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The Church and the Two Nations in Late Medieval Armagh (Presidential Address)

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 March 2016

J. A. Watt
J. A. Watt*
Affiliation:
University of Newcastle upon Tyne
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Extract

Perhaps I can best introduce my paper, explain its nature and state my objective in writing it, by describing it as another step towards completing the second part of a study of which my book The Church and the Two Nations in Medieval Ireland was the first part.’ The study which concluded with the Statute of Kilkenny of 1366 needs extending chronologically by at least a century. More importantly, the nature of the analysis itself needs to be deepened. The ‘Two Nations’ book began with asking a fairly simple and limited question: what was the relationship of the ecclesiastical and civil powers within the English-settled parts of Ireland—in short, English law and the Irish Church. But it ended raising a more complex and more fundamental question about the overall effects on the Church of the establishment in Ireland of an English colony which was not coterminous with the country as a whole and whose strength and influence declined in the later middle ages. There may have been a more or less satisfactory answer in the book to the restricted question. There was, at best, no more than a tentative beginning to an answer to the more fundamental one.

Type
Research Article
Information
Studies in Church History , Volume 25: The Churches, Ireland and the Irish , 1989 , pp. 37 - 54
Copyright
Copyright © Ecclesiastical History Society 1989

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References

1 In Cambridge Studies in Medieval Life and Thought, ser. 3, 3 (1970).

2 ‘The records of medieval England’, in Medieval Texts and Studia (Oxford, 1973), p. 8.

3 ‘The registers of the archbishops of York’, YAJ 22 (1936), p. 256.

4 ‘… quem dixere chaos: rudis indigesta moles / nec quicquam nisi pondus iners congestaque eodem / non bene iunc tarum discordia semina rerum’. Metamorphoses, 1. 7-9.…well named chaos, a raw and undivided mass / Naught but a lifeless bulk, with warring seeds / Of ill- joined elements compressed together’. Loeb edn and transl, by F. M. Miller (1971), pp. 2-3.

5 Registrum Iohannis Mey. The Register of John Mey Archbishop of Armagh, 1433-1456 ed. W. G. H. Quigley and E. F. D. Roberts (Belfast, 1972), p. xli.

6 D. M. Smith, Guide to Bishops’Registers of England and Wales (1981), p. ix. Closer perhaps to the Armagh registers is Hamilton Thompson’s summary: ‘The primary object of an episcopal register was to preserve the common forms upon which the extensive correspondence of a diocesan chancery was conducted, together with such necessary records of business as had to be preserved for future reference.’ ‘Documents relating to the visitations of the diocese and province of York, 1407-1452’, Miscellanea (SS 127, 1916), p. 134.

7 Reg. Mey, p. xxvi.

8 Lawlor, H. J., ‘A Calendar of the Register of Archbishop Fleming’, PRIA 30 C (1912-13), pp. 94–190. Trinity College, Dublin MS 557/2 Google Scholar (transcripts of the originals made by W. Reeves).

9 The Register of John Swayne, ed. D. A. Chart (Belfast, 1935).

10 No edition or calendar yet in print. A typescript calendar compiled by W. Reeves is in the National Library of Ireland, Dublin. Another was drawn up by Quigley and Roberts, ‘A Study in the structure and history of the registers of Archbishops Prene and Mey together with an edition of the register of Mey and a calendar of the register of Prene’ (Ph.D. Queen’s Univ., Belfast, 1955).

11 A. Gwynn’s pioneering study. The Medieval Province of Armagh (Dundalk, 1946), is concerned primarily with the period from 1470 down to the Reformation.

12 Walsh, K., A Fourteenth-Century Scholar and Primate: Richard FitzRalph in Oxford, Avignon and Armagh (Oxford, 1981), pp. 341–45.Google Scholar

13 As recorded in provincial constitutions in Swayne’s register: ‘Item ad instar Milonis auctoritate presentis concilii statuimus et ordinamus sub poena inobedientie et excommunicationis quod unusquisque episcopus suffraganeorum nostrorum pro pace reformanda, tenenda et conservanda inter Anglicos et Hibernicos provinde nostre Ardmachane secundum possi-bilitatem suam laborer, et pacem inter eos predicet, et ad pacem tenendam omnes subditos uos et singulos per omnes censuras ecclcsiasricas compella t. Si quis autem semina tor discordie inter predictos Anglicos et Hibernicos ut predicitur fuerit, quod absit, non solum a pontificalibus sit suspensus, sed ipse quisque fuerit excommunicetur ipso facto.’ First printed by W. Reeves, Acts of Archbishop Colton in his metropolitical visitation of the diocese of Derry (Irish Archaeological Soc., Dublin, 1850), p. xvii.

14 An example, from Swayne’s Register, is given in full, J. A. Watt, ‘Ecclesia inter Anglicos et inter Hibernicos: confrontation and coexistence in the medieval diocese and province of Armagh’ in The English in Medieval Ireland, ed. J. F. Lydon (Dublin, 1984), pp. 48-9.

15 Conway, C., The story of Mellifont (Dublin, 1958), p. 117.Google Scholar

16 … decanus et capitulum sunt meri Hibernici et inter Hibernicos conversantes quibus consilium regium nee consuevit nee decuit secreta Consilia relevare’. Fleming reg. T.C.D. MS 557/2, p. 359.

17 Studied in more detail. Watt, Ecclesia inter Anglicos et inter Hibernicos. Cf.Lynch, A., ‘The archdeacons of Armagh 1417-71’, Journal of the County Louth Archaeol. Hist. Soc. 19 (1979), pp. 218–26.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

18 A distinction made, for example, in Statute of Kilkenny (1360), c. 14, forbidding the reception of native Irishmen into religious houses in the English areas, ‘mes resceuient gentes Engleis sanz auoir consideracion les queux ilz soient neez en Engleterre ou en Irland’. Statutes and Ordinances and Acts of the Parliament of Ireland: King John to Henry V. H. F. Berry (Dublin, 1907), pp. 444-6.

19 J. F. Lydon, ‘The middle nation’ in The English in medieval Ireland, pp. 1-26; A. Cosgrove, ‘Hiberniores ipsis Hibernicis’ in Studies in Irish history presented to R. Dudley Edwards, ed. A. Cosgrove and D. McCartney (Dublin, 1979), pp. 1-14.

20 DNB 5, pp. 17-18 (R.L. Poole); Emden (O), 1, pp. 510-11.

21 Bernard, J. H., ‘Richard Talbot archbishop and chancellor, 1418-1449’, PRIA 35 C (1918-20), pp. 218–29 Google Scholar; Emden (O), 3, pp. 1845-6.

22 Emden (O), 3, pp. 1894-5.

23 Fleming and Prene are listed in Emden (O), 3, p. 2176; 3, pp. 1515-16. As elect of Armagh, Mey is described as ‘bacallarius in utroque iure’ in Mey reg. no. 285.

24 The most helpful biographical study is K. Walsh, ‘The Roman career of John Swayne, archbishop of Armagh 1418-1439’, Seanchas Ardmhacha, 11 (1983-4), pp. 1-21.

25 Swayne reg., ed. Chart, pp. 32-4.

26 Mey reg., nos 283, 187-9.

27 Swayne reg., pp. 66-8.

28 Mey reg., no. 405.

29 Church in Gaelic Ireland, pp. 57-8.

30 On this union. Watt, ‘The papacy and Ireland in the fifteenth century’ in The Church, Politics and Patronage in the Fifteenth Century, ed. R. B. Dobson (Gloucester, 1984), pp. 140-2.

31 1 have examined this in more detail, ‘The disputed primacy of the medieval Irish Church’, forthcoming in the Proceedings of the Seventh Conference of Medieval Canon Law, Cambridge 1984.

32 Mey reg., no. 399.

33 Cal. reg. Fleming, nos 86, 87, 88, 90;TCD MS 557/2, pp. 116-19.

34 There is a typical example of the nature and limitations of the evidence for the provincial council of 1427, Swayne reg., pp. 61-3, 73-5, 78, 120.

35 Swayne reg., pp. 8-16, 17-18.

36 Reeves, , Acts of Archbishop Colton in his metropolitical visitation of the diocese of Deny. Analysis, Watt, ‘John Colton, Justiciar of Ireland (1382) and Archbishop of Armagh (1383-1404)’, England and Ireland in the later middle ages, ed. Lydon, J. F. (Dublin, 1981), pp. 204–11.Google Scholar

37 Curtis, E., Richard II in Ireland, 1394-5 and submission of the Irish chiefs (Oxford, 1927), De instrumentis tangentibus Hiberniam, VIII, p. 69.Google Scholar

38 Cal. reg. Sweetman, nos 68-78, 99 (1366-8).

39 Cal. reg. Sweetman, no. 16 (1369);no. 14(1380).

40 Swayne reg., pp. 117-18.

41 Cf. ‘Papacy and Ireland in the Fifteenth Century’, pp. 140-1.

42 Kilmore (1409); Derry (1410); Dromore (1411); Ardagh (1416). Cal. reg. Fleming, nos 107; 127, 147; 128:256.

43 Swayne reg., p. 149.

44 Swayne reg., pp. 157-8.

45 Characteristic examples can be studied by following the Index Mey reg. s.v. Courts, ecclesiastical (appeals; appeals, tuitorial).

46 Annula Uladh: Annals of Ulster, ed. W. M. Hennessy, 4 vols (Dublin, 1887-1901), 3, pp. 162-5.

47 Mey reg., nos 153, 232, 264, 273, 382.

48 Cal. Prene (Quigley and Roberts), no. 102; Cal. Prene (Reeves), no. 99.

49 Summarized in an Appendix to ‘Ecclesia inter Anglicos et inter Hibernicos’, pp. 61-4.

50 Ann. Ulster, 3, pp. 184-5.

51 Full references, with some previously unpublished texts, ‘Ecclesia inter Anglicos el inter Hibernicos’, Appendix, pp. 61-3.

52 Accession, 1410; deposed, 1414; restored, 1419; dep. 1421; rest. 1432. Detail from A new history of Ireland, ed. T. W. Moody el al. (Oxford, 1984), p. 212.

53 Mey reg., no. 343.

54 Texts from Prene’s Register in K. Simms, ‘The concordat between Primate John Mey and Henry O’Neill (1455)’. Archivium Hibernicum 34 (1976-7), pp. 71-82.