent Rolls, 1232–47, 1272–81, p. 161; Richardson and Sayles, op, cit., The Irish Parliament in the Middle Ages pp. 21–24.

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  42. Estimated from the apparently medieval area in the map in the Enciclopedia Universale Ilustrada Europeo-Americana.

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  44. Russell, British Medieval Population, p, 181. If the group had been primarily a hereditary group that presumably had just finished its training, the average age would probably have been under twenty-five and the expectation of life about twenty-five years.

  45. Webb, op. cit.J. J. Webb, The Guilds of Dublin (London, 1929), p. 9.

  46. Webb, op. cit.J. J. Webb, The Guilds of Dublin (London, 1929), p. 5. Webb is willing (p. 8) to admit that this one was Irish.

  47. Calendar of Close Rolls, 1279–88, pp. 76, 165.

  48. Calendar of Patent Rolls, 1272–81, p. 423.

  49. P. Canon Power, “The Town Walls of Waterford,” Journal of the Royal Society of Antiquaries of Ireland, LXXIII (1943), 118–36. The Danish settlement inclosed about 8 hectares, the other about 19 (E. Downey, The Story of Waterford [Waterford, 1914], p. 240).

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  54. £8, 4s., 11 1/2[itd]. (CIPM, IV, 327).

  55. The wall was built in 1265 —(Hore, op. cit., p. 55). A good map on p. 51 shows quays said to be about 200-250 meters long (Hore, op cit., p. 113). The map of the area on p. 47 also suggests that the city had an area of about 30 hectares. A hill along the river front must have reduced the density of the population,

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  56. See the Appendix.

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  59. Hardiman, op, cit., J. Hardiman, A History of the Town and County of the Town of Galway (Dublin, 1820), pp. 278, 291. Even in the eighteenth century the town was not much larger in area (Historical Manuscripts Commision. Ormonde, II, 328).

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  61. M. Lenihan, Limerick (Dublin, 1866), maps on pp. 237, 258; walls in the time of King John; P. Fitzgerald, History of Limerick, II (1827), 382. Burgesses of Limerick are mentioned in CIPM, VI, 159, but no number appears.

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  63. The evidence is somewhat complicated; see CIPM, III, 222: one-half of 221 1/2 burgages wasted; CIPM, VI, 324: one-third of one-half equals 66 burgages (with six submerged); VI, 340;V, 22; VII, 292.

  64. —Hore, op, cit., opposite p. 285; begun in the time of King John (1199-1216) and completed about 1300.

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  65. CIPM, V, 22.

  66. Ibid.CIPM, III, 222.

  67. J. I.Young, “A Note on the Norse Occupation of Ireland,” History, XXXV (1950), 15.

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  68. Its commerce was only one-tenth of that of New Ross, to judge from the customs revenue —(Hore, op, cit., p. 33).

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  69. C. C. Milligan, The Walls of Derry, pp. 35–36; they apparently inclosed about 16.6 hectares, but even these may have been later. For Down, see Edward Parkinson, The City of Down (London, 1928), p. 85; about 12 hectares. It was a bishop's see (Calendar of Patent Rolls, 1247–58, pp. 135, 490, 606, 653).

  70. It was named as a borough (CIPM, VII, 373–74).

  71. Calendar of Patent Rolls, 1272–81, p. 7.

  72. Ibid.Calendar of Patent Rolls, 1272–81, p. 330. By 1243 it had a Franciscan house (Chartularies of St. Mary's Abbey, Dublin [London, 1884; Rolls Series], II, 315).

  73. Nicholas de Kolchok (Calendar of Patent Rolls, 1272–81, p, 228). From the Continent to Chester.

  74. CIPM, VII, 374.

  75. John D'Alton, The History of Drogheda (Dublin, 1844), II, 285, 363. The areas seem to have been about 17 1/2 hectares for the main part and about 14 for the part across the river (W. P. Allen, “Some Notes on the Old Fortifications of Drogheda,” County Louth Archaeological Journal, X [1943], 233). Here the estimate would be about 25 and 8 for the two parts.

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  76. Chartularies of St. Mary's Abbey, Dublin, II, 165, 169–70.

  77. CIPM, IV, 328; down to 119 burgages by 1383-84. C.McNeill, Liber Primus Kilkenniensis (Dublin, 1931), pp. 55, 68–70.

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  79. CIPM, VI, 326, 340; V, 22.

  80. William O'Sullivan, Economic History of Cork (Cork, 1937), p. 132; R. Caulfield, The Council Book of the Corporation of Youghal (Guilford, 1878). Walls included about 7 hectares, apparently about 180 burgages (CIPM, II, 430; VI, 161; IX, 131). For nearby Olonmel, see P. Lyons, “Norman Antiquities of Clonmel Borough,” Journal of the Royal Society of Antiquaries of Ireland, LXVI (1936), 285–94, esp. p. 294. It had about 14 1/2 hectares.

  81. Russell, British: Medieval Population, pp, 323–35.

  82. Edited with an introduction by F.Madden, “Anglo-Norman Poem on the Erection of the Walls of New Ross, Ireland, A.D. 1265,” Archaeologia, XXII (1834), 307–22; T. Croften Croker, “Identification of the Author of the Ancient Ballad upon the Intrenchment of the Town of New Ross,” Archaeologia, XXVIII (1940), 43841.

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  83. See n, 57. p. 55)

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  84. That Arabic numerals were in use then occasionally in southern Ireland is indicated by their appearance in the Annals of Inisfallen, ed. and trans. Sean Mac Airt (Dublin, 1951), pp. xl,440.

  85. CIPM, I, 130; IV, 254; V, 168; VII, 124. There are many other references to this family.

  86. CIPM, V, 168.

  87. Annals of Inisfallen, p, 417. Franciscans appear prominently on pp. 411 and 429.

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    Josiah C. Russell

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Russell, J.C. Late-thirteenth-century Ireland as a region. Demography 3, 500–512 (1966). https://doi.org/10.2307/2060175

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